Mysterious Islands: Forgotten Tales of The Great Lakes by Andrea Gutsche
and Cindy Bisaillon is another book I have had kicking around for years yet
never got around to reading in its entirety. I acquired the book, which came
with an accompanying 72-minute VHS video, when it first came out in 1999. I was
fascinated by the often forgotten, if not entirely unknown tales from the Great
Lakes islands, yet I only read about the islands I was immediately drawn to (for
example, Middle Island, Pelee Island, Manitoulin Island, and Isle Royale).
Mysterious Islands is divided into five chapters, one for each Great
Lake, moving from east to west. The book is filled with black and white
photographs throughout its 296 pages, but unfortunately many are too small or of
poor quality to make much of them. At times I even stood holding the book
directly under a lamp, or worse, shining a flashlight on certain pictures in
order to see what they depicted. The book was surprisingly heavy, but that was
due to its high quality of glossy paper. Ever the armchair editor, I was struck
by the number of typographical errors in Mysterious Islands. That the
authors named no less than two proofreaders in the Acknowledgements only made
me roll my eyes heavenward. I do wonder what it is that proofreaders actually
do.
On to the islands. Middle Island, the speck of Canada lying south of Pelee
Island lays claim to the title of being the southernmost part of Canada. It was
the hub of a thriving bootlegging and smuggling ring during the time
of Prohibition. The chapter even had a photo of the Middle Island
clubhouse, where all the boozing and gambling took place. A closeup of Middle
Island and its crumbling clubhouse can be found here. There was
plenty to read about Pelee Island, but I was shocked to find only four pages
devoted to Manitoulin. Wouldn't the largest island in the Great Lakes merit more
than this? Manitoulin also claims several lakes of its own. I have cycled around
these lakes within a lake, and even seen the islands within these lakes. I
thought that the authors would surely give at least a cursory mention to Lake
Manitou, the world's largest lake-in-a-lake.
Sugar Island, located in Lake Huron, has an unusual claim to fame: it was
one of twenty-two spots in North America selected as a possible site for the new
United Nations headquarters. Former Michigan governor Chase Osborn proposed the
site based on how it was peacefully acquired by the US in the Webster-Ashburton
Treaty of 1842. Osborn believed Sugar Island fulfilled the spirit of the new UN
pledge, "to settle international disputes by peaceful means, to refrain from the
threat or use of force". The UN instead settled on another island to build its
headquarters: Manhattan.
I love to read lighthouse stories and Mysterious Islands had
plenty of them. Caribou Island, the most remote of all the Great Lakes
islands, lies in Lake Superior, 100 km from the nearest port. It thus had the
most isolated lighthouse. Caribou was uninhabited, although the
rock 1.6 km offshore where the lighthouse was actually located housed only the
lighthouse keeper and his family. Imagine living on a rock--quite
literally--with no one else around for 100 km. There wouldn't have even been
other land to visit, unless you rowed out to Caribou. This might be the closest
an Ontarian can come to feeling what it's like to live on Tristan da Cunha. See
Caribou Island here, and the
speck of white on the offshore rock which is the lighthouse.
In 1917, the government stopped transporting lighthouse keepers and their
families back home in December. In effect, their employer just abandoned them.
Lighthouse keepers had to make their way back to the mainland themselves. I read
this time and time again, and sometimes the keepers suffered tragic results. The
Caribou lighthouse keeper refitted a sailboat yet was trapped for eight days in
Lake Superior's ice and storms. It was another five years before the government
reintroduced winter transport home.
Mysterious Islands spent an admirable time reporting on the
history of the Great Lakes islands before European settlement. The authors
reported on the alliances and treaties made between settlers and the First
Nations. The islands were home to mines, cults (more than one), prisons and
countless shipwrecks. It is my hope to visit some of these islands and I am glad
to have had the opportunity to learn so much of their
history.
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