Paul Gordon

Paul Gordon, the author of this enchanting story, was born in city of Chicago, Illinois in the 1920’s and he was a typical city boy. His only experience with the great outdoors started with his early childhood fishing trips to the local park lagoons where he, with safety pin hooks and packing string, fished for bluegills, sunfish and bass. As he matured into his teens, he acquired more traditional fishing tackle with which he proceeded to catch yellow perch in the great Lake Michigan at Chicago’s shore. The author’s outdoor experiences expanded to include camping on the sand dunes at the south end of Lake Michigan. His camping experiences were greatly expanded during the Second World War when he had the opportunity to regularly sleep under the stars in the mountains of Italy. Upon returning home and enrolling in the Civil Engineering curriculum at the University of Illinois, Paul sustained himself and his recent bride, Ilse, by working as a mapped for the Illinois State Water Survey. While working at the Water Survey, he had ample opportunity to camp on the shores of the lakes whose shore lines and depths he was mapping, and in whose depths he was fishing After graduating from the University of Illinois as a Civil and Structural Engineer, the author took up residence in Chicago and began practicing engineering but with frequent trips to fish in Lake Michigan and infrequent trips to fish in the lakes of Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin. This routine life might have continued on, for who knows how long, had it not been for the great Chicago snow storm of 1967 and its consequential affects on the author’s life as it relates to his introduction to the great outdoors and the wonderful people of Northwest Ontario, Canada, and to his love affair with the island