Bon Echo: The Denison Years

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

In the 1920s, Merrill Denison, playwright and writer of corporate
histories, inherited from his famous mother, Flora MacDonald, a piece of
Ontario forest in the Land O’Lakes area. This property included the
enormous wall of rock known as Bon Echo, in Lake Mazinaw.

The dramatic landscape of old pine forest, deep lake, and massive Bon
Echo rock attracted numerous artists including members of the Group of
Seven. As well, from approximately 1916 to 1920, Flora MacDonald Denison
encouraged writers and poets to gather at Bon Echo each summer to study
the works of Walt Whitman. For a while the Denisons operated a resort at
Bon Echo that became a provincial park in 1959.

Mary Savigny, as Denison’s manuscript typist, was privy to the impact
of these developments on Denison’s life and work. She documents the
who-did-what details of Bon Echo’s transition from private to public
paradise, and the parallel events in Denison’s writing career until
his death in 1975.

The book has the flavor of a school essay blended with a family
history. It is part eulogy to a past employer and part personal memories
of the “good old days.” It is disjointed, fragmented, and hesitant.
Its strength is in the facts. Savigny draws from primary material,
including personal observation, which makes the book a valuable
reference for local historians.