Cape Breton's Magazine

Mystery at Blackett's Lake from a Conversation with John Reppa My name is John Stephen Reppa. I was born in Wes? ton, Ontario. However, my family is originally from here. They are Polish immi? grants. They moved here at the turn of the century. Whereupon, they lived in the Pier, worked in the steel plant. I was born in Ontario because my father moved there to have some work. They moved back when I was about 3, and I've been living here ever since. (How old are you?) I'm 30 years old.. . . (Why don't you just simply tell me the story.) It started for me--I be? lieve it was in 1977, in the very early spring, in February. I was 17 years old, I think, at the time. And, (it) started at Blackett's Lake. Where me and a friend of mine whose name is Lawrence--who doesn't like talking about this--refuses to talk about this with me to this day. I can't find him any more, anyway--he's out West somewhere. However, we were out there one particular night, because my family has a bungalow on the Blackett's Lake. And his sister lived there as well. We were going to an East Bay dance--a teenage dance. And we had picked up a pint of rum at his sister's house. And we were going to go take it to the dance. But on leaving, we thought that it was a bad idea, because there were al? ways police roadblocks out there. So as we left his sister's house, we went --if you're familiar with the lake and its area, you'll know there's a little bridge where it connects with the Sydney River. As we were leaving the lake area, we crossed that bridge and stopped. Now at that time, there weren't any houses or anything around there. There was just darkness, and a ditch on one side of the road, beach on the other. So on the other side of this road, there was a large clear ditch, with a bunch of small alder trees growing out. And that time of year, the crust on the snow was fairly thick and fairly hard. You could walk on it without falling through. And around all the alder trees, there was an area of I'd say about 5 inches across, that went straight down, from the surface down. It was like a clear area away from the trunk of the tree. Now, away from all the other alders in a large clear area, there was this one par? ticular alder tree that was all alone and far away from the others. He saw it, I saw it, we both knew where it was. Upon seeing that, we decided to lay this bottle of rum--not to take with us--halfway in this hole, and halfway out. So it was just halfway in and halfway out, right where you could see it. There was nobody living out there; nobody saw us out there. It was the middle of winter, there was nobody staying in the bungalows that were on the far side, away from it. There was nobody near there. So, we left. We went to the dance, we had a nice evening, we left. We go back to my house in Sydney River. The Late Show is coming on, and Lawrence suggests that we PIPER'S TRAILER COURT Featuring: Fully Licensed Dining Room Laundromat Mini-Mart Ocean-Side Campsites Swimming Pool 929-2233 929-2067 Indian Brook on the Cabot Trail (Halfway between Baddeck and Ingonish) From either direction on the Cabot Trail, plan for comfort and welcome at Piper's Old Manse GUEST HOUSE with Bed and Breakfast