Area News June 2008

Kukagami Environment Watch

Area News June 2008

www.kukagami.infosathse.com/KEW

"We do not cease to play because we grow old.
We grow old because we cease to play."
- George Bernard Shaw

With this June issue of KEW news, we move back to a monthly schedule of publication for the summer. You can also go to KEWatch.blogspot.com to post your own messages, photos, or to see what’s new between newsletters.

KUKAGAMI SUMMERS
Another summer begins on Kukagami Lake
Swimming, boating, good times in which we all partake
Serene morning waters, the lake smooth as glass
Ever growing circles with each silent paddle pass
A quiet cup of coffee on a patio or deck
Listening to the sounds of birds who sing and peck
Kids in bathing suits, out the door in a flash
Squeals of laughter, down the dock then a BIG splash!!
Hot is the word from Bar B Q's, to saunas to sun
Many activities and they're all so much fun
Families and friends will gather with anticipation
The campers' picnic delights in participation
Picnics at the rapids, picking blueberries off a bush
Careful not to step on them because they'll turn to mush
Lake trout, pickerel and bass tugging on fishermen's line
Beavers, otters, muskrats and loons they also get to dine
Gather round the picnic table loaded down with food
Burgers, steaks and watermelon mmm mmm good
End the perfect day roasting marshmallows over a campfire
Get a good night's sleep, tomorrow brings more that you desire!

June 21st Annual Meeting of Campers Association, 10 am, at Sportsman’s Lodge.

July 6 - Open House at Kukagami Lodge, 2 to 4 pm

Viki and Allan, owners of Kukagami Lodge, will welcome neighbours to their little log cabin resort on Sunday, July 6th. For a special treat at this fifth annual tour of the Lodge, they’ll be serving homemade rhubarb-strawberry cooler along with other yummy snacks. Drop in for a visit to one of Kukagami’s well-preserved historical sites. Kukagami Lodge is only accessible by boat – so if you need a ride, call the lodge at 521-6587, and ‘boatpooling’ will be arranged.

Free Canoe Lessons for all ages and skill levels will be offered by request this summer. We’ll come to your camp, or we can arrange a date with you for larger groups at the beach at Sportsman’s Lodge. Beat the high gas prices and get closer to nature in a canoe or kayak this summer! If you don’t own a canoe, we’ll provide them for the lessons, along with advice for what to look for in a canoe that will suit our needs. Drop a note to KEW@kukagami.infosathse.com

Changes on Our Shores

The shores of Kukagami Lake have lost another of our pioneers. Bob McDougal was among the first group of cottagers to have land surveyed; he received his deed in 1958. When the camp road was cut through wilderness, Bob worked alongside other pioneers. We offer our condolences to his family and friends. He will be missed. We know that his family will continue to enjoy summers at camp where they will share many happy stories of life with Winona and Bob.

Long time camper André Leduc enjoyed her years on Klondike Bay, but has moved on. Andre created the KLCA flag; we will remember her whenever we see the flag unfurled.The Jussela family will be joining our community; we look forward to meeting them all.

Road Clean-up

KEW hosted its 4th annual spring road clean up just before the blackflies descended. Alas, it only took a day for new garbage to show up. On the positive side though, we have many neighbours from Kukagami and surrounding lakes who often pick up litter throughout the summer – thank you to all!

Kukagami Library has moved!

Now located in the first floor of the tower at Sportsman’s Lodge Wilderness Resort. Jody, George, Cortlin and Luke welcome all their neighbours to the community library. Come and select a book in the new location, a cozy sitting room on first level of The Tower. These rainy, mosquito days are the perfect time to escape into a good book. Your library has an excellent selection to choose from- mysteries galore, best sellers, Canadian authors. Have extra books at camp? Drop them off here for others to enjoy!

Sportsman’s Lodge would also like to let Kukagami neighbors know that they have too many rhubarb plants! Feel free to stop in to pick the stalks, or to dig up a plant to grow your own at home next summer.

One of the main objectives of Kukagami Environment Watch is to serve as a source of accurate and timely information for residents and friends of Kukagami Lake and area. Ask you neighbors of they are receiving this newsletter! Offer to forward it to them, or ask them to send their address to KEW@kukagami.infosathse.com.

Kukagami Neighbours appreciate the hard work of the Kukagami Lake Campers Association

Over the past year, the KLCA has acquired funding for several projects that will benefit the health of Kukagami Lake and our residents:

Defibrillator---Sudbury EMS has placed a defibrillator at Sportsman’s Lodge Wilderness Resort. The defibrillator is available to all residents and visitors in our area.

Defibrillator 1 Saves lives, 2 Can be used without training 3 Will not defibrillate a heart that is beating 4 Can be used on person from 2 years of age

Septic Tanks---The Water Committee has obtained funding to assist local residents with the cost of pumping septic tanks this summer.

Sniff out a sick septic system(Tips from Cottage Life website)

There are still cottagers out there with leaking and overloaded septic systems, a major source of contaminated runoff to the lake. Human waste contains phosphorus, a nutrient that algae thrive on; too much of it, and your lake will get algal blooms and decline in water quality. Inspect your septic bed and surrounding area periodically for odours or puddling and, if you detect trouble, call in the professionals. And get the tank pumped out every three to five years. If you’re having a huge crowd to the cottage, say for a wedding, rent a porta-potty instead of stressing the septic system.

Provincial Land Tax Reform

Campers who live in Davis, Rathbun and Kelly Townships got a letter last year about upcoming changes to the way they are taxed. There will be a ‘current value property assessment’ system in the unincorporated territory, which is similar to that in the rest of Ontario. Changes to the tax system take effect in 2009. Local information centers are likely to happen late this summer. You can get on the mailing list by calling 1-800-263-7965. Ask for “Land Tax Reform”

Summer’s Madmen - Bruce Hutchison

After a winter of reasonable unity, Canada is split, by June, into factions forever irreconcilable. Two distinct kinds of men, almost two different species, go their separate ways .

The orthodox and civilized live on as usual in town. The heretics, most Canadian of Canadians, begin the tribe’s oldest summer ritual. With the overpowering impulse of the wild goose, the death wish of the lemming, they swarm to the wilderness. Now, throughout the land, a mass migration is heading toward the summer shack.

The student of our folkways will find on every road out of town a steady stream of cars overloaded with food, bedding, lumber, tools, paint, cement , and no one knows what else- more than enough, you would think, to sustain an army’s campaign. All the passengers are bound for some quiet waterfront by the outer gate of paradise, for a dilapidated house of no conceivable value and thus valuable beyond price.

Some people say that Canada has contributed no great thing to the world’s culture. They have overlooked the Canadian summer shack. No doubt other peoples have country resorts, perhaps better and certainly more elaborate than ours, but it can be proved, I think that our shack is indigenous, peculiar, Canadian and mad. Though aliens may misunderstand it and foreign architects despise it, though it may violate every rule of construction and defy the laws of gravity, the shack remains the truest symbol of Canadian civilization because of course, it is a revolt against a civilization at large . Moreover it is a miracle.

The shack is usually made of cardboard, fastened to a rock by a few rusty nails, built like an incompetent swallow’s nest or a gopher’s hole, and supported by some obscure principle unknown to science. Like all durable things, it rests on the foundation of a dream. It is held together by nothing more than invisible hoops of pure affection and human faith-sufficient to resist not only the fierce Canadian winter but also the deranged climate of mankind.

A summer shackman sets out on a trail that may appear new, but as old as the white man’s life in Canada, a branch of Champlain’s trail leading straight from Quebec. Every year since 1603 the first odyssey has been repeated.The latest version differs superficially from the original, is commonly carried by an automobile rather than a birchbark canoe but inwardly it is unchanged and unchangeable.

A shackman seeks summer, as his fathers have always sought, in the only place where the summer of Canada can be found.As he emerges from the woods, he sees in his shack one of the few certainties left on Earth. Empires may reel, stock markets fall and bombs explode, but the shack will be there. It has been waiting patiently for its owner. Its windows light up at his approach with a glitter of welcome. Its monstrous shape is charged with memories of laughter, tears and vanished children.When , at the sacramental moment, the shackman finds a rusty key ( secreted last autumn, where anyone could find it ) turns a broken lock , and shoulders open a warped door, he enters a dank, musty cell, like a mountain cavern or the lair of the woodland beasts.

But when the fire is lighted, the bedding dried out, and the first meal of summer cooked, the cell instantly becomes a cloister in the New Jerusalem.Then begins the heretic’s summer of freedom, which the orthodox would call a sentence of hard labour, a cruel, un-natural punishment: freedom to mend the ever leaking roof, to paint the decaying boat, to fix the unworkable pump, to cut firewood and perform that infinite toil of preparation which the summer guest will take as his due while complaining bitterly about the service. The freedom, in short, of voluntary servitude, the summer slave of a free country.Opening camp is not really a labour. It is a transfiguration .

The shackman is so transfigured that the orthodox will hardly recognize him in a fortnight. For only here in the open, away from human beings, can a man rediscover his humanity and be himself, do what he likes, build what he pleases and return to the wisdom of a child building sand castles and perceiving the ultimate.

The nation is safe in the hands of the species that made it in the first place of native materials. No doubts about the future alarm the shackman. He mends his roof as if it would last forever. He adds a clumsy porch as if he were building for the ages. He paints his waterlogged boat as if it would carry him across the river of immortality. If the final bomb should drop and civilization perishes, somewhere, somehow a shackman and his wife will survive - the first Canadian and the last.

Website and Newsletter The KEW newsletter is published monthly through the summer, and sent by email to any interested person. Paper copies can be provided to residents upon request. Drop a note to Kukagami Environment Watch, 432 Fox Road, Wahnapitae, ON, P0M 3C0. The Website is updated randomly through the month – so check www.kukagami.infosathse.com/KEW for new information and photos! Submit photos and news items to our email – listed below.

If you know anyone who would like to receive the KEW newsletter, send his or her e-mail address to KEW@kukagami.infosathse.com . If you would like to be removed from the list, please reply to this address.