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DISCOVERY WILD, PEACEFUL AND ROMANTIC THE THOUSAND ISLANDS TELL A THOUSAND AND ONE TALES BY NANCY LYON © 1 Council 000 Islands Int’l Tourism FAIRYLAND AND POVERTY. TOM THUMB AND LITTLE HUCKLEBERRY. DEATHDEALER, BLOODLETTER, SNAKEOIL AND BLACK ANT. PUMPKIN, TOOTHPICK, BUCK, DUCK AND WHISKEY. WHERE IN THE WORLD DID THESE ISLANDS GET THEIR OUTLANDISH NAMES? FROM THE AIR THEY LOOK LIKE GENTLE CLUMPS OF MOSS FLOATING UPRIVER FROM GANANOQUE. ON A TOPOGRAPHICAL MAP, SOME ARE NO BIGGER THAN A MOSQUITO’S EYE. BUT THERE ARE AT LEAST 1,865 GRANITE CHUNKS AND LUMPS OF LAND IN THE ST. LAWRENCE RIVER ALONG THE CANADIAN-U.S. BORDER BETWEEN KINGSTON AND BROCKVILLE THAT OFFICIALLY QUALIFY TO BE COUNTED AS ONE OF THE THOUSAND ISLANDS: HAVING TWO LIVING TREES, AND BEING ABOVE WATER 365 DAYS A YEAR. FROM THE 27-MILE WOLFE ISLAND, TO THE PUNIEST ISLET, EACH IS A LITTLE KINGDOM WITH A STORY TO TELL... On Heart Island we have the Taj Mahal of the St. Lawrence, necting a Canadian cottage with a few trees to an American built by a love-struck millionaire for his young wife in the flag on a pole. 1890s. After her sudden death, he abandoned this astonishing 120-room Rhenish castle to rats and ruin. Its stupefying 16th- The Thousand Islands region has a spectral beauty in winter: century grandeur and melancholy chambers are a relic of the snow-dusted patches in a sea of tinted ice, swirling with sunset Gilded Age. On Cedar Island you can explore a Cathcart magentas. In autumn, flaming maple torches glow on a deep Redoubt defense tower built in 1847. Zavikon claims the blue slate. These visions I have admired on many long drives world's shortest international bridge, 10.5 metres long, con- between Montréal and Rochester, N.Y., along Ontario’s 1000 © 1 000 Islands Int’l Tourism Council MAY-JUNE 2003 • 5 DISCOVERY © 1 Council 000 Islands Int’l Tourism Islands Parkway (Hwy. 2) and New York plants. Let them lure you into the wigwam with State’s scenic Seaway Trail (Rte. 12). But sum- a welcome of Bindegek! and Bozho! and you’ll mer is a roving regatta! Flotillas of bright be bewitched by the Native enchantment. houseboats speckle the waters. Parasails and hot air balloons gussy up the skies. Boasting Although Samuel de Champlain established a anglers, happy campers, wreck-loving divers, trading post at what is now Kingston in 1615, birders flock here like flyway species. Cyclists and Jean Desbayes charted the region in 1687, strut their thighs, boaters parade their skiffs at naming it “Les Milles îles,” it wasn’t until 1783 Loyalist Rockport and festival-goers gallivant in that the first settlers arrived. At Upper Canada Victorian Kingston and funky Gananoque, Village near Morrisburg, I got a fascinating gateways to the region. Meanwhile, on the glimpse into the lives of these United Empire U.S. side, Mississippi-style paddlewheelers Loyalists who fled the American Revolution. crammed with tourists gape at the opulent This re-created 1860s village is not your typical island estates of John Jacob Astor, Helena living museum. At least 30 structures are real Rubinstein, Pullman (as in railway) et al. on artifacts salvaged from tragedy. When the St. “Millionaire’s Row.” In the Thousand Islands, if Lawrence Seaway was enlarged, the building of you want action, you’ve got it. If you want soli- a dam at Cornwall in 1958 flooded 35 miles of tude and the lament of the loon, it’s here too. riverfront. Eight villages were submerged. The Ontario government salvaged buildings, fur- MANITOUANNA: GARDEN nishings and even gravestones from the flood- OF THE GREAT SPIRIT ed cemeteries and transported them to the site Spirits of the mastodon hunters of 9,000 years of the old 2,000-acre Chrysler Farm. ago, and the rogues and river pirates, smug- glers, wealthy cottagers and doomed lovers I followed my nose through some of the 66 who came after them, still haunt the region the acres of fields, gardens and orchards, corduroy Iroquois called “Manitouanna” or “Garden of and plank roads, canals and locks. I savoured the Great Spirit.” Eight millennia after the Plano the tang of mint from an herb garden, the pun- Culture had vanished, they paddled here in gent whiff of horses, a churning mill pond’s their dugouts to snag giant muskies and to riverine foam, newly sawn wood and bread ris- hunt the elk, moose, grey fox, cougar and tim- ing in a wood-fired oven. The haunting scents ber wolf that roamed freely. Forty arche- of aged wood and stone, old medicine bottles ological sites have yielded artifacts of the and printer’s ink led me through the old Onondaga, Seneca, Cayuga, Mohawk, houses and barns, taverns and shops, mills Tuscarora and Oneida peoples who camped and factories. here between 700 BC and AD 1600. Life on this site is peaceable now, but it wasn’t The flames of those Six Nation Iroquois spirits, during the War of 1812. Today it’s hard to reduced to embers, glow again brightly on Hill imagine the fiery, bloody era that filled these Island between the spans of the 1000 Islands waters with gunboats and bateaux. Especially International Bridge. At “The Missing Chapters” when you gaze from belvederes along the (part of St. Lawrence Islands National Park), Parkway between Butternut Bay and Native interpreters lead workshops on First Gananoque, or from the Skydeck on Hill Nations customs, language, history and spiritu- Island. But islands named Camelot, Endymion, ality, and trail walks on edible and medicinal Astounder I and Prince Regent I recall the 6 • MAY-JUNE 2003 British victories in the Seven Years War (1756- muskie weighed in at a world record of 69 lb., 63) and the War of 1812. The French pay ships 14 oz., and a six-foot sturgeon, an ancient Ice have long ago burned or sunk in the channels, Age species, broke the scales at 235 lb.) and the blockhouses abandoned or collapsed. Yet military reenactments draw enthusiastic Scuba divers appreciate these crystal waters crowds at heritage sites like Fort Henry in and enjoy exploring eerie glacially carved Kingston, Fort Wellington in Prescott and underwater formations, and wrecks like the Sackets Harbor Battlefield. George Marsh, an intact schooner standing upright in 75 feet of water off Kingston har- I come to the Thousand Islands for the watery bour; the Comet paddlewheeler which sank in vistas, sandy bays, lush vegetation and avian 1856; and the schooner Lily Parsons, which life. (And where else can you watch a herd of sank in 1877 and rests upside down off cows wandering out for a bath—from your Sparrow Island. © 1 Council 000 Islands Int’l Tourism canoe?!) The scraggly twisted pitch pine is the symbol for the 23 St. Lawrence Islands created If you don’t mind stepping aboard a tourist in 1904 as Canada’s fifth national park. Over cliché, Gananoque Boat Lines offers a 800 varieties of flowering plants thrive here, yet stopover at Heart Island to see Boldt Castle. no two islands have exactly the same vegeta- Our boat slows down for a gawk at the rags- tion. Between the Atlantic and Central flyways, to-riches millionaire’s version of a towered, it’s a birder’s paradise with migrating waterfowl turreted 16th-century castle on the Rhine. and ospreys, bald eagles, and wild George Boldt emigrated to New York turkeys on the run. City from Prussia in the 1860s. He started out as a bellhop When the International and ended up owning Boundary Commission Manhattan’s fabulous divided up the Thou- Waldorf Astoria Hotel. sand Islands between He built this castle as a 1817 and 1822, it gran- valentine to his adored ted roughly equal wife, and abandoned acreage to both coun- it the moment she tries. Canada got two- died. The castle’s six thirds of the islands, and storeys...the massive granite the U.S. got the larger islands walls ornamented with cast of Wellesley and Grindstone, and terra cotta...the Roman arch and the deepwater channel to Lake Ontario and powerhouse near the shore...the children’s the Great Lakes. Many U.S. islands, barely stone playhouse—all of it—was left to ruin for big enough for a mansion and a few ser- 80 years before the 1000 Islands Bridge vants’ quarters, were snatched up by million- Authority began a painfully slow restoration aires in the early 1900s. Many Canadian in 1977. On an earlier visit, I was spooked by islands have been sparingly developed or the hanging wires, broken staircases and preserved as parks, such as Beau Rivage and empty rooms pencilled with the graffiti of Burnt Islands west of Gananoque, and countless visitors who’ve stepped gingerly Gordon and Mulcaster Islands east of over these creaky floors since the 1920s. Gananoque. Today it’s a popular venue for celebrating nuptials—hopefully more happily-fated ones You can get to Wellesley, Hill, Wolfe and Howe than the Boldts’. Islands by bridge and car ferry, but to loll around the Thousand Islands you need a boat. Ah the joys of houseboating! Next time I come It can be a three-deck cruiser, a canoe, a rent- I’ll bring a gang of friends and rent a house- ed houseboat or motorboat, a chartered fishing boat that sleeps eight, with full kitchen, bath boat, sailboat or river pontoon with your own and shower, front deck with barbecue and captain. Or a water taxi from Gananoque, dock, off Wolfe, Grindstone, Leek, Endymion Rockport or Ivy Lea to take you out and drop or Wellesley island.

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