Bracebridge Revisited

Bracebridge re-visited; and the times I shall never forget

A writer friend asked me one day if there was some sort of historian’s mutual admiration club in Muskoka, where old farts like me could go and talk with vapid vigor about the days of yore….you know the kind of club where we have smoking jackets with crests and glasses of port to mix with a quarter-pounder Cuban cigar….with companion piped-in music from some aged, venerable folk musician regaling us with nostalgia..

“No……local historians around here don’t socialize…..most of them wouldn’t drink Port on a dare and they’re too bloody health conscious to chomp down on a rich, juicy length of wrapped tobacco,” I replied. “It’s not that we don’t agree with the rights and responsibilities of historians of the empire, we just don’t feel like any company just now.”

At one student-parent day at the local school, the teacher asked me to give a talk about being an historian…..after ten minutes of shooting the concept well over the fourth graders’ heads, I said in conclusion…....”let’s just say that being an historian doesn’t get me invited to many parties…..did I say many….ha…ha.” Well, they were still lost but after class, the teacher asked me for some research tips….as it was the case she was embarking on work to uncover some family history. While my kid was fed-up having an historian for a dad, I helped a teacher find her roots.

In Bracebridge I grew up historically. While other of my chums just chewed gum, basked in the sun listening to the transistor radio….playing Dylan or some period rock’n’ roll, I was paying attention to the way the town was advancing day by day. Now while this might seem a tad nuts, and who would be interested in such minute transitions, it was something I needed to know. I somehow knew that the town was on the verge of profound change, and that it would be important one day to know how this wee burg of 2,500 souls would become a sprawling half-empire by 2008.

When I began writing a column in the early 1990’s called “Sketches of Historic Bracebridge,” all the observations and explorations of my times spent here began to make sense. As a matter of some irony I had to move away before I could really make sense of it…..so here I was then…..writing about Historic Bracebridge while living in uptown Gravenhurst, in South Muskoka. Living ten miles away, in the tropics of true South Muskoka, meant I could look more objectively at my hometown experience. There was a sense of nostalgia and there have been times since 1989 when the thought of moving back to Bracebridge crossed our family’s collective mind. With my parents still residing in Bracebridge and business taking me there three to four times every week, I can’t get too homesick afterall….but I can view change with an added measure of objectivity…..I don’t have to give up my nearby meadow for a shopping centre as I might have in Bracebridge, a town with city aspirations here in the Ontario hinterland.

My columns from this period were full of people sketches, reminiscences about old friends and strange encounters. I realized that I was probably one of the only historians who believed it was more important to recognize the history of the people, the everyday front-line folk who built the town’s economic future in the same effort as they struggled to make daily ends meet. I had a greatly diminished interest to highlight local politicians and the major players in local wealth building. I always gravitated to the stories of the bakers and janitors, clerks and post office workers……I held patiently to the words of retired farmers and police officers, teachers and electricians, waitresses at the local greasy spoon, and lumbermen who always smelled like pine.

I despised the histories that over-estimated the contributions of the elite, the rich, the political mucky-mucks, and the social club executives; their stories as a rule always being half as interesting as the worker-bees of the community, the stay at home moms, the clerks, plumbers, and candlestick makers. We were a family of paycheck to paycheck working stiffs and sometimes we had to scrimp real hard and real long to make rent and eat at the same time. But we found kindnesses amongst our mates, our friends up at 129 Alice Street, the apartment where those of modest income could have a few residential comforts. And it was a community within a community, and to this day I will never forget how everyone kept their doors open in the evening, and residents trailed from one apartment to the other, getting in on conversations, good television or a radio program, or even a game of euchre needing a new player.

I have often wondered whether it is true of myself, as an historian, that I have been tainted by this general mistrust for the upper echelon and their still faithful historical scribes, who believe the only history worth telling is what great new thing the community leaders have bestowed on the future this time. While I have always paused to mindfully glance at the society news, just to keep up on what some believe to be the way toward salvation, it’s my opinion the pulse of the community is better understood being close to those in the midst of this ground level machinery….versus listening to the mutual admiration of cronies in between fat cigars.

I grew up as a street kid, tumbling through the alleyways across the town, investigating every nook and cranny, and watching events unfold both humorous and tragic and then, well “tragically humorous”…..such as when the local bouncer at the former Albion Hotel would eject a trouble-maker without first opening the door. Us wee lads used to sit on the railing by the tracks watching the front door for these flights of despair. For the bouncer there was no sense going to the extra effort of opening the door with one arm when a patron’s head would do just fine. When I used to write about events like this….. some of my historical colleagues would become quite belligerent about my cavalier approach to report the history of their town. While I have a great respect for protocol I have no respect for revisionists or those who believe local history begins and ends at town hall.

When I became editor of The Herald-Gazette in the early 1980’s, it was “one for the gipper,” I can tell you. And there were a lot of powerful folks who couldn’t figure out why the publisher would hire someone without social standing, a rootedness in the local service club program, or at least someone who could be moved by the will of protectionist reason. Here I was in the editor’s chair with about fifteen cents to pay that month’s rent, no earthly reason to bow to any of the political grandstanders who used to get all the press, and a person uncommitted to follow any protocol other than honest, responsible, unbiased reporting. I could think what I wanted about the folks in my community and their bad habits but it wasn’t going to influence my editorial capacity….and it never did. Now of course, after I had given up the editor’s desk and settled into a long tenure as a columnist, I let it all hang-out. Needless to say I made more than a few enemies. The combined forces of opposition began tightening the noose I knew was around my neck, and after I’d made my peace with local history….. and presented a new look at what has always been steadfastly maintained as fact ingrained, I knew it was time to move on and celebrate a period of relative non-confrontation in print or otherwise.

Today I’m a tad gentler, somewhat less resolved to save the world from tyrants and local politicians but I really haven’t changed my mind about the good folks who keep our communities alive and thriving……and admittedly I don’t mention the names of politicians, although I’ve met a few recently who have made me wonder if a trend is developing….or a new complacency arrived at.

I loved my job as editor because it allowed me to drink it all in, just as when, as a kid, I sat on the stoop at Black’s Variety and watched the adult world folly and fiddle, hustle and dawdle through each god-blessed day. I was proud to represent my hometown and yet I wasn’t about to hide news or bury what the public needed to know. And I had lots of angry readers who demanded that I bury what they believed wasn’t in the best interest of home and family. I fought them every inch and printed what I believed, in heart and soul, needed to be in the public domain. I was right more than I was wrong. I took a lot of abuse in a decade editing the Muskoka press but it was an experience I needed to expand my appreciation for life and times, good and evil, joy and tragedy. I had readers embrace me with heartfelt appreciation after a feature story…… and then I had angry readers intent on hurting me when we ran stories about their relatives being busted for impaired driving. I took a lot of heat for running negative news reports of any kind. For the first two years of my editorship, every Wednesday in local publishing was like driving with high beams into a blizzard…..amongst those mesmerizing, dizzying snowflakes, there were a few good wishes….and you know, it was all I needed. Just a few folks to say, “Nice work Scoop….I wondered when someone was going to blow the whistle.”

I was born a writer and I shall die a writer. I will always show my goodwill toward those unsung community builders who work progressively and patiently, most often with modest return, who build the future one brick at a time…..one cheeseburger and fries, one bagged carton of milk in the bag.

Please check out Curious; The Tourist Guide for my newest column series in 2008 regarding the good old days as a beat reporter-controversial editor, working in the South Muskoka region of this grand old Ontario.