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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.