Sylvan Lake

Our life in the '70's and '80's

A slideshow of our Sylvan Lake life is here.

When I was in Military College in 1960 or so, my mother bought a lot on the North shore of Sylvan Lake in a district called "The Breakers".  She was the first person to buy in that new development and was the first to build.  She designed the cabin herself and had the lumber yard cut everything to her exact specifications.  The truck that came to deliver had to use an old farmers trail to get through the bush and couldn't get all the way to her lot.  A quick re-negotiation with the developer resulted in a lot switch and the delivery truck dumped their load where they were when they were stopped by the terrain.

Mother cleared the trees from the building site and built the cabin with the help of my younger sisters, Bonnie, Maureen, and Sandy. She had no power and only rudimentary tools.  She would have made a great pioneer.  A simple cabin, but one the family used for years.

About ten years later, Steph and I had just returned from California and decided that our own cabin at the lake would be a lot of fun.  I could fulfill a dream of building a house, we would spend summers in a beautiful place near friends and family, and it would be a great place to bring up our young daughter, Joey.

Over the course of the next ten years we finished (sort of) the cabin, made a lot of friends, and led very busy lives with our two homes and weekly travel.  We built a corral and bought a horse and spent a lot of time every summer planning for and building our entry into the annual Breakers Regatta parade.  Because of the imagination and energy of my sister Bonnie, we won every year.

Ultimately Joey got older and with friends and interests more in Calgary, the cabin became a maintenance burden.  We sold it in the mid-80's and started to think about other ways to keep ourselves interested.  So came about our second move to California.