Mysterious Islands: Forgotten Tales of the Great Lakes

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.

Mysterious Islands is another collection of curiosities from the
muniment rooms of Andrea Gutsche, Cindy Bisaillon, and their associates
at Lynx Images. This team mounts expeditions into the dark interiors of
hintermost Ontario with an enthusiasm reminiscent of our Georgian
ancestors. Eighteenth-century satraps ransacked the recesses of the
Indian subcontinent, bringing back a heterogeneous assortment of curios
to stock the lumber rooms of English country houses. The ladies of Lynx
display their disparates in the pages of books such as this.

Here, in one corner (page 84), is the head of William Lyon Mackenzie,
grim-visaged, dour-eyed, a prefiguration of John Brown. Ranged round the
old traitor is a necklace of Canadian islands, where the republican
adventurers he inspired sought entry points for the delights of
Jacksonian America. Here is Amherst Island, east of Kingston, between
the Bay of Quinte and Lake Ontario, where pirate Bill Johnston
plundered, bullied, and shot up the residents. There is Hickory Island,
just inside the Canadian border, whence the liberators intended to mount
an attack on Gananoque and Kingston, until the clearly Canadian, clearly
courageous Elizabeth Barnett revealed the plot. Somewhat to the west is
Pelee Island, Upper Canada’s Garden of Eden in Lake Erie. The
“Patriot Army,” rallied to the flag of liberty and mustered at
Sandusky, Ohio, was hell-bent on crossing the ice and snatching this bit
of perfidious Albion’s empire. And so the displays are introduced,
until at length all the Great Lakes are covered and the volume is filled
with history’s lumber. Mysterious Islands is a wonderful book for
dabblers.