Family Trips & A Dead Northern Pike

Almost every family trip has some funny tales to tell…

During the Summer of 1968, my Dad said we were going to take a trip to Canada, near Montreal. Truthfully, I think all he wanted to do was take a drive in his ’65 Ford Country Wagon. That and get away from work for a while.

So off we went, driving from Buffalo NY to Montreal Canada. Not without a fight though. Four kids and everyone wanted to ride in the back. It took us most of the day to get there of course… Buffalo to Albany north to the Canadian border and Montreal.

We arrived in the early evening at a small resort outside of Montreal where we had a small cabin and could go fishing and hiking. It was a cool little place on a lake that was walking distance from the cabin. And as I and my brothers noticed, lots of girls with their families. I’ll return to that in a second.

After the first night there, my brother Andy and I decided to go fishing. So we walked to the lake, found a couple of boulders to sit on, and stuck our lines in the water.

As a reader, you need to understand my ‘oldest younger brother’ Andy. He always found something entirely unrelated to whatever we were doing at the time that gained 110% of his focus. In other words, fishing became boring after like 5 minutes.

For example, once, playing sandlot baseball, he was the right fielder. A safe place to put him we figured. Wrong. A fly ball was hit his way. We turned around and there he was… running…