Yes, we once used a phone just like this one that is on display in our museum. There is a nice collection of older phones for visitors to enjoy and reminisce about.

We’ve come a long way from lifting a receiver and hearing “Number please”. If calling far away, we would say, “Long distance, please”.  Another voice would come on the line saying “Long distance” and we would recite the destination and number. (London, England, 5642).  Most numbers were only four digits. No area codes.

To receive a call, each household had a separate number of rings. Could be one long, two short, or any combination of long and short. Hearing your own ring you picked up the phone and said “hello”.

Many lines were shared by several households. If on a party line you could pick up the phone on a neighbour’s ring and hear their conversation. Much news was gathered this way. Gossip as well.

The Cloyne Museum’s season opening is this Saturday, June 25 at 11a.m.

Bring a lawn chair and tap your feet to the music of the Pickled Chicken String Band. There will be a BBQ too. The museum will be open seven days a week all summer. Be sure to visit.  

Clarendon and Miller Community Archives have begun a new phase of research. You will recall the Memories of General Stores that was presented in May for their 10th Anniversary. By May 2017 the committee hopes to have research completed on local lodges and housekeeping cottages of North Frontenac (present and historical). Some lakes with only two or three have already been noted. CMCA needs help to identify those on Big Gull Lake and Kashawakamak Lake. We are confident that readers will recall many. If you have photos, names of lodges/housekeeping cottages or the names of people to contact, CMCA would sure appreciate a call or e-mail. Phone Brenda (613) 479-2837 or e-mail This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.; Heather at Plevna library (613) 479-2542 or e-mail This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. The CMCA will be holding a fundraiser BBQ on Sat. June 25 at Clar-Mill Hall in Plevna from 9:30am-1:30pm.  

The Kashwakamak Lake Association (KLA), has been busy. Its lake sustainability sub-committee recently completed the draft Kashwakamak Lake Sustainability Plan and it will be voted on at the KLA’s upcoming Annual General Meeting on July 9 at the Harlowe Community Hall from 9:30 – 11:30 am. The bulk of the AGM will be a presentation, which will summarize the Sustainability Plan, discuss next steps and be followed with a vote. Non-members are welcome at this meeting and people interested in joining the KLA can do so at the door for only $15.

“I’m very proud of the work that our sub-committee has done,” stated Gordon Hunter, president. “We have an incredible group of talented people who have worked on this effort for fiveyears,” he added. “I’m excited to see the presentation and hear the comments and discussions around the plan’s recommendations.”

The committee began this effort in 2011 and the Kashwakamak Lake State of the Lake Report was presented at the July 2013 AGM as the first step in preparing a lake sustainability plan. They received public comments and did further research and have now completed the draft Sustainability Plan. In order to complete this third step they need their membership to read the plan, come to the AGM and vote.

For the first time there will also be a FREE barbeque immediately following the AGM sponsored by James Train, Cottage Docks, www.cottagedocks.com. People are asked to RSVP by June 30 so there’s enough burgers and hot dogs on the grill. RSVP to Gord Hunter, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or call 613-336-7345.

There are also a limited number of printed copies available for people without access to a computer and three copies of the plan are at the public library in Cloyne. To request a printed copy, KLA Members and those interested in the Kashwakamak Lake community are asked to email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or call Judy McIntyre at 613-336-2882 and leave their name and mailing address. With a possible postal strike looming as early as July 2nd the KLA is asking people to make this request as soon as possible.

Gardens are never made by sitting in the shade and our local Land O’Lakes Garden Club members are prime examples of busy folks. The months of April, May and June are chock-a-block full of jobs as we cleaned up from winter, prepared the soil for planting and finally got to the best occupation -planting new seeds and plants.

An early morning line up was the order of the day on May 28 at our annual plant sale. Promptly at 9am the doors of Barrie Hall opened to a crowd of shoppers. Thank you to all our members and non-members who donated plants for this great cause. Our membership knows just what buyers want and spend enormous amounts of time separating and replanting vigorous specimens from their own gardens in pots. Remember these plants are acclimatized to our local conditions and will not be like fussy plants from further afield that take time to adjust to our acidic soil.

This was my first year and I was astonished by the number and quality of the plants for sale. The Don Cuddy family of Harlowe did an amazing job of starting vegetable seedlings and we were privileged to be the recipients of many beautiful heirloom tomato plants, cucumbers, peppers, eggplants and herbs to sell. This is a generous donation from the Cuddys that is very much appreciated by our garden club.

For those of you who missed the sale, don’t forget it next year, as you will find a wide variety of plant and vegetable seedlings at nominal expense. We hold the plant sale every year on the Saturday after the May long weekend, so mark your calendars for next year. By then you can pop those tomato plants into the garden, as frost danger is normally past. What a great way to build a garden and provide you and your family with delicious home grown produce. There are plenty of helpers at the sale to answer your garden questions and get you started producing food. The money we earn is turned back into the community in various ways and some of it goes toward a bursary for children interested in pursuing their post-secondary education in the Environmental and Horticulture fields.

We hope you notice the community planters that dot our neighbourhoods. They are the rectangular black boxes, like the one in front of the Cloyne Post Office. Freshly touched up for the summer, with renewed soil and compost, they were well planted by our member teams on June 3 with beautiful annuals. Local businesses donate a small fee, which goes directly to our expenses in filling the planters, and we are grateful to every business and individual who makes that possible. When you see a planter in front of one of our local business locations, please make a comment to the owner as this beautifies our community and those folks are instrumental in making that happen. Business owners assume the responsibility of watering the planters throughout the summer while our member teams check on them periodically to ensure all’s well and blooming.

Take a walk along Little Pond Road and wander through the lovely little Pioneer Cemetery that members have lovingly restored. From an overgrown bush it has been transformed and every year we make improvements. This year you would have found many volunteer members moving gravel to renew the pathways as well as enjoying a great lunch. Do have a look!

Besides all the planting we have been up to, a big and exciting project is planned and underway for our Canadian 150th Birthday of Confederation. We are keeping the details under wraps for now but want to make a special thank you to Brad Douglas of Home Hardware in Northbrook for making a wonderful donation toward our objective. Thank you Brad!

A couple of things we can tell you are: It will be a show-stopper and the community will be invited to the opening. Watch this newspaper for more details as the summer progresses. And one other thing: think about planting all your gardens with red and white next year, and get your order in at the local nursery early as the entire population of Canada is thinking the same thing. Growers are anticipating the demand but it never hurts to remind them you will want red and white. What a display it would be if we all made this happen.

Pine Meadow Nursing Home is blooming too, thanks to our wonderful volunteer members. There is no one that is without a job helping out in these spring months in our garden club. You need to know that our levels of experience in gardening and our interests in what we grow are wide-ranging. Some have gardened a lifetime; some a few weeks. Some members love a vegetable patch; others care for growing cut flowers. Maybe there is an interest in shrubbery or herbs or just an interest in hearing our monthly speaker and having some social time. We gladly accept all visitors and hope you stay and decide to join our group. There is nothing better than sharing growing knowledge with someone who likes the dirt! We meet every 2nd Thursday of the month, April through November, at the Pineview Free Methodist Church at 7pm. Join us. Our welcome mat is out.

The congregation of Land O'Lakes Emmanuel United Church celebrated the dedication of their church on Addington Road 2 just north of Northbrook with an open house on Saturday, June 11. They have already been worshipping in the new space for over a year and a half. Before that they spent more than five years undertaking the arduous process of amalgamating the congregants who had been attending the Cloyne, Riverside (Flinton) and Harlowe churches.

The church, which had been a private home with a large garage before it was converted into a church in 2013 and 2014, features a 2,900 square foot room that is used for worship. Many of the key religious elements, such as crosses, the baptismal font, etc., as well as the piano and organ, came from the former churches, but from the start, the congregation and then pastor, Judith Evenden, felt that a new space was necessary for the congregation to come together in their own collective space.

“It also would have been very difficult, if not impossible, to bring the older church buildings to the point where they could satisfy not only our needs but the building code as well,” said Janice Andrew, the current chair of the church council, and one of the people who was involved in the amalgamation process since the start.

The renovations have been ongoing even after the church opened one and a half years ago.

“Let's just talk about walls,” said Andrew, to demonstrate how much work was done. “We removed the wall between the garage and the house, bedroom walls, the living room and dining room wall. We also put in a new floor, furnace, air conditioning system, new windows, paint, new stairways, a sound system, ramps. It was a lot of work, and there will always be more, but we are basically done now.”

The congregation decided not to put in church pews in their main hall, which gives them a lot more flexibility when it comes to how they worship together and how easy it is to use the space for other purposes.

Reverend D'Thea Webster came to Land O'Lakes Emmanuel in September.

“I've been here as we put the final touches to the space. Aside from the work on the space, what is really impressive to me is how much work has been done on a human level, to make sure everyone is welcome in that space. I couldn't tell when I came here who was from Riverside, who was from Harlowe or who was from Cloyne. It has been one unified congregation from the day I came in, and that is a tribute to all the work done before I arrived, and to Judith Evenden,” said D'Thea Webster.

Janice Andrew agreed.

“There were times, when we were going through the amalgamation, that some of us said we should go ahead and sell the three churches. We were anxious to move ahead, but Judith said it was important to keep hearing from people. She insisted that we give the time to people to discuss things very, very thoroughly and gently and gradually come to a decision. One of the things she kept insisting on was that 'everyone has to have their say' ” said Andrew.

“You can see why when you think about it. There is still grieving going on because people naturally have attachments to the place where they were married, where their children were baptized and confirmed, and married even. Spirits dwell in those rafters. There is still pain for some people who have not been able to come back, although there have been people coming back.”

Andrew was one of the people who first took note of the house that became the new church and she said that although it is not located right on Highway 41, which was what was planned, everyone who went to look at it had the same feeling.

“As soon as they got out of their car and walked to the building they could feel a sense of peace. We all knew this was the right place for us, and it is,” she said.

New Leaf Link (NeLL) celebrated the end of its eighth year of programming with the performance of a play about the environment that was based on Dickens' “A Christmas Carol” last Wednesday (June 1) at the Harrowsmith Free Methodist Church.

The play featured the 13 young adults who attended NeLL programming this winter, as well as volunteers. The group moved their twice-weekly program to the Free Methodist Church earlier this spring from their former home at St. Paul's Anglican in Sydenham.

“We had a great home at St. Paul's,” said NeLL founder, Karin Steiner, of the move to Harrowsmith, “but for accessibility and capacity reasons this is a more suitable space for our programs.”

NeLL has been well supported by individuals, businesses and groups from across South Frontenac over the years, and this year they received a grant from the township to help with the move to Harrowsmith.

“We have been supported by the community and some local foundations over the years, and this year we are very excited about our arts programming. We have Gary Rasberry doing music; Annie Milne doing puppets; and Christine Harvey doing drama. We have received a grant from the Community Foundation of Kingston and Area for our arts program, and we have been invited to make use of the Tett Centre in Kingston to do some work there. It's amazing what we have been able to do over the last year or so in the arts.”

New Leaf Link was established as a means to fill a gap for young adults who had graduated from School to Community classes and were living in South Frontenac, where there was no programming available at the time for residents of South Frontenac. Since then NeLL has developed three streams of day programming: skills and literacy; health and recreation; and arts and adapted technologies. Fees for the day programs are kept to a reasonable $30 per session and since there are no salaried staff, all grant money is used to augment programs.

“Every grant helps us to build our capacity to grow,” said Steiner, adding that NeLL is seeking support from the Ontario Arts Council to help set up a third day of programming. She would also like to see NeLL run a two-week camp in the summer.

“We really have become a community, and it is a long summer for many of our youth. They miss each other,” she said.

While NeLL was established partially out of frustration with the way the funding system for developmentally disabled young adults was set up, it has become something more, an asset to South Frontenac.

“We generally all care for each other. We are happy to come together, be together and learn together. We talk together about our issues; we share news. We know what we are all about and where we want to take this,” said Steiner.

On Tuesday, May 31 the Sharbot Lake and District Lions held an information night at Oso Hall in Sharbot Lake. Long-time members of the club, including President Bill Zwier, and former presidents Bill Pyle, Linda Zwier, and Dave and Dawn Hansen, all outlined some of the projects that the local Lions have been involved with over the years for an appreciative crowd of observers and potential new Lions.

They talked about the support the Lions give to causes as varied as recent donations to the Fort McMurray relief fund and the trip by students at St. James Catholic School to Knoxville, Tennessee for the Destination Imagination finals. They also talked about Vision Screening that the Lions have done for years in local schools, roadside cleanup, Canada Day, the food bank, and more.

The evening ended up taking a youthful turn with talk about a brand-new initiative for the local club, the establishment of a LEO club. LEO, which stands for Leadership, Experience, Opportunity, is a youth club for children ages 12 to 16 to organise events, socialize together and learn the spirit of service that is encompassed in the Lions' motto, We Serve.

Lion Lesley Merrigan is spearheading the establishment of a LEO club in Central Frontenac, and she was joined by Vic Smith, who is the co-ordinator for the 24 LEO clubs in Eastern and Central Ontario.

“LEO clubs tend to work best, and last the longest, in small towns,” said Smith, “and with no other youth clubs on the go in this area I think it is an ideal fit.”

Merrigan said that since she has children who are 9 and 11 she has a personal reason for starting up a LEO club.

There were a number of teenagers and pre-teens interested in joining the new club in the audience. The organising and membership work will be done this summer with a view towards starting the club in September.

Anyone interested in joining or learning about LEO is invited to email Lesleysmith181@hotmail or call 613-279-3144 and ask for Lesley.

As President Bill Zwier said, the average age of Lions club members is well into the 50s and 60s, and an infusion of youth “would be very welcome indeed”.

As part of the celebration of the 119th anniversary of the Federated Women's Institutes of Ontario, members of the Harrowsmith Women's Institute (WI) are participating in the Teddy Bear and Quincy Book project.

The Harrowsmith Institute was given copies of the book “Quincy and his Quilt: a Northern Adventure”, a book published by the Women's Institute 10 years ago after they held a contest for the best book about a bear named Quincy. At least 20 of the 27 club members then purchased a teddy bear and then either quilted, crocheted or knitted a blanket to go with it.

The books, bears and blankets were delivered to a meeting on Tuesday night, May 30, where they were collected by Harrowsmith WI president, Jane Adamson.

“I will contact the local schools, or the township to see that the books, bears and blankets are delivered to children in the area who are in need of something to brighten their day,” said Adamson.

The Harrowsmith Women's Institute is celebrating their 91st anniversary this year.

Congratulations to Hollowood Branch 425 on your 70th Anniversary!

On May 1st, 1946, Douglas Thompson, District "F" Commander, attended a meeting of war veterans at Sharbot Lake Community Hall to form a branch of the Canadian Legion. This meeting was arranged by one of the local veterans who had joined the Perth branch in the fall of 1945.

District Commander Thompson gave a talk on the aims and objects of the Legion, then took applications from the veterans to form a branch of the Legion. Elections were then held and the branch’s first president was Wm Meldrum; 1st Vice Bill Hawley; 2nd Vice Roly Irwin; Secretary Ken Alexander; Treasurer Len Sly, and Sgt at Arms Don Jarvis. The branch got its name from Tom Hollowood Sr., who had five sons in the army in the First World War. Two sons were later killed overseas in the Second World War. Fifteen names were picked for the Charter: Comrades Wm. Meldrum, W. Hawley, R. Irwin, K. Alexander, L. Sly, G. Crain, E. Bonner, G. Beattie, D. Reynolds, T. St. Pierre, R. Greer, A. Brash, W. Parks, W. Blakely, H. Raymo and C. Gordon. The Charter came into effect on May 29, 1946.

In 1949 it was learned that the school house at St. Georges Lake was for sale. A motion was passed at the next meeting for the then president, Com. Lyndon Bonner and the secretary, Com. Don Jarvis to attend a meeting of the local school board and see if the branch could buy the building. The building was bought and the branch held its first meeting there on Dec. 7, 1949.

In 1954 the Ladies Auxiliary was formed, the first president was Phyllis Marten; 1st Vice Ivy Bonner; 2nd Vice Elvie Jarvis; the secretary Betty Commodore and the treasurer Bessie Jarvis.

In the spring of 1958 the branch decided they had to have a hall in the village of Sharbot Lake as the school house was too far out and had no room to expand. A motion was made to see if the branch could buy a lot in the village. Com. Lyndon Bonner and Com. Don Jarvis made an agreement to purchase the Abby Brotherhood estate of eight acres for the sum of $12,000 in the fall of 1958. The school house was then sold and the money used to build a basement for their new hall.

During the next two years the branch sold building lots and put the money into the new hall. As the money came in the building was built by the members of the branch. The Legion, for its site, saved one and a half acres with 160 feet of lake frontage and with room to expand when needed.

This brief history was written by Comrade Donald Jarvis.

Today Branch 425 is involved with supporting our local community in many ways, either through donations to different events, such as the swimming program, local fireworks, etc. Branch 425 is also involved with local and home schooled children with the Remembrance Day Poster, Poems and/or Essay Contest held during our fall Poppy Campaign. The posters, poems and/or essays are put on display at the Legion for the benefit of our Veterans, Military guests, and general public to view. The Legion also hosts a seniors’ bingo and dinner in September for the local seniors during Seniors Week. A Veterans Dinner is held at the Branch for local Veterans on the 1st Saturday of November. The Legion also puts on the Remembrance Day Ceremony at the Oso Hall Cenotaph followed by a lunch at the Legion. Also, there are our Friday night suppers prepared by volunteers and open to the public.

We are proud of our Legion and welcome anyone who wishes to join and or participate in any of our activities. I wish to extend a big thank you to all who have supported us, and to all our volunteers who tirelessly give of their time.

June Crawford, President.

On May 1, the Snow Road Snowmobile Club hosted its annual Landowner and Volunteer Appreciation gathering at the Timber Run Golf Course in Lanark. Concerns had been expressed by a number of landowners related to Bill 100 and its potential impact on their properties that have snowmobile trails. A presentation was made by Scott Buckley, Governor of OFSC District 1 and Ruth Wark, President of Snow Road Snowmobile Club who responded to questions and assured landowners that snowmobile clubs do not want easements across their properties but fully intend to maintain their current agreements and relationships. In fact, the land use form has been updated to include a statement to this effect, and many landowners renewed their agreement for continued use of the trails on their properties. There has been mutual co-operation and respect between the landowners and the snowmobile clubs in this area for over 40 years. The club is very appreciative of the trails across private property, which allow for a great network across the scenic landscapes in Lanark and Frontenac Counties.

On April 30 Ruth Wark and her crew of volunteers at the snowmobile club presented a cheque to representatives from the Perth branch of the Canadian Cancer Society to support research, programming and prevention in the fight against melanoma. The club held a fundraising breakfast for the cause and after all the pledges were in, the final total raised was $1466. President Derrick Dixon and fundraising manager Jessica Roback of the Perth CCS received the cheque and conveyed their thanks for the club's support.