The water was like glass on Sunday, April 13th, 2025, so I went for a paddle around Singleton Lake. It is always interesting to see how nature might have changed during the winter. It is a paddle I do several times a year. Each trip is special and makes a fresh memory.
The Singleton Lake area has a rich history that starts with the roots of the now very eroded Grenville Mountains. The northeast to southwest marble ridges were as high as the Himalayas one billion years ago.
Imagine the meltwater from the last ice age, 14,500 years ago, carving a path through the northeast to southwest ridges of the remains of the Grenville Mountains. The ice sheet was three kilometres thick over most of northern Ontario and Quebec. In 500 years or less, that meltwater caused a sudden and cataclysmic sea level rise of up to 65 feet. Imagine how that meltwater shaped the Singleton landscape on its way to the sea. You can see the evidence etched on the marble cliffs.
Indigenous people began arriving in Southern Ontario at least 14,000 years ago, right after the ice melted away. More complex settlements emerged around 600–800 AD. Later centuries saw further migrations and settlements by groups such as the Hurons in the 17th century and Mississaugas in the early 18th century. In the 1800s, settlers from across the Atlantic arrived.
Richard Singleton II (1830-1890) and his wife Elizabeth Jane, nee Tye (1832–1892), built their beautiful stone house on lot one in the eighth concession of Lansdowne in 1864. Richard was an immigrant from Wexford, Ireland and became known as "the sporting colonel." Richard was drawn to the area by the large pine forests and the great abundance of fish and wildlife. The body of water was simply regarded as a large bay in the Gananonque River in the early 1800s. Apparently, Richard II thought it was more of a lake, which now bears his name.
Their son Richard III (1864-1951) married Mary Elizabeth Fair (1866-1924) in 1893. Richard III was an expert cabinetmaker who made a reputation for building fine boats, but he also did a lot of finishing trim on the Singleton home.
Apparently, Richard II pastured his dairy cows on what is now our acreage. It is quite a rowboat ride from White Pine Island (the name I use for that point of land), across Singleton Lake to the far rocky point that I refer to as Point Paradise. He would row across this expanse twice a day and return with his pails of milk. Perhaps Richard III also made that trip.
The roof of the shed on "
White Pine Island" is all that remains of the structure where the boat and other milking supplies were stored. There are still a few of the old
square nails in the roof trusses.
I find history to be very interesting! We often forget that the settlers were folk just like us - looking for a place to put down roots.
This painting was initially called just "White Pine Island" but a check revealed that name was already taken in my portfolio, so "April" was added to make the final name unique.
The Singleton forest used to have quite a population of butternut trees, which were a favourite food source for all kinds of wildlife. They were dying from an invasive European canker when we became custodians of the land. I have planted many disease-resistant butternut trees, and some are surviving without showing the dark-stained bark of the canker infection. I collect butternuts whenever I see a thriving specimen.
The Beech trees aren't doing well either, while the hickories are still disease-free. Black walnuts planted from nuts in 2008 are now mature trees and producing their own fruit! We have planted a couple of white pine plantations as well.
The Singleton Forest is doing okay despite the many challenges of diseases and climate change. Our efforts to maintain the health of the forest look promising. To quote Bruce Cockburn, "history takes a long time". Everyone makes their own "history" or "herstory"! It is important to learn and empathetically build our own place within nature.
The following collage of progress images shows the steps taken in pretty much every painting that I do. Perhaps art will become an important part of the Singleton story, like it was for Algonquin. Time will tell.
A 2025 research paper says that the wood in the world’s trees holds roughly 600 gigatonnes of carbon, or about 60 years’ worth of current global emissions. The trees could hold more, and to have any chance of limiting global warming to 2°C above pre-industrial levels, we need healthy and expanding forests. Researchers say that a deeper understanding of trees’ microbiomes might help deliver that.
As well, solar energy is a big part of the future that needed to start in the 1960s with my generation. Most days, the sun delivers all of the energy we need and then some, directly to our doorstep. Cloudy days might be a concern, but there are ways around that, too, as the technology improves.
