Kish-Kaduk

In the early 1970s I was hired by the newly renamed MNR – previously Lands and Forests – to head up the District’s Junior Ranger program at Cashel Lake. As it so happened one of my colleagues had been involved with the camp when it was water access only and he had been there when Lands and Forests built an access road. Or so he told me.

The camp was for 17 year-old young men and Bruce Little hired me to take the program in a more educational direction. It wasn’t to continue as a work only based camp.

With a background in camping and canoe tripping one of my initiatives was to introduce canoe tripping. On one occasion we canoed in Algonquin Provincial Park and mixing business with pleasure cleaned up a lot of campsites. Bottles and cans were often left behind. We would gather such garbage at a common site and a Beaver floatplane would fly in and take it out. As you can imagine that was a very expensive undertaking. It wasn’t long before bottles and cans were banned from the park.

On one outting we travelled to Brent located on Cedar Lake. The CNR still ran and I can recall being unceremoniously awakened in the middle of the night by a freight train pulling in. I thought that it was going to pass right through my tent. Later on a rail strike and eventual termination of rail traffic returned the Brent campsite to a quieter experience.

As canoe tripping was new to the JR program we had arranged to rent some tents from Kish-Kaduk Lodge that was located on Cedar Lake. An old advertisement said that access to the lodge was by train only. To get to Brent we had accessed the bush road at Deux Riviere and passed by the Brent Crater.

According to one record CNR Section Foreman Ed Thomas and his wife Rose built the lodge and after Mr. Thomas died Jack Wilkinson, cousin to Rose, helped. The lodge closed in the fall of 1975.

Just previous to COVID-19 I attended a meeting of the Hastings Historical Society. The guest speaker was to speak about Algonquin Park. In the course of his talk he featured the photo of a handsome fireplace standing alone amidst the bush on Cedar Lake. The speaker said he know nothing of its history. I am nothing of a mathematician but when I added up Kish-Kaduk Lodge and that fireplace it occurred to me that I could provide the speaker with a possible explanation; and did so following his talk. Basically, that I all that remains of the lodge. Memories! To date I have not found an explanation behind the name Kish-Kaduk.

Photo – the photo is by tripper Bob McElroy.