A private fantasy world, rich in local and family history

Home » A private fantasy world, rich in local and family history
Sheri Turner in front of the greenhouse she built. (photo Allison Flach)

Sheri Turner is ebullient and energetic as she welcomes strangers to the fascinating world she’s built for herself near the tiny community of Shebandowan, about a day’s bicycle ride – or an hour’s drive – west of Thunder Bay.

Her immaculate property, called The Settlement, is a house and panoply of outbuildings, mostly painted grey with bold accents of red everywhere. It’s part fantasyland, part museum and also, one imagines, part window into her soul.

“Red’s my favourite colour,” she explains, to the surprise of no one.

When the ConnecTour crew dropped in to stay for the night, we found her providing a tour to a couple of curious naturalists who wanted to see the woodlot she maintains.

Sheri Turner in the forest she maintains. (photo Allison Flach)

The floor of the woodlot is so clear of debris it feels like carpeting that you could lay down and spend the night on.

She explains that cleaning and straightening up is her obsession. It one of the reasons why, although she’s 60, she continues to clean rooms at the Timberline Motel, just a few kilometres down the road.

It would be an insult to say Sheri is a packrat, because all of the hundreds of knickknacks she has in her house has a place and a history. She is a collector with the ability to create meticulous order out of what could easily be chaos.

Above the bathroom mirror are a column of vintage tins that once held aspirin, salve and laxatives: in one bedroom is a collection of paraphernalia from relatives’ service during the Second World War; in another, an original Hudson’s Bay blanket and a tikinagan, a baby carrier Indigenous people used to hang their infant on a tree.

A collection of paraphernalia over the bathroom mirror.

In other places, there’s grandma’s riding pants and books, a retro Coke bottle collection (although she doesn’t drink the pop), quilts, family photos, and scrapbooks full of clippings about family events or local history. Over her red (naturally) fridge, her cookbooks are sorted by recipes that match holiday events, like Christmas and Easter.

She often finds herself absorbed in books about her family history, and explains she’ll often stay up late into the night reading them. “I can’t sleep because they’re too interesting,” she says.

Cookbooks are arranged by theme.

Along with Sheri’s skills as a sewer, quilter, and home decorator, she learned the skill of carpentry from her dad. After she bought the house in 2012, she added a dormer – yes, by herself – and, renovated the old garage, and then created the other buildings that accent the site. That includes a greenhouse, a wistful doll house with star lights on the ceiling for her five grandchildren, a comical outhouse with his-and-her seating, a pergola that has a distinctly resort vacation feel.

Words to fully describe Sheri and her world are hard to come by. So, we’ve video recorded her as she showed off some of the delightful features she’s created and collected at The Settlement.

The ConnecTour crew is traversing across the top of Lake Superior, considered by many to be the most challenging segment of the cross-Canada ride. Watch for more adventures from the road.

5 thoughts on “A private fantasy world, rich in local and family history”

  1. Such an amazing place and story of a beautiful and generous lady. She would give you the shirt off her back. Very down to earth and genuine. A treasure to know her ❤️ She’s a hard working talented lady as it shows in all the outbuildings around her property. Ohhh and her home 🏡 is another work of art and talent.

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