The Sharbot Lake Farmers Market held their second annual Buttertart Challenge on Sept. 3, which drew 11 entries. The butter tart is a truly Canadian dessert, an ooey gooey delight that was invented in the 1900s in Barrie, Ontario and has a huge following of connoisseurs. The honour of judging the challenge was highly coveted, with one unnamed judge having actually begged for a spot! Each judge had to consume three full butter tarts in total, which left the delighted crowd with the rest! Believe us when we tell you, there were a lot of delighted testers and appreciative commentaries throughout the entire crowd! The winner of the coveted “Best Buttertart in Frontenac County” award was Karen Schonauer of Ardoch. Second prize was won by Kim Perry of Food Less Travelled in Verona, and third prize went to Guy Leger. Soon we will have to have our own butter tart road map to visit the many talented bakers in the Frontenac region.

As well, Natsuki Ono's name was drawn as the winner for the SLFM Kids' Word Search.

This Saturday, Sept. 3 will be a sweet day to be at the Sharbot Lake Farmers Market at the beach in Sharbot Lake. At 10:30am, the judging for the Second Annual Buttertart Challenge will take place. There were 15 entrants last year and it looks like there will be that many and more this year, as Frontenaconians love their butter tarts and clearly love to compete as well. The winner of the $50 prize and title of "Best Buttertart in Frontenac County" will be announced at 11:30 am.

The competition was started last Labour Day weekend by Mary de Bassecourt and Andrea Duggan on behalf of the Sharbot Lake Farmers Market as another event to drum up community spirit. The winner last year, Jocelyn Harpell, (of Jossey's) credits her mother, Annabelle, for the family recipe. Molly Ducharme finished second, a mere 1/2 point behind! Not bad for a girl in grade 8! Anyone can win!

The audience gets to enjoy the tarts as well, as quarters are handed out while the judges are diligently and painstakingly grading the tarts, first by appearance, then by the texture of the crust, the flavour and consistency of the filling and finally, how does it taste all together? These are some of the hardball questions that must be addressed by our panel of judges - all local butter tart lovers of various ages.

Get baking, people! Register by September 2 with a fun name for your butter tart creation. To register, send an email with "Butter Tart" in the Subject line to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. In the body of the email, include your name and the title of your butter tarts. Be creative! Then drop off six butter tarts at the bandstand on September 3. You never know, you may end up $50 richer and with a whole new status in the county!

After a hot summer and our July and August barbeques, it’s time to resume our regular meetings. The next one will be on Tuesday September 6. We meet downstairs at the North Frontenac Telephone office at 12 noon. It’s time to discuss our fall trip. The Brockville Aquarium has been suggested and I’m hoping that we can settle on a date to accommodate the majority. Membership is only $7 a year, and that includes belonging to the United Senior Citizens of Ontario. They hear, and act, on what seniors are facing in their daily lives. They do ask for input from the smaller clubs. Sharbot Lake was commended for sending two proposals, which were presented to the Ontario government. Anyone 50 or over is welcome. Come, and bring a friend. For information call Shirley Crawford at 613-279-2990 or email Dorothy Fraser at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

This fall, North Frontenac Little Theatre (NFLT) is proud and excited to be presenting an original new musical, “Turtle Crossings”, written by NFLT veteran, Craig Godfrey.

Tesah Carter is a music teacher at an urban high school. While singing at an open-mic night with her friends, she reminisces about her childhood cottage days. Through her sharing, we revisit a young girl's life as she grows up at the lake. Along the way, we witness a powerful bond that develops with the boy next door, whom she looks up to as her guardian. In the end, we see how a spiritual re-awakening and the caring love of her "guardian" combine to bring an unforeseen joy into her world. With an original score of music, a wide variety of characters and a tale of human interest that runs the entire gamut of emotions, “Turtle Crossings” is sure to prove captivating and delightful to our audiences.

Brian Robertson will direct our Fall 2016 launch of this original musical. Brian is well known by many of you and a familiar face in these NFLT productions,

and he’s excited to be working on this fun presentation.

Auditions will be held on Sept. 7 & 8, at Granite Ridge Education Centre in Sharbot Lake. See the ad on page 3. The play will be performed Thurs – Sat., Nov. 24 – 26 at 7pm and Sun. Nov. 27 at 1:30 pm. Visit www.nflt.ca

There are roles for teenage boys and girls, adult males and females

Since some actors and crew contacted the author and team from our previous ads, some backstage roles and leads have been filled already. However, since this is a full scale musical, we are still in need of actors for some remaining lead roles and chorus,

as well as musicians to form a stage band, and help with the set, props, sound and make-up.

Contact Producer Kathy Bonsall, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Rehearsals will take place twice a week on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, beginning Tuesday September 13 at 7 p.m.

Last year, when Northern Frontenac Community Services (NFCS) held their annual community BBQ, it poured rain and the event was held in the steamy confines of the Oso Hall in Sharbot Lake.

This year it was sunny and hot, just like the rest of the month, when the BBQ took place last Thursday (August 18th) and the attendance was almost overwhelming.

Tabitha Morton works as a Data Analysis Coordinator for NFCS, did not do a count, but said that the agency had 200 re-usable water bottles to give away at the BBQ, and there were none left at the end of the evening.

“So I’d say we had over 200 people come out, probably a lot more.”

The lineup for food was steady for well over an hour, and kids enjoyed a bouncy castle and the beach and Sparky, while the adults listened to Shawn McCullough perform and enjoyed the late afternoon sunshine.

“People seem to enjoy the BBQ more and more every year,” said NFCS Executive Director Louise Moody.

In addition to having some fun and eating burgers, fresh corn and watermelon, the BBQ was also the occasion of the final tally for the Toilet Paper the Town campaign that was carried out by the NFCS Youth Program Leadership in Training students this summer.

Over 300 toiletry items were presented to Kim Cucoch of the North Frontenac Food Bank.

Parishioners from St. James Catholic Church were joined by Archbishop Brendan O'Brien as well as 3 of their former parish priests on Sunday afternoon (August 21).

The gathering included the dedication of a new baptismal font, as well greetings from the archbishop and a trip down memory lane by Father John Brennan who served the parish between 1985 and 1992 and oversaw the construction of the new church.

The church was needed because the original one room red brick church (now the home of the Cardinal Cafe), which was built in 1883, was too small and had been earmarked for replacement since the early 1960's.

In his remarks to the happy crowd (lunch was served before the speeches) Father Brennan said that when he was approached to take over the Sharbot Lake and Bedford parishes in 1985, and told that he would be presiding over the construction of a new church, “I said that someone must have made a mistake, an opinion that was shared by members of my family who knew how good I was at building things and managing finances.”

He said that the archbishop at the time told him something that was particularly helpful.

“He said let them take care of building the church, just be their priest.”

He said that he quickly learned how self-sufficient the parishioners in Sharbot Lake were when they began passing hymm books through the windows to the people outside and the collection plate would disappear out the front door each week, and then come back in with money from those who had arrived late.

“I grew to realize that if it took a long time for the plate to come back in it did not mean someone made off with it, but that more money was coming.”

He finished his remarks by making note of the efforts of the building committee.

He talked about the work done by Doreen Onfrichuk, who came up with the idea of selling $100 tickets on a cottage, a fund-raiser that really got the ball rolling, and Leo Enright, both of who have died since the church was built.

He then introduced Marcel Giroux, Theresa Ferguson, and Marg Desroche, members of the committee who have remained active at the church and in the community through the years.

The anniversary celebration, which took 18 months to organize, featured memorabilia from over the years and a video about the building of the new church, which is available for $20.

The organizing committee for the celebration expressed relief that all the work was completed and the celebration had come off so well.

And yes, there was cake, lots of cake and squares, including a delicious carrot cake.

You would think Rob and Nancy Moore would be looking forward to a reprieve after Labour Day, when their first frenetic six weeks as owners of the popular Cardinal Cafe in Sharbot Lake.

With the end of summer and the return of the cottage population to their homes in the City, they will have chance to take a deep breath. But it will also bring them to their next, big challenge, the challenge that all retailers in the area face, maintaining a thriving business through the fall and winter seasons.

It's a challenge they are ready for.

“When we found out that Sylvie Smith and Nicole Tarasick [the former owners of the business] were planning to sell the cafe, we knew right away that we wanted to buy it,” said Nancy Moore when interviewed during a late afternoon lull on the Cafe patio last week. “We've been talking about something like this for 20 years, and we even looked at buying this property at one point.”

The Cardinal Cafe is located in the former Sharbot Lake Catholic Church, just north of the cause-way at the foot Sharbot Lake, across Road 38 from the Sharbot Lake Country Inn.

It sat empty for 23 years after the St. James Church was opened up the road. A former owner of the Country Inn used it for storage for a number of years. The Tarasick family bought it two years ago and carefully renovated it in order to create an inviting public space. Smith and Tarasick decided to call it the Cardinal for the points of the compass and the logo for the Cafe is based on the stained glass window at the centre of the building, a window that lets in beam of light on summer afternoons at about 4:00, coffee time.

They decided to sell the café for personal reasons in late June and when the Moore’s jumped at the chance the entire deal was arranged in a matter of a couple of weeks.

The changeover took on July 16th, and the Cardinal Café 2.0 opened for business four days later. During those four days a few changes were made, including putting in a new preparation counter and some equipment so Rob could prepare breakfast sandwiches and burritos, and daily soup, salad and sandwich specials for lunch.

When the new Cardinal opened on July 20th at 6:00 in the morning, it was a breakfast and lunch café and restaurant. The new opening coincided with the peak of the summer season in the Sharbot Lake area, and with a new food menu in addition to the well established coffee and drinks menu that the café already offered, Rob Moore recalls the first couple of weeks as a bit of a learning experience.

“We were working long, long hours, and depending on the our two summer staff members, Maddie Field-Green and Shane Steeves, quite a bit, especially for the way the place operated and how the espresso based coffee drinks are made. I was developing our breakfast and lunch menu on the fly and just trying to keep up” said Rob, a former tea drinker who has taken to knocking back a double espresso once a day.

The first few weeks were certainly a blur for the Moore’s, with Rob coming in at 4 or 5 in the morning to get ready, Nancy stopping in at 7:30 before going to her full time job at Lake District Realty, helping out at lunch and after work. Rob, who had been working as a contractor but was looking for a change, is full time at the café.

The couples two school ages sons have somehow been folded into the mix, with a lot of help from family.

With the menu coming together and the operation of the café becoming easier, the Moore’s are settling in for the long haul.

Aside from getting more deeply into serving meals, the other change they have been working on for the café has been to broaden its appeal.

“It is a beautiful place,” said Nancy Moore, “and it brought the kind of coffee and pastry that was new to this area. We just want to make it the place for everyone, we need to do that.”

Opening early for people who leave early in the morning for work on construction sites or in Kingston and Perth is one way to do that. Another was to start selling butter tarts and pies from Gray’s Grocery up the road in addition to the croissants and pain au chocolat from Fieldhouse in Perth.

The Wednesday evening music nights that started up in June are being carried forward, and the café also has its liquor license again, which took time to arrange because of the change in ownership.

In the fall the hours will shift, but the café is gearing up to serve the office workers, teachers, and all other local residents in the Sharbot Lake area.

“We take orders in the morning for pick-up at lunch, our space is available for small meetings, we are committed to being here year round Monday to Friday for sure, and on weekends as well,” said Rob Moore. “While we compete with the other restaurants in town, we work with them as well. Our goal is to bring something to the community, to make it stronger, and so far we have had tremendous support. My sense is that people want us to succeed, and we are working hard to serve good food, fine coffee, and be a place people enjoy going to.”

The Cafe is open from Monday until Friday froim 6:00 am until 4:30 pm, Saturday from 8 am until 4:30 pm and Sunday from 9:00 until 1:30 pm. The phone number is 613-279-3734

Kent Labbett was very concerned about Central Frontenac's purchase of the former public school's in Sharbot Lake and Parham.

So, he sent a letter to Mayor Frances Smith and the township Council on February 8th, asking a number of questions about the purchases.

He questioned what the townships “long term goal” was for the two properties. He also asked whether there was an information package available from the Limestone Board about the properties, if it was available to the township and if Mayor Smith has read the package before council decided to make the purchase.

He also wnated to know if township[ staff had inspected the buildings before the purchase, and if the township considered and budgeted for tearing the buildings down before making the purchases.

He told the News that after not hearing back from the Mayor by late February he called Cathy MacMunn, Chief Administrative Officer for Central Frontenac.

He said that Macmunn began to offer some explanations but he cut her off, saying “I need to hear this from the Mayor.”

He did not hear back, and based on a search of the online agendas to council meetings between March and July, the letter does not appear in the package of correspondance.

In mid-July, Labbett pressed the issue again, and on July 19th, he did hear back from Frances Smith via email.

She provided a point by point response to his questions.

The long term goal for the properties “is to develop the Sharbot Lake property into a senior's residence; for the Hinchinbrooke property there were a few ideas such as : possible site of a new township garage; use as a recreation centre; a possible business project such as a craft brewery operation.”

As far as an information package about the building is concerned, she wrote that “apparently there was one on file. We did not see it or discuss it with staff prior to purchasing. We were aware the buildings were not in A-one shape because that is why the school board closed them. We did not know how bad Sharbot Lake was until we did a walk through and definitely it is not able to be renovated.”

She also wrote that the appraisal of the properties was higher than the price the township paid for them. For example, she noted that the initial asking price for Hinchinbrooke school was $220,000 and the township paid $100,000 for the property.

She said that the township “did not budget for the tear down nor have we expended any money on tear down, however, we are setting aside $25,000 erach year into a reserve to provide for the tear down sometime down the road.”

She added that the township may be eligible for grants to assist with the tear down if it is done in order to build a senior's residence.

These responses did not satisfy Kent Labbett.

He told the News that he does not “think the township should be involved in real estate speculation. That should be left to people in the land development business.”

He also said he does not understand how the Mayor did not read the “package about the property from the school board. To acknowledge she had it and yet didn't read it is troubling. Why would she not consult with her head building official in advance of purchases rather than after the fact? If she had it would have made her aware that the building was of no value and tearing it down would be a major expense.”

He has written a follow up letter to the Mayor making these points as well as others. Here is his concluding paragraph: “In my opinion I do not feel these purchases were prudent with the informaion available. Please provide some solid information that hopefully will change my opinion of what I think was an extremely poor decision on the part of Central Frontenac Council. Would you have acted in the same fashion if you were spending your personal money as opposed to taxpayers? Just saying ... ”

To visit the bee colonies of Markus Sanders of Crooked Hill Farm, north of Sharbot Lake, is to experience a kaleidoscope of color. Each year Saunders encourages his daughters to select the colours to paint the individual hive boxes, or supers.

Knowing that bees visually identify their hive, I asked him if this was an aid to assist returning bees to help them find their own hive. No, he assured me, it’s a simple trick to start getting his daughters involved in the family beekeeping business.

Saunders has 120 colonies of European honeybees in his apiaries on his 230-acre farm, and sells his honey locally at the Sharbot Lake Farmers Market.

Honeybees provide a pollination service to our crops. Crop yields can increase dramatically when there are plenty of honeybees in the area.

There has been a lot of discussion and government research carried out over the past few years into the dramatic losses being sustained by the bee industry.

Strong colonies, says Saunders, and his forest location have helped him avoid major hive die-offs or the feared Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Bee colony winter die-off rates have risen drastically, along with mite infestations, over the past two decades. These two problems are now major control issues for beekeepers. CCD was unknown 15 years ago in North America but it is now a real and well-debated issue for beekeepers. The bees leave with no regard for their own survival; they leave full frames of honey, and the young and the old. This is not the action of the caring bee communities that had existed prior to CCD hitting the hives.

To help maintain a healthy colony, Saunders will replace the queen bee in each colony every two years. He has also taken smaller, weaker colonies and blended them together with only one strong queen. In this case, he used a copy of the Frontenac News as the dividing screen between the two initial colonies, together with a queen metal separator. Bees of individual colonies distinguish each other by a unique scent. A bee from one hive will not be allowed into another hive. With the paper separating the two colonies, by the time the paper is chewed up, the scent given off by both initial colonies is the same and the total acceptance of each other has been established.

Beekeepers, crop and fruit farmers are working with government scientists to help build harvest yields and strong healthy bee colonies. At this time we do not appear to have the complete answer to hive die-off and CCD.

Are you sometimes confused about what healthy eating looks like when you have diabetes? Have you ever been told to avoid certain foods or entire food groups in order to control your blood sugar levels? Sharbot Lake Family Health Team Dietitians are here to help clear up all the confusion!

Starting Tuesday September 6 from 1:30-4:30pm the dietitians will be offering Diabetes Friendly Cooking Classes every Tuesday for 5 weeks. Topics covered will include: The importance of including healthy carbohydrates, high fibre choices, heart healthy eating, lower sugar eating, and how to read a nutrition label. Each session will also include cooking a healthy recipe and group discussion. Classes are open to anyone diagnosed with Prediabetes or Diabetes as well as anyone caring for someone with Diabetes. Call Megan at 613-279-2100 ext. 107 for more information or to register.