Their children were George, Emma, Annie. Isabel married Emery North and lived on a farm near Moorhead for many years. Their children were George, Walter, William. William was about my age. I knew him quite well.

Elizabeth (“Aunt Bessie”) married Mr. McNally and also lived on a farm near Cannon Falls. She had no children that lived. She was the one with the “Chany cupboard” pieces brought from Scotland. She took quite a fancy to me because I was rather plump (“a braw, muckle gearl” she said). So every summer when we went to visit her she gave me a little vase or pitcher or something from the China cupboard. She never gave to anyone else.

July 20, 1962                               Mable W. Wilkins

John Rodney Turnbull 1880 - Memoirs Part-3 - Kawartha Lakes

Many are the happy memories of summers spent at the Lakes.  In 1885 when I was five years old, father packed the whole family off.  We went by train 10 puffing, clanging, and tooting joyful miles to Lakefield (Ontario, Canada).  Then a little steamer, the Innika, took us up the lake, through the gushing lift locks into Clear Lake, then Stoney Lake to the little island.

Later father bought the 16 acres, Ivanhoe Island, on the right in Stoney Lake, a summer paradise. Father worked hard.  He saw little of the island himself – just a day once a month maybe, but he surely gave his family a healthy summer.

All of us brothers learnt to swim.  Bill was the hilarious one.  Louis was quieter; Walter was the intelligent, planning daring young devil, always up to mischief. To tease poor Mother one would fall out of the punt

with his clothes on and the other two would jump in fully clothed to rescue him.

Ivanhoe and the other small islands around it are rather fished out now, but at the end of the 1800s we caught plenty of bass, perch and sunfish galore.  The doughty muskellunge were few but father was elated to catch one in the early morning, trolling while one of the Triumvirates – Louis, Bill or Walter, rode the skiff.

We all adored pie.  The island blueberries were prolific.  Mother had an amazing sense of humor.  In a moment of parental generosity she promised to make each of us a whole blueberry pie and did.  Bill, show-off, ate his too quickly to win and race and ran for the pinewoods to hide his sudden seasickness, to return amid the ridicule of Louis and Walter.

There was a swing between two tall pines and we soared towards the sky on that swing.  Wild flowers abounded in the woods.

At the “point” we hunted for “red cedar” logs to whittle.  We caught big frogs there too, with a piece of red cloth for bate, and Mother gave us friend frogs legs as tasty as any on the menu of a high class restaurant.

We had a nap after lunch (I still do) swam, rowed to other islands, and climbed up a ladder in the corner of the dining room to sleep gloriously in beds near the shingles of the peaked roof, where occasional thunder storms brought the refreshing rains with a welcome merry noise.

My tormenting elders (they didn’t bother me much except in wholesome mischief) thought one day they would play a fine trick on me.  I was sitting on the dock in my bare feet with bamboo poles to try my luck at fishing.  They had a big dead fish.  To distract me they asked me to do