Elayne Burt (June 11, 1959 — Feb 2, 2020)
You probably know Dave and Elayne Burt’s cottage — a little ramshackle, deceptively small, on higher ground just around the corner from Rockhaven. Tongues firmly in cheek, they named it “On The Rocks” and had a sign made up. Elayne always called it the “Wee Cottage.”
Twenty- some years ago when they bought it from Don and Madeline Shay (nee Heaps), it didn’t have an indoor toilet but did have an outhouse. Elayne was fine with that. She’d been a camper ever since her days at the CGIT camp on Doe Lake.
What she loved was the old cedar-lined front room that she filled with games, books, and newspapers and the natural rock nook cradling the cottage, which was called “Mommy Rock.” She also loved Turtle Lake, their secret lake and the source of water, right out the back, just past the pine trees.
She loved the big front deck too. She decorated it with flags and patio lanterns made from Christmas lights and old plastic pop bottles she and her daughter Jenna painted. The path from North Kahshe Lake Road up to the deck was lined – some might say littered – with porcelain rabbits, wooden flowers and much more, all garage sale finds. She loved garage sales and The Elephant Trunk in Gravenhurst. But she hated garden gnomes. Trolls were fine but not gnomes. Her sister Anne dared to gift her with a gnome once. Acting on orders, Jenna threw it down the outhouse. (They had a compost toilet by this time.)
You probably knew Elayne Burt herself. Or, at the very least, chatted with her. She loved people. That is said about a lot of us, but she really did. She loved sitting on the bench on the government dock and chatting to anyone – everyone – who drew up there in their boats. She wanted their life story and she usually got it. When Elayne, Dave, and Jenna went to the Shop the Docks craft show in Gravenhurst, she was always more interested in the artisans than their wares. Dave and Jenna would have toured the whole show in the same time it took Elayne to get to her third booth.
Some of you met her at the Sunday church services that used to be at the barn; others at the lake’s annual craft show. She was the one who decided the kids needed some activities and made it happen; who begged a helluva lot of prizes from local merchants, who made up the signs, and who first had the great idea of bringing Sawdust City and its beer to the show.
She also probably sold you a ticket at Jakestock. Pam Lyon remembers the first time she saw the woman who would become a good friend. It was at the annual Labour Day Jakestock music fest honouring Pam's late brother, Jake. Pam was frazzled, working hard behind the scenes when a woman came up and told her in no uncertain terms that the fire in front of Jake’s brother's cottage was just too damn big. That was her brother Ross's responsibility and Pam told her so. “She was really annoying me,” Pam remembers. “I kept saying to myself ‘leave me alone.’” But she noticed at about 3:30 a.m. when the party was down to half a dozen people sitting around the fire singing and playing guitars that Elayne was one of them.
God, Elayne was fun and so creative. Her license plate was OH BEHVE. But she never did. She organized caterpillar races; she wrote an unproduced play called “Don’t Touch My Panini.” She wrote a story for the CAA magazine about all the other quirky license plates she’d noted long before anybody else was looking out for them. When she saw Jay Leno at Rama for the second time and realized he was recycling all his jokes, she decided he needed some new material to freshen his act. So she wrote some jokes about Canada and sent them to him via a rep at Rama. (She never heard back.) When her parents moved into a retirement home, she created Silver Brain Olympics, an entire Trivia program for seniors. That one she almost got going. Almost. “I’m the queen of unfinished projects,” she’d tell Dave.
Actually, she was just ahead of her time. Elayne was diagnosed with bile duct cancer last fall. She died at home in Scarborough. Her funeral was on February 22. Dave and Jenna thought maybe 100 people would come. There were about twice that. Elayne loved people and they loved her back. Friends from high school were there. Friends from public school. They all had stories about the crazy things they’d done back then, most of it mischief stemming from Elayne.
Nobody wanted to leave. Even after they ran out of food. Elayne would have loved it. She would have thrown back her head, crinkled her eyes, and laughed.