A Very Lucky Fellow

I began life in Prescott's "Albert Whitney House," a now sadly derelict, long vacant, red brick town house on Prescott's Dibble Street. Each summer of my early youth, I moved to a summer cottage on the River just west of Brockville. Our summer cottage was located at what is known as "The Swift Waters," a bit downriver from my present location. Later in my teens, my summers were spent a bit further upriver with my maternal grandparents at Heather's Point. This cottage is now owned by a cousin, and is located next door to my current home.

Some years ago while in Prescott, I noticed some workmen at the long closed-up home of my first eight years, and they allowed me to enter and wander through house, remembering my early years there. I remembered on Christmas Day at the age of four, as I came down the main staircase, I saw through the house’s large front windows Santa Claus in his sleigh rise from the house front lawn. Yes, to this day, I swear I saw Santa and his wonderful gift laden sleigh, drawn by eight wonderful reindeer. Childhood imagination is truly wonderful!

As I now cruise toward my 95th birthday next August, I look out the front windows of my home at the waters of the River, which as a 12-year-old, I "cruised" at what I felt was a high speed, in my 2½ HP outboard motor-driven Vercher punt. My mother cried on the summer day in 1942 when my father brought that motor home to me as a gift, because she had dreams of me growing muscles like Johnny Weissmuller, the then-famous swimmer and "Tarzan" of the movie films. She dreamed of me becoming a great swimmer too, as a result of my rowing that rather heavy punt – to which I promptly attached the new motor.

During the summer months throughout the remainder of the war years, I had a fuel ration card for my small outboard motor. It allowed me unlimited gasoline because I had acquired a delivery route to take ice and milk every morning to island residents. I was deemed to be an "essential service," hence the card. Leonard Hodge, who serviced many riverside cottagers with spring openings and fall closings and who also supplied ice and milk to cottagers in the summer, would deliver blocks of ice and bottles of milk to the Brockville Country Club dock each morning. I, in turn, would deliver the ice and milk to island summer residents in my "speedy" outboard. Yes, I was "essential."

My parents' summer cottage at the Swift Waters is where I learned to swim, in the adjacent sandy bottomed shallow bay. The Swift Waters are called this because it is a narrow, very deep, waterway between the land and an adjacent island, where the water flows quickly in swirling currents. It was in that shallow, sandy bottomed bay, when I was twelve years old, where I taught our then twenty-something year old housemaid Charlotte how to swim. (Yes, some house maids still existed then!) Eventually, Charlotte convinced me that she had become proficient enough to try swimming off the nearby shoreside rocks of the Swift Waters. Remember those quickly flowing waters and swirling currents.

Feeling that she was now a swimmer, Charlotte pushed off into the Swift Waters and after swimming perhaps 10 yards from the rocks, realized that she had never learned how to turn around. She panicked and began to scream and drown. As a 12 year old "polliwog" was very comfortable swimming under water with my eyes wide open, immediately dove in to save her, knowing full well that she would drown us both if she managed to get a grip on me. I swam under water with eyes open and quickly spied her thrashing body. I pushed on her bottom, turned her toward shore, and then gave her two huge pushes shoreward to the nearby rocks. Those moments are still embedded in my mind. Charlotte was saved. As I crawled out of the River, quite shaken by the experience, there high above on the rocks stood a row of adults who had assembled on hearing Charlotte's screams, but who had done nothing. I quickly rushed past them and into the adjacent woods, shaking with fear over what had just happened, and crying my very young eyes out.

Today, I am still very agile in spite of my years, and I'm hoping to match my 104 year old great grandfather, who summered here for years. His choice of Brockville's River shoreline for his summer cottage during the early 1920’s is the cause of my parentage and why I am now retired here. His American granddaughter, my late mother, while summering at that cottage with her parents, met my Prescott-based father, which in turn resulted in me beginning life in the Whitney House.

Growing up as a summer teen on the River, I was part of a wonderful summer gang of up to 40 youngsters, who came to the area for the summer, hailing from many places in Canada and the US – Nashville, Baltimore, Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal, amongst other places. We had an idyllic youth in our summer world on the River!

During the war years, Brockville's Fulford Place, which is now open as an historic home and museum, was closed. The Fulford family lived across the street from it. Dwight Fulford, my age and my close friend, had a key. So we had access to the Fulford Place mansion, particularly its downstairs billiard room, and the glass covered indoor swimming pool in an adjacent greenhouse. In our later teens, we also had the use of Mrs. Fulford's 27 foot long Star Olympic racing sailboat, on which I learned to sail.

The Fulford family's Dodge Watercar was another "toy" that we enjoyed as we grew through our teen years. It pulled us about the St. Lawrence waters on water skis. I recall that on one day we would sail "The Star," and the next day we would water ski behind the Dodge Watercar. I could go on, as there was much more to our summer lives together here in the Brockville and the Thousand Islands areas, including many early sailing races, well before the Brockville Yacht Club was formed. Yes, we were very fortunate, and our lives were certainly golden and carefree.

Today, only a few of my old "summer gang" remain. Most of my current local friends are "newcomers," although some have been here for many years and really aren't "newcomers" any more than I am. I also realize that I am fortunate to have been an only child, which resulted in me inheriting my present wonderful waterside home, which my mother built in the 1960s for her retirement. It is next to her parents' former summer cottage where I spent my teen summers, and where my cousin now lives in the summer.

So, as I spend my days happy to be back where I started, and from time to time I say to myself that few people could possibly have equaled my youth here, and that I have been a very lucky fellow..

By John Reid, Brockville, ON

John Reid considers himself an "Island newcomer" but only because he returned to Brockville in 2009, following a life that stretched from Canada to Switzerland to India and finally to King City, north of Toronto. It was King City where he and his wife Jane lived for 40 years and raised their three daughters. John enjoys writing, and we look forward to more of his memories.

Editor's Note:  Our thanks to John Reid for sharing his memories with TI Life. A couple of conversations and some email exchanges tells me he has more to share . . . Fingers crossed, for this is great fun!

Posted in: Volume 19, Issue 12, December 2024, History, Essay, People, Places, Current