TEHKUMMAH—Evelyn Russell-Baehr’s Island roots run deep. The Expositor ran into Ms. Russell-Baehr at Bluegrass in the Country where she was a vendor, selling her wares as Simple Pleasures. One of the greeting cards Ms. Russell-Baehr was selling features a view of a heritage log homestead.
“Tehkummah was incorporated in 1882 and that’s the first time I have seen records where my great great grandfather’s name was on it, he owned a lot of property in Tehkummah—all down several roads. I have pictures of my dad crawling in the backyard when he was a baby.
Her two sisters and Ms. Russell-Baehr were gifted with 100 acres by her parents. “We built a house on part of it,” she said. But she also inherited the original homestead, which had considerable additions and renovations over the centuries. “I tore it all back to the original logs,” continued Ms. Ms. Russell-Baehr. “I had Jerome Pheasant and his crew from Wiikwemkoong lift the house up, put seven layers of blocks under it. Then he says to me, ‘You can have a crawlspace under there,’ but I said, ‘no way I am crawling under there, you just fill it up with gravel,’ so he filled it with gravel and cement.”
Ms. Ms. Russell-Baehr heats the home throughout the winter. “It costs about a hundred dollars a month,” she explained. “I keep it at around 50 when I am not there, but turn it up to be more comfortable when I am.” There’s a good reason it’s not terribly expensive to heat the heritage homestead despite its rustic and historic exterior.
“Inside, well I can’t live inside with the logs looking like the outside, so I had the late Larry Case come and frame it up, insulate it, put drywall on it, then I bought pine boards 10 inches wide, and I storyboarded everything,” she said. “I told Larry, ‘You put them on the walls an inch-and-a-half apart’ and then I went and put caulking in between. Then I put about eight layers of urethane on it, so it is real easy to keep clean.”
This gave her the best of both worlds—a heritage log cabin homestead on the outside and a more modern and easier to maintain interior. Ms. Russell-Baehr said her home often attracts visitors fascinated by the rustic vision her place represents. “People often stop when they are driving by to ask if they can come look inside,” she laughs. The vendor obviously enjoys chatting with people and can often be found at the many vendors’ markets around Manitoulin in the summer months.
