Clear Lake

By any standard, the lake is not large.   Roughly circular in shape, it is perhaps three-quarters of a mile in diameter, only slightly larger than some nearby sloughs.   Clear Lake is located in east-central Alberta, sixteen miles southeast of Wainwright, seven miles west of Edgerton and roughly three hundred miles north of the U.S. border.   East-central Alberta is a land of small rolling hills and deep bowls, vivid reminders of the scouring of the last glacial age.  Many of those bowls filled with water and where access to a fresh spring was provided, a prairie lake was born.  Surrounded by poplars, aspen, willow, and birch, the lakes are small gems with sand soft as talc.  Clear Lake is one such lake, a hidden treasure revealing itself suddenly as motorists drive up over yet another hill.  In the shimmering heat of summer, its sudden appearance is an unexpected and pleasant assault upon the senses, a sight somewhat out of place in a land of sloughs, mixed farms, and small, dense poplar thickets.

Our family moved to Wainwright in 1946 when my father purchased the local dairy.   Our first visits to Clear Lake were Sunday drives to picnic at what was superfluously called the Main Beach (It was the only beach).  Elsewhere, foliage crowded the shore.   

By 1946, most of the lake was surrounded by cabins.  Two farms overlooked the lake from the south and north, and another farm was nestled in behind the Main Beach.

In that 10-year period from 1946 to 1955, Clear Lake promised, AND delivered, peace and quiet.  There were no big powerboats, no electricity, no running water, and no all-weather roads.   Being set low in a glacial bowl, even radio reception was poor.  The road to circumnavigate the lake was a two-rut creation with several low spots often rendered impassable by bad weather.   Modern-day motorists would take one look at this road and begin shopping for an SUV.  But the motorists of the late 1940's and 1950’s worked with what they had and usually made it, one way or another, with or without help, to their destination.  Coping with mud and bad roads was a required life skill. To avoid tackling an especially daunting mudhole,  lake motorists sometimes attempted to carve a new road out of the bush.  More often than not, though, drivers simply shifted into low gear, stepped hard on the accelerator, muttered a prayer, and held on tight. 

The Canadian prairie produces an astonishing variety of plant, animal, and insect life all capable of renewing their cycle of life over a very short period of time.   In this part of the world, spring does not usually arrive until late May, regardless of what the calendar and Farmer's Almanac might say.  The rule of thumb at Clear Lake was that no one went swimming until the 24th of May long weekend, a date which lived in optimism since one could often spend that day dangling one's feet from a laggard chunk of winter ice.  Summer was tendering its farewells by the end of August and local gardeners would make wagers that the last two weeks of August would deliver at least one tomato-killing frost.

Summer, then, was dismayingly short.  If it was to fulfill its role as a time of renewal, a lot of things had to happen in a short period of time.

And it did.  Waterfowl began arriving in late March, an ornithological lapse in judgment that often forced them to huddle together for warmth after a vicious spring blizzard.  Winter wasn’t finished just yet.  Crocuses (Croci?) pushed their way through melting snow to bring their promise of spring and pussy willows lifted hearts with their sudden brave appearance. This was the early, false spring.   The land then paused, took a deep breath, as if to build up its strength, and girded itself for the explosion of life in late May. 

Overnight, songbirds, insects, flowers, weeds, grasses, leaves, blossoms, algae and mosses took centre stage in an impressive display of growth and renewal.  What was only a few days earlier a bland study in brown and gray suddenly became an explosion of color and sound.   Much has been written of the hardiness of people who survive on the Canadian prairies but one could argue they were aided by this soul-lifting celebration of life that is late May.  In the blink of a biological eye, the world is filled with birds, insects, air-borne seeds and the sounds of life.  Everywhere on the lake, infant waterfowl paddled after their parents.

Clear Lake became a glittering and inviting escape from the dusty towns.   Dense woods wrapped their foliage around the cabins that fronted the lake, lending, from a distance, the image of a row of small animals peering out at the water.  The lake was a rich, deep blue and reflected a sky so bright it hurt the eyes.  When so much of life on the prairie had a utilitarian appearance - farms, cultivated fields, and pastures - the sight of Clear Lake in full dress was uplifting and powerful.

In late May, the cabin owners began to visit on the weekends, brushing away the spring thaw layers of dirt and ushering fresh air into the stale cabins.    Preparations were made for the summer.  As June blossomed, friendships were re-kindled and children roamed free late in the crisp endless evenings, running through the many sandy foot paths that surrounded the lake.  They shrieked and laughed as they bumped into each other in the dark and swatted at moths and old spider webs. 

Our family's love affair with lake began in 1949 when we were able to rent a cabin for two weeks.  The cabin was on the Edgerton side of the lake (the east side was referred to as the 'Edgerton' side while the west was known as the 'Wainwright' side).  The following year, we rented for three weeks, then four.  Soon we began to think of the cabin as ours.  The cabin was set back roughly 10 meters from the lakefront, just enough space for a small slough to exist.  The existence of this small, swampish, slough required that a boardwalk be built to get from the cabin to the lake.  The swamp was home to mosquitoes, frogs, and an astonishing variety of insects and exotic plants.  Unfortunately, neither my brothers nor myself were biologically curious and the area remained largely off limits for all the time we spent at the cabin.  Our loss.

In 1952, we bought our own cabin, also on the Edgerton side.   It was an older cabin, built sometime in the twenties, dark green in color and set back even further and higher from the lake than the rental cabin.    Its distinguishing characteristic - apart from its distance from the water - was that it backed onto a gully.  The rear portion stood on stilts where a vehicle could park beneath when the weather turned nasty.  The “stilts” were poplar logs, a tree species not known for its construction durability but we never had a problem with them. A sandy trail led up from the lake, rising perhaps fifteen feet in the twenty or so meters to the cabin door.   More poplar logs had been set into the sand at intervals to prevent erosion and provide a crude staircase.

Around 1950, the Canadian Army discovered Clear Lake.  Its training facility southwest of the Wainwright townsite hosted thousands of troops each summer and, in 1950, was preparing young men to go to war in Korea.    The Army needed a place to take troops for an afternoon of R and R.  Seeing that Clear Lake had but one public beach they offered to carve another one out of an undeveloped site two lots away from our family's cabin - and across the lake from the Main Beach.

In a matter of days, a small fleet of bulldozers had cleared two empty lots and created a sizeable sandy beach - the Army Beach, as it became known.  The Army Beach was one of the happy stories to come out of the military's proximity to the farming communities of Wainwright and Edgerton.  It was an instant success and with no cabins on it, a place that could be enjoyed by weekend visitors and an alternative to the main beach. 

Our single-story cabin contained a living room, a dining room (separated by one step), a kitchen adjoining the dining room, one bedroom next to the living room, and two more bedrooms at the rear.  Like its neighbors, the cabin was built of plywood and two-by-fours with as many windows as the structural integrity would allow.  Most windows had shutters to combat summer storms and to keep the cabin more or less immune from winter's erosive damage.  The windows in the rear bedrooms contained no glass, only screens and shutters that opened into the rooms.

The kitchen had a small counter, a sink, a few open shelves, an icebox, and a large wood stove; the dining room, a table, chairs, and more open shelves.  The living room , narrow and cramped, had two lumpy upholstered chairs  and a sagging couch.  The furnishings all came with the cabin and dated from the twenties.  Pithy signs covered the walls  ('As a rule, a man's a fool.  When it's hot, he wants it cool.  When it's cool, he wants it hot.  Always wanting what it not.')  Tattered magazines, paperbacks, and worn playing cards lay everywhere.

There were no organized activities for any children on the lake.  They were expected to find their own entertainment and did so in a  variety of ways.

Swimming, of course, was what every kid wanted to do on a warm day.  But sometimes, things got in the way.  For instance, the parental “You’ll Get Cramps!” theory ruled the day and kids were expected to wait an hour after breakfast before swimming.  Fortunately, there were several alternatives.

Boat races, for instance.  Most cabin owners had one boat, a rowboat.  There was an occasional motorboat (a few with powerful 5 HP motors!) but the majority were boats that relied on oar power for propulsion.

We had a rowboat, a narrow three-seater that looked as if it belonged in The Museum of Primitive Watercraft, someone’s misguided idea of a rowing canoe. Painted dark green, like the cabin, it was a creaky wooden craft that seemed to have capitulated to the lake when it came to keeping water out.   The boat was in perpetual drydock, laying on its back on our small beach, forlornly waiting for another application of caulking, a splash of tar on the seams. 

At those times when the boat was ‘lake-worthy’ we were expected to carry the two lifejackets assigned to it.  This was an odd concession to safety ordered by our parents.   Two life jackets were deemed sufficient regardless of the number of passengers.  Our parents were not alone in this.  And wearing them was not compulsory.    The lifejackets were bright orange and kapok-filled, puffy orange pillows that tied under the arms.  Wearing one made movement next to impossible so most of them spent their useful lives stored under a thwart.   If a boat did capsize – and they often did, usually due to mayhem on board – passengers were expected to stay with the boat (being wooden or aluminum, none of them actually sank) until they could either right the craft or wait until it drifted into shallow water.   It all sounds quite cavalier on the part of our parents but that’s the way it was and Clear Lake, through all those years, never lost any child to a boating accident.   Tipsy young adults at midnight might have been another matter.

Boat races were held, unofficially, every morning around 9 o’clock.   Rules stipulated there be 2 kids per boat, one rowing while the other cheered and acted as unofficial coxswain, and one kid standing by the shore as a starter.   The finish line was some landmark down the lake or wherever one boat quit or became hopeless disoriented by a sloppy or exhausted oarsman (The disorientation most often came in the aluminum rowboats. They were extremely light and rode high in the water.  Unfortunately, an uneven pull of the oars could send the boat spinning and an easily flustered oarsman could find himself spinning wildly while trying to correct his mistake).  Two boats per race was the norm and fifty yards would be a fair estimate of the distance.  And while neither my brother nor I were big or strong, we seldom lost with that ugly green boat.  Our speed may have been aided by the fear that a new leak would scupper the boat before we could reach the finish line. 

Fishing was another option but not as popular as one might think.  The lake was home to a wary population of pike and pickerel and perch but landing them was, for the most part, a frustrating exercise, and not simply because the fish were too smart for a bunch of ill-trained kids armed with red devil lures.  Fishing in Clear Lake was also an unending fight to retrieve fish hooks entangled in weeds, a constant battle with tangled hooks.  For all the thrill of catching a fish, fishing was too often a ‘default’ recreation, something to do when there was nothing else to do, a way to pass the time on a rainy day.   There was, of course, the rainy day theory.  Fishing wisdom held that fish were more likely to bite when it was raining.  The image of a slicker-clad fisherman casting in the mist is a common one. However, a 'gentle' rain on the prairies, one in which a fisherman could sit serenely watching his line, was a rarity.  More often the rain was a fierce downpour accompanied by strong winds, the threat of hail, and the rumblings of thunder.  A saner option to a rainy day was finding shelter. 

Other non-swimming options included baseball or softball, hiking to nearby Arm Lake, building porous lean-tos out of willow branches, berry picking, and carving birch bark from rare birch trees.  Frequently kids made a half-day hiking adventure out of being sent on errands to buy milk or eggs from nearby farms.

But swimming was the main attraction.  And an uneven attraction it was. There were no swimming instructors at Clear Lake. The ability to swim was acquired because of - and in spite of - older children.   Generally, the progression was as follows:  a) learn the dead man's float;  b) kick your feet while doing the dead man's float;   c) life your head and dog paddle with your arms while doing the dead man's float.  Put it all together into one awkward body action and suddenly you were actually swimming.   It took some time to gain confidence in the ability to get from A to B in the water, not often in style, but safely.   The kids had all seen adult swimmers doing the crawl but there was no one to teach them how to breathe.  The learning curve was, of course, not uniform by any means and the skill levels were all over the map.  There were few swimming races.

Most mornings, then, were spent racing and exploring with the rowboats, swimming, and playing on the little beach.  Swimming, for all its allure, was usually a brief affair.  Most of the kids were skinny and the water was cold.  When the wind was blowing onshore, weeds and unidentified water critters came with it.  Add to that the ever-present threat of horseflies, mosquitoes, and wasps from the air and leeches and hives from below and the swim often ended abruptly with a kid running screaming up onto the shore . 

But on those days when the wind was blowing offshore and the bugs were busy elsewhere, swimming in Clear Lake was pure pleasure.

The early mornings, when the wind was light and mist rose off the lake to the tune of a mating pair of loons, were a special time for my parents.  They would sit out with their coffees, leaving us to sleep, and watch this beautiful little part of the world slowly come to life.

When the weather failed to cooperate mothers had to make emergency plans.  A small cabin full of children was not an invitation to peace and quiet.  Sandwiches and Freshie (the forerunner of Koolaid) were quickly provided and board games hauled out from under beds and cupboards.  If everything went according to plan, mothers would retire together in one cabin and leave the children to fend for themselves in another.  The only source of heat was the wood stove and most kids over the age of 8 or 9 knew how to stoke a fire and keep it burning safely.

The evenings were as special as the days.  By late July, the sun was still well above the horizon at 9:00 PM.  It was futile to send children to bed.  Kids would stay up until ten or eleven o'clock, something they would not normally be allowed to do.  As darkness fell, the gas lamps were lit. Our cabin had two gas lamps and four oil lamps.  One of the gas lamps was a Coleman lamp - safe and easy to light.  The other was some generic black creation which, if memory serves, actually used gasoline as fuel.   Lighting it was always an adventure and the responsibility for seeing it work fell to my father.  No matter the weather, this was done outside, indoors being far too dangerous. After pumping the pressure throttle for what seemed forever, he would turn a valve and set a match to the mantles.  Flames would shoot in the air as escaping gas eluded the mantles.  After a minute or so, the flames would expire, leaving two mantles glowing as bright as 100-watt bulbs.   Cabin owners across the lake thought they were being treated to a small fireworks show. I'd not seen one of these lamps before nor have I seen one since.

When the skies were clear and the winds had abated, the evenings were spectacular, star-filled and moonlit, a glowing world caught somewhere between daylight and dark.  Lake families were reluctant to retire indoors, instead building bonfires to enjoy the stark clarity of the night sky, staring silently for long periods at the tops of the trees silhouetted against the sky, a world awash in stars.  A shimmering glow reflected from the lake.  The silence was deafening.

The nearest town to the lake was the hamlet of Heath, about three miles north.   Nothing much happened in Heath - it had one general store that did a brisk business in the summer - except that the CNR main line passed through it.  The trains rarely stopped in Heath but the crossing gave them cause to sound their whistles.  We would often be wakened in the middle of the night by the surge and ebb of a locomotive whistle as a train passed through Heath.  It was one of the special memories of lake families, the sound of a steam train whistle an evocation of a larger world.  The rail line in this part of Alberta had a fairly marked downward slope as it moved eastward into Saskatchewan and when the wind didn’t interfere, the Doppler Effect of a train hurtling east was quite different from a train chugging uphill to the west.

August came all too quickly.  The nights grew colder and the fires in the stoves were built to burn longer.  Migratory birds began to appear and the leaves of the aspen trees all too quickly turned yellow.   The time had come for families to pack up cabins, seal them for the winter, and reluctantly make the return trip to town.

For our family, one final ritual had to be performed.  The road back to town crested on a hill before turning away from the lake.  My father would stop the truck so everyone could take a moment to look back and take away a last visual memory of the lake.  Amid thoughts of the joys of summer and the beauty of the Alberta prairie, we would each make a silent wish for a speedy return.

Robert Alan Davidson

July, 2007

POSTSCRIPT:   I recently returned to Clear Lake to see the old cabin.  Instead, I found a monstrous summer home with a lawn, no less, leading to the lake.  Not only had the new owners demolished the cabin, they'd bulldozed the hill upon which it sat and, "artfully" I'm sure, thinned the trees.   Sometimes progress isn't a great thing.