Originally published in Lake of the Woods Area News, Volume 55, Number 1, Early Spring 2025
Last summer was quite the celebration at the family cottage. We celebrated my dad’s 60th summer on Lake of the Woods. Ruth Bowiec chronicled our family’s journey to Lake of the Woods in her Bee Line article column in the local newspaper for my second birthday, so this isn’t the first time our family story has been told.
As the 1988 article stated, my dad, Robert, moved to Winnipeg in the early 1960s from Kansas City with his parents/my grandparents, Bill and Clint, for my grandpa’s job with Inter-Collegiate Press. Though my dad’s first lake experiences are in Nestor Falls, the fun really began in 1964 with the purchase of the family cottage on Clearwater Bay.
My dad spent his summers and winter breaks on the lake working around the cottage, boating everywhere in a tiny tin boat with nothing more than a lap belt flotation device, fishing with his dad, and making friends he still has today. I love hearing those stories with a cold one on the dock. Though my dad and his family eventually moved back to the United States, the cottage remained. After retirement, my grandparents spent their summers here, much like my parents, Robert and Penny, are now.
Our property was one of the original on Kenricia Road—
lot 14. Until fire road distinctions were made, and now addresses, you could find us by this sign. While it now has no official meaning, our property will always be known as Hab’s 14.
My mom came to the lake for the first time in 1979, the year she and my dad got married. In 1986, I was born and named Suni (pronounced like sunny) after Sunset Country. My name seems to fit me well—I enjoy being at the lake as much as the previous two generations.
My first trip to the lake was when I was just two weeks old. That summer is talked about often—Father Comeau baptized me at Notre Dame Catholic Church in Kenora, I met my paternal grandparents, and I had my first boat ride while my sister, Shelby, swam around the Kendall Inlet Island.
I spent the month of July on the lake until college when summer jobs beckoned, allowing only a week or two. I have since graduated from the University of Kansas (three times!) and am a high school teacher and coach in the Kansas City area. Once my parents leave for another summer on the lake in May, I begin the countdown to my time there as well.
With summers off, I am able to spend the entire month of July on the lake. I’ve recently taken up fishing with my dad and am hooked! I also enjoy rides in the paddle boat, helping my mom and dad with the seemingly never-ending list of chores, a good local brew on the dock, and, of course, reconnecting with our lake family.
Somehow over the last 60 years between moves back to the States, careers, marriages, and children, the cottage remains in our family. I’m certainly blessed that many of my best childhood memories revolve around my time on the lake and my dad would say the same. It truly is a magical place.
The plan is for this milestone to just be the beginning of the story—and that the first 60 years leads to another 60 years. The generational cottage owner is becoming a thing of the past and it’s something that our family cherishes.
I hope to be the third generation of Haberlands on Clearwater Bay at “Hab’s 14”!
