I was given a key to a guest room that night fully expecting to be back on the road the next morning. Instead I had a meeting with the resort’s assistant manager and Mr. East’s son, Brien, and he asked me if I would like to stay and work there. My first reaction was to say “Hell no!” but after having a chance to see where I was, I quickly changed my mind. Not only was Georgian Bay beautiful – the rocks were White! – , but also, the resort itself was magnificent and there was no way Bucky would ever find me there. I asked what I would be doing and was told “anything and everything”. Sounds good to me.
I then got back into the “Queen Mary”, drove back to #69 and headed south to Gravenhurst. 4 and ½ hours later I was back at the Muskoka Sands Inn packing up my personal belongings fully expecting to be driving back north yet again within hours. But not this time. Oh no. No more driving for this fella. It was flying time. This time Mr. East had me join him and his drop dead gorgeous wife, Annabelle, on the short one hour flight to Killarney. I rode in the co-pilot’s seat and he even let me have a go at the controls. The flight was remarkable in two ways. One, it was so much shorter than driving and the views were incredible. Miles and miles of water and trees. For the first time I got a real sense of the expanse of my surroundings. The plane itself was a four-seater with wheels in its pontoons so it could land on both water and land. We touched down in the channel outside Killarney and bobbed on the water to the resort where we pulled ourselves up a ramp onto dry land. Wow was that easy. I disembarked feeling rather self important and was taken to my new ‘single’ room in the staff residence. There was a dorm and then 4 or 5 supervisor rooms and I was assigned one of them. Although Spartan, it was deluxe accommodation compared to the hovel I had at the ‘Sands’. I unpacked, went to the staff dining room for dinner where I met the handful of other staff then returned to my room and went to bed for 2 reasons. One, I didn’t know anyone and two; I was dead tired from all the travel. It was seven o’clock.
