Now and Then – Dick Ahlers

Dick Ahlers first found Manitoulin in 1931 when his parents, from Pittsburgh, holidayed at the cabin-in-the-woods of his fathers law partner in Rockville on Lake Manitou. I have been drawn to the Island ever since; more so as my own family has lived in St. Louis, Pittsburgh again, Detroit, Houston, Cleveland, Detroit again and Cleveland again. It became a home base for our family. We have just sold our Island cottage after 47 years of enjoyment, Dick explains. With our aging, property maintenance had become even harder and more time-consuming. To sell was a hard decision, but we still expect to spend a lot of time on the Island.

Richard W. Ahlers Jr. was born to Richard W. Ahlers Sr. and Margaret (nee Hartley) on January 25, 1927 in Pittsburgh. My mother was a school teacher and she retired after marrying my dad. Maternal grandparents were Beecher Hartley and Lara (Murray). Beecher was in the coal business in Pittsburgh. My maternal grandmother died in 1931 when I was four. My paternal grandfather William Ahlers owned a lumber business in Pittsburgh. He died in 1901. Grandmother Ahlers visited the Island once in 1936.

Richard Ahlers Sr. practiced law at Pittsburgh in partnership with Lee C. Beatty, 20 years his senior. Beattys wife Gertrude Beatty was an English-born Welsh woman who loved Canada. In 1927, the couples annual excursion north brought them to Whitefish Falls, to the Stumpf and Spry Lodge in surroundings they much-admired. Mr. Spry persuaded Lee and Gertrude to visit his cousin Alf Spry at his new resort in Rockville on Green Bay of Lake Manitou, on Manitoulin Island. A year later, Beatty commissioned Alf Spry to build a cottage for him. Their first vacation there was in 1929 and the family returned every year until Lees death in 1943. The Beatty family still visits regularly.

In the bleak year of 1931, and for the next 10 years, the Beattys generously offered late-summer use of their cottage to the Ahlers. That first summer, Dick recalls, we left Owen Sound in the afternoon, sailing on the S.S. Manitoulin. We spent the night at Killarney, which had no road access then. I still remember standing on the top deck of the ship with my dad in a dense morning fog, while my mother dressed. The steam whistle sounded above us, loud enough to lift a small child out of his sandals. The boat proceeded to Manitowaning and on to Little Current where Alf Spry met us in our 1928 Hudson. There were no road signs to Island locations in those days, Dick continues. As my parents unpacked at the Beatty cottage, I wandered away behind the building to an area of escarpment rock and fissures. Much distressed, mother found me placidly ensconced in the plentiful wild strawberries.

The Ahlers enjoyed the Beatty cottage, taking their meals at the Spry resort, half a mile away. In the late 1950s the Spry Resort became Manitou Haven with Jule and Edith Chisholm as proprietors. Jule was the adopted son of Alf and Lily Spry. Lily lived to be 104.

In 1934, Dick was joined by brother Roger and the Beatty youngsters often stayed on the Island with the Ahlers after the Sr. Beattys returned home. On September 3, 1939 I remember being at the Paul Foster cottage next door and listening, with a handful of others, to the Fosters new Oldsmobile car radio as Canada declared war on Germany. Pauls sister May wept. Their brother Ainsworth had been wounded in the Great War, World War One.

Travel from the States to Manitoulin was far more challenging in those years. It was a dirt road after Owen Sound and just a trail from Parry Sound to Pointe au Baril and beyond. The winding dirt road to Goat Island was a beautiful half-day experience. The small eight-car ferry, the Jaqueline, made the final passage to the Island because the bridge served only the train, known as the Blueberry Special. It would stop for blueberry pickers along the way.

One of the two Tobermory ferries was the SS Manitou, an elderly coal-fired boat, carrying 12 to 15 cars. Meals were prepared on the car deck on a coal-fired range and passed up by ladder to be served at six two-person tables in the fore-aft passageway. A one-armed bandit, a five cent slot machine, was chained to a steel pipe supporting the wheelhouse above. One year, with three nickels to invest, I hit the jackpot, Dick allows. The machine spewed a bonanza of three or four dollars of nickels everywhere.

The steel-hulled diesel powered MS Normac had been retired from fire boat service at Detroit. It carried a few more cars than the Manitou and did not pitch and wallow as readily. She ran for several years in the 1960s between Meldrum Bay and Blind River before becoming Captain Johns Seafood Restaurant at the foot of Yonge St. in Toronto. Most recently, the MS Normac served as a floating cocktail lounge and restaurant in Port Dalhousie, but was gutted by fire in 2011.

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Now and Then – Dick Ahlers