When the Island Lodge started up under new owners the Phillips – many of the local teenagers saw an opportunity to be in the Bay for the summer and still make some money.
Both my sisters, Cindy and Coralie, worked there to save up for university and late in the summer of 1976, when I was just 12 years old, Coralie got me a job there cleaning cabins for the last few busy weeks. I made $10 a day and was incredibly proud of myself for saving enough money to buy my first ever new pair of blue jeans at Jones’s department store in Espanola – just in time to go into Gr.8 wearing big girl pants. Ha!
The next year I worked there again with Coralie, cleaning cabins, washing pots and at night, staying up well past my bedtime with the older kids, playing caps, drinking beer, and occasionally doing tequila shots. The night I got the worm from a bottle of mezcal was horrifying!
As long as we turned up for work the next morning no one cared and our off-time was our own.
One Friday night the group decided to go into Espanola for a night on the town at the Pit, a seedy bar in the basement of the Espanola Hotel. I’m sure I bugged/begged Coralie and her older boyfriend Dave, the cook from Toronto, so much that they gave in and decided to take me with them, and off we went to the Pit. Cor had put lots of make-up on me and the bar was dark enough that I was admitted and even served a beer. I remember being asked what I wanted and replying nonchalantly, “I’ll have a Pilsner.” I think that meant a Labatt’s Blue, but boy did I feel cool! (Ironically, I was too young to go on the infamous “Staff Frolic” organized by Bobby Dobbins and I got left behind ha!)
At 16, I worked there again the whole summer and made lasting friendships, and swam every day to that big rock by Lunham’s, and earned enough money that I was able to go visit Coralie in England the next year when she was doing her semester abroad from Guelph U. It was a wonderful summer.
But the Lodge provided more than just a chance to make some money. It offered a crash course in growing up, in responsibility, a (hard) work ethic, and skills I use to this day. (On my first day Chris Phillips taught me how to sweep properly – using the floor cracks).
I wasn’t a very good waitress (understatement) but it was a great way to meet people from all over the world and to learn so much from interacting with the guests. And being there with Bay friends – Nancy and Greg and Bobby and Duncan Bell, and my dear departed friend Ted Nawash, made it all the better.
And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention “The Wedding”. Kathryn Wilkins and John Reeves beautiful wedding that was so perfect, on a lovely June day, until “The Fog” rolled in and left many of us floundering about out on the lake in the pitch black. But what an adventure in boating!
My happiest memory of all though has to be just the quiet time – between washing pots after lunch and peeling onions and potatoes for dinner, those few hours we got off in the afternoon, when I could sit on the rocks outside our staff cabin and look out over the channel towards Frood Bay, and the LaCloche hills beyond. They are so close there – the view is spectacular and I remember thinking that I had to be the luckiest teenager in the world.
Submitted by Laurie Cook
Bay Of Islands Community Association