Houses of the 1000 Islands

Many of the islands in the 1000 islands have houses on them, ranging from simple fishing shacks to quite impressive domiciles.  We took pictures of a few just to give you some idea of life in the islands.  Some of the islands are quite large, in fact the largest Canadian island, Wolfe Island, is large enough to have an 86 windmill  wind farm in addition to all of the houses.  Some islands are so small they can barely support a single house, others are too small for even one house.  The official definition of an island is a body of land that remains at least 3 feet out of the water year round and has at least one tree and one additional form of vegetation on it.

The only house on a small island

Hanging off the edge of an island

Modern architecture goes island

Big island cottage

Even bigger island cottage

As you might notice from some of the pictures above, these houses frequently have garages, just like their mainland counter parts, but the garages are boat garages on the water, not car garages.  Like the houses the boat garages come in a wide range of styles, from a "carport" type to a multi-boat storage facility.  These garages are a necessary piece of domestic architecture because the only way to get to your island home for most homeowners is by your own boat.  In fact many of the real estate listings for island properties saw "boat included."

Boat "car port" with party deck on top

Single boat garage with "driveway" dock for outside parking

Three boat garage

We spent our time in the 1000 Islands at Park Canada docks on Canadian park islands that are only accessible by boat.  This a a picture of one of those docks at one of the islands.  Some docks are only big enough for a single boat, others can hold 4-6 boats depending on the size of the boats.  All of the islands have  walking trails that let you circumnavigate the islands, picnic benches on the docks and sometimes grills and fire pits inland from the docks.  The park rangers will even sell you fire wood if you want to have a campfire at night.

We discovered that the Canadians use these parks to go camping in their boats.  When they arrive at a park, they unload a camp stove, tablecloths, beach chairs and an umbrella or two and set up life on the dock.  Many cook all their meals on the camp stove rather than in their boats.  I found this a bit strange until on of the women I talked with told me her boat didn't have a stove.

This last picture is just for fun.  We were heading up the Bateau Channel from our last park dock heading to the town of Kingston, Ontario when we came across these "bath toys" in the channel.  I'm not sure you can appreciate it from the picture, but these things were big, 3 to 5 feet each I would guess.  I have no idea what they were doing hanging out in the channel but they provided a bright spot in our day.