The Mazinaw Rock Collection… More on the Bon Echo Inn — The Ouija Board Conversation

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Reception room, Bon Echo Inn, near Pakenham, Ont., circa 1910Unknown / UnknownMP-0000.726.6

Flora MacDonald Denison, an Ontario-based inn owner said that The Bon Echo Inn had her favorite poet’s words etched forever into a granite cliff. Mac-Donald-Denison decided to model her quiet piece of paradise after the spiritual humanism and democratic idealism of her poet hero, Walt Whitman. She started The Whitman Club at the inn and a small number of people in the Canadian arts world began to see Mazinaw Lake as a retreat.

In the sultry summers of the 1920s, however, bohemian holidayers from Toronto, controversial young artists like Arthur Lismer and A.Y. Jackson, emerging authors, influential journalists having frolicked for some days or weeks in a rustic idyll beneath the great Mazinaw Rock at Bon Echo would converge on what was then Tweed’s Orange Hall to stage one of Merrill Denison’s “rollicking” entertainments.

It took a full day to make the 55-kilometre trip from Bon Echo. The amateur thespians would squeeze into Denison’s McLaughlin Buick for the bone-bruising drive along a dirt road (now Highway 41) to Kaladar where they’d catch a train to Tweed. The merrymakers would mount a quick rehearsal in the Orange Hall auditorium before bedding down in a local hotel.

There are old CBC radio Interviews with Merrill Denison speaking about the bygone days of the Bon Echo Inn and about the curious mysticism that surrounded the place (there are references to seances and ghosts etc) . When I saw clippings of the register I realized that these guests were the very best of the Canadian arts society. I think occultism was much more a part of the mainstream arts culture back then. It kept reminding me of the Overlook Hotel in The Shining…read-The Devil’s Telephone? The Ouija Board or Strange Stories from the Past

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View from a rustic cottage, Bon Echo Inn, near Pakenham, Ont., circa 1910Unknown / UnknownMP-0000.726.7

The Ouija Board 1908

Dear James,

Last night we had quite the scandal at the Bon Echo Inn with the Ouija Board. One dear lady was fearful the thing would call out her husband’s name and that’s why I say I’m going to get a ouija board of my own and hold my seances all by myself.

What’s that?

You thought I had sense enough to not believe in such fool things? Weil I haven’t, and when you read this you know the Ouija Board means well and tries to its level best to enlighten poor suffering humanity. Especially woman hummanity on the subject of the kinds of husbands we have and what they are.

‘What’s that?

A little old piece of rectangular wood 16 inches wide and 21 Inches long and a half an inch thick can’t be proven remotely related to spiritulaism or anything respectable?

What’s that?

I was present at a ouija board seance the other day and one young lady actually had the nerve to ask it of the man she was going to marry would be a bald-headed widower with eight children! And there I sat like a bump on a log. Did you ever hear of such nerve? And what did I ask? I asked the ouija board what had become of all your splendid New Year’s resolutions, and believe me I got an answer that would stagger a sailor.

What’s that?

I shouldn’t be so personal? Indeed that’s what I should be, and why I am I am going to buy me a ouija board of my own to see if I can to find out about some of your antics sir.

What’s that?

You thought I was above such things? I am, but whatever the ouija board tells me l’m going to believe. I am to ask it who you spent that 350 dollars on at Christmas. I mean the $350 that was recorded on one of the jeweler’s bill and which was not for a present for me. When I confronted you with it you denied it and said it must be intended for someone else.The board began to speak in French. You know Ouija Boards have a way of talking in foreign languages.

The Ouija Board called my name, I answered, and then the little planchette or pointer began to flicker and flivver around like a man with delirium tremors, and I grew perfectly faint and sick for fear it would reveal some frightful family skeleton. Suddenly the little pointer ran up and down the board like lightening. Well, it doesn’t matter to me whether you believe in the Ouija Board or not, I believe in it, and when it spelled out these words:

‘Don’t sit in seats 106 and-107 row C at the theatre because if you do some dreadful luck will overtake you!’

I went to the matinee next day and when I looked at my seats they were the fatal numbers— 106 and 107 Row C . Well, I said to myself- I’ll just go and see if the Ouija Board really does know what it’s talking about, and you know what happened?

You had thought I was spending the day knitting for the Red Cross: I lied, I never told you I was going to the matinee and thinking as you did that you had me settled for the day you streaked off with that hussy to the matinee and when we sat down in our seats 106 and 107 sitting right in front of us in our very laps almost were you and that red-headed wench. Now tell me that Ouija Board hasn’t got sense.

What’s that?

Why make home any more miserable by bringing a Ouija Board into our midst? I hope to ask it dozens of things which I’ve so longed to know. How much liquor you drink a day, and what does become of all your money and whom do you spend it on? What’s the cause of your restlessness and irritability at home, and is there really another woman? If the Ouija Board says yes to the last question, then you and I part for life.

Understood Sir?

You always manage someway to explain your actions like you did about being at the matinee that day with that little insolent. But once the Ouija Board assures me of your purpose then I shall take steps at once to free you of the ties which seem so irksome and so unpleasant for you.

What’s that?

You didn’t suppose the Ouija Board would ever be popular with women because it insists upon having the last word? Maybe It’s a womans’ Ouija Board who knows? Certainly a man couldn’t have such inspirations or be able to solve such questions as it solves.

What’s that?

You have no faith in the ouija board? And while you think one good lie deserves another you don’t believe the spirits are coming back from their land of ease and contentment and worry in these stormy times? It doesn’t matter if you believe in it or not. I do. Our spirit friend can send a clue to me about your dates, plans and your general mode of life. It can hopefully solve a few riddles that are worrying the life out of me and causing me wrinkles and strands of grey hairs before my time. That I do not need Sir!

The modern Ouija Board comes from the late nineteenth-century … It became extremely popular in the 1920s. Andrew Boyd, Ouija author & researcher

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View from a cottage, Bon Echo Inn, near Pakenham, Ont., circa 1910Unknown / UnknownMP-0000.726.4

Guests loved to swim and fish in the waters of Mazinaw Lake, or rent rowboats, canoes, or small boats with inboard motors. They often relaxed on the inn’s veranda, taking in the awe-inspiring view.