Dennis Spilchuk Poet Verse

Notes About The Poem

The Castle on White Otter Lake

The Castle on White Otter Lake

That rustic, old log castle
That stands facing the lake
Was built by hand by one man
To acknowledge his presence
In a changing world he felt
He could not participate in,
And so he chose to live like a hermit
On the shores of White Otter Lake.

Time and wave action
Eroded the rocky shoreline into sand
To create beaches.
And rising water levels
As a result of a sluice dam
Built for the spring log drive
Shaped the shoreline, a disaster!
Because the waters held back
Were never enough
To float logs through the chutes,
Down the Big Turtle River
To the Shevlin-Clarke Sawmill
In Fort Frances.

And so, a plan was hatched
To get the logs to the sawmill
By another route.
A steam lift was incorporated
On the portage between the lakes
To raise the logs over from White Otter
Into Clearwater West Lake.
Then, a tugboat and boom were used
To pull the logs across Clearwater West
To where a “Shay” design locomotive
Waited to be loaded on the southern shore
To haul them to Turtle Lake.
From where the logs were floated
Down to the Seine River
(A branch of the Arctic Watershed System),
Continuing the log drive
To the Fort Frances sawmill.

The castle was built
Using platforms and winches
And block and tackle lifting devices.
Red pines were felled and dragged,
Hewed square,
Then eased into place and chinked.
Windows and other wares needed
Were transported by canoe
Over portages from Ignace.
The castle stands
Three stories high
(Four as the tower rises)
On a twenty-four by twenty-eight-foot
Perimeter base.

Legend has it Jimmy McQuat said,
“You couldn’t call this no shack!”
And would refer to his log cabin as
“Stirling Castle by the Sea!”
For come evening
The waters of the lake
Would shimmer in silvery hues
With loons in front
Wailing out tremolo notes
As one gazes south
From the castle
On White Otter Lake.

In front of the castle, at his wish,
Is the gravesite of Jimmy McQuat,
Squatter, pioneer, and eccentric.
Who in the Fall fell overboard
While fishing
And got entangled in the net and drowned.
The body was recovered
In the following Spring
By Ministry Forestry Rangers and buried.
And on the marker, it reads,
“Jimmy McQuat, 1855 to 1918,”
Of White Otter Lake.
                       ***

Notes:
1 James Alexander McQuat (1855–1918): Jimmy McQuat was born in Argenteuil County, Lower Canada (Quebec), and as an adult in his forties, moved to Emo in Northwestern Ontario, where he took up farming and prospecting. Later, he would abandon this lifestyle, and in 1903, he chose a more hermit-like way of living and settled down in a cabin he built on the shores of White Otter Lake, where he lived off the land, trapping and selling furs for income. Jimmy McQuat began to work on his dream home and finished it in 1915.
2 White Otter Lake: White Otter Lake is located in Northwestern Ontario, Canada.
3 Shevlin-Clarke Logging Company: The Shevlin-Clarke Logging Company operated (at that time) Canada’s largest pine sawmill in Fort Frances, Ontario, from 1911 to 1940. In 1912, the logging company began harvesting the Turtle River/White Otter forest area.
4 Shevlin-Clarke Lumber Company (SLC) Shay locomotive: The “Shay” locomotive was a geared steam locomotive built to Ephraim Shay’s patents in the Lima plant in Lima, Ohio. It was a Class B, 2 truck, 3 steam cylinder engine with a smoke tube boiler (truck-wheel set bogie chassis). It was acquired by SLC in 1912 and used to haul logs from Clearwater West Lake to Turtle Lake from 1913 to 1924. “Shay” locomotives were known as sidewinders or stemwinders because of their side-mounted drive shafts that drove all the wheels, thereby providing traction to pull heavy loads.

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