Bekanon Island: 2025
Last year’s newsletter left us on Bekanon Island located at the north-east corner of Georgian Bay: roughly 6 kilometers south of where the French River empties into the Bay. Five friends and I (three families), had purchased Bekanon in 1987 for a remarkably modest sum. The island was originally purchased in 1927 from the Canadian government by George Rogers, an American industrialist, for $73.40. By 1929 Rogers had built a family compound consisting of five buildings and many bedrooms. It had been built (relative to this forgotten corner of Georgian Bay) in a grand style and had been obsessively restored by a colleague in the years before we purchased it from him.
That 2024 newsletter is available from our office, or our website at: lakesidedental.ca
It ended with this: This is Part One. Part Two: Life on the island, adventures, misadventures and more to come: Next year’s newsletter.
Bekanon Island: Continued
So this is “Next year’s newsletter”. Here we are on a 3 acre island. Getting to Bekanon, following the 400km trip from St. Catharines, involves offloading everything onto a large runabout owned by Wrights Marina in Britt, a 20km boat ride out to the island, unpacking and hauling everything up to the main cabin and then putting it away. The boat trip is approximately 70% in sheltered waters and 30% exposed to the open bay. It is generally a pretty easy ride, but a strong wind out of the west results in things getting bumpy; and occasionally, when the great wind blows down from Baffin Island, there is no ride at all until things calm down.
Another part of this expedition to the island involves bringing everything that you will need for the time that you are up here. A trip to the corner store to get that forgotten pound of butter is not a simple matter. So, if you are going up for two weeks, you bring two weeks’ worth of everything that you will need with you. And a little bit extra just in case. Every trip up involves planning, lists and coordination with others that are coming up with you (often the case). It’s a serious exercise in organization and logistics. One’s organizational skills improve with time and repetition.
A perfect day on Bekanon Island
It’s not clear whether this particular day has ever happened, but every part of it has happened many times over
It’s the first week in July. We’re up at the island with four grandkids (two of them about 8 and two about 11), two set of their parents and my two brothers and sisters-in-law. With Deborah and me, this makes for a total of 14 of us spread over seven bedrooms.
We’re pretty far north so the day begins early.
A little before 4:00 the first light is evident in the eastern sky. Sunrise follows at around 5:30.
We begin slowly but by 8:00 brother Karl and his wife Ilene have breakfast set up on two glass tables arranged on a flat section of rock in the middle of the island (both food science graduates from U of Guelph, they have this pretty much under control). The rocks heat quickly and reflect the sun’s warmth. Even on cool days things are comfortable in this sheltered location.
Over breakfast we talk about the day, the weather, the wind and projects. Today things are calm, warm and moving to hot. All projects are under control. The grandkids want to go exploring so by 10:00 we’re at the boat dock piling into our 15-foot inflatable Zodiac. The kids are in full exploration mode with bathing suits, lifejackets and water shoes. A couple of parents are along to help ride herd on our expedition. A heave or two on the pull-start and we’re heading off to explore an island that we haven’t been to before. Within a 20 or 30-minute boat ride we are surrounded by about 800 islands. Only six or eight of them are occupied: we still have plenty left to find and explore. And there are a few favourites that we go back to every year.
A good island will have large areas of bare granite, a pond or two, mounds of rounded rocks and boulders left pretty much where that the last glacial ice sheet left them, when it melted some 10,000 years ago. We find tadpoles, lilies, snakes, wild roses and green blackberries – it’s still early July. The kids, unfazed by the still cold water in Georgian Bay swim to some small nearby islands/rocks and then further to the islands/rocks past that.
By noon we’re back, lunch gets made (usually eaten in our screened porch because the sun is getting pretty intense).
There could be an afternoon nap by some of the senior members of our group. There is reading, swimming and messing around in very small boats and on paddleboards. Dinner preparation gets started.
By 6 or 7 we’re back in the screened porch sitting down for dinner. The sun is descending in the west. A familiar toast is proposed: “Here’s to survival on the edge of a wilderness.” Around 9:30 or so the sun is fully set. By now dishes are done and the kids headed for bed. If it’s cooling off there could be a fire in our granite fireplace created for George Rogers about a century before.
By 11:30 the last of the twilight has ended, and, because this is a perfect day on Bekanon Island, it’s clear. As we have essentially no neighbours (and so no annoying lights), we have a remarkably dark sky with the Milky Way streaming across overhead. And then sleep beckons.
A little before 4:00 the first light is evident in the eastern sky.
Some Stories: Adventures, misadventures and more
How Bekanon got its Solar System
When we first arrived on Bekanon Island in the late 1980’s we were powered by a wind-turbine and an ancient and remarkably loud Briggs and Stratton generator which gave us 36 volts of DC current. Electricity was stored in an array of 12 car batteries. The nearest source of regular electricity was Key Harbour, 3 km and a small fortune in underwater cables away.
The wind generator was interesting in that it had been developed at the beginning of the 20th century for use on American mid-west farms. Until then night-time lighting came from candles and kerosene.[1] The wind generator brought electricity and electric lighting for the first time.
It was well designed, to face into the wind and to tip back out of harm’s way when things got too violent. Hugh Jack, the previous owner, needed some parts to keep the unit (installed by Rogers half a century before) running. He tracked down the inventor and developer, now in his later 90’s living in a senior’s home in Iowa. As a result of his creation and entrepreneurship, the man was on his way to becoming remarkably well-off. Then, in 1935, Franklin Roosevelt passed legislation that led to the electrification of the American mid-west countryside. The demand for wind generators plummeted. The inventor still had bitter things to say about Roosevelt’s interference and the subsequent failure of his business.
Miraculously, our inventor still had an inventory of unsold parts for his wind generators. He sent the needed components to Hugh, and they kept the unit running. This arrangement worked for two or three years after we took over and then, having worked hard for 60 years, our wind generator finally died from multiple causes - and needed parts were no longer available.
A Honda generator took its place, giving us 120 volts of AC power to power our need for light at night.
Refrigeration was a different story. We inherited two propane powered refrigerators, about 40 years old. They used no electricity, just the heat from a propane flame to operate both refrigerator and freezer. At least twice someone who understood these things explained how a propane flame can cool a refrigerator using no moving parts. My understanding lasted for minutes at a time before clouding over. I still think that magic was involved somewhere.
Anyhow, old refrigerators, even with no moving parts, need maintenance. The folks from Georgian Bay Propane down in Parry Sound, an hour south, provided this - until they couldn’t. Propane refrigerators, if the burner isn’t burning perfectly, produce carbon monoxide. People died and recent government regulations would not allow further servicing of these units.
In Brazil, much of the country is still without centralized electricity, so they manufacture propane refrigerators. We bought one of these. The folks from Georgian Bay Propane installed it. Equipped with a carbon monoxide monitor it was legal and worked well for three years. Then one day brother Karl walked over and asked if it was OK that there was a small open flame outside the refrigerator. No, that was definitely not OK. We shut off the gas before things got really interesting.
Our next propane refrigerator was built by the Amish in the U.S. The Amish, along with several sects of old order Mennonites, don’t want modernity in their lives, so electricity, and all it’s incumbent evils are banned. Propane fridges, however, are fully OK in the eyes of God and so some enterprising Amish folks started building them.
Not cheap (about five times the cost of a regular electric fridge), it was beautifully made and worked well. For about a year. Then it started freezing everything. So we called Georgian Bay Propane who they sent two guys on an hour’s drive north to Britt, where they got on the water taxi out to Bekanon. They worked on the fridge for two hours replacing a component, got back into the water taxi that had waited around for them, and eventually ended up back in Parry Sound. All in, the repair bill was roughly the same as the cost for that entry level refrigerator[2]. Three days later everything started to freeze again.
At about the same time, we had been up to Camp McIntosh, a fishing lodge in the mouth of the French River. They had recently converted to solar power: enough to run two walk-in coolers, several freezers, and give illumination all night long. They had been using a diesel-powered generator, which was now only used for backup. The woman who managed the kitchen there was thrilled.
We contacted the local guy who installed these systems and, for the cost of our two previous refrigerators, along with installation and repairs, we had our own “solar system”: electrical solar panels that charges batteries feeding an inverter that gives us 120 volts of AC power. We found a new home for our Amish refrigerator and purchased that entry level refrigerator and installed it ourselves. It has run perfectly for five years. When it fails, we will give it away and simply buy a new one: so efficient, so inexpensive.
The bonus was that we also now have light without having to run a generator. It does come on occasionally. Our batteries hold enough charge for three days of cloudy weather, and then, if needed, the generator gets them recharged in a few hours. This happens once or twice a year.
We love our “solar system”.
An interesting note is that one of the things we miss is back when our generator was providing our light, a timer was set to shut it off, and once it shut off everything was black until morning.
I do like the convenience of being able to turn on a light to read at 4:00 a.m. when I can’t sleep, but part of me misses those days of absolute, pure darkness.
Leaving time behind
When we first got Bekanon we discussed how we wanted things to unfold. We appreciated Bekanon’s heritage and decided that we wanted Bekanon to be a bit of a refuge from modernity. So, we have no television, no music system and not even a free-standing radio. People can bring their own devices, as long as they keep them to themselves, but we prefer a world in which books and old, reread newspapers are our main connection with the outside world.
We do most of our own repairs and maintenance. Propane (for the stove) and electricity are two areas where we do give way to expertise.
A few years back we put in a walkway for the ease of getting things from the dock to the main building. When we acquired Bekanon we were in our 30s. We’re now in our 70s. It’s easier to push a two wheeled cart loaded with suitcases, coolers and tubs along a smooth walkway than to carry all this over rough terrain, as we did for the first 30 years. So things do evolve, but slowly.
The windows on Bekanon feature small panes with old wavy glass: perfect float glass wasn’t available in the 1920s. And so, when we add new windows, they use old, recycled imperfect glass. One of our partners complains that he goes to a lot of trouble to have his vision be as normal as possible, so he doesn’t fully appreciate the distortions of old glass. We did throw in a few windows with flat glass for his viewing pleasure.
The island came with a remarkable workshop, including enormous wooden block and tackles with 1” hemp rope, equipment for threading pipes up to 3” in diameter, a range of hand saws and small wooden barrels filled with roofing nails. We have added to it so that we have, among other things, a multitude of battery powered tools and screws in almost all shapes and sizes. Out here running short in the middle of a project isn’t as simple as a drive to Home Hardware.
Over time we’ve reroofed the main cabin twice and finally installed a steel roof that should last well beyond our lifetimes. We liked this so much that subsequently we have re-roofed all of our buildings with steel.
Community
Possibly the best thing about Bekanon is the community that has emerged during our time on the island. Initially we were three young families, each with children ranging from in utero to about 10. We are now three older families, with children in their 30s and 40s and now grandchildren. Initially we didn’t all know each other that well, but over time we all became excellent friends, and partners’ friends have become our friends.
We time share the island, organizing it into 9 two-week chunks over the warm months. Each family gets 3 two-week time periods of exclusive use of the island. We have a formula for time allocation: one year you get 1st, 7th and 8th choice, the next 2nd, 5th and 6th and the third year 3rd, 4th and 9th . Selection is made at our annual business meeting, generally in late November.
Work weekend is probably our best event: in early June we organize a three-day work weekend. The island partners cover all costs and we invite friends to join us in doing real projects. Some are pretty ambitious: the year we built our large screened in porch, or the year that we began putting up steel roofing starting with our main building. Other projects are more bite-sized: building our walkway or rebuilding a dock. And some years we simply do maintenance. Regardless, we seem to have a collection of very capable friends who mostly work with their heads and who welcome the opportunity to do something real with their hands. There are scenes like my brother John (artist and bagel maker) up on the roof driving screws into our new metal roof, working beside the physician who heads up cancer treatment and research at Princess Margaret.
At 5 o’clock we break out gin and tonics and all work stops (mixing power tools and alcohol is a particularly dumb idea). Happy hour lasts until about seven. We clean up tools, show off our progress and then relax.
Dinner is served at our baronial dining room table. It seats 16 easily.[3] The wine is decent, the food good and the conversation great. There is nothing like a group of people working on common projects, out of doors in the middle of nowhere to put everyone into most excellent spirits.
Black Flies
Besides fall, the best time to be up at Bekanon is in mid-June. The days seem almost endless. The sun, high in the sky, heats the rocks and, being early in the season, there is no-one around. You say: “But what about the black flies? June is high season for those clouds of bloodthirsty little critters all across the north!” There is “dirty little secret” that very few people know: black flies need running water to breed. Out in the islands, there is no running water, and so, there are no black flies. On the mainland yes: swarms!. A kilometre offshore: none! In thirty some years I have encountered one, and I think that she was lost. There are mosquitoes, yes: not that often and not that many. But black flies: none.
Storms
We have been storm-stayed on Bekanon Island more than once: scheduled to leave the island when the wind (and the marina) determined that we were not going anywhere. Bekanon is sheltered from the open bay by a series of barrier islands, so waves never get more than a metre or so even in the fiercest winds. However, there are a couple of places where we can look out at the open bay. During a good blow and with binoculars things out there look like the inside of a washing machine, but on a huge scale: crazy waves and spray shooting high into the air.
I had always wondered what it was really like out there in the open during one of these storms. Then I had the chance to find out. It was closing weekend, late September, about five years ago. I was up with daughter Anne and island partner David Mathies. Mid-morning, we had shut everything down for the winter and were waiting for the water taxi to come from the Marina, except that it became clear that there would be no boat. A wind of epic proportions had come in out of the west. Nobody in their right mind would be out there in those conditions. I called the marina to arrange for a pickup once the wind died down, possibly late afternoon, or more likely the next day. Except that the person who answered the phone said that the boat had left to pick us up 30 minutes earlier.
Our boat dock is on the east side of the island and so is nicely sheltered from powerful winds out of the west. We looked out and, unbelievably, the boat was just pulling up to our dock. We ran down, secured the boat and talked to the driver: a young guy by the name of Drake (an auspicious name). He said that he didn’t like to disappoint people and so once he set out, he just kept on going.
We loaded the boat and headed back. He said “Hang on, it’s going to be rough.” The boat is a solidly built 26-foot aluminium runabout with an open cabin to protect the driver and passengers from spray or rain. Anne sat up front, beside Drake. David and I hung onto two stainless steel stanchions on the back of the cabin. So this is what that washing machine looked like up close. The worst places were where there was a rock face that reflected the waves coming in off the bay, one wave building on another with troughs deeper than ever. Drake was an excellent pilot. The boat was enormously capable and powered through all of this. David and I, hanging on at the back had some significant concerns about simply being thrown off the boat. If the engine had faltered, things were going to get very interesting, very quickly. The big American V8 just kept on running, pushing us out of each trough, over the crest and back down into the next trough. It was exactly what I had wanted, and, happily, I’m here to tell the story.
The marina is a few kilometres up Byng Inlet, far removed from the open bay. The wind still was fierce, but the water was subdued: so different here. I asked Drake, as we were getting the last of the gear off of the boat, “This trip back, in terms of being wild, was it in your top ten?” He said, without stopping to think, “It was number one!”
I’m occasionally asked if having a place in Georgian Bay is compared to Muskoka. My general response is that, for me, Muskoka is a bit like toking on a one-time illegal substance: mellow and quite wonderful. Georgian Bay is different: it’s like mainlining a much more illegal substance: it’s edgy, it’s dangerous… and there is nothing better.[4]
More Georgian Bay stories are planned for 2026.
Newsletter 2025: Dental
The Rest of the Newsletter
Fifty years ago, on a hot sunny June 6, 1975, I graduated from dentistry at the University of Western Ontario. I was in the company of my parents, my fiancé and possibly my in-laws to be. I’m unclear. I imagine that photos were taken, but they have disappeared into some far-distant photo album.
At the convocation ceremony I remember walking up the aisle of Alumni Hall to Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man”. It began with a huge brass gong that I remember being some 6 or 7 feet in diameter: the sound, when it was struck, was a vast, resonant, metallic thunder. Words fail. This was backed up by tympani and French horns. I had never encountered music like this. It was a grand introduction to the rest of my life.
I had already been working in Arthur, near Mount Forest for a few weeks. A month or so later I was married. Life was unfolding at an amazing rate.
I remember that for the first year or two I felt like I was on permanent summer holidays: no assignments to worry about, no exams. I was, for the first time in my life, an adult, in charge of my life. All the complex stuff of being a grown-up had yet to take hold. It did.
There was such pleasure in life up there. We rented a renovated schoolhouse that backed onto a square mile of bush and swamp. Across the road there was a hill that was a canvas that the seasons painted. I remember it fondly.
After a while it became clear that it was time for some children, and being distant from extended family didn’t make a lot of sense. A good location for a practice became available in the Medical Centre in Virgil and we moved to St. Catharines into the heart of a large and complex community of family and friends.
Children arrived (one of the great things that I have been involved in). In the middle of that we moved to Port Dalhousie to a wonderful property on the edge of Lake Ontario (it had been on the market at a modest price for two years: different times: go figure). The basement leaked and there were birds in the backyard: I felt like I had moved home. 47 years later it continues to be one of the better decisions of my life.
After five years in the medical centre the landlords advised me that they wanted to triple my rent. They had forgotten that I had an option to renew for five more years at a rent based on increases in the cost of living. I exercised this option, renewing my lease, but I started looking around. My father-in-law had a friend who owned an acre of land in Virgil. He approached him on my behalf. His response was that he had owned the property for many years, and turned down many offers, but today he was ready to sell. Timing is everything. I bought the land and then, in 1984 I built what is now Stone Road Dental. It was great and it was complicated: 5 operatories, 12 staff. I enjoyed my years there, but started thinking about a simpler situation, with fewer moving parts.
There were by-law changes and it became possible to build a small professional office in one’s home in residential St. Catharines. I started thinking about this in the early 1990s and by 2000 the idea of Lakeside Dental had begun to gel. After a few minor variances were passed by St. Catharines City Council, plans began to be drawn up. The practice in Virgil was transferred to a new owner in 2004 and after a transition period, I opened here in Port in April of 2008.
Professionally, this has been the best thing. One chair, a great view and two excellent staff, we can only see one person at a time. If you like what you are doing, which I do, life doesn’t get a whole lot better than this: nice people come to see me with interesting problems and I am allowed to solve them. As I have said in another newsletter: happiness is the unintended consequence of meaningful activity. As I see it I retired back in 2008 and took up this interesting hobby: dentistry: in my house: 3 days a week. This isn’t completely accurate, but it works for me. Our dental facility may be on the small side, but it has one of the better private offices that I have encountered: complete with a well equipped kitchen, a great dog and two fireplaces.
And of course, all of you get to share a good part of this this with me.
Referrals
One of our goals is to get all of you to the point where new decay is stopped (or at least largely controlled). As a result, you don’t need to see us as often and so we have room for new people coming to us for care. We continue to be grateful for your referrals to our office. If you have a hobby, it’s good if it keeps you occupied.
CDCP
The federal Canadian Dental Care Program is up and functioning and making access to dental care more affordable for many uninsured people. If you have any questions about this please feel free to contact us at the office.
In conclusion
As the person who has been publishing these newsletters for the past 35 years or so, I have realised that I like crafting words, images and ideas. And as my readership, I thank you for your patience and indulgence in reading to the very end.
I and we wish you all a fine transition into summer.
David Bergen and his wonderful support team
[1] John D. Rockefeller became the richest man in the world through oil. He founded Standard Oil in 1870. By 1890 he controlled 90% of all oil in the U.S. I had always thought that this involved oil for use in automobiles: it wasn’t. The oil was refined to provide kerosene which replaced candles and whale oil to illuminate the world once the sun had set. Kerosene lighting made him enormously wealthy. Gasoline was essentially a waste by-product until cars appeared on the scene around the beginning of the 20th century.
[2] It is good to have partners with whom to share these costs. It eases the pain
[3] David Mathies lives outside of Huntsville. He had a magnificent white pine in his driveway. The house needed renovations, so the tree had to come down. David arranged to have it cut into very long, thick boards. The wood was air dried for three years, and together with Sheila, his architect daughter, created a grand trestle table. It is magnificent!
[4] Growing up in the sixties, I might know just a little bit about that aforementioned toke. The mainlining part is based only on what I have read: but it seems like there could be similarities.