Torbay Cottages News 2013

(Google Doodle New Year's Eve 2012)

What a Wonderful World.... 2 minutes of your time

The Story of Little Black Sambo is a children's book written and illustrated by Helen Bannerman, and first published by Grant Richards in October 1899 as one in a series of small-format books called The Dumpy Books for Children.

Sambo is a South Indian boy who encounters four hungry tigers, and surrenders his colourful new clothes, shoes, and umbrella so they will not eat him. The tigers are vain and each thinks he is better dressed than the others. They chase each other around a tree until they are reduced to a pool of melted butter. Sambo then recovers his clothes and his mother makes pancakes of the butter. The story was a children's favourite for half a century until the word sambo was deemed a racial slur in some countries, and the illustrations considered reminiscent of "darky iconography". Both text and illustrations have undergone considerable revision since.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_Little_Black_Sambo

Early January winds bring out the kite-boarders ... while Brandy shakes of the Old Year to make room for the New !

January turned into a month of extremes... record mild temperatures during the first half with most of the snow melting away & periods of rain keeping snowmobile trails closed and the lakes unsafe for anything heavier than foot traffic.

By the third week we flipped to record cold, with the bitter cold lasting a full week, preceded by a major snowfall. This allowed some of the trails to open and ice fishing to proceed, in spite of a new and reduced limit for Walleye

North Bay is blessed with so much commercial construction and development going on from which Torbay continues to benefit with corporate clients filling the void caused by reduced ice-fishing and snowmobiling activity.

Our latest partners braving the January cold are :

The flippin' weather did not stop there... during the last week of January we endured a second 'January Thaw',
but this one dropped some 45mm (just under 2") of rain ! ... This closed all trails again for several days and there was flooding in various parts of the City too. This was followed by another deep freeze through the end of the month and into the first part of February, but the trails for snowmobiling are open mostly available again. Ice fishing is also in full swing, and the fishing has been quite good from what we are hearing here. There have been some wild winds with blowing and drifting too...

Ice Shacks at Sunrise ... the fishing has been the Best in Years !

Sunset 08 February Finally the YoYo weather stabilized and all the trails opened,
Ice-fishing is super and everyone is smiling!

Here the Westin Group who sledded in from Pettawawa

The Ferringer Group out of Pennsylvania had
perfect conditions mid - February

The NBSSR activities had perfect conditions Feb 9/10 ... next one Mar 2/3

The Haisers back for another week...

Lake traffic after sunset 'returning home' (snowmobiles and cars/trucks)
with roughly 2 - 3 ft of good ice third week of February

Interspersed with weekend snowmobilers and ice-fishers, Torbay has become home to two families - victims of house fires in town...
sad circumstances, however nobody was hurt and we are pleased to provide a workable but temporary home away from home.

Seen in passing, typical Canadians going to the Beer Store eh?

Nice to see some new(er) sleds around

... come a long way in 30 years and many look (and perform) like exotic cars

Late - day return off the ice (from fishing) ... conditions and catches
are the best they have been in 10 years from what we are hearing...

Ice Fishing is over as of the 15th of March and now the shacks are lining up along the shore. All shacks have to be off-ice by end of the month...

... although it sure looks and feels like Winter is hanging on well past the beginning of Spring on our calendar

Sunset April 20 Our Lake level is very high

Ice @ Sunset Park April 22

... and then it happened.. the wind shifted and with the high water allowed the ice to move close to shore and it simply and annoyingly destroyed the dock!

Nice to see the birds back... well, some of them...

Here it was, 8.30 in the eve of April 24 ... me scrambling to get
the Muskoka chairs and picnic table to shore... icy water to be sure !

April 28th

Egon Theodore Landsberg 09 Feb 1917 - 30 Apr 2013

I have not updated here much in March & April as my father's health deteriorated rapidly as there were many visits to doctors and specialists with various efforts to control increasing pain. Dad knew that without chemo and radiation (he felt his quality of life was more important - and rightfully so) his days would be numbered, and so the cancer discovered last year (when he was 95), along with the stroke last July, together took their toll early in the morning of April 30th.

My father lived a long and rich life full of wanderlust, adventure and intrigue, caring, generosity and love. He was gifted with intelligence and talent, sharing all his attributes willingly and freely to everyone who traversed his path. A good listener, he spoke his mind and expressed a distaste for incompetence. Egon was a student of Man, or perhaps more precisely the 'Mensch' in Mankind.

The last two years Dad spent 'living' and entertaining on a cruise ship (MSC Poesia), feeling that he was not to spend his time in a 'home - waiting for God', Thus he went traveling - from Greece and Italy to Iceland and Norway, the southern Carribean to Quebec all the while playing the white Grand Piano in the Atrium of the ship. While he spoke five languages, he was a master at scrabble for some 40 years, seldom missing an opportunity to trounce his opponent even with English not being his mother tongue.

Egon also maintained a blog on his website and had many thousands of fans on Cruise Critic. Within the hundreds of contacts of Family, Friends, and Acquaintances in my father's email groups (where they received his reports directly), many were touched by his travels in later years, while some graced his life for 60 years and more. Some of 'his-story' is found on his website at the link below, a site rather incomplete but with sufficient representation of his last sixty years or so. Egon lived his last months near me in a retirement village here in North Bay.

photo Hans Kern

Dad's wishes were simple, the lowest cost cremation possible, no memorial service, no fuss, and scatter his ashes, together with those of his third wife, Heidy (2006), over the Lake at Osoyoos in British Columbia where they enjoyed living for over 30 years.

I will miss you Dad, may your music and our memories console us. Love ~ Steve http://home.cablerocket.com/~egon/index.htm

Dock rebuild coming along in June

Sunset June 6

Storm June 16

Bob Morrow's group was a super time for a short weekend...

Scott Hamel and Family enjoying some early heat on the beach

July First (sailboat regatta in background)

Leversedge extended Family enjoying first day & night
sunset and the newly rebuilt dock June 29

Jul 3

Jul 6

Torbay Flowers...

Peter Lourenco Family July 8 Josh Speagle with daughter Landon

Albino Mallard and lots of baby ducks around early July

2nd week of July we entered into a Heat Wave ... temps moved into the 30's for a full week and the lake soared to match!
No relief until around the 20th.
Below, the Jutras and Fleming families ... coping... water temp near the shore July 17

The Jutras family - mid July

Evening Storm of July 17th Sunset July 21st

July and August both saw an increase in corporate/business clients so Torbay was very busy overall
... below the gentlemen from Hawkins Contracting and Eptcon enjoying a regular evening game of washer-toss ...