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SATURDAY, JUNE 25 TR BY CLIFF PETERS N all of lake-studded North America there is just one lake where a visitor can, in little more than an hour, dine at a Duncan Hines- recommended restaurant, listen to an American economist, a Canadian statesman and a Chi- nese philosopher take part in a panel discus- sion, watch a stately heron stalk rigidly across the overgrown grave of an Indian chief, hear the music of a fine band drift across the waves, and browse through the library of one of the world's greatest humorists. But Lake Couchiching, a long, thin body of water extending like a finger from larger Lake Simcoe some fifty miles north of Toronto, offers the opportunity to do all this and more. For Couchiching is a lake of infinite variety and long history, a lake familiar and yet vir- tually unknown to its visitors from all quarters of the globe. In 1615 Samuel de Champlain came to Lake Couchiching on a journey of exploration and visited the Huron Indians there, watching them fish in the teeming Narrows between two lakes. He wrote in his diary of this lovely lake and the Indian metropolis built only a few miles inland from its shore. While savage wars wiped out the Hurons and drove the French back to Quebec, Couchi- ching was slowly forgotten until its rediscovery - shortly before the Eighteenth Century began and Governor Simcoe opened Yonge street from little York to Holland Landing. Along this road came the soldiers, journey- ing by ship from the road's end to Orillia and from there by way of the old Huron Trail Stephen Leacock home on Brewery Bay. Geneva Park draws visitors from all parts of the earth. that is now Highway 12 to Georgian Bay and the Upper Lakes. Next came the lumbermen before whose ringing axes the ancient forests of white pine splintered and fell and the lake waters filled with great logs being towed to the lumber mills that sprang up on both lakes. From Lake St. John, a scant mile to the east, a great flume brought still more timber felled in the distant forests and floated down- stream. They splashed into the. lake and were herded into booms to be towed to the hungry mills. As the forests dwindled the settlers moved in on the rich farmland. Lake ports like Orillia came into being, catering first to lumbermen, then settlers and then the tanneries and factor- ies. Sail and steam ships plied the lakes until the steel rails of the railroad slowly strangled them and the docks fell silent. Less than a hundred miles from Toronto, blessed with good rail and, later, highway con- nections, Couchiching offered fine fishing and woodland seclusion to satisfy the city family's yearning for a return to nature. Organizations too were quick to recognize these advantages and soca: camps sponsored by YMCA, Anglican Church, B'nai Brith, Knights of Columbus and Ontario government were built. Of .all these camps at least one soon achieved a world-wide fame. Owned and. operated by the National Council of the YMCA, Geneva Park camp each year draws its hundreds of visitors to a series of conferences of which the most famed is the Couchiching Conference of the Canadian Institute For Public Affairs. To the hundreds who visit Geneva Park each summer Lake Couchiching is, of course, a familiar name. But few of these visitors ever become aware that, separated from them by only a few points of land, lies the well-groomed athletic training camp operated by the Ontario Department of Education to train school lead- ers and physical education teachers, where pro- vince-wide track meets are held, and the University of Toronto football squad receives its fall training. Even less do they know of the Indian Reservation of Rama a mile or so away where the ancient Indian arts of basket-weaving and porcupine quill decoration are still practiced. Or that quiet, marshy Chief Island just off- shore is still as primitive and uninhabited as when the ancient Hurons paddled their canoes into its deep coves and lit fires along its sandy beaches, and later tribes cleared the land for an old, old burial place whose gravestones are still discernable, their weather-worn inscriptions still legible. There are many things about Lake Couchi- ching that even year-round residents of the dis- trict do not know. Some are familiar to the hundreds of ice fishermen whose shanties dot the shining lake .in winter, to the Power, Squad- ron boatmen who prowl the secluded bays and coves, to the cottagers and resort visitors who are drawn back each year by the sheer beauty of the lake. But few of these know all of Lake Couchiching. In Orillia's Couchiching Park an heroic and far-famed statue of Champlain gazes eter- nally across the waters he opened to the world. A mile or so away at the head of a lovely inlet with the irresistable name of Old Brewery Bay the great, white, summer home of the great Stephen Leacock draws visitors from near and afar to see the house he built with loving care and the lake he loved to sail through all the years of his life.