Building forts in The Fort!

Our home was the second home built on the 800 block of Third Street east in Fort Frances. Art Debenedet had built the first home and it stood at the corner of Third and Frenette Ave. There was another home at the corner of Third and Shevlin without any homes between. Third Street developed as a baby boomer subdivision.
No roads ran north of Third street east of Phair Avenue. Everything north was grown up bush with lots of willow bushes sprouting up where once large piles of sawn woods dried from the Shevlin Clark saw mill. A railway right of way ran north and south along the west side of Reid Ave. It was eventually sold off for additional homes to be built.
As children, our playground was the bush behind our home. Where Fourth Street now exists a drainage ditch ran east and west and always filled with water in the spring and after rainstorms. Where Fifth Street today exists, a huge pond seemed to have water year round and we chased tadpoles in the late spring.
We had trails throughout the bush that ran all the way to the tracks. They crisscrossed the whole bush. We built “forts” and Tee-Pees all over. Sometimes when a new fort or tee-pee was being built, we would ask our moms to pack lunches for us.
The forts were built with willow shrubbery and would have entrances and roofs. Willow branches were cut with our jackknives and we pushed them into the ground. Our knives were our best toys. We would weave other branches through the branches that were stuck in the ground. The roofs were built from stronger branches with sticks with crotches put on the sides and other stronger branches crossing over. We tied them together with the bark from the willow branches. When enough rafter sticks had been formed to create the roof, we then threw over thatched mats of willow branches.
Hours were spent creating these forts. We competed between ourselves to build the best fort possible.
As eight and nine year olds we got to use a hatchet. That enabled us to shop out branches that at the base were over an inch thick. With enough, we would begin creating a Tee-pee. Three branches would be formed to create a tripod with one of those trees having a sturdy crotch at the top to lay the other two large branches into. The three were tied together at the top. More long branches were then added around to complete a circle. It was tedious work. Once the branches were all in place, we began tying them together with smaller cross branches.
There would be one set of cross branches around the bottom and a second higher up. Once it was sturdy we would again begin weaving small willow shrubbery around the outside. A door was created with an opening that you could crawl through.
The forts and tee-pees became our castles. Designs were refined. We might use them for a week or a month and then we would tear them down and start again. They were never permanent. We never slept in them. They were all out of sight of our homes, but we knew that we were safe in the bush.
A parent would show up or call to us from the lane to remind us that it was lunch or suppertime and we knew that we had to come in before it became dark. We had our boundaries, but we had lots of freedoms and independence.

–Jim Cumming,
Publisher