The Good Neighbour Award
The Kahshe Lake Ratepayers Association has created the Good Neighbour Award, a way to salute the great people on our lake. Cottagers who keep an eye out for one another. Friends who rescue lost docks, pets, even treasured beach balls. Neighbours who chop wood for you. All those summertime and all-the-time heroes doing all the small and large things that make us a real community.
You know who they are.
Now tell the KLRA.
Email the story and details of your local hero to goodneighbour@kahshelake.ca . He/she/they just might win the KLRA Good Neighbour Award for 2021!
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The Kahshe Lake Ratepayers Association is thrilled to announce that Kahshe Lake cottager Steve Rae is the recipient of the KLRA’S inaugural Good Neighbour Award (2020).
It’s the very best start to a new lake tradition.
Here’s what Steve Rae said last summer when the KLRA asked him to write a song for Kahshe Lake. An anthem.
He said, "Sure".
Then – and these are his exact words – “It shouldn’t be too hard to write a love song to a place you love so much.”
That’s how Kahshe Lake came to have its own song. A very, very good song, A song that belongs to everyone now because Steve has donated As Beautiful A Place -- that’s its name -- to every one of us on Kahshe Lake. You can find the lyrics and the music on the KLRA website ( www.kahshelake.ca) Feel free to copy and paste and to sing along all summer. And next year. And the summer after that.
He performed it at Kahshe Cares 2020, the KLRA fundraising event last September at the Muskoka Drive-In. And he performed it on Steve’s Song Garden on his FaceBook Page.
This would have been extraordinary at any time. But it happened last year – during the 2020 pandemic, when we were all raw and worried and needing our Kahshe community. We couldn’t physically gather together, but Steve Rae brought us closer anyway. He gave us music. He gave us our very own song. He gave us hope.
The KLRA is giving him a plaque (see above) designed and hand carved for the KLRA by Tyler Ryan, a young cottager and woodworker who did it because he loves Kahshe Lake. Find him at: woodhousewoodworkingco.
Here’s hoping Steve will display it at the new cottage he’s building on Kahshe. And that every time he looks at it, he knows an entire lake is thanking him.
Here is Steve performing his song: Steve's song.
And here are the words:
As Beautiful A Place. Aug 27, 2020
By Steve Rae
Verse 1
Wake up every morning
to the sound of the loon
On a crystal clear day
On a glass calm lake
The sun filters through the branches
To the forest floor
As the coffee starts to perk
And the cottage world wakes
Chorus:
Step Outside, see the world unfold
This heavenly sight
Never grows old
As beautiful a place
As there ever was to be
At Kahshe Lake with its healing waters
It restores our soul
And make the world okay
As beautiful a place
As there ever was to me
Verse 2
See the boats pass
Give a friendly wave
It’s the thing to do
On a Kahshe day
Water sports, kayaking
Mount Mary jumping rocks
We love to watch the kids
And hear shrieks of joy
Chorus:
Being Outside, we watch the world unfold
This heavenly sight
Never grows old
As beautiful a place
As there ever was to be
At Kahshe Lake with its healing waters
It restores our soul
And make the world okay
As beautiful a place
As there ever was to me
Bridge:
Kahshe Lake owns my heart
Steals my thoughts when we’re apart
It’s hard to show
My depth of love for thee
Verse 3:
But now the shadows climb
Up the granite shores and tree tops
Signalling the close of a perfect day
The streaks of colour shoot
High into the sky
Prefacing the canopy
Of Milky Way
Chorus:
Step Outside, see the night unfold
This heavenly sight
Never grows old
As beautiful a place
As there ever was to be
At Kahshe Lake with its healing waters
It restores our soul
And make the world okay
As beautiful a place
As there ever was to me