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DUNDELA, Ont. — Nancy McIntosh was running errands on a cool, cloudy, mid-April afternoon, driving the back roads northwest of Morrisburg, Ont. in her white Ford and daydreaming as she went. When it occurred to her that her route was going to take her right past her childhood home in the village of Dundela, for a fleeting second, she considered turning around. Nuts, she knew — but perhaps better than catching sight of the two-storey white country house she grew up in, currently unoccupied, seemingly unloved and sagging into serious disrepair, as is the surrounding 14-acre property.

“I tried to close my eyes when I went by,” she says. “I never go to Dundela. If my grandmother was alive to see the property now, she’d roll over in her grave.”

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McIntosh is a semi-retired high school teacher with short, grey-brown hair, a feisty sense of humour and a black-and-white Corgi named Piers. One late August morning she was at her kitchen table in Long Sault, near the banks of the St. Lawrence River, telling stories about her family and their old place. Apple motif place mats adorned the table; framed photographs of apples hung from the walls; a sign by the backdoor read: “Have an apple a day.” But her name is the most telling clue.