Calhoun Lodge Videos

Jack Kozlowski and Jeff Taylor provided videos of their visits to Calhoun Lodge.  Jack’s takes place in 2013 while Jeff’s is in 2014.

Jack Kozlowski’s 2013 Visit

Jack Kozlowski a frequent visitor to The Massasauga Provincial Park kindly took photographs and videos for this blog in 2013. I am pleased to share this and hope for those who have visited in the past will enjoy this. For those of you who have yet to visit Calhoun Lodge, I hope the video will inspire you to do so.

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Jeff Taylor’s 2014 Visit

Jeff Taylor, along with Thomas Kirby, his partner, and Amy Sheffield, his niece, visited Calhoun Lodge in late June 2014. This was Jeff’s first visit in over 35 years.

Jeffrey Taylor’s 2014 Return to Calhoun Lodge Part I

Part I starts with a fast trip across Blackstone Harbor, past the grassy marsh and arriving at the front dock. Disembarking Jeff notices an overgrown beachfront before ascending the stairs to the lodge. We given a glimpse of the outdoor surroundings including the stone flower bed and fireplace.

Once inside the lodge we are shown the main living area, the second floor and the former bathroom.

Part one wraps up with Jeff, Thomas and Amy starting their tour of the kitchen, a building rarely, if ever, seen on the inside.

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Jeffrey Taylor’s 2014 Return to Calhoun Lodge Part II

In Part II, Jeffrey, Thomas and Amy continue looking at the winter and summer kitchens and move on to outdoors viewing the woodshed and cold storage buildings before going to the guest cabin.

While kitchen fixtures are out-of-place and in general in disarray, structurally it is as it was when Jo Calhoun built the kitchen. The original knob and tube wiring is still there as are the light fixtures. The icebox is still intact. The wood stove used by Elizabeth Calhoun and Jeffrey’s grandmother for cooking and baking sits next to a “modern” propane stove.

In the back of the lodge is the woodshed and cold storage buildings. Also shown is the lodge bedroom’s foundation; the bedroom itself became a victim of insect damage. In the woodshed sits another wood-burning stove moved there from the farmhouse.

After viewing the rear of the lodge, the guest cabin is next. It takes some time to enter the secured cabin and once on the porch the cabin’s interior is only visible through the windows. The cabin, built by Jo Calhoun for his daughter Betty Jo in 1946, is small with a wrap-around porch.  It was designed primarily for sleeping as all meals were prepared and eaten in the lodge’s kitchen.

The visit to the guest cabin wraps up Part II before moving on to the generator shed and farmhouse in part three.

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Jeffrey Taylor’s 2014 Return to Calhoun Lodge Part III

The third and final part takes Jeff, Thomas and Amy past the wood shop to the generator shed and then on to the farmhouse. Most of their time is spent at the farmhouse.

There are no interior shots of the workshop but there is an inside look at the generator shed.

The farmhouse was known as the caretaker’s cabin while Jerome lived there. When the Taylors bought the lodge it became known as the farmhouse and this is where Ed and Lee Serre resided. Later, when the park took over, park employees resided there.

There is talk that the farmhouse is haunted as well as the surrounding grounds. There are many people who have said they have experienced apparitions of Jerome.

The video ends with Jeff and Amy overlooking Blackstone Harbor where the boat house once stood.

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