Innisfil Historical Society's blog



Summer Memories: Outhouses, Toads and Shad-flies, Oh My!

This blog post comes to us from Marj Mossman, member of the Innisfil Historical Society.

When I was growing up, summers at our cottage on Lake Simcoe were special. It was different from our home in Weston. We had an outhouse not a bathroom. Our outhouse was behind the cottage. We went out the backdoor of the cottage, up a few stone steps, past a few little cedar trees and there it was. It was a one seater and if you left the door open you could see the lake. After doing what you came to do, there was an orange crate with a tin pan on top and a bar of soap. You filled the pan with water from a pail, washed your hands, threw the dirty water on the cedar trees, dried your hands on a towel hanging on a hook on the side of the orange crate and left. Just about every summer there was a toad lived beside the outhouse. We used to feed the toad shadflies. The shadflies would hatch out of the lake and land on our flagpole. We would pinch their wings and carry them up and feed them to the toad. The shadfly would wiggle and the toad would extend his big tongue and the poor shadfly would be gone. The toad got fatter and fatter. I can’t say that I miss those summers that there was an outhouse but they certainly served a purpose and were part of summer at the cottage growing up. Marj Mossman is the president of the Innisfil Historical Society and spear-heads the Heritage Lake Simcoe Campaign.

Pages