Welcome to
Margaret's Place
in Cyberspace

 

As a child, I attended summer camp in Muskoka.  My first canoe trip was in Algonquin Park, with a youth group, at age 16.  The magic of the interior had a profound and lasting effect on me... it felt like home, in a way that no other place ever had.  After the first year of studies toward my Bachelor's Degree, I was hired to do field work in the Yukon Territory with several of my professors and fellow students.  What a dream job... I was actually paid to go camping... twenty weeks in a tent, over three summers!  During and following graduate studies, I participated in several campground-camping trips.  In 1994, I had the privilege of returning to "my first love," the Algonquin Park interior, by canoe, with two friends.  Since then, I have organized and participated in at least one "interior" canoe trip each summer.  My camping friends have dubbed me Martha Stewart McGyver, in recognition of my creativity in the camp kitchen (backwoods pastries are my specialty) and in solving crises (I can repair almost any piece of equipment or sprained body part with a couple tent pegs and a roll of duct tape).

In 1999, I gained a new canoe-tripping companion...  my fiancé, Gordon.  Gordie and I rang in The Year 2000 by eloping on New Year's Eve.  We exchanged our vows outdoors, standing upon a carpet of fresh-fallen snow, between two stately old trees, by the shore of a tranquil lake, under a crisp and clear winter sky.  In November 2000, we were delighted to welcome a baby girl into our family.  We took her on her first canoe trip (playpen and all!) when she was just ten months old.  Tragically, my love affair with my wilderness soul mate, and the father of my little girl, was cut short when Gordie was killed in a motor vehicle accident in September 2002, just two and a half years after we married. 

Over the past five years, my daughter, our two dogs and I have continued the outdoor tradition on our own and with friends, tent-camping in over a dozen Ontario Provincial Parks and one National Park.  Our biggest "solo" adventures to date (just my daughter, the dogs and I), have been:  

• week-long campground-camping stays in Restoule (2003) and Killarney and the Temagami region (2004); 
• a 17-day campground-camping road trip to Lake Superior Provincial Park (2005)... featuring a day trip on the Agawa Canyon Tour Train, out of Sault Ste. Marie; 
• a 22-day campground-camping road trip to The Mississagi (north of Elliott Lake), Superior, Manitoulin and Tobermory (2006)... in Tobermory, we spent a three nights "teepee camping" at a native campground and rode the Zodiac to the shipwrecks and Flowerpot Island; 
• a one-month camping road trip to the Thunder Bay area (2007)... highlights included Sleeping Giant Provincial Park, Pukaskwa National Park, Kakabeka Falls, the Terry Fox Memorial and the longest suspension bridge in Canada;
• a two-week camping road trip to Temagami, Timmins and Cochrane, Ontario (2008), plus a ride on the Polar Bear Express Tour Train, from Cochrane to Moosonee, and a visit to the award-winning Polar Bear Habitat and Educational Facility, in Cochrane;
• in 2009, we plan to head into more remote regions of Northern Ontario (between  Timmins and Wawa) or visit some of the highly-rated parks in eastern Ontario.

Closer to home,  we involve ourselves in kayaking, bicycling, hiking, swimming, cross-country skiing, and snowshoeing, at local parks.  We also frequent several local wildlife centres and sanctuaries.  In  March 2006,  my daughter and I drove to Haliburton, for a day of dogsledding.  I learned how to drive a six-dog team myself, and my daughter rode along in the sled!  We had a blast!!

I hope you enjoy my web pages.  Feel free to drop me a line, sometime, to share your nature experiences or to tell me what you think of my site.  

Sincerely,
Margaret A. Black