Where We Live

Our farmhouse is a few miles outside Cobourg, which in turn is about 60 miles east of Toronto, Canada on the north shore of Lake Ontario:

The Marquis de Denonville, French Governor at Quebec, stopped at the future site of Cobourg in 1687 to fish for salmon. Later, United Empire Loyalists, coming north from the newly independent United States, settled in Cobourg in 1784. Among the newcomers was Ebenezer Perry, whose house (built in 1835) is now one of the fashionable restaurants in town (Woodlawn Terrace Inn). Ironically, UEL Ebenezer was a cousin of Commander Oliver Perry of American ("We have met the enemy and they our ours").fame on Lake Erie. War splits up families. Charles Dickens visited Cobourg. Daniel Massey built his anvil home here -- from which Massey Harris (aka Massey Ferguson aka Varity) was born. Cobourg was incorporated, after much lobbying by Ebenezer Perry, in 1837 in honour of (though misspelling) the family name of Queen Victoria (Saxe-Coburg-Gotha). Victoria University (now in Toronto) began here. Another building, Victoria Hall, was built in the 1850s and opened by the Prince of Wales. It is today the site of concerts, musicals, and the Art Gallery of Northumberland.(where some of Merike's art appears from time to time).

The Danforth

Our farmhouse is situated 1/2 km south of Danforth Road -- yes, the same Danforth that runs through Toronto. In 1798 Governor Simcoe awarded a contract to Asa Danforth to build a road connecting York (now Toronto) with Kingston. The Danforth was built a few miles north of Lake Ontario to avoid the swampy river deltas. One of the 'half-way houses' for the York-Kingston stage-coach is a few miles down the road. Later, when a new "Kingston Road" (now Highway 2) was built around 1814, it was built closer to the lake though occasionally it used some portions of the old Danforth. This left disconnected pieces of the Danforth scattered about in Toronto, Cobourg, Grafton, etc. Our Cobourg piece was further fragmented when Highway 401 sliced diagonally through it a few decades ago.

The Seasons

In winter our grounds look like this:

Zeph (one of our previous owners) prancing on the snow. Rod trudging behind. At least in winter, dogs don't have muddy paws.

And Merike's blue gate is covered with snow:

The gate (made of welded steel painted with automotive finish) was designed by Merike in honour of her daughter Valerie's wedding in our garden in summer 1994. The base is welded to four conrete piles constructed by Stephen three feet into the ground. So far the winter storms have not budged it. In the distance Lake Ontario often exhibits about the same colour.

In contrast, in summer the same gate looks like this ---->

In this photo Lake Ontario blends in with the sky and is almost invisible. However, just beyond the Blue Gate you can see our southern pond, which we use for irrigating Merike's garden. Living in the country (as in Manon de la Source), one always worries about water (where it comes from and where it goes). We don't have a creek (groan) and we live on the top of a hill (actually a drumlin scraped out by the glaciers as they retreated from Lake Ontario more than a few years ago). But our hilltop is very swampy in the spring so we excavated a couple of ponds to trap this water for the dry summer days.

At one time, the north pond was our largest. Here Merike's daughter Paula (taking a day off from her Toronto film production work to visit us in the country) is trying out our raft.

Later we dug a very much larger pond to the south. Here in this photo you can see Merike kayaking about in it. This pond is also the scene of an annual "Cousins Party" where children of all ages compete in water games organized by Rod's son-in-law Xavier.

And finally in fall (one of the good seasons in Canada) the sugar maple gives this sort of colour:

This is the smaller of our two sugar maples. The larger one we have used now for several years to make maple syrup.