A true friend of the Salmon River continued

Andy last father's day

Donna McNeil - Andy’s wife, workmate and canoe partner - sat up late one night after Andy died and wrote this:

Over 20 years ago, we bought our land here on the Salmon River.  We fell in love with Tamworth and the river, found this piece of land, and built our home here. Best move we ever made.  Like the Arrogant Worms song, we love our trees, and rocks, and water.

Riverkeeper 

As a sailor, Andy had such a respect for the power of the wind, water, tides, and the sun.  He paid constant and careful attention to weather patterns, even years after he skipped a boat.   His love and respect for the Salmon River was just a logical extension of that.  He so enjoyed observing how it changed through the year, noting water level, temperature and colour changes.  In the winter he cross country skied and snow shoed along the banks.  In the summer he swam in what we called the Mid-Hole. He acted as a spotter for all of us as we air-mattressed down Reversing Falls (Albert's Falls) – see photo of Andy standing in the river – and he loved to greet and photograph the white water kayakers and canoeists as they came down the river in the spring.  Many paddlers were the recipients of his photos of them shooting the falls – he loved to provide people with that unexpected gift and kept a notebook with him to record email addresses.  He made a sign on our land at the falls that said “No Hunting, No Trespassing, Portagers Welcome.”  Hopefully it made the flow-through visitors feel that much more welcome.

From Sailing to Canoeing 

Although he sailed as a young boy in Kitimat, BC and Hudson, PQ, and until his early 40’s from Toronto’s Boulevard Club, he came to love canoeing and kayaking even more.  We never got around to white water, but we portage canoed with a number of couples well into his sixties.  In the navy, he was in charge of and respected ships under engine power, but his true love eventually became messing about in boats that were powered by the wind, a paddle, or an oar.

On our land, we have over four kilometers of bush trails.  Andy planned them out after studying the lay of the land, and how the deer and other animals chose to move about.  We cleared the trails together, and then he watched the formerly tangled bush start to breathe, and the flora start to rejuvenate.  He walked, skied or snow shoed every trail at least once a week.

As he moved about, he created some truly beautiful nature photographs, and was proud of three sets in particular.

Black Rat Snake & Canada Goose

He observed a black rat snake slowly, and I mean slowly, creeping under a Canada Goose that was nesting on an abandoned beaver lodge in one of our ponds.  The snake moved so glacially that the female goose didn’t notice, and he was able to sneak under her and eat most of her eggs.  The male goose, not far away, was looking for other predators and wasn’t aware either.   Andy patiently photographed the event over a couple of days.  Three eggs did survive to hatch chicks – an amazing example of nature’s way.

Great Blue Heron

Teen Heron -photo by Andy Glendenning

Another set of photographs showed a pair of Great Blue Herons repairing a nest in a snag in another one of our ponds, then sitting on the eggs, feeding the small hatchlings until they matured, and finally helping them fledge.  It took three months to complete the photo set, and not once did Andy make enough noise or motion to scare them from the nest.  During a subsequent nesting year he saw that one of the chicks had died, and he actually observed the survivors and one of the parents push it out of the nest into the slough below.

Red Tailed Hawk 

His favourite series of all was of a juvenile Red Tailed Hawk that swooped down to grab some kind of rodent, and then proceeded to hit a tree branch on the way back up to the sky.  Andy was lucky enough to be coming around the corner when it happened.  The hawk was on the ground, on its back stunned, but Andy gave it a branch to grab on to so it could at least sit up.  He kept on photographing, even as our elderly cat (she was 17 at the time, and 20 now) was stalking it, sensing an opportunity to capture the big prize.  He shooed away the cat, kept taking pictures, and the hawk eventually took off again with a great big headache.

He photographed yearly visits from the same Albino Grackle (three springs in a row), our resident deer including the one we came to know as Henry, the occasional elk from Bancroft way, wayward moose, fox families, wild turkeys, grouse, beavers, muskrats, otters, and every bird imaginable including the shy Pileated Woodpecker.  Sadly, he never managed to get a good photo of a bear, wolf, or fisher although he saw them often in the bush.  He liked to keep moving rather than build a good blind and wait.  Still, he was able to get some great shots just by walking softly and carrying a big camera. 

Beavers 

My best guess is that Andy planted about 10 times more trees than he cut down for firewood.  He loved the dead standing stuff, keeping the best snags for the woodpeckers, but taking the rest to heat our home.  The other tree cutters, the beavers, were his kindred spirits.  He loved to observe their various skill levels – some could drop their trees on a dime, and others hung them up one after the other.  He used to help out the latter by getting the trees to the ground, then come back the next day to chuckle at how the beavers had returned and nibbled all the greenery.

He took great pride in heating our home with a renewable source – wood.  One of his favourite things to do was watch for interesting pieces of wood as he cut and split about 6 bush cords of wood a year.  He kept the most promising pieces in order to create some wonderfully unusual and haunting pieces.  Some of his wood art had a more practical purpose, like his candle holders and trivets, but I truly loved the wood sculpture.

Wood sculptures by Andy

More wood sculptures by Andy

Deer Flies 

For all his love of nature, he never felt much compassion for the deer fly.  Based on internet research and some experimenting, he built a deer fly trapping device that mounted on the back of his ATV.  He kept modifying it until he was satisfied with its effectiveness.  On one pass of our 500 metre lane, he could capture almost 200 of them.  As a constant deterrent, he used those sticky hat strips.  I got used to the fact that the back of his head was always buzzing with deer flies stuck on them, but it did tend to gross out some of our visitors.

He was an avid recycler, and a composter royale, with two large bins on the go all the time.  He even set up a composting toilet by the river when we had our friends for camping weekends.  At one point in time, we indoor composted through the winter using a worm bin, and then set them free in his new garden beds in the spring. 

Dinner from a Stone

His gardening talents were really tested when he started to carve garden beds out of the Shield.  It was discouraging sometimes, but he kept at it, finding out what grew best in the hot and dry beds, and harvesting a truly remarkable amount of food for us to enjoy.  Who knew that you can get dinner from a stone?

  One of his biggest regrets was that he wasn’t able to drive in the dark because of bad night vision.  It kept him from getting involved more formally with groups that met in the evenings, but he always tried to help out in ways that he could.  I remember when we joined a group of people on a very cold winter’s day, dragging newly felled White Cedars into piles to improve the Loggerhead Shrike habitat on a piece of land just south of  Tamworth.  That he could do, in daylight.

Retirement: Never! 

In May of 1995, as a family, we planted over 200 trees on our land here in Tamworth, on the first day of his retirement from senior management at Queen’s Park. When he wasn’t picking black flies out of his teeth, he asked when it was that he would be able to retire.  I said never.  And he never did.