Gypsy Heart
Gold Member
Bexley, Victoria County, Ontario Canada
The most salient feature of Balsam Lake is Indian Point, a long blunt tongue of land, a mile in width, which is mark out by Northwest Bay and the Gull River estuary. Just southeast o this point are several small islands, of which Ghost Island, fifteen acres in extent, is the most important. This long, narrow, forest clad island shrouded in legend. It has two Indian mound graves of unknown antiquity. Tradition has also endowed it with buried treasure. According to pioneer lore, certain Jesuit priests had been stationed among the Indians in this part of Ontario and farther west prior to the British conquest of Canada in 1759. When the armies from the south began to close in on Canada, these priests gathered all their church plate together and prepared to paddle with it to Quebec. However, in passing through Balsam Lake they buried it, for some reason, on Ghost Island. The tale is apocryphal .and hard to verify, but was given sue' local credence that several large excavations and dozens of smaller ones were to be found fifty years ago where optimists had been digging for the legendary treasure. The continual interference of Jesuitic ghosts (whence the name of the island) was supposed to have thwart all efforts to locate the buried silver.
The most salient feature of Balsam Lake is Indian Point, a long blunt tongue of land, a mile in width, which is mark out by Northwest Bay and the Gull River estuary. Just southeast o this point are several small islands, of which Ghost Island, fifteen acres in extent, is the most important. This long, narrow, forest clad island shrouded in legend. It has two Indian mound graves of unknown antiquity. Tradition has also endowed it with buried treasure. According to pioneer lore, certain Jesuit priests had been stationed among the Indians in this part of Ontario and farther west prior to the British conquest of Canada in 1759. When the armies from the south began to close in on Canada, these priests gathered all their church plate together and prepared to paddle with it to Quebec. However, in passing through Balsam Lake they buried it, for some reason, on Ghost Island. The tale is apocryphal .and hard to verify, but was given sue' local credence that several large excavations and dozens of smaller ones were to be found fifty years ago where optimists had been digging for the legendary treasure. The continual interference of Jesuitic ghosts (whence the name of the island) was supposed to have thwart all efforts to locate the buried silver.
