Vol.10, No.54, 2007
A Shack In The Woods
by Marie Ouellette

I spent much of my childhood at my grandparent’s house. My grandmother was a brilliant, clever woman who taught me how to cook and how to speak perfect French. Together, we would bake bran-and-raisin muffins, which made the house smell delightful. She grew up on Cobourg Street in the downtown part of Ottawa, and always had a story to tell about her life.

My grandfather grew up in rural Gatineau. He avidly supported the Montreal Canadiens until Ottawa got its own hockey team. A self-taught artist, he carved lovely faces and characters out of chunks of wood. The house was filled with these lovely portraits; there was a blacksmith, a fur trapper, and many Native American faces, each one a wooden glimpse of old French Canada.

There was another piece of art in their house, although it was not my grandfather’s. This one was a painting - as I later learned, it was by Frank Johnston, one of the Group of Seven, a famous team of Canadian artists. The piece was a lovely, lifelike oil painting of a solitary cabin draped in snow in a friendly-looking forest. Both my grandparents were quite fond of the painting. When I was a little girl, my grandfather would show me the painting time and again, hanging over the old gray couch in their den, pointing out the delicate splashes of morning sunlight against the snow and the little puff of smoke at the top of the cabin. It was as though there was a nice roaring fire inside.

The shack in the woods was a comfortable, cozy place. I would sometimes dream of finding the shack, hidden away in a forest that would be known only to me and my grandparents, and that we would live there, in the simple little home with the wood stove and the frosty, snow-covered windows. I imagined going outside to play in the fresh snow, breathing in the crispy Canadian winter air.

As I grew up, I started thinking of the shack in the woods as the penultimate representation of French Canadian spirit; trudging through harsh winters, trying to create a nation, struggling to survive with enough food and heat and yet, surely once in a while, stopping to gaze at the beauty of the snowy landscape they were a part of.

The shack in the woods also became, to me, the symbol of all that is peaceful and cozy. In times of distress, I could always think back to that cabin, and picture myself safe and comfortable inside it. It perhaps helped that the painting hung in my grandparent’s den, proudly affixed above the vintage gray couch, where I would sit with my grandmother and knit a vague scarf-like thing with mismatched colours, while my grandfather, his wrist sore with age, would now carve portraits out of bars of soap. The smell of baking muffins was in the air, probably a lot like the comforting smell of cornbread being baked in a place not unlike my little snow-covered cabin.

The shack was nestled in a forest of tall evergreens; to the left of the shack there was a path in the snow, in my mind created by carriages that passed through these woods on occasion. The trees closest to the path were small, like scrawny little cedar bushes. It was easy to conjure up images of the cabin’s residents, walking outside in knee-deep snow, breathing in cold air fresh with the scent of pine and cedars, meeting someone on the trail who would hand them supplies for the next few weeks or so. Oddly, it never occurred to me to wonder why the shack was there - whether or not it was there for work, to house a family, or to jumpstart a community...for all I knew, there were dozens more shacks just outside of the view of this particular tableau.

Of course, as a child who had often gone walking through fresh, wintery local forests and who vividly remembered the enchanting smell of evergreens, it made perfect sense why someone wanted to live there, be they modern people or pioneers, in an unspoiled chunk of Canada.

When I moved out of my parents’ house and into my own apartment, my grandparents gifted me with the painting, knowing that I loved it just as much as they did.

I was touched by the gesture, and still to this day Frank Johnston’s A Shack in the Woods hangs proudly on my wall, above a beige armchair instead of a gray couch. But it is still to me what it was to my grandparents - a frozen moment of perfect, preserved Canadian history.

They tell us to know and remember our history by reading books, and watching documentaries, and asking questions of all those who know what it is like. For my part, I choose to carry in my heart and mind the historical symbol that is the shack in the woods.