"Skeleton Lake: An Episode in Camp" by Algernon Blackwood

Another story that is not a ghost story despite being in the ghost story section of the book. Guess the editor didn't know what else to do with them. Ah well, it's still an interesting tale even so.

Somewhat surprisingly to me, there is a lake in Canada by the name "Skeleton Lake". Creepy. But it's in Ontario, not Quebec. But it's much too close to Georgian Bay of Lake Huron to ever have been a part of Quebec. Certainly not circa 1900. What changes to Quebec's borders there were in the late 19th century were to the northern and eastern borders, not the western or southern borders.

What we call moose here in North America, apparently you Brits call an elk? But we have another animal in North America that we refer to as an elk. I suppose it could be considered charming that there is so much confusion in animal nomenclature, but it would be handy to clean it all up so that when a given word was used everybody would have the same thing in mind upon hearing it. Perhaps the worst example of this are the big cats - panther can refer jaguars, leopards, or cougars, yet cougars are unrelated to jaguars and leopards. A black panther can be either a jaguar or a leopard, but not a cougar. A Florida panther is actually a type of cougar. Cougars are also known as pumas, mountain lions (not to be confused with African lions, which are part of the panther genus where cougars are not), or catamounts, in addition to panther. Then there's the bobcat, which is actually a type of lynx. Big cat nomenclature is such an enormous mess. Needs a big ol' reset.

Degree of frost: a non-standard unit of measure for air temperature meaning degrees below melting point (i.e. "freezing point") of water. For Fahrenheit, the degrees of frost = 32F - the current temperature

Per wikipedia, the term appears frequently in Ernest Shackleton's books South and Heart of the Antarctic, Apsley Cherry-Garrard's account of his Antarctic adventures in The Worst Journey in the World (wherein he recorded 109.5 degrees [Fahrenheit] of frost, –77.5 °F or –60.8 °C)

The picture used is a photo of a moose hunting camp (possibly taken by William Morgan Jones, circa 1900). The lake shown is in Quebec, but is Kipawa Lake. The existence of Skeleton Lake was already discussed above, but this is a lake that is in Quebec and is showing a moose hunting camp, with canoes even, so it fits the setting in all but name.

To follow along: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/14471/14471-h/14471-h.htm#chapter10