One hundred years in the making
From the time he was three years old, Woodie Stevens has spent every summer of his life at his family cottage in the Thousand Islands, a 10-minute boat ride from Gananoque, Ont. But it wasn’t until his 20th summer at the cottage, when he thought he had the Thousand Islands all figured out, that the islands and the river reached out and spoke to him and changed the course of his life.
Woodie, born Ford Woods Stevens, is today a 77-year-old American, a career dentist in the Philadelphia area, a gentle soul who can spin a good yarn. His cottage, which has been in the family for more than a century, sits atop the highest point on Wyoming Island, some 60 feet above the St. Lawrence River. It features an impressively level stone patio just outside the door, a perfect plateau of Canadian Shield granite courtesy of Mother Nature. The patio faces downriver to the east, but also offers a clear view south towards Grindstone Island, just across the invisible line in the water that marks the Canada-U.S. border.
The Thousand Islands were Woodie’s summer playground as a kid, the place where he learned how to swim and paddle and fish, how to drink and flirt and get in and out of trouble. At age 15, he and his pal Gordie once found a giant anchor stone at the bottom of the river and decided to haul it out of the water and up to the patio. It took them five days.
By the time he’d reached his twenties Woodie was living a carefree and careless life.
