#2: [02-Aug-07]

03-Mar-2001 -- My brother Tim Martin told me about this project in late January 2001 after he had visited 3 confluences in Alberta, Canada. I immediately visited the website to see his entries, then checked my area of Ontario and found that two confluences had already been visited.

Using road maps and MapBlast, I discovered that there were two unvisited confluences within 100 miles of my home in Kitchener, and both looked quite close to roadways. My problem was that I don't own a GPS. So when Tim announced he was coming to Ontario for our older brother's 50th birthday party, I urged him to bring his GPS along, since both confluences are close to London, Ontario, where the party was to be held.

March 3 was a lovely early spring day, sunny and above freezing. My sister Sherri, her husband Steve, and their puppy Gabriel decided to tag along to visit the first site. Because time was limited, we travelled west along the freeway, highway 401, turning north at the Putnam Road exit to get to the confluence at 43N 081W, which is several kilometres east of the village of Dorchester in Middlesex County. After about 2 kilometres on the Putnam Road, we turned west on Road 60 and travelled a little over a kilometre to Hunt Road, where we turned south. The GPS was pointing to a field behind a farm yard.

As we drove slowly past the farm, we determined that the confluence was behind the barn, just off a fence line. We stopped at the end of the lane, and when we got out of our cars, a large dog came running out, barking. We heard someone hammering near the barn, and soon a young fellow came tentatively out to see what we wanted. Tim introduced himself, explained our mission, and showed him the "letter to landowners" that we had brought along. We learned that the dog was named Max and the boy was named George. George's parents weren't home, but he was intrigued and saw no reason why we shouldn't find the spot and take some pictures. We invited him to accompany us to the exact site.

Steve stayed in the car with the puppy, so it was George, Max, Sherri, Tim, and I who walked through the yard, around a large manure pile and out beyond the barn. We walked along the fence line to stay out of the mud of the field, which had been planted in corn last year. The farm is a mixed dairy and crop operation of 100 acres, not particularly prosperous-looking, a fairly typical family farm in this area of southwestern Ontario. A railway line runs along its south boundary, and while we were walking a freight train went by, heading west.

The confluence was less than 10 metres off the fence line, about 100 metres behind the barn. We found it easily and took our photographs. When we arrived back at the barn, we found that George's older brother had come home, so while Tim explained the project to him, Sherri and I went out to the road and took a photograph of the old underpass where the Hunt Road goes under the railway track, a common sight in this part of the country. Apparently the road dead-ends at the Thames River just south of the railway.

While Sherri and Steve headed into London along old highway 2 to prepare for the birthday party, Tim and I went back to the 401 to travel to our next confluence at 43N 82W.