Editor’s note: One of the great things about CottageLink listings is the in-depth information you get about rental and purchase opportunities, far more than you can find in newspaper or magazine classifieds. Now we go a step further with an even more personal account, because there’s a story behind every "for sale" sign. This is Larry’s…
By LARRY JOHNSTON
Ever hear the name, "Byron Dalyrimple"?
He was an outdoor writer whose stuff appeared for many years in Field & Stream, Sports Afield and Outdoor Life magazines. Erwin A. Bauer was another.
Both these guys did articles about pond fishing, management and development. So as a kid, I bought the dream - I wanted a pond of my own. So I bought 400 acres of land and built a lake.
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That's not the end of the story. It took twenty-five years or more to get to that point and even after I decided to do it, it took five years of very serious searching to find a suitable property. There was no Cottagelink around then.
It had to be within a ninety minute radius of my home in Toronto because I just knew I was stuck with day fishing for most of my life and to have a place that was too far away meant fewer trips. So I searched every side road and checked all the real estate ads and asked for assistance from Ministry of Natural Resources biologists who did not know what lands were for sale and from real estate people who did not know what lands were suitable.
I needed land I would be allowed to manage for fish and wildlife conservation, essentially meaning that it couldn’t have a year-round flow of water or be on a river or a lake. An intermittent or seasonal water supply is the key to avoiding conflict with the MNR, the local conservation authority and the Environment Ministry regardless of one's good intentions.
The biologist son of a real estate agent overheard his dad talking to me about my needs and recalled water on a listed property he once hunted. He hitched a ride with a local flyer, shot aerials and mailed them to me. Although the property did not appear to have water flowing in or out, it was there.
Three drag lines the size of small apartment buildings and the biggest bulldozer I've ever seen spent four months carving my lake out of the Cardon Plain, famous for its limestone near Beaverton. Construction began on January 4, 1994, and the lake has been a work in progress ever since then.
The MNR has licensed the 20 acre lake so that I can stock bass, walleye, trout and fathead minnows. But perch and rock bass have also found their way into this catch-and-release paradise where Laremouth have measured up to seven pounds and where ducks and geese pour in by the hundreds each fall.
The habitat I created with the help of Byron Dalyrimple and Erwin A. Bauer, my early mentors, has produced beaver, otter, deer, grouse, turkeys, five species of ducks, geese, blue herons, American bitterns, pilated woodpeckers, and dozens of other creatures where before there were none or very few.
I've planted raspberries, apple trees, sunflowers, wildflowers, grapes, nannyberries and red oak to increase food supplies and planted water lilies, wild rice and bulrush. I've sunk logs and brush piles by dragging them into position in winter and letting them sink through the rotten ice in spring.
On 400 acres a man can lose himself. It's enough to ensure privacy. It's surrounded by private property and the lake cannot be seen from the perimeter where neighbours who value privacy help to ensure mine.
It's for sale, the result of having no one special to share the place with - if that makes any sense.
I don't have the kids to catch the frogs or the fish. Cancer took the woman who was to share the sunset and my hunting buddies who were to share the sunrise moved too far away. Without those folks, the dream's a bust for me. Now the place can guarantee someone else's hunting and fishing success and peace of mind, forever.
