Time Travel my Way by Janice Carter

A little more than a year ago, I wrote my first post here and had just sold my first Harlequin Heartwarming ( For Love of a Dog - September  release).  My topic then was Garden Island, where we've rented the same cottage for 35 years, and where I've written most of my Harlequin novels.
      So taking a page from other posts (thank you all!) I thought I'd walk you down the one kilometre lane (5/8 of a mile??) and tell you something about the history I get to live with every summer.
      The island has been owned by the same family - the Calvins - since the mid 1800s when the family business - The Calvin Company Limited - built timber rafts and steamships to transport timber down the St.Lawrence River and throughout the Great Lakes. After World War I, the advent of diesel as well as a decline in the timber trade around the Great Lakes marked the end of the business. But at the height of production, a village of 750 people lived and worked on this 65 acre island. After the war, the family began to use many of the remaining buildings as rental cottages.
     Starting at the 'foot' of the island is the GI Post Office, once a real post office and general store where villagers traded their Garden Island currency for goods. Now the lower part is an island museum, looking much like it did in the 1800s. The upstairs is rented out.

    Further along is this pretty cottage - the Office - once the island's administrative headquarters of Calvin Company.  There was a two story safe inside it until the mid 60s.

Across from the office is the Big House, the summer residence of the last CEO of Calvin Company, Hiram Calvin. The rambling interior is filled with Victorian and Edwardian antiques and today is the summer residence of Calvin descendants.

Those 750 people in the mid 1800s had to live somewhere too and there are a few buildings still standing - called the Workers' cottages - used today as summer rentals.  By now you're getting the picture of how things here are named!

Further down the lane is the Schoolhouse, one of two originally on the island. There was a resident school teacher for the village and the schoolhouse was also used for church services. Today its interior has been renovated but the exterior is basically the same.

Most of the buildings from that village are long gone.  Many burned down and some simply fell into disrepair, vanishing into the ever-encroaching vegetation. But once there was a library, a dining hall, a blacksmith and a working farm.  The place we've been renting all these years was once a Calvin family summer residence.

My favorite room is the living room with its wood stove, big windows and view of the St. Lawrence.

Recently my niece (who also summers here) and I were discussing books, especially science fiction. I asked her if she could travel in time, would she pick the past or the future to visit. She immediately said the past and, in particular, Garden Island at its peak. I completely concurred.  A walk down the lane in the mid 1800s is exactly where my imagination takes me every summer.
   So if you could travel in time, would it be to the future or the past?  If the past, what era appeals the most?

September 2017

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