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.

Please visit my other blog at thenatureofmuskoka.blogspot.com