10. Nan and Richard Buy an Island

Cutting Loose for the Wilderness

Definition of Wilderness: " A region which contains no permanent inhabitants, possesses no possibility by conveyance of any mechanical means, and is sufficiently spacious that a person crossing it must have to experience the experience of sleeping out." - Robert Marshall, "The Problem of the Wilderness," in Scientific Monthly, Vol. 30, No. 2, Feb. 1930.

Nan and Richard's island home on Abram Lake near Sioux Lookout, Ontario, as it looks today. Source: Winoga Lodge, Facebook

 

 

Nan's doctor told her after her surgery in 1939 for a perforated ulcer that she was through with radio; he advised her to slow down. "It's Nan's salvation to live away from the city," he told her husband Richard Morenus. The couple loved the outdoors. "Each summer we'd taken leave for a month and hied ourselves to Canada's bush country to fish and hunt," Richard later wrote in Maclean's magazine, "and in the utter serenity of primitively peaceful surroundings regain perspective otherwise warped by the other 48 weeks of the year spent in the phantasmal world of entertainment." [Richard Morenus, "From Broadway to Bush," in Maclean's, September 1, 1946.]

As Nan recovered from her surgery, she and Richard decided to find a log cabin along a lake shore somewhere in the wilderness. They got out a map of Ontario and traced a road running north to where it met the northernmost line of the Canadian National Railway at the small town of Sioux Lookout. "Here, then, was what we were looking for," Richard writes. "This would be our starting point. No motor road to the north. No railroad to the north. Nothing to the north but wilderness."

"But for two people instinctively gregarious, so dependent upon contacts with other human beings for livelihood," Richard continues in Maclean's, "to cut loose to carve a year-round existence out of the wilderness presented at best certain rugged aspects." At least the town had a post office for contact with the outside world and could furnish the couple with food and supplies they would need to survive.

Incorporated in 1912, Sioux Lookout is located in Treaty 3 Ojibway territory in northwestern Ontario, halfway between Thunder Bay and Winnipeg, Manitoba. The community is surrounded by numerous lakes including Pelican Lake, Lac Seul, Minnitaki Lake, and Abram Lake.

Old Tourist Camp on Abram Lake 

Nan and Richard's cabin as it looked in 2020, now part of Winoga Lodge. Photo courtesy of Kim Clark and Richard Mansfield, current owners of the property.

In 1940, the Morenuses wrote to the Sioux Lookout Chamber of Commerce and soon learned about a nine-acre island on Abram Lake that had once been a tourist camp owned by David and Mary Dubois, general merchants and fur dealers from nearby Superior Junction. The camp was 14 miles by water from Sioux Lookout, and came complete with cabins, and ice house, a storehouse, canoes and outboard motors, and other outfitting equipment. 

Apparently, the camp had proved to be too remote and too rugged for tourists, so the Dubois, who had owned it since 1925, put it up for sale. "Dave Dubois had grubstaked trappers for more than thirty years," Richard wrote in this book Crazy White Man (1952), "and he will long be remembered in the bush."

On November 16, 1940, Richard and Nan bought the Dubois' island, sight unseen, for $1200.

Land Transfer #32793 for Island "F.P. 44," Parcel 9317. Source: Ontario Land Titles, Kenora District.

From the start, Richard and Nan intended to go into the tourist business on the island. In January of 1941, three months before leaving New York for Sioux Lookout, he sent a letter to Herman Stern on the Winoga Lodge and Camp’s new letterhead. “The [tourist] folders have just come from the printers," Richard wrote.. "It tells our story simply and as unpretentious [sic] as possible.”

Letterhead from January 1941. Source: Herman Stern Papers, 1904-1979. University of North Dakota, Chester Fritz Library, Department of Special Collections. OGLMC 217, Series 4, Sub-Series B, Box 10, Folder 13, Correspondence - Dick Morenus (1937-1942).

The Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, May 1941, reported that alumnus Dick Morenus (class of 1917) and his wife had recently bought Winoga Lodge, a fishing, hunting and vacation camp for about twenty people “He says its his chance to at last get free from the jitters of radio broadcasting, do some writing, and run a nice little business amidst his favorite sports.”

NEXT: Preparing to Move to the Island - Click HERE

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