Black Lake: The Place That Keeps Bringing Me Back

There are places you visit. 

And then there are places that somehow become part of who you are. 

For me, that place is Black Lake, just outside Perth, Ontario. 

I’ve been going there for the better part of my life, and some of my earliest memories are from that area. 

I remember being a kid and my parents were still together. We drove up in a motorhome, got lost on some ridiculously narrow road and managed to rip the ladder off the back of it. 

I remember hanging around my Uncle Cliff and Aunt Bea’s general store. I remember catching a bullfrog and being pretty proud of myself. Then I went for a nap. When I woke up, the bullfrog was in the fridge. 

Skinned.

Apparently we were having frog legs. 

I remember sitting around with my uncles after fishing. I think I was around 10 or 11 and my grandpa asked me to go get them a beer by the tree. One of them said get one for yourself if you want. That was my first warm Labatt 50. 

That was Black Lake. 

But my connection to the area actually goes back a lot further than me. 

My great-great-great uncle Joe Lally came to Canada from Ireland during the potato famine. His original log cabin still stands today as part of the heritage at Murphy’s Point Provincial Park. You can tour it and see plaques and artifacts telling some of the Lally family story. 

My grandfather grew up in that area in a log cabin with 11 brothers and sisters.

After my parents divorced, my mom would still take us up there. My Uncle Alex lived next door to my grandparents’ cottage, and I spent a lot of time with him. 

Alex was a different breed. 

He taught me how to shoot a .22. Taught me how to tie a proper fishing knot, catch Pike, Bass and Lake Trout. He lived off the land and I loved spending time with him. 

One summer, I somehow ended up staying at the lake for more than a month. There was an old trailer at the cottage, and that became my bedroom. Aunts and uncles would come and go, and nobody seemed to mind that I just stayed. 

My cousin Robert had a boat, and we waterskied almost every day. 

I got pretty good at it. Eventually I could do dock starts on a single ski. 

There were parties around the lake. There may have been a few beers involved at an age when there probably shouldn’t have been. I have no idea where I got the money for any of it. 

I remember trailering the boat over to Silver Lake.

I remember Phil Collins Sussudio playing on cassette. 

Funny the things your brain holds onto. 

Then life happened. 

There were a few years in my twenties when I didn’t get up there very much. But Black Lake wasn’t finished with me. 

My sister eventually bought a cottage there, and Laura and I started coming back. 

One of my favourite things is looking around that property today and seeing a deck I built off the bunkie roughly 20 years ago. 

It’s still standing. 

I’m actually a little impressed with myself. 

A lot of what I know how to do with my hands I learned from watching my dad, and every once in a while something like that deck reminds me of it. 

There is another part of Black Lake that is impossible to explain without talking about the Lally family reunion. 

Every five years, a couple hundred Lallys descend on the area. 

One year, when I was probably 25 or 26, I loaded a bunch of my younger cousins into a motorhome and drove to Black Lake. 

We partied for the entire week. 

Apparently a little too successfully because some of the adults weren’t impressed that our party became bigger than the actual reunion party. 

I regret nothing. 

And somehow, all these years later, we’re still doing it. 

Only now I’m one of the adults. 

That’s slightly concerning. 

The lake has changed and so have I. 

Over the last five years or so, I’ve gotten much closer with my cousin Brad, who’s about ten years younger than me.

We usually sleep at my sister’s place mostly because the bunkie has air conditioning but we spend a ton of our time down at Brad’s. 

That’s become the gathering place. 

He’s got four kids. My sister has kids. My girls are older now. Cousins come and go. Friends show up. There are always kids everywhere. 

There’s a beach, boats, fishing rods, a giant inflatable pyramid in the lake and usually something being cooked. 

Brad has worked overseas for years and has worked his ass off to build what he has there. Over time, the old crappy fishing boat “the Pickerel Princess” has been replaced with a beautiful Lund, and there’s now a Yamaha ski boat to play with. 

Every year I go through the same debate about buying something myself. A boat. 

A Jet Ski. 

Something. 

Then I remind myself that I’m there for about two weeks a year and it’s a six-and-a-half-hour drive home. 

Last year I actually brought a Jet Ski. 

It broke. 

I made the guy take it back when I got home. 

Maybe Black Lake was trying to tell me something. 

Because the truth is, I don’t really need anything else when I’m there. 

I fish most mornings. 

Some years we don’t catch much. Some years we do. 

And I still go. 

There’s something about getting out on that lake early in the morning when the water looks like glass that makes catching a fish almost secondary. 

Almost. 

I’m still a fisherman and I'm pissed I haven’t caught a pike in a couple of years now.

What I appreciate now is different. 

Cell reception isn’t great. 

Years ago that probably would have driven me crazy. 

Now I love it. 

The phone gets put down. 

The kids read books. 

They swim. 

They climb things. 

They disappear with their cousins and come back when they’re hungry. 

We cook great food. 

People wander from cottage to cottage. 

We sit around and talk. 

We play cards and board games. 

I get to see family I don’t see nearly enough, including my sister and family who live all the way out in British Columbia.

And once in a while, I even let loose a little. 

I don’t really drink at home anymore, but put me at Black Lake with Brad on the right afternoon and apparently the rules can change. 

That’s part of it too. 

I think Black Lake might be one of the few places where I completely drop my guard. There’s nowhere I need to be. 

Nothing I’m trying to accomplish. 

Nobody I need to impress. 

I’m just there. 

And maybe that’s why I keep coming back. 

I’ve written before about vacations, slowing down and learning to be more present. But Black Lake feels different. 

It isn’t an escape from my life. 

It’s part of my life. 

I was there as a kid. 

I was there as a teenager trying to grow up a little too quickly. 

I was there in my twenties partying with my cousins. 

I came back with Laura.

Then with my daughters. 

Every year we take a picture by the big oak tree at my sister's cottage and every year I look at it and think how incredibly lucky I am.

And now I stand on the same lake watching another generation of kids swim, fish, laugh, make friends and create their own stories. 

Someday they’ll probably remember completely random things too. 

A certain boat. 

A song that was playing. 

A fish they caught. 

A night everyone stayed up too late. 

Or some stupid thing their dad and cousins did that they’ll still be talking about 30 years from now. 

That’s how it works. 

The big moments matter. 

But somehow it’s the little ones that stick. 

I’ve spent a lot of my life looking forward, building businesses, chasing the next goal and thinking about what’s coming next. 

Black Lake is one of the few places that makes me look backward and forward at the same time. 

Back at where my family came from. 

Back at the people who aren’t here anymore.

Back at the kid I used to be. 

And forward at my girls and all these kids who are now creating their own version of the same story. 

Five generations ago, members of my family were building a life in that part of Ontario. All these years later, we’re still showing up. 

Still gathering. 

Still telling stories. 

Still fishing. 

Still laughing. 

Still making memories on the same lake. 

Maybe that’s why, no matter how many other places I travel to, Black Lake will never really feel like somewhere I go. 

It feels like somewhere I come back to.