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I was lucky to spend every summer in our cottage on a small island in the St. Lawrence River just off the island of Montreal, Canada. There were no cars, just a few electric golf carts for the elderly. We had a pool for the 200 or so people who lived on the island, a tennis court, and a playing field. As teens we inherited a shack called The Wreck from those older than us. The rule was no adults (older than 20) and no one under the age of 12. It had electricity, an old television, a couple of old couches, and a wobbly card table with equally wobbly chairs. My sister, six years older than me, and her cohort took over the shack first, and when we girls were 11, all we wanted was to be old enough to be in The Wreck with our older siblings.
When I was 11, The Wreck was laboriously put on huge rollers and moved by strong men out of the woods and into a more public area near the ferry landing and the mooring area for all of our boats. I guess the parents felt The Wreck needed to be more visible, but they still weren’t allowed inside. When I turned 13 in the month of May, so did my best friend, Anne. Jennifer was allowed to join us all, even though her birthday was in late July. It would have been too cruel to leave her out on the technicality of a few months.
For years during the summertime we hung out in The Wreck. It was awesome! We played cards, watched grainy bad television, and fought over the best seat on the best couch. I flirted with David. Jennifer flirted with my brother John, and Anne sulked because she didn’t have anyone to flirt with. There was no alcohol involved. We would have had to go across the water in an open boat and bring it into an area near where our parents and neighbors were passing by all the time. Although they weren’t allowed in, they could knock, stand at the door, and look inside.
We didn’t really want alcohol anyway. There were runs across to the mainland (which was actually Montreal Island) to get candy and soda pop. There was eventually some pot smoking as well, on the part of the older boys. We also played a game we called Chase with the younger children and the older adolescents. The oldest was about 18, and the youngest was about 10. One of the older boys, almost grown up, would announce that a game of Chase was going to be played after supper. Everyone would gather at “base” which was a particular maple tree. The island was a mile long and a quarter mile wide, so the playing area, including everyone’s backyard and the rocky beach surrounding the island, was very large. There were two teams, equally composed of a mixture of younger and older boys and girls. It was like hide-and-seek in teams. We would play as the long summer evenings brought in dusk and eventually darkness. The only real danger was being eaten alive by mosquitoes.
It was unlimited freedom, or so it seemed. Jennifer’s dad was difficult, but we broke her out of being “grounded” with a good ladder more than once. My mother’s only rule was that we had to be home for supper. She had an old schoolhouse bell that she would ring at five minutes to six. We could hear that bell from halfway across the island. All the other mothers told their children to come home when they heard the bell. There were minor disagreements between us girls, but we knew that it was best to work things out. The coming of autumn and the school year always meant that we had to say goodbye until the next May, when the melting of the ice and the opening of the ferry landing would allow us access to our beloved island once again.
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