MiniMemory: Another Canadian Airbnb

Editor’s Note: Ann continues on with her genealogy project staying in Canadian Airbnbs, each one with its own surprise. This one offered an inviting writing desk for working on her project. 

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I was quite excited to finally get back to Wellington, a lovely small town on the north shore of Lake Ontario. My host had driven me through this Bayfield-like town the first week I was in Canada. To him, there wasn’t much to see. “Too many yuppies had found it and now everything is too expensive,” he snorted. I mentioned that those people might be keeping this little town alive by buying their lattes there and staying in a Bed and Breakfast. Sometimes they start new businesses. After all, it’s a scenic place, with a nice shoreline and a sandy beach.

I didn’t press the point because I had already booked an Airbnb in Wellington for the whole next week. My plan was to rent a bicycle and zip around to the many places where my ancestors were born, or lived, or married, or died. I had found 38 different people in my family tree who were connected to this little town in one way or another.

So, kind man that he is, Patrick Goodmurphy, my host, drove me down to Wellington to drop my luggage and me off at 312 Main Street. It is a narrow wooden house with fine oak doors and the name of the Airbnb on the door: Big Lake Stay.

After I worked the lock box and got the front door open, I went to the car for my things: my backpack, a purse and my hiking boots, meaning to come back for the roller bag. Patrick, raised to always help ladies, struggled a bit to wrench the roller bag out of the Honda’s back seat. He finally got it — awkwardly — into the small entrance. I told him I could handle it from there. To my total amazement, he reached out to give me a tiny hug, looked at me with concerned blue eyes, and said, “Be careful, now.” I smiled and began organizing my things for the transfer to the second floor reached by a narrow staircase.

As he drove off, I heard a strange annoying sound from inside. A high-pitched, squealing sound, actually like a small hand-held planer for wood. The sound was coming from a room with an open door to my left. I glanced in, thinking I’d meet the woodworker, and was startled to see a young man, partly clothed, face down on a table, getting a tattoo. A BIG tattoo on his back. I immediately looked away. So . . . The ground floor of my Airbnb is a tattoo parlor. Hmmmm.

I started to maneuver the roller bag to get it upstairs when the tattoo artist, himself heavily tattooed, leaped over to me, saying “I saw your spry young fella helping you – I’ll bring this upstairs; it looks heavy.” And he did just that, with his tattoo-enhanced smile.

Only on returning downstairs later did I notice what I had missed the first time I came in.

If you can’t read it, the sign to the left of “Big Lake Stay” says “Songbird Tattoo”. 

If Patrick Goodmurphy had noticed the tattoo sign, that might explain the concern I saw in his eyes — concern which was completely unnecessary as the Airbnb and its neighbors are great.

Copyright © 2025 Ann Sigford