The writer, the reality, the world between
My boys Andrew and Robert (Gravenhurst musicians) have, for years, accepted their father’s eccentricities as “just another day with pop!” When I’m not the ever-brooding writer-in-residence, looking all poetic and mindful, I’m the “collector-gone-mad,” filling every space with old stuff, books, historic documents, art and just about anything else that looks or feels old. My wife knew I was a moody writer and an obsessive collector when we married. She has many different coping mechanisms to deal with either the cranky author or the spending-way-too-much collector. The lads however, have to warn their respective girlfriends and families about their artistic and quite historic father. All you have to say is “my father’s an historian,” and that’s usually enough to peak somewhat adverse curiosity. I initially wrote this short blog for Andrew and Robert….possibly something they can suggest potential inlaws read before they invite The Curries to any bonding event down the road.
When I began work as a fledgling reporter for The Muskoka Lakes-Georgian Bay Beacon, a press operator at our sister publication, The Herald-Gazette, in Bracebridge, told me that I was preparing for a life of “print!” With his hands black with ink and a couple of stains on his upper arm from some printing project that didn’t go according to Hoyle, he told me that once in the writing-publishing game, I would be forever contaminated with “printer’s ink!” While I had no idea what he was talking about at the time, I was interested enough to pursue the statement over three or four conversations with the printer that same week.
What he was trying to tell me was that becoming a professional writer, and working in the weekly newspaper enterprise, had destined me to the addiction of printer’s ink. He said that very few who join the printing-publishing domain ever fully recover from the exposure to the communication industry. “You’ll have printer’s ink in your veins forever,” he said with a hint of dire prediction. It turns out it wasn’t a poison raging through my veins but rather an “inspiration” injected that would command an ongoing relationship in the publishing industry…..until as they say, “dust to dust.” I thought it was an interesting bit of print industry folklore but being strong-willed from childhood, I couldn’t imagine anything so intoxicating that it would influence me over the course of an entire lifetime. Well, it’s within a hair’s breadth of thirty years, since he told me this ditty about printer’s ink, and I’m still in the business. Still writing. Still dreaming up new ideas for blogs, web sites and new books. Was he right? Of course he was! He had printer’s ink in his veins too.
Writing is an absorbing profession and those reporters from my time, who left the business entirely without regret, did not have the deep seeded fascination with the printing industry that I possessed. From my first exposure to the thundering old presses and the smell of wet ink on paper, I was truly mesmerized. I used to wander back to the printing shop of The Herald-Gazette at coffee time, to watch a project run through the presses. Might have been a book or a magazine, even a small newspaper. Our main paper was sent to a larger company with a much more elaborate press. I enjoyed watching the presses in action and the expertise of the printers who danced around those machines with grace and speed, watching for over-inking, poor inking, and a botch-up in paper delivery through the machines. It was a fascinating opportunity to watch a book go from blank page to the printed, compiled and bound word…..packaged in an attractive cover.
It wasn’t until I watched one of my own books being run through these machines that the issue of “printer’s ink” had now truly impressed upon me. I was thoroughly and agreeably contaminated by the enterprise of writing and publishing. I had gallons of printer’s ink in these veins. After all these years and a collection of published works that now easily touches the ceiling here at Birch Hollow, I now fully appreciate what it meant to marry the publishing industry. My wife and family certainly appreciate the extent and murky depths of the writer’s abyss. Of course I don’t think of it as an abyss but rather a profound, unyielding, dynamic obsession. Is that a good thing? Maybe not! Not much I can do about it now, seeing as my life-force chemistry is ten percent natural blood, ninety percent printer’s ink. I can write a story by using my fingertips.
Every now and again some fledgling author will show up at my doorstep, wondering if I would be willing to share some wisdom about the writing industry. How can I explain the significance of “printer’s ink?” How can I soft-sell how it determines the life-committed writer-authors from the “happenstancers” who will never fully adopt the writer’s lifestyle? A way of living, which by the way, is as much handshake acceptance of poverty and untold future suffering. How do you explain to some wide-eyed “keener” journalist the torture yet to come; the miles to be traveled often for little more than self gratification, and the occasional byline that recognizes persistence only.
I’ve scared off quite a few writers in my time and I’m so pleased to hear they’ve found more profitable, gainful employment far from the pungent aroma and stains of printer’s ink. There are occasions when I happen upon some half-deranged soul determined to make a go of the writing game. They listen and seem to understand what it will cost to commit to the mindset of the writer apprentice. What it means to live with the quirks of the creative process every second of the day. The horror of not being able to shut it off just because you’re exhausted. In the dim light of the midnight hour, you might have just sat down to the keyboard, necessitated by inspiration, fueled by the thought this might be the start-up to the long anticipated novel. Maybe not! Just a false alarm. There’s nothing on that start up page but the brightness of the computer monitor. No opening line. No poetic beginning. Just another failed attempt to wrestle inspiration from mind to screen, ink to paper. I tell them to view the movie, “The Lost Weekend,” to stress the point there’s more suffering enroute. Just wait!
I’ve had a few other writers show up in tears about yet another rejection of a novel submission, or failed job interview with the local press. “Suck it up,” I tell them, with a grumpy, seasoned growl. There is no way of diminishing or soft-landing the heartache of writing failure. It’s part of the sculpting exercise to create an enduring author; one willing to suffer deeply for the most minor success, the most miniscule credit in a published work.
For the past 30 years of sundry publishing credits and a few memorable moments of recognition, I have wandered around in the stupor generated by creative enterprise. I have never arisen from slumber one day since, feeling anything but a tired, frustrated writer. Each day, as I wander through the exercises of productivity and self preservation, I do so as a writer, ever watchful, always creating story-lines for new projects, looking for inspiration for the next paragraph of an ongoing body of work. Sometimes I pull a great idea out of the air that smacks of decent authordom, and I will race to put it into print. Too late! Old age has fried my retentive capability. A blank page in an old Smith-Corona used to make me crazy. Now it’s this infernal white screen inspiring nothing but snow blindness.
As tangled and mired down as one can come to feel, when thinking about this crazy profession, I have long given up on the idea of evacuating all this printer’s ink, to make room for normalcy, complacency and a sheltered existence. I carry-on, the weary foot soldier of writing enterprise, hoping for the next big break….the words that come after the title and the byline, which resemble something of a story…..anything that might employ the grand presses to engage printer’s ink onto every blank page in sight.
I’ve often wondered if the pressman, who told me about the haunting of printer’s ink, was looking for a wayward soul to harvest for his master. It’s been a semi-hell ever since. Yet despite the brimstone and carnage, it’s had its moments. The uncomplicated joy for example, of blogging these dark secrets of authordom, under the influence of printer’s ink!
Now back to the eternal quest for the grail! A book deal and something to write about!
Note of explanation: While it’s certainly true the writer, any author anywhere in the world, suffers for his or her craft, I have never once succumbed to doubt….the doubt that maybe I should have tried something other than writing. I’ve enjoyed all the ups and downs and as strange as it may read, I’ve always felt the suffering, the anxiety and sudden bouts of depression were part of the writer’s life…..a writer who doesn’t wear the profession’s scars like badges of merit, is unworthy of being called “an author.” I’ve never once asked my sons what they think of dad as a writer because I know for fact they don’t read my work. Suzanne will only read a piece I’ve composed if I ask for her opinion. For all they know I could be writing pornography. I don’t blame them at all. Maybe when I’m dashed out of this mortal coil they’ll reminisce about good old dad by reading a few of these blogs at my wake.
Thank you for visiting this blog-site.

Please visit my other blog at thenatureofmuskoka.blogspot.com

History uncensored is more than some can take

Working from my cluttered, Dickens-like home office here in Gravenhurst, I seem to have a fair amount of time to reminisce about how it all began. How this writing affliction came about in the first place. How in the world I got caught up by this obsessive mission to keep notes for future posterity. What is it that commands me to this keyboard every day, whether I’m up to a writing jag or not? I keep threatening my adversaries that with all this time-flexibility, one day soon I’m going to pen a tell-all book about the local power elite, and their shenanigans dating back to my early reporting forays into their magic world. I just might. I don’t think it would make a best seller by any means but it might curtail some of the big-wheeling, cavalier, “screw-you” movers and shakers free-ranging here in Muskoka.
Back in the days when I worked for the local press, I had a fairly limited editorial capability. I had a beggar of a time doing my job, conscientiously, telling the news, and giving honest, well researched opinion while at the same time making sure it didn’t offend the multitude of VIP’s, their friends, the political honor guard and the local clubs and institutions that might be angered…… if as they say, the editor colored outside the line. I did it all the time just to see if they were paying attention. I snuck quite a large number of stories through just before the crunch of press time, when my overseers had ducked out early for a normal dinner hour in a comfortable setting. Editorial staff and layout artists had to stay frequently to nine or ten on a press night and on a few miserable occasions until midnight. Seeing as I was boss and I couldn’t resist the temptation to exercise true freedom of the press, I’d often find a little extra room for a story that might not have made the flats in preparation, earlier in the production day. Management was known to “pull” a story because of some disruption it might cause in the community, or some chagrin it could bestow upon a faithful advertiser……one looking for any reason to hate our publication or score an ad for free on account of hurt feelings. I got tired writing to suit the wants of so many. I put my job on the line a thousand different times because I adamantly believed inclusion of a particular, maybe controversial story, deserved the light of community-wide readership. By golly that meant for some interesting press mornings with a lot of tell-tale whining, door slamming and statements in anger that usually started like, “I can not believe you ran that story Currie! I oughta fire you right now!”
I’ve been out of the day to day operation of local newspapers since the early 1990’s, and it’s taken quite a few years of contemplation and reflection to appreciate just how much fun it was dodging and darting through the management’s many advisories, and ever-changing, hour by hour protocol. What kind of stories should we run in the community press, and what stories should wind up on the paste-up room floor ….,or on the bottom of the publisher’s shoe?
I had the privilege of working with some exceptionally talented writers who were miles ahead of me in capability. Each of my staff members was highly skilled in research and story development, and when they composed a piece, well, it was pretty much an editor’s delight. Few errors if any, and so well composed that I felt guilty getting a paycheck for pretending to edit. They did however, ride me pretty hard about challenging authority, a more latent skill I’ve honed in the past decade. I was the go-between on many stories, and feature article proposals, trying to seek approval of management to provide space for what might bring a tad more response from readership than the usual two or three letters a week. I loved representing their work but despised the mountain climbing it took, to sell an idea especially if it got too close to a sacred, sensitive wing of the community, they were bent on protecting.
Here’s an example. When I got a new reporter there was always that period of adjustment, which always seemed more for our paper because we needed first of all, to explain the pillars of local society we had to respect….the people we had to please and businesses that needed to be stroked constantly. I hated myself for these start-up tutorials but they could see by the twinkle of a rogue’s eye, I didn’t always follow the rules as set down by the big cheese. On one occasion I was asked to edit through this chap’s critique of a play he had attended, put on by a local summer theatre. It was handed to me by management with the request I provide a little attitude adjustment to the rookie scribe. He had been absolutely ruthless in his review, enough to make any director cry, any performer quit the profession. I had previewed the production myself and his reference to it being parallel to a “rail disaster,” with “toxic fuels leaking out,” was pretty much how I would have written it….with a few compliments sprinkled in just to hang onto that contract ad. He was bang on most of the way through the article but we in the community press (during my years) never used words like “awful” and “of little talent,” to describe a performance by one of our major summer season advertisers. Now put yourself in my shoes, and imagine what it was like trying to tell a high ranking university graduate, in journalism, why he had to give a somewhat more pleasing, encouraging review…..or he might lose his pay envelope. “If they pull their ad contract, they (management) will pull you,” I explained.
Just before you judge us as sell outs to truth and honesty, we always found a way around management protocol. In fact, because I worked with some fine writers with great futures ahead, we simply wordsmithed our way through each week. We got so good at using positives as sarcasm, and writing honestly with subliminal messages that nobody knew at first reading, just how we felt about a particular performance, theatre or musicale, because it was so damn positive and light-hearted. Of course we had a number of intellects out there who let us know they appreciated our sly methodology of slipping a negative review into a smooth silk jacket. While the backers of the show, sponsors and actors thanked us frequently for our enlightening reviews, those who saw through the veil of flamboyance found clear evidence we hated the production, and could offer no reason whatsoever why any one would wish to attend.
I did this for eleven years. It was a laugh beating management’s protocol simply by being half-arse intelligent. Imagine how it must have felt to be sent out to do a business promotion (always in return for an advertising buck), interviewing some guy with one foot on a banana peal (business in the pooper), telling me about the great comeback he’s making. “Business is good,” he’d say, looking to make sure I was writing it down in my note pad. I can’t tell you how many times I was the last bloke (who gave any appearance of being a potential customer) in their business before it folded. I was the “management –forced-me-to-interview-you guy,” with the notepad soon to be filled with amusing anecdotes and doodling.
The problem I’ve carried further into my life’s work as an historian, is this century old (or more) habit of the community press and hobby historical types, rounding off fact to suit the requirements of the audience. We used to call it the “good times were had by all,” standard of operation, and it really screws us historians up today, trying to figure out what actually did happen, and what was the honest impact of a significant event. What angers me the most is that this “good news” pre-occupation to please advertisers is still a hale and hardy reality in the local media. I have to keep reminding myself I was part of the problem for quite a few years, being worried about offending the world around me who apparently all signed my paycheck.
In some ways I suppose, I have become in this sense, an historical revisionist simply by necessity. A lot of details of local history were smoothed and withheld for a wide variety of reasons, and there is no question there are miles between what has been recorded in newspapers and many early books, and the accurate descriptions of a particular event or tragic situation. I can find many occasions when news was sanitized, censored or omitted entirely because it was decided by the publisher at the time, to be too controversial or revealing for the good of the community. For example, there are many sources for the keen historian, to find out more about the appalling poverty and death due to starvation that occurred in Muskoka for decades, without any serious recognition at the time by the local press. Was it lesser news than details of the agricultural society meeting or town council minutes( which by the way always got lots of column space)? By using dozens of sources one finds out fairly soon into research that death by malnutrition was fairly regular from the early homestead days of the late 1800’s into the 1930’s (and to a lesser degree after this). I have read numerous privately published pieces and journals that draw attention to this period of suffering, amidst the pomp and circumstance, the elegance and extravagance of Muskoka’s famous resorts. You’ll find out a great deal of information about the resorts but not about the inherent suffering trying to eke out a living on a Muskoka farmstead.
Each year for about the past decade, I have helped three or four university students annually working on research projects regarding some aspect of Muskoka’s history. And each time I blow their minds by refuting much of what they believe to be the truth about the settlement of the region, and the true economic picture as it was characterized by some historians determined to put our region in the best possible light…..forever. Here I come and rain on the parade. Can’t help it! While I do confess to the positive reinforcement of some articles to please the audience back in my non-glory reporting days, I’m sworn off down-playing anything I happen upon. If you’ve heard that I’m a stickler for detail and a disturber of epic proportion, it comes from those who adamantly believe that you should never let “truth get in the way of a truly good story.” I’m tired of truly good stories and far more interested in seeking out the truth from what fiction is presented. There’s a ton of it to go through but I’m far more patient these days. Now that I work for myself.
I have considerable knowledge about the trials and tribulations that occurred in Muskoka from the 1850’s to the present, and it bothers a few of my contemporaries that the cork might indeed be out of the bottle. Simply stated, I don’t cover up or censor historical fact to please any one at any time, and when I’m asked to assist on a research project, or to advise about a particular time or struggle in history, I have nary a reason to harmonize any information for consistency’s sake, to make a sad tale seem inspirational.
I have become a watchdog today for those who interpret history by their own standard of misinformation. I make notes for posterity. I have confronted many hardcore revisionists recently, making real news read like poetry, and the reception hasn’t been all that welcoming.
So fire me!
I will never misrepresent historical fact. I will never admit to being perfect and I will correct any error so that it does not become an historical obstacle to researchers who follow me.
Thanks for taking the time to read this January 2007 blog editorial. Please read my other blog www.thenatureofmuskoka.blogspot.com

New Highway II overpass in Gravenhurst could be major change in tourism history

Gravenhurst made its history as a “jumping-off” place, where the traveler arrived by stage or rail and boarded a Muskoka Lakes steamship for the rest of the journey by water to points on Lake Muskoka, Lake Rosseau and Lake Joseph.
When rail and steamship travel became less necessary to the movement and service of the tourist trade, with new roads and rail-line extension, Gravenhurst began to lose its “hub” relevance. Increasingly over the past sixty years, our town has been bypassed by the motoring public, enroute to their lakeland destinations near Port Carling, Port Sandfield, and Rosseau. Although I don’t have traffic statistics to back up this claim, it would be hard to deny for example, that moving old Highway II, to bypass the urban area of Gravenhurst (around Gull Lake) meant a substantial, ongoing loss of potential business traffic. Instead of turning into Gravenhurst to get to the above mentioned communities, cottagers and tourists in general seem to prefer exiting at Bracebridge and Highway II instead.
The newly proposed overpass and exit into Gravenhurst could dramatically effect this traffic flow through Bracebridge, and instead help create new interest in the Highway 169 route through Torrance, Bala and Glen Orchard to the intersection with Highway 118. The commercial node planned in area of this new overpass and exit will be quite encouraging to motorists interested the Muskoka experience (off the major highway) sooner, and a short drive will put them at the new Muskoka Wharf facility and many options there for a traveling respite (dinner by the lake)….while listening to the lap of waves against the shore of Lake Muskoka.
It could be the case, if Gravenhurst takes full advantage of this huge new opportunity, that we will again be a more recognizable “jumping off point,” one that in 2007 onward will encourage visitors to linger a wee bit longer in the town’s commercial and service quarters, than has been evidenced by statistics in the past few decades. As many seasonal residents and visitors already enjoy, Gravenhurst can be a fulfilling long-term vacation destination. The highway realignment is a critical new reality for the historic Gravenhurst downtown, and a great boon for new development through these upcoming commercial nodes. Despite what other Muskoka communities have done to draw business to their communites, Gravenhurst could siphon a great deal of new commerce by employing sensible and attractive signage pointing the way. An upgraded business plan developed and implemented by amalgamated commercial interests will allow the community at large to take advantage of this exciting new-age opportunity.
As an historian, I know this is a precedent setting era for the welfare of the next century…..unless the Doomsday Clock has something to do with our fate sooner. There is a very real possibility the planned changes to Highway II will finally restore some long-lost heritage to Gravenhurst, as the first major community of Muskoka. This will be Gravenhurst’s decade and there should be much less whining about opportunity denied! Help shape the future of this town in transition by getting involved. Get off the fence and help where you can. Saving our high school seems to me a great place to start,
Thanks for joining this Gravenhurst blog site. More to come.




Has the writer lost his mind – he’s supposed to hate urban development

It has often been said Gravenhurst has been frozen in the 1950’s, while our neighboring communities have been fast tracking into the new century. And while I never thought that was a terrible thing, because I happened to like the 50’s, when it comes to living in a town full of despair, and business failures, it does become by necessity, a mission of restitution and restoration to encourage the infusion of opportunity. If my present hometown is going to fail economically, because of the aggressive commercial developments to the north and the south, then it is the justification to make improvements. I’m an environmental watchdog don’t kid yourself…. and I don’t agree with the senseless, for profit only, destruction of Muskoka hinterland on a lark. Strip balls impress be the least especially when the land it claims was a thriving and important green belt. When however, I see this wonderful little town, which has worked so hard to protect its heritage and integrity, despite many external pressures, this new development period has many more positives for the people who need it the most. We do need to provide a good working and investment base, in this town, in order to provide employment opportunities for our sons and daughters, many who do stay on after high school and post secondary school education. We need to show these inspired graduates the advantages of investing their futures here…reasons for them to open new business and industry; to build houses here, and to raise their own families in this beautiful region of Ontario. My two sons have invested here by opening their own business. They already have expansion plans after only one year on the main street of Gravenhurst.
I can put my differences with developers aside, when it is a matter of economic survival, not simply land-sharking at Muskoka’s peril. If ever there was a time for Gravenhurst citizens to get off the fence and cease complaining, it is now, today, this moment, and turn that energy into a pro-active relationship with municipal governance, so future development becomes reflective of our values, not solely the image desired by investors….the ones disinterested in our hometown values. Don’t underestimate the significance of citizen action and lobbying in order to fulfill our greatest urban needs.
While I’m always upset by sacrifice in my community, and confess to feeling profound nausea when a bulldozer wipes out a lowland in a day’s work, I do know when change becomes necessary and it may not be the change that suits my local politics and environmental ethic….yet if it helps the community survive and maintain its historic integrity at the same time, then I would gladly volunteer to help a business retention and expansion initiative. It doesn’t mean I won’t try to save open space and fight tooth and nail against anything that smacks of cash-in-lieu of parkland (my longstanding argument against selling parkland dedications) but it has become crystal clear our future is in serious peril if we don’t fight back with sensible proportion, to make Gravenhurst as appealing to investment and commerce as possible. And this is an historic initiative, in my ballywick, and I would love to see Gravenhurst reclaim its past as the true Gateway to Muskoka.
If that makes me a hypocrite, then I stand guilty as charged. No one will ever accuse me of disloyalty to my hometown, past or present!

Please visit my other blog at www.thenatureofmuskoka@blogspot.com

Gravenhurst in Winter’s Embrace

It’s one of those damp-cold days you hear oldtimers talk about, a seeping-in hurt that penetrates your bones. I’m told it differentiates us in climate from the Arctic, where it is a drier less invasive bitterness. All I know is that this latest trip out with our dog Bosko was damn cold, and my fingers are still numb. I’m kind of fumbling at the keyboard as I can’t feel any sensation in my fingertips. On my errands today I’ve already been cold, hot, chilled to the bone, too, too hot, even colder with ice forming in my beard. Now I’m feeling winter-saturated sitting at this computer keyboard. A Muskoka winter has always meant curious extremes and this year has been no exception.
A few weeks ago most people had given up on the normal fare of a Canadian winter striking us here in the hinterland. While I do appreciate the effects of global warming, I knew this was just a weather anomaly and a green period of extended autumn I’d seen before. As is usually the case, a Muskoka winter is can unleash severe conditions, whether it is short or longer is the subject of debate. A shorter winter can be brutal versus winter that arrives in ice late in November, and remains moderate until the first weeks of April. These have tended to be fewer in the last half of my lifetime than shorter, with profoundly harsh shorter-term winters. Even after only several weeks of what I would call tough winter weather, most around here have forgotten the dry spell at Christmas, and the growing grass of early January. As a number of sage individuals, with considerable credentials in winter survival used to tell me, a late winter is always more dramatic when it finally arrives than the long drawn out affair that commences shortly after Hallowe’en.
With numerous business interests between our home here in Gravenhurst and Bracebridge, I am in and out of vehicles for a good portion of the day. I get to see a lot of Muskoka nature on the drive in between the two centres, and on many occasions I can’t resist a stop at Muskoka Beach, to admire the snowfield and colorful fish huts sculpted into the drifts on Lake Muskoka. There are many places along the daily trail that I find amazingly beautiful this time of year particularly, including the cathedral maples further up the Beach Road, a short distance from the intersection with the narrow lane that connects to the Stephen’s Bay Road, and eventually the Muskoka River. The scene is tranquilizing all seasons of the year, but in February it is quite enchanting, the boughs laden low overhead by newly fallen snow, the cathedral effect quite impressive.
I might argue with my wife Suzanne that it is a great hardship having all this running around to do, but truth be known, I can hardly call these sightseeing ventures “work,” by traditional definition. I arrive back home with many new observations that are soon to wind up in columns like these, some for publications in Southern Ontario where readers seem eager to know Muskoka’s seasonal happenings. In the summer season, Suzanne and I stop frequently to snatch some “actuality,” having a picnic while watching a windswept meadow flower-forth in afternoon sunglow. It’s a little chilly for dawdling this time of the year but an experience I wouldn’t sacrifice by reducing travel miles and opportunity. I have watched storms thundering across the farm fields in early summer, and been ecstatic to come upon wild turkeys grazing on the hillsides during the chilled mornings of late August. I’ve had the pleasure of chasing rainbows to their end in early September, and been thrilled to see the painted leaves of mid-autumn. So far this winter, I’ve driven through snowstorms and freezing rain, coming upon an almost concealed roadway at times, and then as suddenly and profoundly as the blizzard roared across my path, be amazed at the other end to find a tranquil sunlit scene as if a world apart. I have driven on evenings illuminated by a full moon, and been impressed beyond words, to find the country farmstead bathed in milky white from horizon to horizon, the grey plume of smoke from the chimney rising straight toward heaven. I have seen the snow covered cedars being shaken clear by the wind, and felt comfort watching the sunrise engage the crystal ice of the winter forest.
It’s true, of course, that I will find any excuse to explore this amazing District I call home. For work or pleasure, it’s always an experience, in this pleasant and invigorating embrace of nature; snowing but calm this very moment, as I prepare for the next road-trip to somewhere down the road.
Thanks for taking the time to read this blog submission. More travels to come.

Please visit my other blog www.thenatureofmuskoka.blogspot.com

Gravenhurst could make huge gains in the tourism industry this decade – if so desired

For the past fifty years in Muskoka, economic development committees attached to local municipal government, have been attempting to find diversification in the local economy, such that one day they could proudly state, with statistics to back them up, that no longer is tourism the number one industry in our region.
While I have always appreciated their widely supported and substantially funded mission, to seek out the kind of investment in industry that would provide an outrigger should tourism ever diminish, my feeling generally is that the effort has only ever been partly successful. The mission for example to draw Corning Glass to Bracebridge in the late 1960’s, early 70’s, was monumental for the economic development interests of the time, just as it was a staggering blow when it was announced the plant was about to close only a few years later. While there has been much more industrial interest in Bracebridge and the wider region, there have been some heart-wrenching failures. They aren’t extraordinary failures but rather what you should expect of small satellite plants in the ever changing dynamic of a global economy.
I’ve been preaching this for decades now, to anyone who would listen….and there have been a scarce few of those…… but despite the poor audience, I will make the claim once again. Tourism. It’s our number one industry. It has been our number one industry for well over one hundred years, with the exception of a brief period of lumbering buzz which cleared away huge swaths of our forests during the late 1800’s.
I have found myself in hundreds of debates over the years, with local self-assumed experts who stubbornly claimed manufacturing in Muskoka could be a serious challenger to the domination of the tourism sector, as the leading money maker for the region. I could spend hours on the topic and undoubtedly write my way to a cyber space moon, and still fail to impress upon local pundits that they’re wrong to believe we can support ourselves now or in the immediate future on the revenues and investment of local manufacturing. I think it dates back to the development of tourism generally, and the “master-servant” relationship that manifested initially from the necessity to assist a local population’s economic survival. Many Muskokans with family ties back to the pioneer economy of this Ontario frontier, are understandably sensitive about the “master-servant” reference, and with some validation….., it does still hurt to think of our tourist economy’s beginnings as a luxury for some, a hardship for the hosts.
Settlers to Muskoka had no choice but to find immediate solutions to the very real questions of pending starvation. Many settlers pulled out of Muskoka after their first winter homesteading because of the harsh environmental conditions. If we had accurate statistics on the number of homesteaders who fled out of frustration and failure, we could get a better understanding what a settler and family had to face in this newly opened Ontario bushland of the 1860’s. The reality pioneers embraced economic incentives from those who wanted to attend the hinterland to enjoy sport and leisure, is early proof invention was born of necessity. As far back as the 1860’s, it was obvious that while homesteaders were hacking out farmsteads, well off sportsmen were angling in local lakes, in need of lodging, food services, and guiding. While this is not to suggest every pioneer supplemented their family income by catering to the tourist class, they most certainly participated in secondary interests, such as the surging lumber industry. Many struggling pioneers headed out to the winter logging camps, leaving their families to struggle for survival on the homestead until spring. Thousands of homestead fathers and brothers never came back. Even today logging is a dangerous occupation. Think about it back in the 1880’s, without medical assistance any where close. When the logging industry began to decline, tourism was already beginning to blossom. Instead of going to lumber camps, to supplement their incomes, many more struggling familes found work with tourist homes and the early Muskoka resorts, from doing the carpentry work to supplying produce. Henry Longhurst Sr., of Windermere, used to delight in telling me (as a fledgling historian), about his work ethic as a young man, rowing his boat of farm produce around Lake Rosseau in the summer, cottage to cottage, including resorts, in order to make extra money from the family farm. This was not an anomaly but the benefit of having a budding tourism industry side by side, and there are few of us today with local roots who would deny the advantages of this historic industry association..
I do feel as I have for some time, that there is a festering resentment about the reality we had to do someone else’s chores, facilitate another person’s vacation in order to survive. I also think that in some ways this desire to diversify away from tourism has generated a growing over-confidence in our own sustainability…… the mission to rise above dependence on the desires of our visitors, which as sheer economic diversification makes sense, just not as a “we’ve finally come of age” half-maturity, turning our backs on the economic engine of our region……, hoping our manufacturing and business enterprises will rise in triumph.
In the next decade, despite any amount of economic diversification added to the mix here, tourism will still rank as our number one earning industry. The most significant danger to the tourism industry in Muskoka, is plain old neglect. Add to this environmental challenges, and we really do have a lot to think about, in order to keep this industry alive and thriving. Our industry and our local economy generally, has suffered many times throughout history when national and international crisis prevailed. Tourist investment in our region dropped during both World Wars and through the hard years of the Great Depression for obvious reasons. When the world has been stung with recession, it has been noticeable in Muskoka’s coffers. Major events do affect us here, from the catastrophe of 9-11 to the chaos and adverse publicity associated with the SARS outbreak in Toronto several years ago. Like all industry and all economies, blips can become serious downturns in a matter of moments under the right circumstances. It doesn’t help in our region when local movers and shakers forget the importance of maintenance on our old and faithful tourism sector.
If I see any sleeper gain for Gravenhurst, it’s a much heartier, sustaining embrace of the tourism industry; a revamped mission of discovery, to determine a. how much we’ve let it decline over the decades, and b. what we can do to make it as significant as it once was to our region.
I have never once heard even one tourist applaud the initiative of urban sprawl in the place they like to call paradise. I haven’t heard one tourist in all my years of reporting suggest that they can’t wait to get to Muskoka to shop at the local strip mall, or even box store. The fact they might shop there is one thing, but to believe they don’t have many more significant options in their home regions and enroute here is rather absurd generally. To say we have over-retailed in Muskoka, just a tad, is a huge understatement. When we should have been seeking out developers interested in building hotels for our visitors, we’ve been boldly hoping for the next great advancement in the retail shopping experience and seeking out evasive large scale industrial investment. I’ve long been of the opinion that retail investors with roots in Southern Ontario mega-communities, will give Muskoka a sized-down version of what they have in other locales, simply because population availability doesn’t warrant otherwise. So how many visitors to our community can possibly be wowed by a hinterland box store? To think they built these mega stores for our consumption only, local pundits are sadly mistaken. The seasonal surge does impact these stores. If they weren’t there, visitors would shop in a smaller store, and possibly be more comfortable doing so.
If I was asked my opinion where Gravenhurst should look to a more secure and prosperous future, it would be to re-visit the tourism industry and find more investment opportunities to provide even more accommodation and hospitality services, including local entertainment venues, to take advantage of the industry potential other communities are presently half-ignoring. Being an environmentally concerned community, and proving this beyond mere face dressing, could be the start of a beautiful relationship for us all. This is where the visionaries need to step up and lead based on fact not on wishful thinking.
We have an important cottage (second home owner), seasonal-resident contribution in this region, we largely take for granted. In company of tourism visitation and support of our region, and the money they bestow generously upon local business enterprise, we have much to be thankful for despite those who suggest the contrary. We have only begun to understand the potential of the tourism industry despite over a hundred years that should prove otherwise. Just when it was assumed by all the industry experts, we knew it all about making the most of our number one industry, here comes this blogger to tell them “it just isn’t so.” We need to be more innovative, more diversified in the tourism sector, and we need to welcome our guests; acknowledge how important their patronage is….. a declaration that has become pretty thin over the past decade, as if we simply endure their investment and little more.

PLease vist my other blog http://thenatureofmuskoka.blogspot.com/

Saving a school, like sparing a park is the next great challenge


For a person who gets up in the morning, and cherishes the first step outdoors, and who might stay out for an entire day admiring the inherent wonders of the hinterland, you might wonder why politics and government indifference to broad spectrum democracy would cause me to pause, internalize angrily for several moments, sit down at this keyboard and blog. Well it’s like this.
The years I spent as an editor-reporter for the local Muskoka press has haunted me long after my retirement. I know too much about the operation of local government. At times I feel it is a great advantage to possess this insight into the workings of the municipality. Most of the time it’s a curse because I unfortunately can’t leave well enough alone….ever! My family cringes each time I sit down at the computer for fear I might spontaneously combust. As for some members of local council that’s all I am to them…..a curse. At least we agree on something.
Just over a year ago I took up a protest in the Town of Bracebridge (ten miles north of Gravenhurst and my former home town), in an attempt to help a number of area residents block the sale and development of an historic park on Wellington Street. One of the town’s best known recreation sites, Jubilee Park, was about to be the new home of a satellite university campus, the recreation centre on the property to be used by a community college. The compromise of this historic parkland, in an otherwise urban neighborhood, seemed an appalling move by the town, considering there is not a lot of open space available in the central region of the ever-expanding town. Rather than go into great detail about the specifics of the park’s sale, the neighborhood residents opposed to the project lost their appeal to the Ontario Municipal Board. The park is as good as gone. I watched these folks hustle non-stop for one year to save their neighborhood recreational space, and quite honestly, I took the OMB decision as hard as those living next door. As a resident of Gravenhurst, my primary worry now is that the decision sets about a precarious balance about what is to be conserved and expended in the future; a matter of concern for the entire district of Muskoka. If the elected stewards of a conserved property can get rid of it when so desired, shouldn’t we be watching the rest of the region’s parkland, for the very next mission of intrusion. Apparently a century old park isn’t secure enough. As a kid I played in that park. As a parent my kids played in that park. We never could have imagined a public park in such a tight urban area would be negotiable…. period. There were a lot of surprised people when the university project was officially announced a year ago, January 2006.
The relevance to Gravenhurst is this: It seems fairly apparent that Bracebridge’s expansion is going to seriously impact Gravenhurst, as was the case over many occasions in Muskoka history, including Courthouse centralization, District Government headquarters, formerly the head-office location of the former Muskoka Board of Education, and South Muskkoka Memorial Hospital of the early 1960’s. Being geographically central has helped Bracebridge grow, then and now. This has kept them economically balanced through a number of otherwise crippling recessions.
With recent news about Bracebridge’s expanding retail community in a number of significant rural nodes, and the creation of what appears to be a super equipped secondary school, (connected to a new town recreation centre, with pool and indoor track, and community theatre facility), Gravenhurst watchers have become uneasy about a matter of history formerly thought resolved. Several years ago a super school project was discussed at the Board of Education and Municipal level, to be situated on land bordering District Road 4 and Muskoka Beach Road, in Bracebridge, and it was decided an amalgamated facility would also include students from Gravenhurst High School. Talk about a shot across the bow.
I was a member of the Save Our School Committee and it was one of the most important issues of community integrity fought in more than a century. The hard working members of the committee who carried the matter to a Board of Education vote, were successful in halting the amalgamation project….for a time. I don’t think there were many folks on the committee who believed it was a total victory, fearing it would be a revisited issue at a later date.
There have been rumors circulating for the past two years, the past two months at a greatly accelerated rate, and I fear we are about to face the issue once again, as the new school facility opens this coming September 2007 in Bracebridge. With decreasing enrollment occurring in many regions of Ontario, the province has had no choice but to consider closing some of the most seriously affected schools. There isn’t much recourse other than for affected communities to come up with ideas in advance of a closure order, to make up for the shortfall of students and alternative uses.
Gravenhurst’s numbers have been hovering in the danger zone for years, and it has continued to fuel rumors about its imminent closure. This coming September, it is quite likely many families may opt to have their youngsters enroll in a secondary school with more options, and finer educational-recreational services attached. How can Gravenhurst High School compete? How can Gravenhurst save its school, and preserve its history?
When the super school plan arrived in the local press a few years back, there were several key levels of anger. One was that the closure proposal was to be voted on with very little preparation time to mount an effective opposition. Much the same occurred with the Jubilee Park project. Neighbors were afforded very little time to gather support and launch an appeal to the Ontario Municipal Board. Secondly, for all intents and purposes, the bid to close the school and bus Gravenhurst students north, seemed to many like a well planned attack on our town. Take a high school away and you stab a community in the heart. How can we prosper as a community when we’ve just had our heart ripped out? How many businesses would suffer a serious set-back in business and student staffing if our school was closed?
It’s just like the historian to get absorbed by historic precedent. We have somewhat the same issue today as the SOS committee faced. If the issue hasn’t already got some momentum behind the scenes, there are signs all citizens should be aware of, happening now, that could jeopardize the future of our school. It’s necessary to think of this worse case scenario now because if it is thrust upon us, there won’t be much time to react before action is taken.
With the large scale commercial development occurring presently and carrying on hale and hardy in Bracebridge, Gravenhurst will be hugely impacted in the future. I haven’t run into any one yet who can tell me how exactly, Gravenhurst can out-muster the box store pressures from Orillia, Bracebridge and Huntsville, except its ongoing successes in the seasonal tourist enterprise. If merchants in downtown Bracebridge are concerned about the impact of new business nodes on their way of life, merchants in Gravenhurst have to be similarly aware times could be much tougher a year from now than at present.
The old reporter’s nagging intuition is that much of the above has been pre-planned, with a great deal more known by local politicians and staff than the public knows via the media. While some local politicians believe that releasing news of these future initiatives would be harmful to ongoing negotiations with developers, for example, not telling the citizens of the potentially dramatic changes yet to come is, in this writer’s mind, an unthinkable injustice to the people who have worked hard to make this a good and safe hometown. There is time now to mount a new initiative to maintain the high school but with enrollment likely to take a battering in the next two years, it’s abundantly clear the issue of closure isn’t going to disappear any time soon. In fact, it could be an ongoing plan of action semester to semester, and it will necessitate municipal councilors getting involved, as well as every citizen who calls this community “home”. Every alternative needs to be assessed.
When the first super school project was bandied about a few years back, I made it clear to my committee members, on several occasions, that such a development would help launch a massive development of the land, well beyond the relatively small acreage used for educational and recreational buildings. I pointed out what kind of commercial and residential investment would be undertaken if the project was approved, and I know many on the committee thought I was blowing the magnitude and impact of the development way out of proportion. I recommend that any one who questions what kind of development is attracted to a new site for a community centre, theatre and secondary school, should take a motor trip up Manitoba Street (north) to Douglas Drive, and get a first had glimpse of urbanizing influence unfolding.
In the matter of saving the Gravenhurst High School in the coming months, I will again offer my support to any group wishing to mount a campaign in its defense.
While there are many councilors who have been dismayed by my involvement in the protest, first with the SOS committee in Gravenhurst, and most recently the Jubilee Park protest in Bracebridge, (seeing me as an outsider to an internal matter), being a Muskoka historian allows me a tad more flexibility. The same holds today, as I reference a brewing fight between Bracebridge and Gravenhurst over our students, and our right to self determination. Unfortunately, Gravenhurst hometowners, ratepayers, business owners, industrialists, investors and well wishers will have no choice but to recognize a rising grudge match as it manifests behind the scenes, and to get involved in whatever action is warranted. My suspicion is that Bracebridge council isn’t overly concerned about losses incurred by Gravenhurst, should our community succumb to the pressures of progress, lose our students, jobs and business.
I don’t have a dire warning for Gravenhurst. Just some reporter’s timely advise about a significant issue of increasing, purposeful centralization at our expense; proposals for a revamped order of things here in Muskoka, put forward by a few self appointed prophets of economic fortitude.
I’d like nothing better than to be wrong and this blog evaporate into the abyss of all other nonsense, hearsay and speculation. Sometimes issues like this are a tad more significant than whether Ted Currie is a raving loon or not. Is there any truth here? Is the school in danger of closing due to a decrease in enrollment? If you think it’s a possibility even sometime down the road, what are you going to do about it? Hopefully you’re going to help start the next generation of the Save Our School Committee. Maybe you’ll have enough interest in the good old home town to stay on and volunteer for the Help Gravenhurst Kick Ass Brigade, hopefully grown from the seeds now planted.
Be true to your hometown. Pay attention to the news of the day and ask questions of our elected representatives. If you think there’s more to the story, adopt a reporter’s point of view, and dig a little deeper. Being vigilante is a way of life now. As they say, it’s “the new normal.”