When I was younger I remember a story, a myth, a fairy tale, an old legend you could say. It was during the summer months when my sister and I would visit our home away from home on the south shores of Lake Simcoe, this home; the great estate called Rotherwood. On certain evenings with friends or family, we would light up a bon fire down on the rocky shorelines and tell of scary or legendary tales. Much different folklore passed through our circle to send each of us eerie feelings or deliver goose bumps up our spines. But there was one in particular that rolled off of someone's tongue each and every night, it was of the legend of the Lake Simcoe monster.
The story originally started out as a joke between my cousins, my sister, and myself, to help explain odd occurrences in the lake. Like when the colours would change from a brilliant aqua blue to a dark misty green; or when the calmest of waters all of a sudden grew harsh with waves for no apparent reason. The changes reflected the monsters movement beneath, or the mood it was in at the time. I recall when the lake would roll along as if it were the ocean with oh so high waves on bright, sunny, warm days with not at all much wind in the air.
I new that it was a story concocted between us kids, but I still found myself being strangely mesmerized by the tale and sucked into its lure as it grew from one mouth to another. There were nights when the exaggerations would send me my own shivers and I wouldn't dare to have my back to the moonlit lake.
The fabrication of the story fooled no one as we laughed about our creative monster, but at the same time moments of fright and awe would follow each tale. Even during daylight hours when part of us new that we were wasting our time, we still stood endlessly on our waterfront dock gazing out into the ocean blue. Binoculars became part of our further ventures along the shores; hunting for something we knew to be unreal but seemed to be planted into reality none the less. We would tell our stories and of what we were doing to vacationers along the beaches as we passed through. Oddly enough, most of them would listen to us with a hint of wonder in their eyes.
Years rolled by and I along with my friends and cousins matured, the scary stories by the campfire dwindled to few and far between as life took on other priorities. But stories of the Lake Simcoe monster still remain, not told as often but spoken of every once and a while as our childhood fairytale words get passed on to new friends and associates.
What used to be a remote summer cottage was turned into a successfully run year round Bed and Breakfast for ten years in the late 1990's and into the twenty first Century. And even the odd guest seemed to be enchanted by my tales of the lake. I even caught people starring out into the waters to see if they could find any truth to my narrative. But they couldn't because monsters like that don't exist; do they?
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