Today, another day to appreciate the glorious colours of the Fall on the Lake.   The dappled hues of the trees are at their most spectacular. They are at their best around early evening, when the sun from the West turns the poplars and willows golden and the mountain maples red. They are breathtaking in their colour from red, gold, yellow, and green - it’s a rich luxurious pattern of colours. A drive in the countryside enables you to inhale the bounty of colour…its just incomparable to... Read Full Story

The long summer evenings show the poplar trees transformed, suffused with a light glow, reflecting the sundown. The calm of the evening lake is a long way removed from either the bristling winds of the morning or the zephers of late afternoon. The loons are as ever in the middle of the bay. Now the beaver re-appear, swimming out from their house, nestling in the granite rocks of the shore. Fellow raptors, the eagles perched high over the bay, watch the scurrying mergansers below. This... Read Full Story

By mid-August the level of the Lake has begun to drop and its beaches start to re-appear. My morning stroll is marked by the rediscovery of animal life as deer, foxes, and turtles move up and down from grass and reed cover crossing the beach to the water’s edge. A surprising number of crayfish seem to be surviving this year, their darting shapes visible when one looks through the clear waters of the bay from the dock. Surprising because crayfish are fairly low on the foodchain, and are... Read Full Story

The morning stillness is something that is precious. The tiny sounds of water lapping on the dock, the merganzars squawking their way as they waddle into the water, watched and watching the loons. Who’s watching them……at least between long dives for minnows. This morning a painted turtle slowly made its way through the water. There seem to be more of them this year - or perhaps I am simply seeing them more often. Well it’s past seven o’clock in the morning so at least the bear has wandered... Read Full Story

These days of rain the bay is full - driftwood from decades past comes into the bay. The mergansers, loons, otters and the beavers navigate effortlessly around it, but boaters beware - for driftwood can be deadly to boats and motors. With rainy days come glowing evenings, the sunsets radiating on the trees, providing a completely different view - one of almost molten energy. Boats drift gently in, with fishermen scowling, squinting over lines concentrating on possibilities, calculating... Read Full Story

A stroll through the woods in the morning. Again my faithful expresso its tangy warm glow - hazelnut flavoured coffee has much to answer for – it’s keeping me alert. It’s clear that looking across at the loon, that one loon is in the middle of the Bay - moving slowly, hunting as always. The alertness of loons - whose gaze comprehended all movement, watching us watching them. Loons are creatures of habit, and there is every evidence that this particular loon - called ‘the Commander’ because... Read Full Story

Every morning’s walk along the beach is refreshing, with my faithful expresso clutched in my hand, the sense of being alive in a warm morning palpable. Calm air is broken by the dull hum of a boat passing through, fishermen moving from place to place, checking out the possibilities. For over a century sport fishing has held pride of place as the activity of Regina Bay, but it is of a special kind, owing much to a way of life in Middle America which is perhaps fast fading. Fathers, children... Read Full Story

A walk in a misty morning and a sidelong glance across the Bay brings on other musings. The hurried warmth of an expresso in my hand brings on a sense of the long connections of this land, not with the coffee and Brazil, but between here and the sub-tropical Gulf of Mexico to the South, the Prairies and the fastnesses to the West. Prior to European gentlemen, being fashion conscious, and desiring at least four top hats per year resulting in the beaver’s fur fetching astronomic prices in... Read Full Story

More about ‘Clapham Junction’ - From my beachside chair the idea that the centuries old comings and goings on Regina Bay were anything like Clapham Junction seems absurd. Clapham Junction is a triumph of Victorian investment, a hub of iron and steam – my first memories of train journeys was the soot blackened tunnels carrying wartime adverts and bomb shelter signs. Regina Bay remains a still waterway, ruffled by stiff breezes, its dappled evening a wash of colour. Trains full of dark suited... Read Full Story

In these current fervid days of strange numbers, frantic headlines, and the helter-skelter news cycle it is just good to be able to relax, kick back and enjoy the tranquility of lake waters of Regina Bay in Sioux Narrows. The ability to be able to do this in such a serene environment, whilst sitting in a deck chair overlooking the lake itself is actually incredible given this region’s past. Indeed, this ‘relative peace and tranquility’ has only been achieved during the last two generations... Read Full Story