Dugout canoe at Hess' Point

I remember when Jim and Jean McBurney and I discovered the dugout canoe at Hess's Point described in the article by my mother in this same web page. At first  it seemed to be just a log, but we recognized that it had been worked on, and was hollowed out. I think it is more likely to have been 1938 or 39. Jim Ted McBurney didn't start coming out from Chicago to spend the summers until after 1937, as I remember it. But he did verify for us the approximate date when it had been made and used. I also remember watching the Tyee II being built by "Cap'n" Markham in Coolin, on the beach next to what was then Art Moore's Boat Storage & docks, and the Coolin Inn restaurant. I tried to get down to Coolin as often as I could from our cabin facing 4 Mile Island. I was fascinated by it and once I walked all of the way from our cabin along the shore in order to see it. Priest Lake has always been a special place for me. After I was ordained an Episcopal Priest, and took my vows in the Society of Saint John the Evangelist, and could only spend a few days, up to 1 or 2 weeks at the Lake, it took on a spiritual meaning for me, especially looking up the lake at the high mountains near the head of the lake. A few years ago (perhaps about 25) I was making a retreat at the Jesuit Retreat House in Gloucester, MA, and found a biography of Fr. Pierre DeSmet, SJ, who is said to have discovered Priest Lake, which he named for his Superior General, also a classmate, Fr. Roothaan. People found the name hard to pronounce, so they said, "It's named after some priest", and that is what it was then called. In that biography Fr. DeSmet was quoted as saying what a spiritual place the lake seemed to him, and that the Indians whom he met confirmed that by saying that it was a very spiritual place for them. I have many more memories, but this is enough for now.

David Allen, SSJE
Posted in 2009