35 7TH LINE ROAD, WOLFE ISLAND
The Essentials
A fantastically sweet Century home on the outskirts of Marysville on Wolfe Island for just under $250,000. The island sits at the very eastern end of Lake Ontario where it feeds into the St. Lawrence River. Everyone should live there (though it would lose some of its charm then).
The Bigger Picture
I wrote a novel, ostensibly a thriller, a few years back, set in the Kingston and the Thousand Islands. There was lots of frantic running about on the ice between the mainland and little bits of land just off Gananoque. And a lot of swearing too. It was a frigid (and maybe also turgid) little affair, that did well enough and yet has always left me feeling that I never really understood what I was writing about. The plot got away on me.
But the landscapes saved the book. And I wrote those long establishing shots - teeming with granite and spruce and the effects of glaciation - pretty well, if I say so myself, and I can revisit some of those paragraphs without embarrassment. The main reason for that is that I was studying this part of the world as a kid in England. The physical geography course I enjoyed in the old manor house just outside Oxford, thick with eager chatter of drumlins and eskers and receding glaciers (really!), and the southern limits of the Canadian Shield, chilled the air so much that I wore an extra sweater most days. Well not really, but I was certainly inspired by the subject matter. And when I arrived in Canada in 1980, timid and curious in pretty equal measure, it was the shape of the land that offered the most comfort.
I must have seen Wolfe Island on maps back then, never realizing that in the distant future I’d be planting my signs in the alluvial dirt out front of pretty little houses like this one at 35 7th Line Rd. I had no way of knowing this is how I’d spend my days, pay my bills, that this routine of listing and selling would be how I measure out my days.
It’s not so bad. Not at all. Quite the opposite, in fact. And you take a gander at the pictures, or drift through the beautifully shot rooms on offer here, and you’ll understand why I really don’t mind the way things have turned out - my recent days full of smooth ferry rides, and listing meetings in bright offices with good people who’ve made and enjoyed something truly lovely that they now want to pass on to new owners.
I reckon this oh-so-pretty 3+ bedroom home at the edge of Marysville would be a mighty fine spot for you to put down some new roots. Or to create a life in which every day feels like your first day on holiday. With its creamy paints and refinished pine floors awash in marine light, and with its smart kitchen like something from a magazine you’d actually subscribe to, this is one you’ll wander through barefoot, pondering your extreme good luck on your way to the front porch with a book, or just to watch those who are forced to live on the mainland making their way into town for the next ferry. The place is immaculate, it really is, light pours out of its every smart angle, and it sits proudly on its green lot.
The house would also make for the perfect summer getaway, a cottage, or you could rent it to those escaping from south of the border and make some money. It would have suited one of the protagonists of my novel too, it occurs to me, if the damn fool hadn’t chased out one day onto the ice as thin as rice paper and sunk.
The Gallery
