LAKE SAINT PETER PROVINCIAL PARK, ALGONQUIN PARK’S LOGGING MUSEUM AND EGAN CHUTES PROVINCIAL PARK, JULY 28-AUGUST 3, 2022

Lake Saint Peter Provincial Park, Ontario, Campsite number 14

For the first time in many years, I decided to book a campsite in a park that I had never visited before. After a perfunctory research, I found out that it was a small park, located on Lake St. Peter, north of Bancroft and relatively close to Algonquin Park. According to the map, some campsites offered a view of the lake and I almost manage to reserve one, but probably somebody else must have hit the button a second before me, so I booked the only remaining campsite number 14.

 

Lake Saint Peter Provincial Park, Ontario, Campsite number 14

When I left home, the traffic on Highway 401 East was moving relatively well, but after a while, I found out about an overturned trailer, blocking all lanes—and to avoid it, I took Highway 404 and then the 407, the toll highway, which, as always, was traffic-free and I could have probably drive 150 k/hr without any problems. I stopped in Peterborough at Bell Mobile, where I activated my first smartphone! I made another stop in Bancroft in Food Mart, got 2 steaks (they were delicious!) and arrived at the park. Indeed, the site was rather small and offered very little (none) privacy from the adjoining campsite and the one across the road. After setting up the tent, I drove back to Bancroft to get wood.

 

Campfire wood for sale in Bancroft, Ontario

Two years ago, while camping in nearby Silent Lake Provincial Park, I discovered a place in Bancroft selling wood. It was run on an 'honour system' and each time I went there, I did not see any owners. This year there was plenty of wood, too, and as I was loading it into the car, a lady walked from the house—and of course, we started chatting. Her husband had passed away not long ago and now she was running this business. I asked her if people ever took the wood without leaving the payment—she said never, which I found quite amazing: as I had already mentioned in my blog about Silent Lake, if she ran such a business in Toronto, in no time the money (and the wood) would be gone!

 

The Hasting Heritage Trail at the entrance to Lake Saint Peter Park. The trail is more suitable for dirt bikes and ATVs than bikes

Along road 27 there is an old rail trail, Hasting Heritage Trail. I had even thought about bringing my bike and riding on it, but some reviewers strongly advocated against it, claiming that the trail's surface was made up of dirt & gravel, very rough due to numerous ATVs using the trail. Indeed, they were right: it would probably take a mountain bike with very thick tires to ride that trail—and when I saw a group of ATV-ers and some motor-cross riders speeding on the trail and leaving a huge cloud of dust behind, I knew it was certainly NOT my kind of a bicycle trail!

 

The Alligator--a boat that could also move overland--in Algonquin Park's Logging Museum, Ontario

 

Algonquin Park's Logging Museum, Ontario. How the loggers lived

One day I drove to Algonquin Park's Logging Museum, which I had wanted to visit for a long time. Logging was probably one of the most important activities in Ontario at that time and I always admired the people who had worked there and the hardships they had faced. The outdoor museum, where I spent over 2 hours, brought that time to life. I hope that one day I will be able to write much more about logging and loggers.

 

Egan Chutes Provincial Park, Ontario

Last year, while staying in Silent Lake, I had driven to Egan Chutes Provincial Park. Unfortunately, the Garmin GPS had the location completely wrong and I ended up in a different place, many kilometers away from the park. I had to manually find the park on my GPS map and program the destination. Once I was close to the park, on road number 28, I could not find the entrance to the park—and to make the whole story short, I had not visited it.

 

Egan Chutes Provincial Park, Ontario

This year I was better prepared and entered the exact coordinates into my car's GPS. Indeed, there was a very small sign saying “Egan Chutes Provincial Park”, but it was only visible if approaching this entrance from the east—and even then it was very easy to miss. In fact, I met two girls on the trail who also had problems finding the park! The short road was quite rough and potholed, certainly impassable to cars with very low clearance. At the end of the road, there were several cars parked here and there.

 

Egan Chutes Provincial Park, Ontario

The first thing I noticed was the abutments of the old bridge, most likely once part of highway number 28. The trail leading to the chutes ran along the river and was quite easy, yet near the chutes it became rugged—and finally I had to walk across and on rocks—a very risky task if the rocks were wet. The chutes were quite scenic and I took a bunch of photos. On my way back I noticed a solid tree, partially chewed up by beavers—probably even beavers gave up at one point, realizing that the task was too challenging for them!

 

Egan Chutes Provincial Park, Ontario. Even the beavers must have given up at one point!

Bancroft still had its old train station, converted into municipal offices; the Hastings Trail ran next to it, in the former railway's right-of-way, and there were a number of ATV-ers and dirt motorcycle riders on it.

 

Nearby was a very interesting museum; I spoke for quite a while to the lady inside the museum—she used to be a nurse in Toronto, but also had a degree in Canadian History and Native Studies—so was very knowledgeable on topics relevant to the local history—I wished I could have spoken with her longer! The museum had a lot of really fascinating exhibits related to the Bancroft area pioneer and native history.

 

The bear trap

One of the exhibits was a simple, yet effective bear trap, made of an old barrel spiked with nails. I remember a similar contraption, probably from the 17th or 18th century, in an old church in Poland—but it was not meant to trap bears, but thieves who had attempted to steal money from collection boxes: once they put their hand down into the bottom of the wooden box to grab money, the spikes made it virtually impossible to withdraw it without having the spikes impaled all over the hand.

 

Perhaps by today's standards such devices appear to be cruel, but I have always been against judging our ancestors' actions by the current standards, as has become so trendy recently. Besides, considering extremely lenient or even non-existent penalties for petty crime, many people would probably be quite content to see such an antiquated anti-thief device make a comeback!

 

 I left Bancroft and headed back home, taking various back roads and hoping to stop at various towns and other places. Unfortunately, it soon started raining and I only stopped in Barrie, where even a quick run from my car to the store caused me to get quite wet! Amazingly, the sky was blue over the Toronto area and it had not had any rain for weeks! 

Algonquin Park's Logging Museums. Reproductions of Tom Thompson's paintings on logging. By the way, today they're worth several millions of dollars!

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