Gravenhurst is my chronicle-
The place where I can write in peace

In the late 1980’s I had grown weary of my editorial responsibilities with the local press. While I had always provided publishers with twice as much copy as they paid me for, I was getting pretty aggressive with my forays into the sacred zones of the local political and social elite in central Muskoka. I was reprimanded weekly for challenging authority and bucking the in-house convention, to obey at all cost, the advertising department’s initiatives……performing editorial feats for the good cause of advertising revenue, not for journalistic integrity. I felt the cold knife-blade of professional compromise every time I was asked to shill for the business community…..sent out to do another good business review in return for an ad they had placed in the very next edition.
My notes home from public school used to inform my mother, “Ted doesn’t mix well with others,” and “Ted spends a great deal of time daydreaming.” Both are true and I can remember my mother Merle stomping off to parents’ night at Lakeshore Public, in Burlington, itching to unleash a steaming tirade against anyone who would suggest that “mixing with others,” has relevance to her son getting an education, and be damned any one who would even think about restricting a free thinker’s privilege to daydream. My mother Merle was quick to defend her son’s artistic integrity, as if she knew in the early grades of elementary school that her son would somehow put individuality and daydreaming into art, music or maybe even the writing profession. There were many other occasions, through my school years, when Merle went to bat for my lackluster in-class performance, without any real evidence it was going to help me become a great Canadian “anything!”. She just didn’t want teachers messing with her kid’s creative ambitions.
I was sitting on our verandah one summer afternoon in the early 1990’s, with my old and eccentric bibliophile friend David Brown, of Hamilton….the man who gave me my start as a book collector…..and we started comparing what people though of us respectively. Dave Brown, who at the time of his death, had over 100,000 books stacked in his small Hamilton bungalow, said he was tired of people thinking he was nuts just because he loved books. I said in response, I was really tired of people thinking I was nuts because I like to write all day and night. You know, by time we finished adding up all the public scrutiny about our personal interests, we agreed that at the very least it gave our friends and adversaries alike something to gnaw-on in our absence. In other words our eccentricities kept them from getting bored. Funny thing, I’ve never felt it necessary to analyze others for entertainment purposes. Dave said, “Well Ted, we’re at least popular if that means anything…..I guess we should feel flattered to have created all this fuss about whether or not we’re crazy.”
Dave would not argue that he was eccentric. I was his biographer and he was never once disturbed to be referred to as “eccentric.” In every finite definition of eccentric, Dave Brown was a textbook example. He was brilliant. He had the kind of inquisitive nature that demanded ongoing education, and I never once felt in our years working together, that he thought of himself too old to learn new things. When Dave Brown, who was also one of the country’s well known outdoor education specialists, wanted to talk…..about anything…..gads, I listened like a sponge handles spilled water. His knowledge was brimming and I had so much to learn when we first met in the early 1990’s. Everyone in our family listened to Dave Brown talk about history and his many adventures canoeing throughout Ontario, and we were reluctant to close down our evening chat, despite being at the brink of exhaustion. If Dave Brown was labeled eccentric, then I wanted to absorb as much eccentricity as he was willing to share.
I learned more about Canadian history and the outdoors from Dave Brown than I ever acquired through high school and at university. Suzanne told me once that Dave found us Curries to be kindred spirits because we continually quested for information, and challenged accepted thought when necessary. When Dave Brown passed away, and left me to write his biography, I mired for months fearing it would be impossible to capture this scholar’s character, such that he would reach out from the great beyond, and chastise me, as he did others in life, for unfounded generalizations. Could he ever approve of my written assessment of his life and times? I was his student! His apprentice! The job seemed immense. I did finally write the book and most of those who bought the biography agreed I had captured his most interesting qualities. I’m still not sure how Dave would have appreciated the over-view although he’s sent a few messages from the grave that our work isn’t quite done yet. Dave has some subtle reminders like pulling out books from the shelf, leaving them askew, if not dropping them to the floor as evidence a directive hasn’t yet been followed. A playful, mindful haunting you might say. I still validate Dave’s presence here at Birch Hollow, and keep him in my thoughts whenever I’m pawing through my thousands of old books and document. On visits he slept on a couch in my library and every night before slumber he sorted through these same titles, looking for something interesting to digest….as the last detail of learning for that day.
Dave and I shared a number of professional habits that obviously earned us the label of “eccentrics.” On our book hunting missions we were both so focused in the work (fun for us), we could ignore all other distractions. If there were any intruders into our respective domains, we could become a tad standoffish….and we were both quite capable of blowing off interlopers who got too close to our nitty gritty searches of book aisles, in dozens of shops and sales in this region of Ontario. This intent-focused mission of discovery gave others the opinion we were being rude, self absorbed, anti-social and disjointed from the demands of social conscience. If you interrupted Dave Brown at an estate or auction sale, to socialize or ask his opinion about a book, it was as if the hounds of hell had been set loose on their prey. You just didn’t! And while I have been known to exercise a far more tempered, gentle retort to any one bothering me, I’m still branded as “ignorant,” and “high and mighty,” just because my focus and mission are more intense than their own.
In Bracebridge, my reputation as an old miser, a writer who lacks self-restraint, an activist, someone who defiles the protocols of “getting along,” and shows disrespect to the rights and privileges of the power elite, has little if any relevance here in Gravenhurst, my hometown since 1988. For whatever reason here, I just don’t draw a lot of interest or busy-bodied attention. I’m just they guy who collects books and antiques and keeps to himself. I like that. I’m pretty sure there are those who view me as “a strange chap,” and somewhat “odd-in-habit” but by and large I’ve enjoyed a wonderful anonymity here, and can avoid having to defend myself in shops and at sales because I shy away from social interaction. In fact, I believe adamantly this “live and let live” relationship in Gravenhurst has been the reason I’ve found the perfect writing conditions here at our in-town homestead, we call with affection…..Birch Hollow.
There have been times when I thought possibly we should re-locate elsewhere in Muskoka. Suzanne will quickly remind me how much I’ve suffered living in homes in the past, that didn’t offer the inspiration I needed to quest-on at this typewriter. She’s right of course. I owe this little ranch bungalow a great deal, for housing so safely and happily its writer in residence. When I begin work here in my office, where my window looks out over The Bog, I feel confident my concentration on a project won’t be disturbed by a neighbor or friend on a mission to save me from myself…..the writer alleged to be swallowing the humanity of the real Ted Currie. The most distraction I will get here is when a squirrel darts along the walk outside, and our dog Bosko hears the footfall, letting loose a warning growl just to inform the critter the enforcer is on the job. You know, I haven’t won that Pulitzer yet, or even felt a single literary award in my grasp yet I couldn’t care less about measuring up to someone else’s standard. I do like having readers however, and I’ve been fortunate over the years to have reached hundreds of thousands….some who appreciate my perspective and others who don’t but read on anyway. I have especially appreciated the increases I’ve found most recently with internet exposure. I’m not writing to win awards. I’m writing as a person who loves his craft. While those who know me can’t get past the word “eccentric,” when describing my actions, reactions and obsessions, I now consider it all complimentary despite their intent. A female friend once said to me, “you spend so much time writing and collecting; you need to take a vacation!” Geez, for me, writing and collecting is a life-long vacation. It’s just a little hard to explain to someone who thinks it all sounds like a lot of work.
Birch Hollow here in Gravenhurst is a haunted place. I will always feel Dave Brown’s spirit hovering in my office, or sitting with me out on the verandah on still, moonlit summer nights. I will still get inspired to write some tome or other when I hear the shrill loon-call out over Lake Muskoka, and feel the ecstasy of discovery when I wander through the restorative woods of The Bog, the hollow across the lane. I owe this place, this town a debt of gratitude for being relatively free of the kind of social protocols that inhibited me during my much-loathed newspaper years. I think about my mother Merle’s defense of my creative enterprise as a wee lad, and hope now she feels the forays at parent-teacher nights were worth the fury…..to give a writer-in-waiting a chance at independent thought and unfettered imaginative freedom cum graduation.
I think I’ll stay here for awhile, and write a few more pages….maybe go off to the local book seller and see if anything new “that is old” has arrived since my last visit….and I shall thoroughly enjoy this freedom found living amidst the pines and birches, of my humble and accommodating home town. Thank you Gravenhurst.

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April Snow on this old Gravenhurst hideaway

Yesterday afternoon I stood on the thick grass-laden mounds, dotting the basin of this Muskoka District topography, I fondly refer to as The Bog. I was listening to the geese calling from a hiatus of flight, down along the shore of Muskoka Bay. There were only trace amounts of ice and snow down in the heavily sun-blocked areas. This morning the spring scene has been wintered over once again, and it’s as if a month of advances on the weather front have been lost. Yet it has given this lowland sanctuary a magnificent aura, a brightness that invigorates the senses.
There are people in this ballywick of mine, who will complain today that this white misery has intruded upon their expectations of an immediate spring; what was supposed to be a warm, flower-filled Easter holiday. They won’t treat this as a special event. They won’t think beyond the motor trip to school or work about the striking beauty that prevails, only steps from their front door. It is all to be endured as one of life’s many challenges. They pass this on to their children who come to see this white mantle as an obstruction to spring games and outdoor recreation…..the Easter egg hunt. How intrusive and insensitive to our plans that nature should perform…. well, “naturally.” I wish for a moment of their time, to show them this painted landscape. I’d like to show them the animal tracks that have already been imprinted across the lowland, made by deer and raccoons, a few rabbits and I believe the neighborhood fox. It’s all intriguing to me and my dismay is that anyone who lives in this beautiful, life restorative Muskoka, can find annoyance with what is so tranquil and picturesque.
Sometimes I have to snap myself abruptly, almost stingingly back to the reality that I’m rather unique in my relationship with nature, and in this place where I so passionately wish to dwell. I can stand out on this same hump of dried grass and watch a summer storm come raging over the western pine ridge, and be thoroughly intrigued by how all the life here, even the leaves on the hardwoods, react in this preamble to a potentially violent weather pattern. I can get great enjoyment watching the northern lights out here, on some bitterly cold autumn night when everyone else is tucked into bedlam. I’ve stood here and watched dozens of winter storms pound ice and snow against the gnarled old landscape of leaning birches, time etched stumps, rotting logs and tormented, windswept evergreens. I’ve heard the gunshot cracks of frigid February air resounding throughout the frozen basin. I’ve watched gusts of wind snap off trees at their base further out on this bog, when a spring gale cuts a swath across the lakeside; flooding this basin and eroding the creek banks, turning shallow pools into expansive overflowing quagmires infilling every habitat hollow visible from here to there. And I will have nothing but awe and satisfaction that I have been a witness to these critical, necessary transitions of a nature in season.
There are times when my boys or my wife will have to venture out in such inclement weather to haul me home for dinner, or to check up to see if I’ve been blown away by the autumn winds, or entombed in ice during a mid-January blizzard. As a writer specializing in these landscape essays, I must have this exposure to the elements. I don’t think any one can appreciate nature solely from the window of a passing car, or a head stuck out a patio door. I don’t think you can get the true measure of global warming from the television or the movie theatre alone. I can guarantee one thing for sure. You can find all you need to know by immersion. When you spend as much time outdoors as I do, during all four seasons in Muskoka, you can appreciate the changes that are occurring in our world. Changes, some quite subtle, we all need to be concerned about. We have too many armchair, “life of relative ease” addicts today including the youngsters, who may read or watch programming about global warming as entertainment but never offer one footstep toward these woodlands. Unless of course there is some exceptional circumstance; and in my neighborhood it means to dump off a retired Christmas tree they don’t want to ship to the landfill site, or various other household articles and garden debris they wish to cast-off without incurring any expense. The residents on my street only care about their own lawns, and how immaculate they appear beneath the flower baskets and sundry other veneer ornamentation. In the fall, like the tumble of hardwood leaves, the homeowners here, as tradition, will commence the cross road amble toting a wide variety of refuse from plastic pails to boards with nails, broken lawn ornaments to unwanted patio slabs. Just ask them at the time of this woodland desecration, whether or not they give a hoot about pollution and global warming. All they want to know about is that their property is crap-free and pretty to the eye.
I’m pretty hard on my neighbors and most of them have already read my barbs of assessment in the local press, when I once again beg them as a concerned citizen, to stop dumping their garbage indiscriminately into the hinterland. I haven’t had a lot of success stopping-up what I call, “the dumping for convenience” enterprise. It’s only the opening days of spring and already I’ve harvested a full basket of recycling bits and pieces, my mates here decided to discard into the “forgiving woods”.
It reminds me about an experience I had while supervising a group of public school students visiting an outdoor education centre here in Muskoka. The students were involved in a wildlife identification game in a planted pinery, when a small group of four or so students discovered a garter snake slithering over the brown pine needles. For whatever reason, one of the boys decided it would be the treat of the day to beat the creature to death. He picked up a stick and with great visual pleasure, and vocal encouragement from every student watching, began hitting the snake with lethal intent. It was in his eyes. There was no mistake that the objective was to render this creature lifeless. Why? Who really knows? His viewpoint was, “how convenient, a snake for the killing”.
I was in position to stop the assault, the first snake killing session I’d ever witnessed frankly, and it took several aggressive outbursts, to thwart the young man from his mission to rid the planet of this particular snake. I will never in my life forget the look in his eyes. He might well have turned his rage on me, instead of the snake. It took me physically grabbing the stick from his hand to put an end to the incident. No child in that group understood why I had intervened to save the life of a serpent. Not one of them. They thought of me as a bully and themselves as “perfectly within their rights,” to transform nature to their own likeness. For me personally, there has never been a more profound moment of understanding, about the true dangers of outright ignorance and indifference. The “don’t care less” attitude our world faces from the untutored and insensitive amongst us, is about to kill us all. These youngsters were doing what they believed was natural to humanity; to kill off what isn’t human….or what isn’t on their “want list,” of species. It was their uneducated, ill conceived measure and understanding of what should survive, and thusly, in their concept of nature’s balance, what should justifiably perish to make more room for the rights and privileges of mortal kind. I thought about developers and politicians, capitalists and urban promoters who would similarly find this poor snake an intruder.
This particular outdoor education opportunity failed because of its brief period of influence on students. Two days at the camp site was not enough to erase false impression and improve sensitivity to nature and natural assets. There will be no tangible progress in the effort to curb global warming unless outdoor education is offered to more students for longer periods, with the funding to make it a widespread school program….and not just a brief visit to a sugar bush, or a casual outdoor walkabout. From the first day of school a strong relationship with the outdoors needs to be encouraged and developed in progressive steps until graduation. Hopefully then we would have the future movers and shakers in our economic world who would recognize the importance to us all, of having a balanced, healthy, non-polluted environment in which to dwell.
When I visit this amazing little lowland amidst the urban sprawl of neighborhoods, I wish to thank personally the brave planner, the developer, who gave our burg this open space option, so folks who appreciate the peace and well being of nature, can sojourn here to watch the seasons in transition. I could remain here for hours on end being thoroughly entertained by what isn’t intruding upon the scene. There is no hustle, no bustle, no impatience anywhere to be found. It is a calm place amidst the profound changes occurring from horizon to horizon; from the tree tops to the snake and fish habitat. Other changes inspired by this final stage of transformation, from late winter to finally emerging spring.
And while in the natural world changes are occurring violently at times, as with its own balance and regimen, I can’t help feeling sadness that it has taken a tragedy of global proportion, to make us take notice of what actually sustains us through this mortal coil…..this purity of air we depend, the clean water that bubbles up from all the springs to be found in this modest, taken for granted acreage. Every resource here considered expendable by otherwise intelligent people. The same people who dump all types of cleaners and fertilizers, and assorted chemicals they wish to dispose of, right here in this fragile and vulnerable landscape; simply because it meets their requirements for cost efficiency and convenience. Then listen to them boast about their environmental awareness….the news they read or heard about but have never once actually practiced, except for their own personal, selfish reasons.
We’ve got a lot to learn about what sustains us.
It’s not just my neighborhood. My God, it’s the neighborhoods of the entire world desecrating these wild, important places. If we can’t stop it in our own area, how can we fix it globally? I like to think it will come about by persistence and education to begin with, education and then persistence evermore….. and it will only be consistent when outdoor education is required learning at every school in every town, over every year and in every city covering this grand old global enterprise of conservation.
Please take that all-important step into the hinterland. Before you endorse the next earth-moving, landscape altering project in your town, visit the site to be destroyed, and think for a moment how wonderful it would be if there was another solution…..a better way of being progressive than sprawling out across every available open space. Is it just possible that being a progressive community can parallel being a successful environmental steward. When a lowland thriving with life-forms is obliterated for the cause of convenient, multi-store shopping, on top of the venues already in place, it makes me wonder if one day we’ll all have to live in one of these malls permanently, due to the contamination everywhere else.
Thanks for reading this blog submission for April 2007.


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