Why detour
The village has been here since 1860, and the thing to stop for stands on a mown square in the middle of it. The war memorial was erected by the Corporation of Olden. A centre column carries a bugle and the words The Last Post. One flanking stone holds the First World War veterans and a later list for the Canadian Forces; the other holds the Second World War, and closes with a line in remembrance of the veterans of the Korean War.
Walk up to it and read the names. Two men from here were killed in action in the Second World War, Jack D. Kellar and Adrian Good, and they are cut into the base of the column. Beside them runs the much longer list of those who went and came home: Asselstines, Kellars, Neadows, Hartwicks, Bedores, families still on the mailboxes around here. There are two benches, two field guns, and the Maple Leaf and the Red Ensign flying together.
The Olden Community Hall stands on Mountain Grove Road, and the township lists it under both names, Olden Community Hall and Mountain Grove Hall. It seats 143 across two floors and does what the halls along this highway all do: suppers, meetings, euchre, and whatever the village needs a room for.
The road to Parham
Long Lake Road leaves the village heading south and runs seventeen kilometres of lakeshore and rock cut down to Parham. Motorcyclists ride it for its own sake, and once you have driven it you understand why: it bends with the shoreline instead of cutting through it, the pavement is good, and there is almost nothing on it but water and trees.
Long Lake Beach is on that road, about halfway along, and it is the sleeper of the whole corridor. A hundred and thirty metres of sand, change rooms, a floating raft, and a public boat launch beside it. If you only get out of the car once between Sharbot Lake and Kaladar, make it there.
Know Mountain Grove better than we do? Tell us what belongs here.
