Sidebar Blog | Washburn Island: Memoir Of A Childhood

Sidebar Blog

Posted by Mary E. McIntyre.

Sidebar: Writing Journey Blog

Talented writers and authors have come into my life from a study of writing. My blog, Sidebar, introduces my eclectic journey. I share trepidations, successes and nonsense on the road to being published. Click on Sidebar, have a look around, and if interested, I invite you to follow along with me.

Otter Lake Writers' Retreat

Otter Lake, Ontario Writers’ Retreat

Arizona Writers' Retreat

Arizona Writers’ Retreat

Open Mic Newmarket

Open Mic Newmarket

Writers' Community of York Region

Writers’ Community of York Region

Writers' Retreat Sandy Lake, Ontario

Writers’ Retreat Sandy Lake, Ontario

Wild Words Book Launch, Pickering, Ontario

Wild Words Book Launch, Pickering, Ontario

Author Tom Brown

Multi-award winning author, Ian Brown

Author Charles Foran

Multi-award winning author, Charles Foran

Latest Postings

Cow Pies June 30, 2016
Posting stories of my childhood memories on Washburn Island, Lake Scugog is one of my interests. For 60 years from the 1930s to 1990s there were at varying times five family cottages on the island. We lost my cousin Ronnie Baker in a tragic accident on Washburn Island in 1957. This first story introduces you to Ronnie. The legend at […]
Botanical Artist – Maeve Hughes April 9, 2014
In April 2013, my sister, Maeve Hughes, and I crawled on hands and knees in local woodlands to photograph one of our favourite spring plants, the Trout Lily. We did the same thing when we were kids on Washburn Island — but without a camera. Our mum, Vera Burrows, loved our little bouquets of wildflowers, putting them in cheap glass […]
Memory July 21, 2012
From literary magazine Geist: Fact and Fiction, Summer 2012. Claudia Cornwall’s essay titled That Beautifully Unworldly, Reasonless Rampaging of My Old Self resonated with me about complex memories of summers at Washburn Island. 1956 traveller, Curt Lang wrote in his diary: The past is always so alive. It encroaches like a green tide on every hour and […] […]
You Can Never Go Back July 16, 2012
Prepare for disappointments when you return to a place that meant a lot to you as a kid. In your absence, progress advances, disguising your landmark memories with modernity or neglect. For the current residents of Washburn Island, the narrow dusty tracks that rimmed Lake Scugog now have metal signposts with designated street names and […]
A Boy’s Cottage Diary 1904 September 30, 2011
A friend loaned me a book she’d come across in her research for her husband’s family, A Boy’s Cottage Diary 1904 annotated by Larry Turner. Because my grandparents on both sides of my family came out of the same era, although a few years later, I was curious about how they afford to buy a cottages on Washburn Island […]
Bill Duncan’s Washburn Island Memories August 14, 2011
Bill Duncan is 92 years old. That alone is a great accomplishment. Bill shared a couple of Washburn Island stories with me. He’d been a friend to my dad in Toronto in the ’30s, and it’s because my grandfather helped his father build their Washburn Island cottage that my grandparents located there later in 1936. […]

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