The sands of North Beach

“I know every damn inch of that park,” says Ralph Margetson. “I was born in the south of England and lived there until I was 11 years old. Got to know the shrubs and the birds and when we came here I would get to know the skunks and raccoons. I quit school down here when I was 13. I only got grade seven.”

When I learned that Ralph Margetson was a pioneer of North Beach Provincial Park I set out to see him at his home on the upper Melville Road. It’s Friday and the south light paints the living room; a vase of tulips sits on a table and Ralph is snug in his winged-back chair. Between the time of my phone call and my arrival Ralph has scribbled key words on a large recycled envelope. He plunks it into my lap. “I’ll talk and you can put it together later,” he decides. “It’s all lies anyhow!”

Ralph speaks in a vernacular truly his own: part English gentry, part Cape Breton, part western cattle drover. He is a man who will laugh and cry all in the same sentence. He recounts life experiences in the way he has witnessed them: uncensored. Ralph Margetson turns ninety-six years old this coming July. And that one is no lie.

“I married a war bride from England…came home in February 1946 and bought the farm off my father for $3,500,” he begins. “It was a hundred acres; had a house and a barn, a going concern with two ordinary horses, eight cows and chickens and a sow or two. We later rented a farm in town (Melville) and moved there and I worked both farms. After about 20 years I got up so I had 20 cows, which at the time was quite the thing. I got the hydro in and milk machine…we were the first to have an indoor toilette in town.”

The phone rings. Ralph speaks briefly then hangs up. “After 20 years I run for council in Hillier and nobody knew me but thought; ‘well he’s a veteran…we’ll vote for him’; after 4 years when they did know me, I lost the vote,” Ralph smiles.

I ask about North Beach. “Word came from Outlet Park, which had been going for about 20 years—it was a tree planting place for putting trees on the sand dunes—that the provincial government were adding a new park over by the north bay. They wanted a foreman and four men; I thought well the milk business was changing and so I called them up.”

For Margetson it was a step along a new path. He was hired as foreman and made responsible for finding the help he would need. “We went up the first morning; the road was at the north end of the beach off of Partridge Hollow Road. A man from Outlet Park got our size of clothes for uniforms. The shirts had a ‘Lands and Forest’ badge on the shoulder. The first job we had was cleaning up the beach,” Ralph tells me.

“We worked down to the south end and they put a cabin up there for us to use. They paved the south end road down to the buildings and they put a gate on. There was hydro, water wells, pumps and lines to put in,” he continues. Ralph pauses then nudges me. “Look at your list and see what we got!” I see the word ‘dunes’.

“Oh ya! As you come around the bend there was a big sand dune and they had to bulldoze that out for the road. About half-way in the park was the biggest sand dune, about twice as high as this house, and they levelled it to make a parking lot. I thought it was a shame: once it’s gone it will never be back.”

The assistant superintendent from Outlet was the superintendent of North Beach. “I’d call him up every morning to see what the hell he’d want done. The first thing was toilettes. We started with outhouses. Then a couple of years later they came with newer ones with holding tanks and wanted me to burn the old ones. I burnt two before I decided it was a waste. I moved one to make a storage shed by the office and it was under the table but I gave the others away to workers or anybody that wanted them. Shit I had a guilty conscience burning them. I came through the Depression and when I saw the waste that happened when I started working for the government..! I was hired in the fall of 1966 and the park opened in 1967.”

Ralph takes a breath and I check the list: ‘90 cents’ and ‘students’ it says here! “Well the next spring I got seven students come there,” he launches in. “Three on the gate and four on beach patrol and the four maintenance men. The pay was 90 cents an hour. I had to make a schedule as we had to work Saturday and Sunday. There was more business then than the rest of the week in the summer. Gosh, sometimes there would be no parkin’; they’d be parkin’ on the road…we’d have to shut them off,” he adds.

Ralph looks to me: ‘Undertow’ seems to be next. “Oh that was one of the biggest problems…you look on your map and you can see all the way from North Beach to Niagara. When the wind blew you got six foot waves and you got an undertow. We’d put up red flags, I’d tell the kids on the gate to warn everybody…the big percentage would take notice…then there’s a certain percentage in spite of hell…I’d go down there …I never blamed the beach patrol for no drownin’s because there’s a certain percent wouldn’t take no goddamn notice of what I’d say…there was four drownin’s while I was there.” Ralph slows a moment in the light of the window.

“On the inlet side there was that darned drop-off,” he continues. “We were there about a year or two when we built four towers about 12 feet high with a 4×4 platform and a canopy. Each had a ladder and the beach patrol could sit up there on a chair. There was two on the lake side and two on the other. They were there for about four years when someone in command had the bright idea we didn’t need them anymore. Many of the supervisors were not practical. That’s what I noticed about the students. The ones who came from the farm were practical. Now that’s another interesting thing…you’re going to be here ‘til midnight!” Ralph declares.

I see the words ‘tree stumps’ on the list. “Oh we had spare time…I would think of jobs,” Ralph starts. “I thought it would be nice to have a few stumps as ornaments so on my farm here at the bottom was a lovely stump fence with these cedar stumps. We got a truck and I brought the men down and we got that big one that stands by the park gate. We put one or two more on the corner goin’ down around.

On the other side there’s a snake fence…I also put that there. Harry Alexander on the next farm, he’s dead now but he gave me those. I thought that was a good idea too. What else is on the list?” ‘Poplars’, I respond.

“In the spring you had to have a tractor because the damn sand was about ‘that’ deep along the road. And then another thing…the park opened up the 24th of May and around then good Christ they’d arrive with about a thousand damn poplar trees for us to plant when we had all the other things to do!”

What are some of your best memories, I ask? “One of the biggest things was meeting the students. That was one of the surprises I had. Pretty near 100 percent good kids. Generally speaking they come from pretty good families but you know they had one or two years of university yet they knew very little of Canadian war history. It amazed me that they didn’t teach it in school. Far’s I know I stayed on good terms with all of them. I was flexible. I worked there for 15 years until 1981 when I retired. I continued farming…”

What were your thoughts on your last day there Ralph? He pauses, taps his fingers…“I don’t hardly recall…” he maintains. “You knew there was a big change comin’. Bein’ in the army ya lived with the same guys…at the park every fall you’d go on home ‘til spring. Some of those kids have done awful good.”

Have you gone back in recent times? He lifts his hand toward a shelf nearby: “That picture there with my grandkids…took there about three years ago.”

A dull mist is no stranger to the seasonally closed gates of North Beach Provincial Park. The steel swing bars across the road rest against a wash of dandelion and forsythia yellow. By the spider-like stump anchored at the entrance rests a branch, a ‘walking stick’ left for any passing wanderer. I take it with me on my pilgrimage.

Lime-stained mosses cling to ancient tree stumps; snake fences chase through the pines. Past the silent guard house the flutter-leaf poplars are fresh in bud; the rawness of the lake air is soothed by the song of the red-winged blackbird and of the robin.

The winter winds have begged the sands over the road. I round the bend and lean into the hard breeze; the horizon of beach and sea and shorebirds is interrupted by a blue-and-red-foil balloon; a marooned castaway from afar. It reads ‘Jackie’s Birthday’; perhaps from Niagara or Buffalo or some small place in between. And soon the winds will call the students; back one more time to hoist the gate that announces the season of Ralph Margetson’s North Beach.