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Booth Operators 1961
1961
Atton's Lake, Saskatchewan, Canada


Credits:
Haight, Gloria

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Personal Reflections of Atton's Lake
by David W. Routledge

When I get overwhelmed with my life and living in Toronto I think back on a place and a time where I felt safe, loved and secure. It is at those times that my thoughts go to Atton's Lake. In my mind's eye I am sitting on the patio of the cabin (#57) with my special mug in my hand drinking coffee with my Grandma Haight (Verla Haight nee: Armitage) in her rocking chair beside me. There are pots and pots of flowers on the patio and passer bys often stopped to talk to Grandma. Most often I became the coffee maker and server for these impromptu coffee klatches.

Every morning before anyone else got up Grandma and I would meet on the patio. We would read a passage from a morning meditation book that I had and then we would take turns sharing what the passages meant to us. My Grandma was a birth right Quaker. Sitting there listening to the birds singing and to my Grandma talking about her spiritual life helped me to formulate my own personal belief system. We never did this anywhere else but at the lake.
When I was a young boy my Grandmother Haight would gather all of her grandchildren together and take them to the lake. We were the second generation of Haight's to go to the lake. My mother (Ruth Routledge nee: Haight) and her siblings used to go to the lake in the 30's. Initially they used a tent as there were no cabins, and then later my Grandpa (Walter) Haight would hook up the caboose that he used for harvesting to a tractor. He would drag this up to the lake and for a few months this became the family cabin. At the end of the summer he would take it back to the farm in time for harvesting.

Whenever my mother talked about those times she always had a smile on her face. I think that the summers at the lake were one of the reasons that my mother and her siblings were good friends all of their lives. That caboose is now in the Unity museum. My uncle, Don Haight moved it. The caboose had stood in one spot for likely fifty years and when my Uncle Don hooked up the caboose everyone thought it would fall apart or not move. Uncle Don said (with a note of pride) that the "old girl" started moving as if it had been transported regularly. Everyone was sad to see it go except for me (but that is another story).

Grandma would often have six or more young kids running around all the time. How she managed I do not know. As we grew our friends also became part of Grandma Haight's lake family. I want to tell three stories about the lake to share some of my memories. The first happened in the late fifties. (See Picture). There was no running water and with all those kids Grandma went through a lot of water every day. She was certainly innovative because she got an old baby carriage and put a cream can in it. Then she got some binder twine and made a harness out of it and hooked the older grandkids up to it. Every morning we had to hook up the "dogs" to the dogsled and take the empty cream can down to the pump. There would be a can full of water there to prime the pump. Once the pump was primed we took turns pumping so we could fill the cream can with water. We then got to get back into harness and bring the water home. I was the oldest so I had to steer it as well as do my share of the pushing and pumping - but I also got to wield the binder twine whip! We were very enthusiastic about doing this and sometimes the speed with which we came back was great. Often when we tried to get the carriage up the small hill by the cabin the carriage would tip spilling the contents of the can. So we would have to repeat the process. The interesting thing is that Grandma made a game of it and we all thought it was wonderful fun and could hardly wait to "get into harness". People in the picture are from the front: Eric Morrison, Joan Morrison, Dan Routledge, Ron Routledge, David Routledge and Verla Haight.

29

Haulin' Water
Circa 1958
Atton's Lake, Saskatchewan, Canada


Credits:
Routledge, David

30

The second story I wanted to share is about my Grandpa Haight. He would come and help Grandma close up the cabin at the end of the year. The hill to the lake was much steeper, more windy and (in my eyes) more dangerous then. Mom tells stories of when she was a kid they had to go up the hill backwards as the older cars did not have the power to go uphill in forward. Grandpa would have a carload of grandchildren in the back seat of the car and he would pretend half way up the hill that the car was not going to make it up. He would make the car jerk, slow down to almost a crawl and say how worried he was that the car was not going to make it up the hill. He told the kids in the back seat to push the back of the front seat and those in the front had to push the dashboard to help the car get up the hill. How hard we pushed to help our Grandpa up the hill! We fell for this year after year. When my nephew, William was younger he took his turn as well at pushing the car up the hill. When we got to the top we were all thrilled that the car had made it up the hill. Grandpa would then say "Turn around kids and say Good bye to the lake". He knew full well that we would realize that the summer was over and we would not see the lake for a whole year. He knew he would have a car load of crying kids. I can still remember Grandma saying "Oh Walter!!".

When the parents and the friends came there was always a large crowd. The dishes seemed never ending. In an attempt to deal with this one year Grandma said that we should each pick one cup and use it all day rather than a different one each time we had a drink. By this time I was 14 or 15. I remember going to Battleford which for us small town kids was a trip to the big city. I was drinking coffee by that time and all the adults also had to use only one cup. So on one of the trips to North Battleford I bought "my" cup - it has a palm tree on it. Nobody dared drink out of my cup. If some newcomer accidentally did everyone would tell them to be careful as that was David's cup. The first thing I do when I get to the lake now is look for my cup, and at the end of my visit I wash the cup and put it at the back of the cupboard so no one else will use it while I am away. The cup is probably 45 years old now (I had to do that subtraction again as it did not seem possible it had been that long). The cup now has a crack in it (and if I find out who did it....) and I truly believe that when that cup breaks it will be the last year that I go to the lake.

31

Buried in Sand
Circa 1960
Main Beach, Atton's Lake, Saskatchewan, Canada


Credits:
Haight, Gloria

32

Atton's lake still has the best beach and clearest waters of any lake I have been to. I could talk about much more - finding a bullet from the Riel Rebellion on Cut Knife Hill, going on the Ghost road and how scary that was, trips to the North Battleford Fair, diving off the high diving board for the first time, teaching swimming at the lake, getting to reconnect with the Cut Knife kids every year and trying to figure out how to spend our 10 cents a day are all wonderful memories.

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My name is Vera Haight Gottschlich. I was born in Unity in the 1930's. Long before I can remember I always spent my summer at Atton's Lake. In my very young years there was no money due to a depression as well as a drought. Each year my mom, Verla Haight, would take us to camp in a tent in the same area as the campgrounds are now. No one could afford to spend money on a holiday so Mom brought the hired girl, two hired men, and her little sister as well as we four kids. Dad (Walter Haight) stayed home to do the chores. I wonder where everyone slept.

Mom cooked over a fire covered by an old square washtub. She said it smoked terribly so she used her ingenuity and put a chimney in the tub next year. (Much better!) We also had homemade hammocks. They used burlap bags. Mom had to have some rest!

Mom was afraid of water and could not swim, but Dad could do the sidestroke. She wanted us all to learn to swim and we did with the help of Dad and Mr. Frank Beggs. Guess what stroke we used? Later when we learned to dive off of the diving platform and board made from floating gas barrels, we would show off to Dad. We earned 25 cents.

During the war in the 1940's my Dad moved our bunkhouse to the lake. This was no longer needed on the farm in harvest time. The population of the summer crowd dropped off immensely as there was a gasoline shortage. And a lot of the men were overseas. We four kids still went camping each summer after we had weeded Mom's big garden.

We were teenagers now and our folks let us stay alone in the caboose. What fun we had! We got to know from kids from other towns close by. We swam all day and sat on the lovely beach in the sun. No suntan lotion! We fished for perch, picked saskatoons and sometimes wild strawberries to eat. We had chokecherry pit spitting contests. We were never bored. We walked a lot around the lake. In the evening we would walk to the East Lake or the West Lake where we would have a weiner roast at the vacant monastery retreat grounds. Some days we walked across the pasture to the Battle River. Our socks would be covered in spear grass and blue burrs.

The size and shape of the lake hasn't changed. The water is a bit lower but it is so clear, cool and refreshing. The reeds don't seem as thick and we never ventured in as the blackbirds and terns would threaten us and zoom over our heads and scare us away. There used to be a well on the beach and we loved to sit on the lid of the cribbing to watch the summer sun set, then watch the fireflies in the dark. There were no streetlights. There must be some fish still in the lake because each year the greebs return to have one baby chick, ride on their parents' back, and fish is in their diet.

We carried water from the well by the booth. We used the small public toilet nearby and to keep food cool we had a hole dug in the ground. No ice!

Two caretakers that I remember were Mr. Henderson, a war veteran who had one arm. He would swim the whole width of the lake. That would fascinate me. We could only swim the hole when we were teens. He told us not to wash or use soap in the lake because it was bad for the fish and we didn't. The second young man in the 1940's was Glenn Perkins. We became good friends and kept in contact for years. He had a neat way of swearing and singing naughty little ditties and I learned them all.

We were proud of our lake, tried to keep things clean and picked up. When we cleaned fish we did that off in the bush and then buried everything in the ground. I guess we also helped fertilize the bushes and trees.

There were empty cabins and if one needed a repair like a window or a broken shutter,we would try to fix it.

Our folks would appear one day. It was time to return to reality. We would go to the Battleford Fair and then back home to the fair. We would work bagging broom grass and then school.

We built a large cabin in 1980 in the same spot as the caboose. No matter where I have lived I have tried almost every year to return to my lake. My children and my grandchildren love it as much as I do.

When I come down that hill and pull up to the cabin, I don't want tv and telephones, just maybe some nice music and a good book. I like to walk down to the shore and watch the different distinct colours that show the different depths of the clear water. It just seems a different world to me, my lake.