Great Lakes Logia

John Abbott is a professor of history at Laurentian University’s Algoma University College. He is the co-author of The Border at Sault Ste Marie and The History of Fort St. Joseph.

The cover offers a clue to the character of this slim volume. The title
is printed on a background of chipboard. Chipboard is a composition of
phlegm and fragments, the product of modern chemistry and a clapped-out
forest. “Logia” is probably inappropriate, since there are few if
any sage observations here that rival those attributed to Jesus.
Doubling the “g” would be appropriate. A loggia is a gallery, open
on one side, or an arcade, an environment designed for strolling,
eclectic display, and casual observation. On offer here is the mostly
ephemeral stuff of a literary flea market, though keeners will discover
a few treasures nestled among the preponderance of odds and ends on
chipboard tables.

Most of the treasures are literary antiques, though even those
sometimes suffer from an application of the revisionist’s art. They
include a moving passage from William Wilfred Campbell’s “The
Beauty, History, Romance and Mystery of the Canadian Lake Region”
(1910) that Paul Dutton chips into an overwrought account of
environmental degradation and squalor. On the other hand, John Terpstra
takes passages from Lady Simcoe’s superb diary and, adding his powers
of observation and knowledge of geology, geography, mythology, and
history, infuses a mere sandbar in Hamilton Bay with surprising
significance.

Terpstra has a more sensitive understanding of context and its
importance than the editor of this work and most of its contributors.
There is little here about American waters, though the title would
suggest there should be. There is much about Toronto and the western end
of Lake Ontario. A mental map would make Lake Ontario by far the largest
of the lakes. Not one of the contributors now resides near any of the
upper lakes, and few of them ever did. This is not an anthology. It is,
rather, a poorly assembled pastiche of poetry, prose, paintings, and
photographs. Recommended only for the collector who must have
everything.