My parents called me the Killarney Kid; that’s how much I loved our camping trips to the north shore of Georgian Bay. Every August, mom and dad would pack up the tent trailer, cram me, my two sisters and the dog into the green station wagon with the faux-wood side panels, and make the six-hour drive from London, Ont., to the same campsite in Killarney Provincial Park about 100 kilometres southwest of Sudbury, Ont. For weeks on end, the Canadian Shield was my playground. After swimming until my fingers were wrinkled like prunes, I spent hours hunting for quartzite, foraging for wild blueberries, rock-hopping over smooth granite humps and exploring the surrounding forest.
There were squabbles over the sleeping arrangements, since two kids had to share the bottom bunk bed – separated only by sleeping bags – while the third would have the coveted slab of plywood above, perched on fold-out metal legs.
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On a Tuesday in early August, I got out of a big bed with four fluffy pillows, snow-white sheets and a traditional Norwegian blanket in a Scandi-cool stateroom full of blond wood on the brand-new, 378-passenger Viking Octantis expedition cruise ship. I pressed one button to raise the light-blocking shade and another to lower the top half of my floor-to-ceiling window – the so-called Nordic balcony – to behold the Killarney landscape for the first time in more than 50 years. The water, rocks and trees are part of my story, and connect me to my childhood, my country’s history and my ancestors.
My late mother always told me her great-uncle was a famous Great Lakes sailor, but it wasn’t until I researched Capt. Robert Dow Foote that I discovered he not only helmed many schooners and steamers, but once commanded the 600-passenger SS Noronic, “The Queen of the Great Lakes.” (The Noronic went up in flames in 1949 while docked in Toronto, killing more than 100 people and marking the end of the Great Lakes cruising heyday.) It seems I come from a long line of mariners, since Capt. Foote’s uncle, according to an 1898 article in the Toronto Globe, was an officer on a ship that searched for the Franklin expedition, and Capt. Bob, as he was known to friends and family, never sailed without his grandfather’s parallel rule, an old-school navigation tool.
When my great-great-uncle died in 1923 at 72, newspaper articles praised him for piloting ships through treacherous weather, including the 1913 “Big Blow,” when 250 people and 12 ships were lost on the Great Lakes during a November gale, and for dashing into the water near Collingwood, Ont., to save a fisherman who had become entangled in his nets and fell overboard in 1870.
For these very personal reasons, I was thrilled to board the Viking Octantis for its eight-day Great Lakes Explorer cruise from Milwaukee, Wis., to Thunder Bay, Ont., which sailed over Michigan, Huron, Georgian Bay and, after passing through the Soo Locks, Superior. It was a week of superlatives: first cruise; first visits to Milwaukee, Mackinac Island, Mich., Parry Sound, Ont., Frazer Bay and Silver Islet; first trip through the Soo Locks; first kayak paddle on Lake Superior; first year I’d sailed, paddled or swam in all five Great Lakes; and the first trip back to my beloved Killarney.
The childhood nostalgia was intense as I gazed through binoculars at the pink granite topped with windswept eastern white pines. Through adult eyes, I saw a Canadian landscape immortalized in Group of Seven paintings.
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Instead of an early morning dash with a bar of Ivory soap to the chilly concrete bunker known as a provincial park washroom, I had a shower in my ensuite bathroom with heated floors, which was stocked with Freyja products, a Nordic skin care line only offered on Viking cruise lines. I didn’t have to wait until the water boiled on a camp stove to eat breakfast; I ordered room service. When I was thirsty or hungry, I didn’t whine at mom; I pressed a button to summon my attentive steward, Wayan, or took the stairs, or elevator, to the fifth deck. I had heard about all-day, gluttony-inducing smorgasbords on cruise ships, so I was pleasantly surprised by the decently paced intervals for breakfast, lunch and dinner at the buffet-style World Café, where lineups formed at the sushi bar and the steak-and-lobster grill station at 6 p.m. sharp.