Flashback to the summer of '66. I was 12 years old. My family was vacationing at our summer home on Lake Rosseau in Muskoka, Ontario, an area known for its fierce thunderstorms.I have always been a lover of storms. But one storm caught me unawares. It started like a bad novel: 'Twas a dark and stormy night. Rumblings of thunder seemed far off and fickle. I was in a deep sleep when a flash jolted me out of my slumber. I sat straight up. It was as if someone had flicked the light switch in the cabin we called "the Bunkie." If that was a lightning flash, it had to be close by, I thought. It was the dead of night, maybe three in the morning. My siblings dozed soundly. I ran to the cabin's front window, from where I spied flames shooting through the trees near the lake. I raced pell-mell to the main cottage. Panic-stricken, I roused my sleeping father. "Dad, wake up! There's a fire down at the beach." I raced down the hill, expecting to find a tree split in two by lightning or the boathouse being torched.
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