The Mazinaw Experience: Bon Echo and Beyond

Barbara B. Aitken is a public services librarian in the Douglas Library
at Queen’s University, a board certified genealogical record specialist, and a member of the Association of Professional Genealogists.

John Campbell, a long-time summer resident at a cottage on the lower
lake at Mazinaw, has written a history and a memoir of the Mazinaw that
builds on the excellent local history, The Oxen and the Axe, produced by
the Pioneer Club of Cloyne.

Mazinaw Lake is located in southeastern Ontario in the northern part of
the former Lennox and Addington County and Frontenac County. Bon Echo
Rock is a massive 350-foot cliff that descends into one of Ontario’s
deepest lakes. Included in this book are beautiful black-and-white
photographs depicting the sheer face of Bon Echo Rock, as well as Bon
Echo Inn (1901–36) which was owned by Merrill Denison. Denison, who
became director of Hart House Theatre at the University of Toronto, was
a leading Canadian playwright and author who donated this property to
the Government of Ontario for its use as a provincial park. Most of the
members of the Group of Seven visited this spot.

Other chapters focus on the aboriginal presence, the pictographs found
in the area, lumbering, settlement, and expanding tourism. This fine
history of the Mazinaw-Bon Echo area is recommended for Canadiana
collections.