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Watershed Magazine, 160 Joice Road, Cobourg, ON (2025)

03/14/2025

Spring has Finally Sprung! And with the arrival of spring, we can now enjoy longer days, warmer weather and of course... the Spring Issue of Watershed magazine.

The Watershed web site will be up and running soon... but in the meantime, you can grab a copy at your favourite store, restaurant or community hot spot.

Among your favourite departments like Joie de Vivre by Jeanne Beker; Life au Lait with Lonelle Selbo; and a Day Trip to everything maple, the spring issue also features these important topics:

WOMEN & POLITICS
Meet some of the women who have entered the demanding, rough-and-tumble world of politics, looking after the town, the province and the country and – yes – keeping the rest of their world humming.
By KARIN WELLS

LONG LIVE THE LANCASTER
The Lancaster bomber was a familiar sight in the skies during the Second World War. Tom Cruickshank examines the nuts and bolts of the Lancaster restoration project at Base 31 in Picton, and shares the stories of the men who flew in these iconic aircraft.
By TOM CRUICKSHANK

NATIONAL HEIRLOOMS
While Canadians were fighting overseas, countless wartime volunteers worked tirelessly on the home front, sewing and knitting “items of comfort, which made the lives of the troops more bearable and reminded them of home.
By MEGHAN SHEFFIELD

FARMING FAMILIES
Farming has always been a family affair, but today family farms are under threats from encroaching development to labour shortages. Catherine MacIntosh chats with local farming families to learn what inspires them to keep doing what they do.
By CATHERINE MACINTOSH

HEALING IN COMMUNITY
For too long, stigma and personal shame have kept sufferers of mental illness out of sight. David Sheffield tells the stories of both patients and caregivers, exploring where they came from and how they got to where they are now. The answers are surprising.
By DAVID SHEFFIELD

THE RESTORATION OF BRIGHTON’S HOPS BARN
Can you dismantle a 150-year-old structure, truck the pieces up the highway and then put it all back together in another town? Possibly – if everyone hops to it. Follow the journey of a historic hops barn as it makes its final journey.
By TIMBER MASTERSON

03/11/2025

Get Ready... the Spring Issue is Almost Here!

03/07/2025

International Women's Day is tomorrow and Watershed wanted to take the time to acknowledge the core group of women who work behind the scenes to bring you your favourite magazine.

Gayle Thomas runs everything seamlessly and effortlessly behind the scenes - from subscriptions and accounting to deliveries and beyond.

Jennifer Shea keeps our Events Listings up-to-date and has recently taken on the important role of Advertising Sales in Kingston and Napanee.

Jeanette Carter is our English Rose, ambassador at many cultural events and powerhouse Director of Advertising Sales (West).

Meg Botha, our Art Director, ensures Watershed looks her best from the Cover Art, to ad layout, brilliant editorial design and coordinates the photographers and illustrators that help bring our stories to life.

Debra Parks is our outdoor enthusiast, insightful Director of Advertising Sales (East), and keeps us laughing when the going gets tough!

Stephanie Campbell, Managing Editor and Social Media point person, coordinates the editorial for each issue and is the main contact person with our talented roster of writers and story-tellers.

And... last but definitely not least is Publisher Jane Kelly whose vision brought the idea of Watershed to life 24 years ago ... and whose foresight has resulted in the continuous growth of a noticeably larger and more significant magazine, as well as recognition from the National Media Awards Foundation (NMAF) with the 2024 Award for Excellence in Journalism.

Watershed would also like to recognize the many talented female writers, photographers and illustrators that we have the honour and privilege to work with each and every issue.

https://watershedmagazine.com/

03/05/2025

Watershed magazine is proudly 💯 Canadian - from our content, our writers, photographers and illustrators - we are 🇨🇦

03/03/2025

Follow the Food with Karen Hawthorne

Baking with Joy
Stirling
Facebook – Baking with Joy

When you love sourdough, there are so many possibilities from Baking with Joy. Kim Hoogland launched the microbakery in Stirling in 2024, dedicated to the routine of starting her day in the pitch black of early morning to work her sourdough magic. Yes, there are sourdough banana chocolate loaves (delightfully decadent!), along with all manner of classic loaves, baguettes, focaccia, pretzel bites, cinnamon rolls and doughnuts. Special orders welcome! You’ll find her handcrafted creations at area farm markets and shops like Nana’s Olde Fashioned Fudge and Gifts in Belleville.

Vegg Up
Verano Foods, Cobourg
veranofood.ca

Beverley Shepherd’s go-with-everything organic sauces are a healthy condiment for your home cooking. The financial services expert uprooted her life in Toronto and moved to the quiet beauty of Cobourg where she’s become a much-loved vendor at area farm markets. She’s passionate about sharing her quest to eat wholesome foods with creativity and flavour. Her Vegg Up line will transform your salads and shrimp cocktail platter like nobody’s business! Her sauces are also available in food shops and grocers, and there’s a mild spice option, too.

The Kafana
199 Front Street, Belleville
IG:

This is the spot for freshly pinched varenyky – the Ukrainian word for perogies – the perfectly delicious symbol of comfort and tradition in the kitchens of Ukrainians. The Kafana in Belleville serves up classic savoury ones with potato or sweet fillings like blueberry and sour cherry. Or try the banichki, the warm cheesy pies that melt in your mouth! Corinne Sykes and her Ukrainian wife Myroslava Symonenko (who first met years ago on a plane headed to Ukraine) started pop-ups to fundraise for Ukraine war relief and opened their restaurant to continue sharing their love of food and culture.

Struisvogel Ostrich Ranch
3555 County Road 3, Carrying Place
struisvogel.ca

Now, if you haven’t dined on ostrich, this is an invitation! The tender red meat is easy to digest and high in iron – and makes a wonderful steak that tastes like filet mignon or tenderloin. Struisvogel ranchers Caleb and Brittany DenOuden fell in love with ostriches when they were volunteering in South Africa, home to expansive ostrich farms. They started thinking about farming the leggy, long-necked birds back in Canada, so they did. Come tour their Carrying Place farm, buy feed to make friends with the ostriches, and shop for pot pies and ostrich leather cowboy boots.

https://watershedmagazine.com/departments/follow-the-food-winter-2024-2025/

02/28/2025

As the nights draw in and the cold winds blow, many of us feel the urge to hunker down and get lost in a book. Welcome to winter bliss!

Winter Reads by Janet Davies

MEL SHAKESPEARE
A Dedication to Beauty – An antiquarian’s life with antiques and old houses.
Published by the author

Mel Shakespeare saves old houses – sometimes literally from the wrecking ball – repairing, restoring, even rebuilding early Ontario homes. He’s an incredibly creative person, art director, musician, poet and author of a nine-book detective/fantasy series, The Magician’s Nine Lives And How He Lost Them, but his great passion is architectural restoration. Mel Shakespeare lives in Cobourg.

After a lifetime restoring period homes, Mel pulled together stories and photos of his favourite projects for A Dedication to Beauty. He calls it his legacy book, and it highlights many architectural gems he saved and restored over 60 years. “I’m not getting any younger,” he says. “It was time to do a book.” And what a handsome book it is, with 300 pages of photographs and details of 26 beautiful early Ontario homes and their interiors, including the one that started it all.

“I began finding and rescuing old houses and materials, restoring them or moving and rebuilding them, and not just log houses.” Among the log, stone and vintage timber homes in the book is a post and beam building he found being used as a chicken coop. “It was full of chickens, but when I stepped inside I saw it also had original wainscoting, original paintwork, and the original fireplace. All it needed was a good cleaning,” he grins. And then there’s the stone house he built from salvaged materials that local authorities wanted to designate as a heritage property, thinking it was 200 years old. He’s that good.

This limited edition of A Dedication to Beauty is a must-have for lovers of early houses and antiques. It’s a celebration of early Ontario architecture and captures the whole spirit of preservation. dedicationtobeauty.com

https://watershedmagazine.com/features/winter-reads-2/

02/27/2025

Nerding out with Duarte Da Silva

Life au Lait with Lonelle Selbo
Photos by Ian Brown

The luckiest among us get to spend time with a bon vivant and fellow trailblazer who also happens to be a cherished friend.

Duarte and I are posing kind of nerdily on his gold-rimmed, black and chrome motorcycle in an alleyway beside the Regent Theatre on Main Street in Picton. We’re shooting photos for this story and it’s taking a long time because even though we’re at least ten feet back from the sidewalk, everyone passing by knows at least one of us, and neither of us can resist an opportunity to say Hi.

It’s no surprise that Duarte is getting so much attention in this small Picton alleyway. He’s a significant figure in Prince Edward County. Previously the Executive Director of the PEC Winegrowers Association, he was recently named CEO of the PEC Chamber of Commerce, and it seemed like such a natural fit. His instinct for leadership, deep-rooted knowledge of the region, advocacy for our community and passion for the local wine and food scene are worn on his sleeve.

https://watershedmagazine.com/departments/nerding-out-with-duarte-da-silva/

02/26/2025

Watershed is Lovin' the Local with Lamiaceae All-Natural Skincare

Creating natural skin care by harnessing the elegance of simplicity and all-natural ingredients.

– Instagram: .ca –

https://watershedmagazine.com/departments/lovin-the-local-winter-2024-2025/

02/25/2025

Ste. Anne’s Spa: A Legacy of Healing & Hospitality

by Greg Ceci

The sprawling countryside acreage and historic structures of Ste. Anne's Spa speak of a long, storied past. Indigenous land, farmland-homestead, bed and breakfast – and now a world-class health and wellness destination.

Ste. Anne’s has evolved into an industry innovator with its own bakery, an organic beef farm and holistic skin care products. Jim proudly acknowledges many of these ideas were spawned by past and present employees who have always worked as a collaborative team.

https://watershedmagazine.com/features/ste-annes-spa-a-legacy-of-healing-hospitality/

02/24/2025

Beyond the Garden Gate with Micol Marotti

Cross-Country Skiing

When the evergreen branches are heavy with freshly fallen snow and the trails are blanketed with a layer of white, cross-country skiing in our local forests can make you feel like you have entered your own private fairy tale.

“Independence, freedom and a healthy life are the gifts my skis have brought me,” said Herman “Jackrabbit” Smith-Johannsen (the Quebec skier who popularized cross-country skiing in Canada) at one of his last skiing marathons at the age of 106.

The Norwegian-born Johannsen began his skiing career with a pair of the heavy four-metre-long wooden skis that a local farmer used to traverse snow-covered fields; later he fashioned shorter and skinnier skis for himself.

Always an adventurer and an outdoorsman, he developed techniques to negotiate the hilly terrain of the Laurentians. He quickly saw the potential of skiing as a sport, eventually cutting and maintaining hundreds of kilometres of trails that served as a source of recreation for thousands of skiers. His major accomplishment was The Maple Leaf Trail, which wound its way 128 kilometres through the Laurentians.

Today, skiers glide across the snow on skis made of lightweight materials – fibreglass, carbon and compressed foam – with bases made of P-Tex, a high-density plastic. The bases are “fishscaled” so that waxing according to the temperature and the snow conditions is no longer necessary.

Our region has distinguished itself as a cross-country skiing destination with dozens of trails and different terrains to choose from.

The Millennium Trail offers a variety of natural landscapes in Prince Edward County including The Dunes Trail that skirts Sandbanks Beach and its famous sand dunes, while the Hastings Hub trail crosses over a historic bridge in town before connecting to the Trans-Canada Trail. The H.R. Frink Cross Country Trail just north of Belleville offers a 1.8 kilometre easy loop that takes only 25 minutes to ski for a quick workout, while the seven Beagle Club Trails in the Northumberland Forest range in distance and difficulty, from the 1.6 kilometre Kiddie Loop to a 13.3 kilometre Green A loop. The Ganaraska Forest has over 35 kilometres of groomed and track-set trails that meander through the forest. Many of the Lower Trent Conservation properties also offer great cross-country opportunities.

Hastings County
H. R. Frink Trail: 381 Thrasher Road, Plainfield.
quinteconservation.ca
hastingscounty.com

Northumberland County
Beagle Club Trails: 180 Beagle Club Road, Harwood. facebook.com/northumberlandforest

Ganaraska Forest Trails: grca.on.ca

Hastings Hub Trail: Trailhead at Hastings Field House, 97 Elgin St., Hastings. visittrenthills.ca

northumberlandcounty.ca

Prince Edward County
Millennium Trail: The Dunes Trailhead, County Road 12, south of the Dunes Beach day use area and the West Lake Campground entrance.

pectrails.ca
visitthecounty.com

Quinte West
Lower Trent Conservation Trail: Many of the Lower Trent Conservation properties offer great cross-country opportunities
ltc.on.ca
quintewest.ca

https://watershedmagazine.com/departments/cross-country-skiing/

02/21/2025

Watershed is on the Road supporting the businesses that are working hard to create the food we savour. Let’s keep things local and source those special ingredients to create a comforting, decadent winter’s meal.

Follow the Food with Karen Hawthorne

The Hive and Hearthstone
225 South Shore Road, Napanee
thehiveandhearthstone.com

Here’s a great reason to take a country drive on a Saturday: Tammy Lloyd’s Hive and Hearthstone farm on the south shore of Hay Bay has a uniquely pink residence for her chickens, Cluckingham Palace, honeybee hives and a tempting farm store. She’s crafted honey and beeswax candles and installed a wood-fired oven for her popular breads and fast-selling pizza with bee sting honey (first come, first-served!). There’s dessert pizza too with apple pie filling, crumble and caramel drizzle. And don’t miss the artisan chocolate oat cookies while you’re there.

Daughters Cider
Footstep Organics, 422 Fox Road, Wooler
daughterscider.ca

Paul Stewart grows organic produce on his Wooler farm that is sought out by discerning chefs at the markets where he sets up in Toronto. He also has a local customer following through community-shared agriculture and his family’s farm store for the bounty of vegetables and preserves. In 2019, he started an apple orchard with varieties for hard cider production, and Daughters Cider has proven a winner! The dry Cider Classic is refreshingly crisp and the Wild Pear (made from his neighbours’ pears) has been called “juicy, muddled, with a hint of farmhouse funk. Lovely!”

Porch Dog Coffee
55 Autumn Road, just north of Warkworth
porchdogcoffee.com

Warkworth’s new coffee roaster is all about excellent beans and animal love. Mark Dawidowicz, business consultant and entrepreneur and his adorable dog AJ have four small-batch blends with names that are as addictive as caffeine can be: Wagging Tail, Unleashed, AJ’s 50/50 nutty half-caffeinated blend and All Bark No Bite. The company has a pup-mobile to travel to area markets and events for sampling and a feel-good buzz. A portion of Porch Dog proceeds supports animal rescue and outreach services like Brighton’s Determined as Diesel supplies for special needs and senior animals.

https://watershedmagazine.com/departments/follow-the-food-winter-2024-2025/

02/20/2025

If you’re looking for a good read, you’ve come to the right place. From Port Hope to Picton, we are blessed with a rich assortment of local writers, some internationally famous, some just bursting onto the scene, and some with a lifetime of amazing memories they’ve finally found time to share.

Winter Reads by Janet Davies

ZOE WHITTALL
Wild Failure – Short Stories
Published by Harper Collins

Zoe Whittall is the author of five novels, including The Fake, long-listed for the Toronto Book Award, and also a poet and writer on TV shows like Schitt’s Creek and Baroness Von Sketch. Wild Failure is her first collection of short stories. Born in the Eastern Townships in Quebec, she now lives in Prince Edward County.

Zoe “compresses entire worlds into the most alive of sentences,” says one reviewer and it’s true. She quickly draws you in to lives lived with hardship, sexual confusion, too much or not enough love, wit and fear, and tenderness. Be prepared, some are raunchy, but there are passages that stop you in your tracks and make you want to underline them.

“I wrote short stories in my 20s and then they started getting longer. The idea of writing a novel was intimidating, but I tricked myself into doing it.” Her debut novel won a Writers’ Trust of Canada award and she followed it up with four more, as well as collections of poetry, before returning to short stories.

“I’m a character-first writer. I care more about rhythm and language and the interesting parts of my characters than I do about plot, although I deliberately wanted The Fake to make you excited to find out what happens next.” She certainly achieved that. Many reviewers call it a page-turner.

“I like to explore someone’s life as they face their fears. I write about anxiety, fear and sometimes shame, because that is rich emotional territory. My characters are at interesting thresholds of their life.”

There’s a lot of warmth and humour in her stories, as well as angst and a clear-eyed telling of what she calls the “emotional chaos.” Wild Failure is dynamic and vibrant, contemporary and honest and very engaging. In fact, it’s a wild success.

photograph by Ali Eisner Photography

https://watershedmagazine.com/features/winter-reads-2/

02/19/2025

Must Stamp

Stamp collecting has always been an addictive and potentially lucrative hobby. Local stamp clubs offer the perfect opportunity to buy, sell and trade your stamps while at the same time developing friendships. The Trenton Stamp Club held its first meeting before the end of the Second World War. Since then, local philatelists and newcomers have been gathering twice a month to buy, sell, trade and talk about stamps. The Cobourg Stamp Club also meets twice a month. Come join in; members are not only knowledgeable, they are always happy to help assess your collection. Maybe you’ll be lucky enough to discover that you have a rare 1840 Penny Black on an old envelope.

For more information:
Trenton Stamp Club: trentonstampclub.ca
Cobourg Stamp Club: canadianstampnews.com

https://watershedmagazine.com/departments/must-must-must-winter-2024-2025/

02/18/2025

Stirling 1923

Reverend Bundock Leaves Town

It was vigilante justice to be sure, and the story behind it was ta**ry. In the fall of 1923, the Reverend Elijah Bundock was minister of the Apostolic Church in the town of Stirling, although his congregation had dwindled to just seven souls. Bundock, who also referred to himself as a “faith healer,” was a boarder at the Stewart home on Henry Street – living with 74-year-old Hugh Stewart, an invalid, Stewart’s 66-year-old wife Jane and their unmarried daughter, Tryphena, 38. The Reverend’s wife is said to have been residing elsewhere in Stirling.

According to local papers, the Reverend had an arrangement with the aging Stewarts that had gone sour: “… a financial agreement with the parents by which they deeded their farm over to him on condition that he keep them while they lived … Bundock apparently had not been keeping his share of the bargain as there were quarrels in the Stewart household and the old lady had left Friday last.”

Six local lads took the matter into their own hands. They decided to run Bundock out of town. The Stirling News-Argus described their vigilante act as such:

“Rev. Bundock … was tendered a warm, though not unexpected reception on Tuesday evening when several citizens of the town and vicinity … treated him to a drive in the country landing finally at Anderson’s Island, where they showed still further generosity by making a slight addition to his toilette in the way of tar and feathers …”

The event didn’t go unpunished. The lads were charged and eventually convicted in front of a Belleville courthouse packed with onlookers. Unlike the original Stirling News-Argus report, which had treated the tar and feathering lightly, the Intelligencer reflected the court’s disapproval: “His Worship was convinced not only that ‘the laws of the country had been contravened but that a menacing spirit of Bolshevism had been exhibited.”’

The men were given six-month suspended sentences and jointly fined $100 to compensate Reverend Bundock for “the ruin of his suit.”

And what of the Reverend? He headed west of Thunder Bay to the town of Nolalu with “his sister” Tryphena Stewart, where he eventually died at the age of 75. He never divorced, but his death certificate notes that he was separated.

With thanks to the Hastings Historical Society and photo provided by the Community Archives of Belleville and Hastings County.

https://watershedmagazine.com/departments/reverend-bundock-leaves-town/

02/17/2025

Get outside to enjoy the sunshine after an epic snowstorm yesterday! Happy Family Day 🏡

02/14/2025

Jeanne Beker meets up with Andy Thompson

Mastering the sweet sounds of music and voices in the Northumberland hills for Joie de Vivre
Photo by Christopher Gentile

For those of us who savour country living, one of the biggest blessings is to do the work we love without the stress of commuting to the big city. And so it was for me this summer, when I was called upon by Simon & Schuster to record the audible version of my memoir, Heart On My Sleeve. As luck would have it, my daughter Bekky had just recorded a voice track for a film she was working on at a studio about five minutes from our Warkworth home. She couldn’t say enough about the cool producer she’d worked with and his wonderfully unusual studio. “It’s in this fabulous, big old rustic barn,” she enthused after her session. “You’d love it! Only trouble is, this guy is incredibly busy. So if you want to book some time there, better be quick about it.” This was one recommendation I knew I could trust. I pitched the Northumberland Music Studio to the folks at Simon & Schuster, and a few days later they said I was good to go and record there. I was elated. The three-day experience was an absolute joy, thanks to the studio’s maestro, Andy Thompson.

https://watershedmagazine.com/departments/andy-thompson/

02/13/2025

Waking up to a winter wonderland is the perfect backdrop to enjoy another selection from our Winter Reads feature.

by Janet Davies

RICHARD POPE
Flight From Grace
Published by McGill-Queen’s University Press

Richard Pope is a retired professor of Russian literature and culture and a lifelong lover of birds, both common and rare. He lives with his wife in Cobourg.

Flight From Grace is his second book about birds and very different from his first, The Reluctant Twitcher, which is a humorous tale of his “Big Year” collecting as many birds as he could in one year. “That was a fun book … Flight From Grace is more serious.” Serious it may be, but it is also highly engaging and beautifully illustrated. Rather than one big year, it covers thousands of years of history with an eclectic mix of mythology, religion and science, with poetry, literature and music thrown in.

“Birds figure strongly in the cultures of Mesopotamia, Egypt and Peru, and in religions all over the world. I wanted to expose the underpinnings of the ancient and deep connection between humans and birds, to explore the effect they have had on us, and the effects we are having on them now through our attacks on nature.”

His lifelong fascination with birds, their beauty, lives and behaviours, shines through, and his approachable writing style and humour draw you in to what is a remarkable overview of a long period of time. He’s not afraid to challenge the experts, ask questions and invite readers to engage in debate.

“It’s the culmination of my whole life’s thinking about nature, climate change, and of course, birds.”

This year, Richard published a third book, Fluttering Things, a collection of his poems lavishly illustrated with original watercolours and photographs. All proceeds from that book will go to charities that support the study and nurture of nature. Mattholderfund.com mqup.ca

https://watershedmagazine.com/features/winter-reads-2/

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