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  • Fall 2024: Autumn on Fancy Free Island – Northern Lights and stunning sunsets 

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    Sunset on Fancy Free, September 27 2024, by Pamela Gough

    All seasons are beautiful when you live surrounded by nature, as we are at Fancy Free, but September and October are our favourite months on Big Rideau. Daytime temperatures are far more comfortable for outdoor adventures than summer’s heat. The romance of viewing the sunset from the tip of the island coincides happily with the dinner hour. The hues of the forests slowly change from green to brillant flame, so that every day there are new surprises in store. Birds are migrating. Geese fly in flocks over the cottage frequently, and noisily. On or off the island, it’s a moveable feast of colour and sound.

    In this blog post I’ll give you a glimpse of some of the things that made the autumn of 2024 very special. But first, for those who have not yet had a holiday on Fancy Free and would like to book a rental in 2025, there are still some beautiful weeks available. Just check the frequently updated calendar here on the website, and fill out the booking form here. We look forward to introducing you to the wonders of nature at Fancy Free Island, a uniquely beautiful Canadian gem.

    Photo Briton-Houghton Bay Road and Footloose Bay, Photo: Tom Gough

    As October progresses, the woods become lushly multicoloured, with some trees glowing almost fluorescent orange against the vivid blue of the lake. Autumn in the Rideau Lakes makes it easy to imagine what it would be like to live inside a Group of Seven painting. Life is all around you, in full technicolor.

    One reason that nature is so vivid on Fancy Free lies in the fact that the Island has a broad, unimpeded view of the western sky over Big Rideau Lake. This means that on every clear night we are literally bathed in the sunset. which is inevitably glorious. As the sun sinks below the horizon, banners of cloud above Turnip Island light up with orange. The bright clouds are reflected onto the water, so the entire view of lake plus sky sometimes takes on a transcendental cathedral-like luminescence. It’s an almost otherworldly beauty at times.

    “The very forest and herbage, the pellicle of the earth, must acquire a bright color, an evidence of its ripeness,—as if the globe itself were a fruit on its stem, with ever a cheek toward the sun.”

    Henry David Thoreau

    Autumn has some strong celestial elements as well. With evenings in October starting early, dark sky viewing becomes possible without sleep deprivation. The night sky in the fall is sometimes the highlight of the day.

    This year we have been exceptionally lucky with night sky viewing, starting with the mid-October Hunter’s Moon. The skies have been clear and the moon so bright that it traced the island’s lawn with shadows at two in the morning. Magically, the Hunter’s moon shone directly through our south-facing bedroom window in the cottage, its milky beams angled onto our pillows as if giving us a heavenly blessing as we slept.

    Hunter’s moon over Big Rideau Lake, by Linda Noble

    Each week this fall it seemed that the solar system produced something new to astound us. On October 10, the sun emitted a large number of charged particles, resulting in a widespread Aurora Borealis all over Canada. To our astonishment we were given a light show in the sky above our boathouse. As we watched in amazement, the sky filled with faint dancing phantoms of light – green flares with tinges of red. We have never seen the Northern Lights so clearly before.

    Northern lights over Big Rideau Lakes, Photo: Rachel O’Neill

    Finally, in the week of October 19, the early evening sky gave us the ultimate experience, the rarest of all: the comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS in the west above Long Island. This comet was last seen 80,000 years ago, and once it is gone, it will be another 80,000 years before it goes by our planet again.

    Comet over Long Island, Photo: Tom Gough

    We’ve been busy with end of year maintenance projects, but we take time every day to enjoy the season. This year we’ve been exploring the lovely hills and valleys of nearby Mill Pond Conservation Area, listening to the aerial honking of migrating geese and the soft hoots of the occasional Barred or Saw Whet Owl as we weave through the golden trees and crunch the fallen leaves underfoot on the trails.

    Video of The Mill Pond Conservation Area trail by Pamela Gough

    It seems as if nature has been outdoing itself to impress us with visual splendour this fall.

    Soon, though, this magical season will come to an end. We closed up for the season on October 23, since the frosts were starting to deepen overnight. We can’t wait to come back next spring.

    We are grateful to our wonderful guests of 2024. Each and every member of the families who spent time at Fancy Free this season has been an exceptional guest and each, in their own way, added their story to the long history of Fancy Free Island. Thanks to our guests, we are able to continue to keep this historic cottage in excellent condition and naturalize the perimeter gardens. We look forward to seeing everybody who wants to come back again as well as welcoming new groups in future years.

    Pamela and Tom Gough

  • Summer 2024: That summer feeling… there’s nothing so good!

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    It‘s June 2024 and Fancy Free is now open for summer! It’s finally here, the time when Canada kicks back and enjoys the long, lazy days of summer. 

    At Fancy Free, the canoes, paddleboard and kayaks are ready for fun. Here they are laid out expectantly, on the Fancy Free boathouse dock. 

    Photo by Pamela Gough

    Many happy adventures await our Fancy Free paddling explorers. Big Rideau Lake is exceptionally large and dotted with bays and islands, making it a paddler’s paradise. A trip to Portland village by water is always a challenging excursion. By canoe or kayak on a calm day it will take about an hour. 

    Or, for a short paddle of 20 minutes, head over to nearby Colonel By Island, open to the public and owned by Parks Canada. Here you will find dockage, hiking trails, a tennis court, and picnic sites. 

    Photo by Allan Joyner

    The entire township of Rideau Lakes is a nature lover’s paradise with beautiful trails, picnic areas, and parks. History is everywhere in this region where many families trace their ancestry back to the United Empire Loyalist era of over 200 years ago. Check out this new guide to picnic places and heritage spaces in Rideau Lakes township.

    ROOM WITH A VIEW

    Video by Pamela Gough

    Here’s the view that we see every morning as we crunch our breakfast toast. Click on the video to see out the kitchen window on the channel side of Fancy Free island. The lake animates every window- it’s constantly in motion, tiny sparkling waves that catch the light and play in the wind. What an amazing way to start the day!

    AUTUMN BOOKINGS STILL AVAILABLE 

    The spectacular fall colours of the Rideau Lakes area draw visitors from the North American eastern seaboard and beyond. Fancy Free is open until the end of the first week of October. Good weeks to view the fall colours and take in the local art studio tours are still available. With several wood stoves for heating as well as baseboard heaters and thick wool blankets, Fancy Free cottage is a cozy haven for families looking to enjoy the splendours of the fall season. Click here to inquire.

    Photo by Heather Gough

  • Fall 2023: Social media, high speed internet, pollinator gardens, exciting fish catches

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    SOCIAL MEDIA

    We love to share the beauty of Fancy Free Island in photos and videos. You can click here to access our new Instagram account! If you have photos or videos about Fancy Free Island please feel free to share your experience using the #FancyFreeIsland hashtag!

    HIGH SPEED INTERNET

    We have increased our internet plan to provide unlimited data during July and August.

    Our unlimited internet plan means that our guests can freely stream music and videos. They now have the best of both worlds- the serenity and peace of a private island set in the spectacular semi-wilderness of Big Rideau Lake, combined with the advantages of access to the latest in technology when needed. 

    NEW POLLINATOR GARDENS

    We are renovating Fancy Free’s gardens to increase the diversity of native plants on the island. For many decades Fancy Free Island was known for the beautiful peony gardens that ringed it, tended by Aunt Margaret Washburn, who owned it for many years.

    Postcards in the mid 20th century show the island with its peony gardens in full bloom, the height of the European-oriented cottage gardening standards of the time.

    In keeping with our commitment to the biodiversity of the Frontenac Arch Biosphere, we are replanting the gardens with native species attractive to pollinators. We’ve added several new species of milkweed, the plant host of the endangered Monarch Butterfly. Other new native plants include Blazing Star and Veronica. 

    We are also growing native shrubs such as Red-Osier Dogwood around the perimeter of the island. They provide foliage and forage for birds in the ecologically important littoral zone between the water and the land. Overhanging shrubs also provide important shade for fish habitat. 

    CATCH OF THE YEAR!

    One of our 2023 guests, Allan Doyle, caught a large pike off the front dock this summer. He released it, but took the photo below first. 

    In the true fishing tradition, Allan told us that the one that got away was even bigger. 

  • Newsletter January 2023

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    Dawn Chorus on Fancy Free Island, June 23 2022

    Welcome to 2023! As you are reading this you are probably dreaming of the upcoming summer and thinking about what life at a cottage on an island in Big Rideau Lake might be like. Let’s do a thought experiment and pretend you are going to Fancy Free Island for the first time, and it’s mid-June.

    First, turn your sound on and listen.

    It’s six in the morning. You are standing on the little silken beach at the northeastern edge of Fancy Free Island looking out over the lake. The view is of the channel in Big Rideau Lake between Fancy Free Island and the mainland, which widens out as it goes off to the distance. The sky is gradually lightening and the birds are awake. All around, you can hear a new day beginning.

    It’s the spring breeding season, so the songbirds nesting on Fancy Free are acting on their territorial instincts. The adults at this point in the late spring are usually either incubating eggs or feeding their young ones.

    Male birds are responsible for protecting the nest by keeping interlopers at bay. Singing is an important part of territory signalling for birds, so the males move from perch to perch around the edges of their territories, boldly repeating their songs. Every species has its own song, and sometimes it may have an extra element such as a special series of notes that makes it regionally unique.

    Occasionally songs may even vary slightly from one individual to another, but they always stay recognizably that of one species, and unlike any other. This makes it easy to identify what kinds of birds are in the vicinity, without even seeing them. You just need to listen.

    This morning the Song Sparrows are active and their melodic notes provide the main fabric of the soundscape. There is one Song Sparrow that is particularly close to you, and his song is vibrant with spectacular trills. In the background you can hear an Eastern Phoebe, and very faintly, you can also hear the haunting call of a Common Loon flying over. Far away, you can hear a dog barking and a motorboat running.

    With some basic knowledge, it’s possible even with your eyes closed to decipher from this combination of bird song that you are in a woodland area very close to a lake. Eastern Phoebes live at the forest edge, and typically they nest next to bodies of water. Loons are swimmers as well as flyers, nesting on shoreline reeds and feeding off the fish they catch when diving. Song Sparrows can be found in most woodlands in Eastern Canada. So, with this combination, you know without even opening your eyes that you are on a wooded area of land that is either on a lake or very close to a lake. Voila, you are now a budding ornithologist!

    As you can tell from the recording, Fancy Free is a natural sanctuary for wild birds. Every spring, the island supports so many breeding pairs that the family calls it “the bird nursery”. It’s not unusual for us to arrive in the spring and find a Robin has nested in a crevice of the porch, or a Phoebe has set up shop on the rafters under the boathouse passageway and is actively swooping down to feed young ones in front of your eyes. Needless to say, the nests are never disturbed.

    We greatly value the contribution that Fancy Free’s natural habitat makes to the biodiversity of the Rideau Lakes region, which has not just one but two UNESCO environmental designations. The cottage and island are managed in a way that allows people live to on the island in harmony with nature, knowing that their environmental footprint is as negligible as possible.

    Fancy Free’s rich biodiversity is a point of pride with us and we invite you to join us in protecting it. If you have suggestions as to ways we can further work to increase biodiversity please don’t hesitate to contact us. We are always interested in hearing feedback on improving the environment of the Rideau Lakes area.

    Enjoy the winter. Spring is coming!

    Pam