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Time_Hurricane

Feature Article August 14

Feature Article August 14, 2002

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Cloyne: another time and another hurricaneby Karyl Waldie Climbing over large, pungent, fresh pine branches to reach the door and check for damage, I opened the Pioneer Museum in Cloyne last Friday morning for business as usual. Unbelievably, it had been spared destruction from the hurricane which had swept all around it that night, wreaking havoc on the village and countryside. As I stood in the shell of the log extension we are building at the museum, surveying with utter dismay the sea of roots and stripped logs which used to be a beautiful stand of very old pines, and the disaster area that was the village, my mind suddenly took a trip back in time way back to 1947, in fact.

I grew up at the head of Mazinaw Lake, 12 miles north of Cloyne. Our family business was Whip-Poor-Will Lodge (now extinct). We were used to the incredible thunderstorms and hail that seemed to come out of nowhere, but one day when I was watching my Dad work in the icehouse, nature outdid itself, and a brute of a storm was suddenly upon us. It rained so viciously that we couldnt even find shelter in the middle of the icehouse. Rain was hissing in from cracks in the boards, pummeling and drenching us. Our car was parked just outside, and Dad yelled that we would have to take shelter there. We ran, then he picked me up and threw me in the car. We were drenched and I could tell that Dad was very nervous. I was terrified! Suddenly the heavens opened even further, and leaves and tree limbs and stones and other debris came swirling crazily down from the sky and thudded against the sides of our haven. Father, who didnt usually swear, swore!

Finally the weather calmed a little, and everyone crept out from wherever they had found shelter. Angus Spencer, our hired man, came running over to tell us that hed seen that happen before and it meant a tornado had touched down or a hurricane had swept through, close to us and sure enough a hurricane had. When the sky cleared, Dad drove around and found that a hurricane had ripped through across Highway 41 just north of Bon Echo Rock, and trees were lying all over, blocking it completely. The Highway was a small dirt road back in those days, and thankfully men from Sawyer Stoll lumber company came to our rescue with their big saws, clearing it in a matter of hours. I have photos of me sitting on the freshly cut end of a huge pine.

At the Lodge, we lost two or three trees, and one rested on one of our cottages, but because so few of us lived in the area then, not a lot of damage was done. As the few eye-witness stories came in, it appeared that trees crashed through a few empty cottages, and a huge waterspout had developed on the lake near the road, but by great good fortune, no person was injured. Shell-shocked we certainly were, by such a swat from nature at our sheltered existence.

With the participation of the Government of Canada