Algonquin Park's Portage Store: The History of a Canoe Lake Institution

Algonquin Park's Portage Store: The History of a Canoe Lake Institution

Established by Molly Colson and her husband Ed, the then proprietors of the Algonquin Hotel just after Highway 60 opened in the mid-1930s, the P-Store, as the locals, call it has had many reincarnations. Learn about the history of this venerable institution, which hosts every week from the Victoria Day Weekend in late May to Thanksgiving in early October, hundreds of visitors venture to Canoe Lake who have come for an afternoon paddle, to pick up last minute suppliers or permits or just an ice cream cone or a Canoe Lake memory from the gift shop on a hot summer day. Whatever type of visitor, there is always something of interest at the Portage Store. Gaye's personal history in Algonquin extends back over sixty years to when as an 8-month old, her parents first brought her to their cottage on Canoe Lake. From the vantage point of a bushel basket under a large pine tree, high above the lake, she watched them build a little cabin in the wilderness. Every nail, shingle, window and piece of recycled lumber had been driven up from Toronto, carried across the lake in a small boat and then hauled up the hill following a narrow path cut through the forest. She heard her first telling of the Tom Thomson mystery sitting by a campfire with one of the locals Jimmy Stringer, whose older brothers had been around during the time of Thomson's death. As a ten-year old, she was an extra, in Jimmy's youngest brother Omer Stringer's, Ontario Motor League camping safety movies, that demonstrated proper ways to paddle and portage a canoe and back-country camp. Inspired in 1996 to learn more about the history of fellow leaseholders, she spent four years paddling around Canoe Lake with her twin boys exploring its shores and visiting neighbours. In this way, she collected all sorts of stories and anecdotes, old photographs and manuscripts. Her first book, published in 2001, was a short story about one resilient neighbour, Gertrude Baskerville, who, spent over 35 years living alone on Tea Lake. Her second, Algonquin Voices: Selected Stories of Canoe Lake Women, won in 2002 the Ontario Historical Society's Alison Prentice Award for that year's Best Women's History. In 2004, she was asked to expand her scope to the entire park and spent several years researching and seeking out the history of every leasehold family in the Park. This work culminated in the publication of Treasuring Algonquin: Sharing Scenes of 100 Years of Leaseholding, which was published in 2006. Since then another six books on people and landmarks in Algonquin and environs have been published.