If you recall, when I had my retirement luncheon with my colleagues from the office early this year, they presented me with many gifts. One of them was a photo essay of Algonquin and that was how I came across Ralph Bice. He stated in his book, Along The Trail in Algonquin that he was perhaps the person who had travelled the most of park lakes. So when he claimed that Butt Lake, now named after him as Bice Lake, is the most beautiful among all of them, I knew I had to check it out and so here is this story.

I knew when I started to read the book that Butt Lake, a.k.a. Bice Lake could only be reached through access point 3. I had to figure out how far to reach it from Toronto, whether we would be able to get to the lake on the same day. This is a standard planning, knowing when will the sun sets and when will we be able to reach the put-in, the first place we put the canoe on the water. The closest town, rather village, to access point 3 is Kearney, 250 km from TO. When we reached it around noon, the lady in the Park Office nodded when I asked if she knew the late Ralph Bice. Yes, Ralph lived in Kearney, where with a population of 800, I am sure everybody knows everybody's dogs and cats' names. I had been to access point 4, Algonquin Rain Lake, close to access point 3 and we knew therefore that after the small town, we still had to drive quite a distance. In this case, it was another 40 km to really reach the put in, through dirt road or gravel road. As it was late autumn, we could still enjoy the fall colour of the trees along the road.

It was 1 PM when we reached the put-in on Magnetawan Lake. Just when we started to paddle, we realized that this lake had already scenic views. It is connected to another lake on the south, Little Eagle Lake. We headed east toward the portage to Hambone Lake. A very short paddling to P135 portage, a piece of cake for my wife Cecilia. She needed all the exercises, she said. So reluctantly I allowed her to portage :-). Hambone Lake is also a small lake. It is connected to Daisy Lake in the south, the source of the famous Petawawa River. Once finished portaging to Hambone, we paddled again and headed eastward to another portage to Bice Lake, a P295, one more piece of cake for my wife. If you see her getting plum in the winter, now you know why. I offered her to portage the canoe to a nearby park the other day, but she told me that I was crazy. :-) So we lifted the canoe and hung it inside our garage these days.

Once we finished the portaging and were on Bice Lake, we kept looking around, Ralph Bice was right, Bice Lake is a lovely lake without weeds with sandy beaches and clear water. We had been watching the weather forecast before we departed from Toronto and were aware that there could be bad weather on the day we planned to be back. Since we couldn't afford to be windbound or stranded, we decided not to venture too far away to an island at the end of the lake. We brought just enough food to last during our camping trip, no spare and we had to be back in Toronto on the week-end. As soon as we spotted a nice and scenic campsite, we landed our canoe and made the place our home and glorious land for the next 3 nights.

Some people 'recharge their batteries' meaning rejuvenating their bodies and souls doing other things, but for us it is a camping trip to the interior. If you recall my essay entitled 'The Healing Nature' you know what it is like to get healed by nature. As usual, we got a loon on the lake who would sing lullaby for us in the evening as soon as we 'turn off' the fireplace :-). Well, there was no aurora borealis performance on this trip but we still had the opportunity to watch the planets and the stars from a pitch-dark place. Too bad it was already cold and I didn't own any wetsuit other than my natural 'wetsuit' :-). I knew I would freeze if I jumped to the water because the weather was already freezing, close to zero Celsius. Luckily I had a 100 Watt nature 'warmer' at night. We played Scrabble as usual, we read our books, we pondered and chatted. There was never a dull moment to be in the interior, to feel close and so dependent on our Maker. What is also good in campsite living, we have to go to 'basic'. It means we had to work to keep on living, prepared and cooked the food, pumped the water through the filter for drinking, looked for and cut wood for fire, etc. Our happiness came from doing the chores and sharing them together. Our joy happened when we did an outing, be it by just paddling around or fishing or hiking. We felt we were blessed on being able to do this and we were happy to be back in time for the Thanksgiving Day.


Bice Lake, October 8, 2002

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