Earl McGovern bought the trapline from Charles Robinson in 1946. Word has it that he worked at the Lumber Mill on Sawdust Bay on Pelican Pouch and likely came to know Ottermere from there. 

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He stayed in the small log building beside the old portage until he built his cottage with lumber brought in from Sawmill Bay.

 

Mr. McGovern kept to himself, but did enjoy visitors once in awhile. In the fall he would line the inside of his house with firewood so he would not have to go out. In the winter he would keep a box over his water hole with a lamp inside so the hole would not freeze. He always said if you went outside and the snow squeaked underfoot, it was too cold to go anywhere.

 

Elton Donaldson remembers a crock that sat behind the cookstove all winter full of sourdough starter that was used to make pancakes. It was covered in ashes, which were just scraped aside when the dough was needed. Elton also recalls dodging drying hides that were hanging from the ceiling.

 

Mr. McGovern would leave Ottermere in the summer to work for the Highways Department out of Fort Francis and Thunder Bay with his brother.

 

The last year that Elton lived at Ottermere he would take Earl to the farthest points of his trapline by snowmobile because his arthritis was getting so bad he found it difficult to walk that far. 

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This affliction forced him to give up his way of life at Ottermere and move to Winnipeg in the latter 1960's, where he lived in the Drake Hotel. Elton and Richard Hurley would visit him there. He eventually moved into a nursing home, and passed away in the 1980's.