Lambert Lake
Once there was a lake shaped like a ring, with an island in the middle.
This is the story of the family it is named for, and the long, long way they came to find it.
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Almost 400 years ago, a boy named Eustache Lambert was born in France, probably near the town of Boulogne by the sea.
Eustache never learned to write. When he signed his name, he drew a mark instead.
When he was a young man, Eustache sailed across the wide Atlantic Ocean to New France. The trip took many weeks.
Maybe he watched for whales!
At last he landed at Quebec, a tiny town at the foot of a big cliff.
Next he paddled a canoe up the rivers, far into the forest, to a mission called Sainte-Marie among the Hurons.
He helped the Jesuit priests and the Huron people understand each other's words.
Then a war came to the Huron country. In 1649 the mission was burned, and everyone had to leave.
It was a very sad time.
In 1653 Eustache started over. He made a farm on the shore of the great St. Lawrence River and named it Sainte-Marie, after the mission.
For rent, he paid in eels: one out of every ten he caught!
Then many, many years went by.
Eustache's son farmed that shore, then his grandson, and on and on: six generations, one after another.
That's more than a hundred winters!
In 1792 a baby named Abraham was born on that shore.
When he grew up, he married Rose Angèle Demers, in the winter of 1822. Soon they had a big, busy family.
Then came hard years. A sickness called cholera spread, and some people died.
Hail and bad weather ruined the crops three years in a row, and families went hungry.
Rose Angèle's brother Modeste was a priest. In 1838 he traveled all the way across the land to a faraway place called Oregon.
News came back about Oregon: the weather is mild, and the soil is good for growing things.
Can you imagine dreaming of a place you have never seen?
In 1841 Abraham, Rose Angèle and their six children packed up and set off west.
First came a steamboat up the river. Where the water got rough, they rode a bumpy stagecoach around the rapids.
Next came a little railroad past Niagara Falls. Trains were brand new then!
Then a big steamboat carried them across the Great Lakes for about a week, all the way to Chicago.
A stagecoach and another steamboat took them down to St. Louis, where they stayed all winter.
In the spring, they rode a steamboat up the Mississippi River to Fort Snelling.
From there the ride was slow, slow, slow: ox carts, about fifteen miles a day, north across the prairie to the Red River.
Red River was where travelers set out for Oregon. But that year's group had already gone, and the way west was dangerous. So the Oregon dream ended there.
The family stayed about three years, and their oldest daughter, Rose, got married.
In 1845, on about Day 1,480 of their trip, they climbed into the ox carts again and headed south.
Five weeks on the trail!
At last they stopped by Lake Gervais, north of St. Paul, and made a farm.
Their trip had taken four years!
In 1849 Abraham bought something special: the whole island in the middle of the ring-shaped lake!
The clerk even spelled his name wrong on the paper: Abraham Lombert.
At first, families here went to a little log chapel in St. Paul, this one.
When Little Canada built its own church, the logs came from Abraham's land, pulled over the snow on sleighs.
At the new church, families had to pay rent for a seat. Stubborn Abraham did not want to pay!
So he made himself a folding chair, and every Sunday he carried it to church and back home again.
But the lake did not stay. In 1870 a water company dug a canal to send the lake's water to the city.
Then a farmer dug a long ditch, and little by little the blue went away.
Years later, Abraham's great-grandson Joseph lived up north, in a sawmill town called Cloquet.
In 1918 a giant forest fire came. Trains carried almost everyone in town to safety, and the family remembers that they made it through.
The family also remembers that Joseph's baby daughter, Marjorie, was born the next year in a hotel on an island in the river, in the hotel's bar!
That hotel had made it through the fire. Another island!
Marjorie grew up and had a daughter, Mary. Mary had a son named Eric. That's your dad!
And that's how the story reaches William and Alex.
Part of the land where Abraham farmed is a park now, with a playground right at the edge of his old farm. We call it PARK_NAME!
You go past it on the way to school!
The lake is almost gone now. A little stream called Lambert Creek runs where its water drained away, and your dad's house on Woodview Court is right next to it.
Can you find where the island was when you walk by the creek?