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McKellar's Very Own Calendar Girl Photographing & Painting McKellar’s Countryside
Artist Janet Peters-Varley
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Regardless of three decades of teaching music, experiences of operating a dance studio, writing poetry, curating an art gallery and dabbling in musical theatre, Manitouwabing Lake Cottager, Janet Peters-Varley is locally known, for gracing the area’s Facebook groups with her photographs. All are shot while adventuring out from their cottage, which her Husband’s Family purchased in 1972. It was originally built in 1949 and was one of the first in the area.
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Night Fall Painting by Janet Peters - Varley |
She’s photographed her own paintings and has had the opportunity to display and sell them through the McKellar Library & The Ridge On Manitou's Pro Shop. Her frequent social media posts capture sunrises, wildlife, night skies and seasons. She’s an imagery person, she explains - “I tend to work in themes and stick with a subject until something else piques my interest”. Encouraged by supportive responses, she created a 2022 Calendar that she took advance orders on and arranged for pick up at the library.
When speaking of winter photography, she shares that she loves the cold blue colours and crispness of the season and doesn’t mind trekking to their non winterized cottage, just so she can take another shot, or two.
janetpetersvarley.com |
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Logging Dams, Early Settlers & Aboriginals
It was the logging industry that changed the geographical landscape of McKellar Township. Before 1872, what we know today as Manitouwabing Lake, previously consisted of Minerva, Manitouwaba and Nicol’s Lakes with many creeks, rivers and wetlands in between.
McKellar Historical Committee President & curator of the Evelyn Watkins Moore Heritage Room, Vivian Moore recalls how her Great, Great Grandfather Frank Ferris complained to the Commissioner of Crown Lands in 1877, when his Lorimer Lake area property was flooded. According to John Mcfee’s book, Up the Great North Road, Ferris went after the Armstrong Brother’s Lumbering company, of whom, McKellar was originally named. Although he got some compensation, he sabotaged the offending dam, was jailed briefly and eventually in contempt, moved away. |
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Such was the gamble with Free Land Grants. The Manitouwabin Dam at Hurdville altered the watershed most significantly and is what created the lake we know today. Some lost land, while others gained waterfronts. Nicol’s lake was named as such for Thomas Nicol who was the first in the immediate vicinity to register a land claim in 1870. After the flooding, there are no records that show he, or his family stayed. A Methodist School Master's journal, with a date of 1875, document that the Manitouwabin Dam existed at that point.
McKellar land owner Dan Ball’s family linage is represented in the book, Memories of McKellar, written by Evelyn Watkins Moore. All eight of his grandparents descended from McKellar pioneering families. He has known all his life, that Tait’s Island, was once a point of land that belonged to the Thompson Family and that locals used to identify the open expanse of water east of that point, before the Narrows, as the North Lake.
Thompson Cemetery on Hwy 124, Dan confirms, is the legacy of this family. Minerva Lake in his opinion, was named for a family member of one of the earliest settlers who would have arrived in the late 1860’s. Patterson, Armstrong, or even widower Peter Leach, he speculated.
As a young boy in the 1950’s, Dan recalls how his Grandfather showed him which small island near Little Tait’s Island, (which they called Birch Island) was where Manitouwaba’s name sake was said to have been originally buried. Dan’s Mother (101 at the time of this report) had told him stories of the indigenous people of the area.
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