By “The Bay” I am referring to the approximately 150 km stretch of coastline running from the French River to Port Severn that forms the eastern edge of Georgian Bay. 

In a lovely piece in the Walrus, “The Map Maker”, the writer, David MacFarlane, quotes Canadian painter, John Hartman, who lives and paints on the Bay:  “I believe we all have a home landscape, a place from our childhood, whose light, space and scale are the benchmark for all other landscapes. We all carry our home landscapes around inside us.” The eastern shore of Georgian Bay is my home landscape.

I spent the summers of my childhood at a small resort between Snug Harbour and Parry Sound called Jacknife Lodge. In my twenties I returned to the Bay, paddling to the outer islands with friends on Friday evenings to camp and watch the Perseids. I have spent the last forty odd summers exploring the islands and shoals of that coast – a place where, when faced with the troubles of modern life, I have often sought the solitude and spiritual renewal that Wendell Berry so beautifully and sparingly conveys in his poem, “The Peace of Wild Things“.

Wendell Berry’s poetry is, of course,  part of a long and well-trodden romantic tradition that emphasizes both a deep affection for place and nature’s gift for quieting the mind, bringing worldly concerns into perspective, and evoking feelings of connection with nature – a perspective we all, perhaps, could do with more of.

It is in this spirit that I offer these photographs of the Bay.