Saturday the 29th is the last full Saturday of the summer, and the corridor has stacked it. At Silver Lake Provincial Park, the 29th annual Silver Lake Traditional Pow Wow runs Saturday and Sunday, gates at 10 and grand entry at noon, with drumming, dancing, food and crafts, all of it volunteer-run. Ten minutes east on the 7, the Maberly Fair goes 8 to 4 on Bolingbroke Road. It’s a strictly agricultural one-day fair, livestock shows and homecraft, this year under the theme The Farm & 4 Hooves. West down the highway, Madoc’s End of Summer Market fills the Village Square at 56 Durham Street from 11 to 3, third year running, with live music and a free kids’ corner. Smiths Falls Ribfest takes the whole weekend, Friday the 28th through Sunday. Then the evening splits three ways. The Marmora Lions hold their annual fish fry upstairs at the community centre on Victoria Street, social hour at 5 and dinner at 6, twenty-five dollars and advance tickets only. ABC Hall in Bolingbroke runs Rock N Rib with a set from Soulfire at 7:30. Maberly Hall has fiddler Pierre Schryer with dancer Danielle Enblom and guitarist Ian Clark at 7. Start the day at the Sharbot Lake Lions all-you-can-eat breakfast, 8 to 10:30 at Soldiers Memorial Hall on Garrett Street, and close the weekend out at the Sharbot Lake Summer Market on Sunday the 30th, 10 to 2 at the covered rink.
Somewhere in there, go swimming. The lakes up here have had all summer to warm up and they don’t know yet that it’s nearly over, so the end of August is the best cold water you’ll get all year. Our pick for a last dip is Kennebec Beach at Arden, off Henderson Road. A shaded grass bank runs down to the water, there’s a picnic table and a dock, and on a weekday you’ll have most of Kennebec Lake to yourself. It’s a swimming spot rather than a boat ramp, so the shoreline is rock and gravel and you’ll want water shoes. If Arden’s out of your way there are plenty more in the beaches and swimming holes guide. Pick one, park, and get in. You’ve got maybe three weekends left where that’s a pleasant decision rather than a dare.
Then a small challenge. Drive a stretch of the 7 you don’t normally drive, and stop twice on the way, in a town rather than at the chains out by the highway. Buy the fries, or the butter tart, or the thing from the artisan who’s been sitting behind a table since eight in the morning. Every one of those places is somebody’s whole year, and whether a main street holds on comes down to how many people driving past decide to become people who stopped. And look up while you’re at it, because this is a glorious road. Two hundred and seventy kilometres of lakes and Shield granite with good farmland at either end, running through towns that make things, feed people and keep their halls open on volunteer hours. We think it’s one of the great Canadian drives. Take it slowly, spend a little along the way, and you’ll see why we’re proud of it and of the country it runs through. Our chip truck census is a decent place to start. See you on the road.