High Street Canada

June M. Blurton is a retired speech/language pathologist.

Garden Island is a tiny mound of rock and soil nestling next to Wolfe
Island, where Lake Ontario becomes the St. Lawrence River. It had a
history of shipbuilding, but by the 1930s the industry had vanished and
the houses were mostly used as summer homes.

One summer, Elizabeth and Eric Harrison and their infant daughter
rented a cottage on Garden Island, commuting daily to their work in
Kingston. They fell in love with the peace, and eventually winterized
the cottage and spent three winters there.

Elizabeth is an artist whose paintings have been shown by the National
Gallery, and she has illustrated this book with delightful
black-and-white drawings. These and her descriptions give the reader a
feeling of a life almost pioneer in its simplicity, but without the
dangers the real pioneers faced. The Harrisons and the few other
year-round residents cut their own holes in the lake ice; drew their own
water in buckets; and stripped, patched, and painted their own walls.
Their neighbors helped them and they helped their neighbors.

Their mode of daily travel to and from Kingston varied with the
seasons: in summer they took the ferry (“Wolfe Islander”) or a
canoe; in winter they skated or snowshoed across the lake, often
dragging a toboggan laden with groceries. This all ended when the
outside world, in the form of World War II, broke into their serene
existence.

High Street Canada is a gentle book. Moving to an almost-uninhabited
island was an adventure, but there is no real sense of adventure in the
telling. Even the dramas that happened are played down. This style is in
keeping with the slower pace of life in the 1930s, and makes a pleasant
contrast to the present.