Point Pelee, Leamington summer vacation in 1953.

In the summer of 1953, my parents took my father's two week vacation and drove from Pittsburgh, PA to the port of Sandusky, west of Cleveland, on Lake Ontario where we took a large steamer across the lake to Leamington and Point Pelee in Ontario, Canada, where we rented a cottage on a family vacation with my father's parents and some of my cousins. I was eleven at the time, so the memories are a little dim. What really impressed me was that I had to spend $1.03 in US dollars to get one Canadian $1.00. Also, fireworks were legal then and there, and we bought a few of the smaller ones to set off (presumably, on the beach in the evening). I also still have the Leamington souvenir pin that I purchased back then. It is shaped like an anchor. It had the name Leamington on a white background on top of a Canadian maple leaf, which was itself on top of the anchor. It was brass-colored and about an inch square. More recently, I found a similarly-shaped souvenir for Montreal. It is much heavier and gold-colored.

We did the usual stuff: mostly swimming in the warm waters of Lake Ontario.

Pretty thin pickings down this branch of Memory Lane.

More recently, I have learned that Point Pelee, a Canadian National Park since 1918, is an important stopping off point in the routes in bird migrations in spring and fall. Point Pelee is the southernmost part of Canada. This area was formerly an important tobacco growing area in Ontario; these days, the emphasis is tourism and tomatoes.

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