Wilbo Notices the Confluences of Rock and Stone, Tribe and Town, Rivers and Lakes, Past and Present, Popes and Rockers

Written Thursday, August 28, 2003 (Four Years, 2 Months Ago?)

I traveled to our plant in Orillia, Ontario, so I'm behind on communicating. It's a 1800 era town 100 miles north of Toronto. The city fathers moved, hopefully peacefully, the Chippewa Indians across Lake Couchiching to build the town, and now all the citizens are driving around the lake to get to Casino Rama. If you imagine Soaring Eagle Casino in Mount Pleasant, Michigan with bear murals instead of eagle paintings, you can imagine Casino Rama.

From the Port of Orillia, you can see the hotel blazing with electric light, but no spot lights. That would be tacky. In between the Casino and the Port of Orillia is Strawberry Island, home of a Catholic retreat center for contemplation and prayer. A few years back, the Polish Pope stayed on the island to rest before "Popestock" in Toronto. Rather odd to have a papal retreat so close to a gambling resort ! The park that hosted Popestock also hosted Sarstock, a music festival that marked the containment of SARS in Canada. The Rolling Stones and Rush both came to perform at Sarstock. Toronto's Downsview Park hosted these events, a good use for a decommisioning military base.

The setting of Orillia is gorgeous: to the north of town is Lake Couchiching, to the south is Lake Simcoe, a lake about the size of Lake St. Clair, I think. The bears are hungry lately, and looking for food, the ursine travelers hang out in the park in Washago, just north of Orillia. I made a short road trip up to Washago, a town built on a island where the waters of the Severn, Green and Black rivers meet, but I didn't see the bears. I was advised to eat my beef sausage in my car, though. I had quite a few moments when I thought, "I could live here." Many snowbirds summer in Muskoka, the mystical lakeland north of Lake Couchiching and south of Georgian Bay, a region named for the chief of those Indians who moved across the lake.

Around Muskoka, the hard granite of the Canadian Shield replaces the limestone bedrock of lower Ontario, the limestone that feeds the famous grapevines of the vineyards between Toronto, Niagara Falls and Leamington. There is a place in Washago where the black waters and the green waters meet, but it was dusk so I didn't go to the confluence of the Green and Black rivers. The Severn leads to Lake Huron, the Georgian Bay region, and by travelling through locks and over one roadway on a "boat train", a ship can go all the way from Lake Simcoe to Lake Huron.

Pope John Paul II: the Rockstar of Popestock