The Conclusion
Diana couldn’t win a shooting contest without her glasses. Before she could pose with her rifle on her shoulder she had to look high and low for her spectacles. Her difficulty in remembering where she had laid them was one of her few signs of old age. “I’ve got to have them,” said she. “I couldn’t hit a barn door without them.”
She also wanted her hunting cap, but when she could not find it replaced it with a sort of dusting cap. At the last minute she ripped off her apron. “That don’t look right in a hunting picture,” said she.
“Do you want a leather jacket and breeches?” I asked.
“I put on a good pair of boots,” said she, “but I’ve always hunted in skirts.”
“What do you do between seasons?” I inquired. “Do you shoot any targets?”
“I shoot at woodchucks and squirrels,” she replied. “That’s to keep them out of the crops. They do a lot of harm.”
“I don’t want to boast but if any pesky woodchuck pokes his nose at me inside one hundred yards I’ll fix him.”
The term “groundhog” which I have found general throughout rural Ontario was one she did not use.
This sturdy pioneer woman was living joyously in the wilderness. The tall pines she had helped to fell and uproot from her fields were not more robust than she. The St. Ola blacksmith was right in calling her a remarkable old woman. She was not a sit-by-the-fire octogenarian ludicrously posing as a Diana. She was a daughter of the woodland and still enjoying the greatest sport of the woods and carrying on her hunting tradition.
And she will carry on for some time yet and perhaps teach her great-grandchildren to pull a trigger. Her mother, I was told, lived to be one hundred.
In fact, this article was published in 1931; Diana of Big Salmon Lake (aka Limerick Lake) died in 1932. She is buried in the Greenbush Cemetery on the Limerick Lake Road. It is pure speculation but it appears that the author nicknamed her ‘Diana’; her actual name was Emily Lake Baragar born September 1, 1848. She died February 24, 1932.
Footnote
Mike Bolton was my first editor at Ontario Out of Doors in the 1980s. He told me that whenever he needed the photo of a bass he would drive to Limerick Lake (from Toronto) and cast from a dock. Once he had his photos for publication in the magazine he would then return to Toronto.
OH DIANA UP-DATE
If you ever attended an evening with the Bancroft Cruisers you’ll most likely recognize Claude Best – or his candy-apple red pickup. Claude wrote to say that Emily (Lake) Baragar who has been featured of late in The Times was his great aunt by marriage. According to Claude’s research Emily was born in Foxboro, Ontario, on September 1, 1848 to William and Elizabeth (nee Simpson) Lake and she married Charles Windsor Baragar. They had six daughters and one son.
For the record: Alma married George Rosebush; Elsie married George H. King; German married Jessie E. Bradley; Sarah B. married George Emerson Philips; Martha married Thomas Green; Ida married Thomas Ham and Emily (Emma) married William F. Bateman.
Both Claude and Diane Hammond (great-great granddaughter) told me that in 1925 Emily shot an albino deer which is presently at the Royal Ontario Museum.
ROM Media Relations spokesperson Mariana told me that “Mrs. George Rosebush (nee Alma Baragar, Trenton) donated the specimen, which is partially albino, to the ROM in 1925. The white-tailed deer weighed 130 pounds and was prepared as a tanned skin and skull. It was collected near Saint Ola from Salmon Lake, which is now known as Limerick Lake.”
We can only thank Robert C. Reade for his article in the Toronto Star Weekly in 1931 on December 30 for inspiring this up-date and reader Keith Jones for going to the trouble to bring it to my attention.
