Author Returns To Addington Highlands For A Second Novel In Cottage Country

Craig Bakay | May 31, 2023

Novelist J. E. McBee has returned to the Addington Highlands area for his eighth novel, The Cadence of Loons. For the record, a couple of characters from The Skootamatta Ozone Ball make an appearance but they’re in it less than Tom Sawyer is in Huckleberry Finn.

Tom Martin shows up at a party on the lake with his wife and Jungle, who was 14-year-old jail bait in the previous novel is also there. She’s all grown up now but still attracting attention of the mails.

Similar to Skoootamatta Ozone Ball, The Cadence of Loons makes use of many landmarks of the area and cottagers/residents are sure to recognize the plethora of Easter eggs sprinkled liberally throughout the novel. Sometimes, the names are changed such as Bright’s Marina being a not-too-well concealed stand-in for Smart’s Marina (Smart-Bright both mean clever, get it?). Others, like The Beer Store, remain unchanged. As does Maple Dale Cheese, and while it’s not really in the area per se, who on a road trip to Belleville can resist stopping in there for a bag of curd? There’s also a reference to going to the Tweedsmuir in Tweed to hear the bands that played there. Those of us who played in those bands are grateful to be remembered. And many of a certain age will remember the bears at Price’s Log Cabin restaurant in Actinolite.

Other references rely on anecdotes that only some will get. For example, the fact that the cannabis dispensary was former a furniture store. And the local butcher shop is well known for its bacon.

The novel appears to revolve around “the interdependence of economic forces resulting in an uneasy alliance between year-round residents and seasonal visitors, on that occasionally erupted in conflict.”

In other words, most year-round residents are dependent on seasonals for their living, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t conflicts.

Enter Craig Galliano, a Toronto lawyer who has a cottage on Skootamatta Lake and whose self-importance rubs many the wrong way. Galliano owns a cigarette boat (long, fast and loud) and his penchant for racing it up and down the lake has resulted in no shortage of potential characters for the who-done-it part of the book. You see, what plot there is revolves around trying to figure out who sinks his boat (and slashes his tires, puts a skunk in his yard and takes a shot at him).

Again, there are no shortage of suspects but good luck trying to figure out who it is. Because, there are several red herrings and a lot of characters who have absolutely nothing to do with the plot. (Spoiler alert, Mona, the over-sexed manager of the Beer Store is not the boat sinker).

There is a sub-plot of sorts in the character of Gord Shuster, a reclusive loner who joins another character in a government-sponsored loon study (hence the title, Cadence of Loons). Shuster himself isn’t a bad character but the sub-plot of trying to figure out his past really doesn’t add much.

In fact, the biggest problem with the book is that there are simply too many characters who add little or nothing other than window-dressing. The don’t advance the plot whatsoever and even when you’ve finished the book you’re still wondering who most of them were.

Harry Potter has a lot of characters too but there’s magic in those books.

Having said that, The Cadence of Loons is a fairly easy read given McBee’s economic writing style. He doesn’t go off on overly ambitious descriptions (in the way J. K. Rowling does towards the middle the series) and he’s not interested in impressing the reader with his vocabulary.

It is, however, a fairly well done snapshot of cottage country in general and the Cloyne-Northbrook-Skootamatta are in particular which should appeal to casual readers just looking for something to fill up a couple of afternoons on the deck, overlooking the lake.

We’ll leave you with what is probably the best line in the book: “There is no greater sin in cottage county than running out of booze on the long weekend.”

The Cadence of Loons is now on sale at Finnegan’s General Store in Cloyne and will be on sale at the Cloyne Pioneer Museum in July.