A GRAVENHURST WRITER'S JOURNAL

A Writer’s Journal – The good graces of the place I call home

This site is not for economic, political, social or personal gain. I don’t expect to be invited to social gatherings because I’ve written this journal, and I certainly didn’t prepare it for the benefit of advertisers and promoters, of which there are none, except family interests of course, as noted in the above introduction. I didn’t spend hours composing these pieces to satisfy any political agenda, and there’s not much likelihood you’ll ever see me out for a cup of coffee with the mayor or members of local council. I’m not that likeable, and in many ways a liability to a political career. Even a casual sidewalk chat with this grumpy old reporter could start the rumor mills spinning. “He was talking with Ted Currie. Gads, something’s up!” That’s because when I do get the ear of a politician by chance, I don’t miss the opportunity to offer a little constructive criticism. Seeing as I’ve got a few chapters dedicated to improving the way things are done on the municipal level, it’s no wonder I’m avoided like the plague.
I don’t want to mislead anyone reading this collection of blog-editorials, that I’m shilling for the local business community because I’m not accepting one penny for my efforts. I’m not interested in any other media than this, because frankly I’ve lost respect for the local press generally, and confess to cutting down my consumption to only free publications, delivered mysteriously to my driveway by newsfolk unknown.. It would be my advice to the media, if ever consulted, that upper management may wish to find out why so many people are giving up on the print media as the primary source of community news, as it was tradition for centuries, and turning instead to cyber-space for opinion on the daily news. As a past editor of many of Muskoka’s well known newspapers, (a stickler for detail then and now) and a news hound by curiosity, I’ve lost patience with the print media’s inadequate, surface only reporting.
I unfettered myself from the managerial caw-caw, I used to put up with, just for the privilege of a paycheck. So the material you are about to read isn’t the result of an over-zealous publisher leaning on the back of a reporter, or the output of an editorially boxed writer, packed on all sides by the rules and regulations of the community press.
What I hope you will find in this collection of Gravenhurst columns, is the reason to visit here, to continue living here, and to invest here long into the future. It would please me to no end, for a parent to read these pieces, and inspire their offspring to invest their own futures here, because of these amazing, often overlooked benefits for future prosperity. Not because of a slick economic recruiting mission or political lobbying but because you like what’s exposed of the real town of Gravenhurst; not the one sculpted by promoters and glad handers….the one presented with only one objective, and that’s to share the good qualities I’ve discovered about the place I’m so proud to call my “home town.”

From Burlington to Bracebridge and on to Gravenhurst as home port

I spent my first few years in Burlington, Ontario, residing several blocks from the city’s business corridor, Brant Street, and one block from Lion’s Club Park where my dad, Ed, was one of the leading pitchers in the local fastball division. I loved going there to watch the evening games. It was a beautiful little park with its own small bandstand where the local marching band would play regular summer concerts.
I resided one block from Lakeshore Boulevard, and the most familiar sound to me, other than chestnuts hitting the ground on Torrance Avenue, were the haunting old fog horns echoing over Lake Ontario. I went to Lakeshore Public School initially and then our family moved to upper Brant Street and the satellite community of Mountain Gardens where I attended the neighborhood public school. During my tenure on Harris Crescent, just off Torrance, I lived in a neat three story apartment own by Anne and Alec Nagy, adjacent to two others own by the Creighton family. Mrs. Bell lived on one side, abutting the gully of Ramble Creek as it flowed to the lake, and on the corner of our merging streets was the scenic old Victorian home owned by Mrs. White. It was a wonderful tree-lined neighborhood with a large commercial farm across the road, a small reminder of how close agriculture was to the main streets of our first fledgling communities.
We moved to Bracebridge in the spring of 1966, and took up residence on upper Toronto Street, in a new home built by the former Shier’s Lumber Company, which was one of the historic, if not legendary logging companies, dating back to the 1800’s, in pioneer Muskoka. We moved several times as a young family, while in Bracebridge, including a stint at the Weber Apartments, on Alice Street (I wrote a published memoir about these years), a cottage on Alport Bay, of Lake Muskoka (end of Beaumont Drive), in the former homestead of Dr. Peter McGibbon, on upper Manitoba Street, an apartment on Quebec Street, our first purchased home as newlyweds (my wife and I with son Andrew on the way), on Ontario Street, just below Bracebridge and Muskoka Lakes Secondary School, (I wrote its history), a short residency at a cottage near Bowyer’s Beach, on the Golden Beach Road, and onto our present, humble abode, we call Birch Hollow, on Gravenhurst’s Segwun Blvd. Compared to many others, I’ve had a modest number of home residences over 52 years.
I married a gal from Windermere (Lake Rosseau), by the name of Suzanne Stripp, an acquaintance from high school days in Bracebridge, and as I was still by all pertinent measure a new resident to Muskoka, marrying into a founding family at last gave me the afforded rank of “local”. Of course it was “local by association only.” Suzanne’s family were members of the region’s earliest pioneers, including the Shea and Veitch families of the Three Mile Lake, Ufford area of the present Township of Muskoka Lakes. Her uncle Bert Shea wrote two important texts detailing the history of the Sheas and area farmsteads, (a text actively used by Muskoka historians decades after publication) and her great-great uncle’s dug-out canoe is still on display at the Muskoka Lakes Museum in Port Carling. To connect with her ancestors we frequently stroll the grounds of the Ufford Cemetery, on the Dougherty Road near Windermere.
Our family history records are well represented by United Empire Loyalist stock; Suzanne’s family initially settled the “Front of Ontario,” the Cornwall area of Upper Canada, and my family settled in the Trenton, Brighton, Bay Of Quinte region, of Lake Ontario (Upper Canada); where my ancestors were the Jacksons and Sandercocks (still researching my English, Dutch connections). My grandfather, Stanley Jackson was a builder in Toronto, and had a street named after him, in the region of Jane Street and Bloor (Old Mill). He was a violinist connected to the Toronto Symphony, or so family legend has it, and I often benefited in my childhood, listening as his quartet practiced in the parlor of their Toronto home. Suzanne’s grandfather Sam Stripp, was a competent carpenter who built the family home on the shore of Lake Rosseau, at Windermere, and was known for not only his boat building skills but as the “painter of the ice” for many of the fabulously decorated Bracebridge Ice Skating Carnivals. Suzanne’s mother Harriet and father Norman were former owners of the Windermere Marina. Harriet was a hobby painter and writer, and long time organist at the Windermere United Church. My parents, Ed, a life-time lumberman (Shiers to Building Trades in Bracebridge) and mother Merle, bank staff for most of her career, took me as a wide eyed youngster, to many of Ontario’s historic sites and on hundreds of other exciting North American motor trips from an early age. It’s where I got my interest in history and my passion for traveling. Now you know about us.