ARRIVAL OF MUSEUM.....A GLOWING ACHIEVEMENT

WOODCHESTER HAD IT ALL - OR SO IT APPEARED

When Wayland Drew called me one evening, and asked if I had time to meet with him, regarding the idea I had recently proposed (in the local press) for a Bracebridge Historical Society (circa 1978 I believe), I was thrilled to have a potential partner. The initial response had been slow. I didn’t really know who Wayland (Buster) was, at that point, until my girlfriend at the time, Gail Smith, told me about the book he wrote on Lake Superior. I found out quite a bit about the good Mr. Drew, before I attended the meeting at his Bracebridge house. Here I was, a snotty nosed recent university graduate, with the ink still wet on the diploma, and I’m having an intimate meeting about Canadian and regional history, with an author of considerable national acclaim.

I wasn’t in that meeting five minutes, before I knew we would come to be good friends, and something terrific would happen up on that Woodchester Villa hillside. He had such a gentle, calming influence over a scared kid, who had just then, been happily, but politely put in his place. I was delighted to be his underling. And that never changed through many years and quite a few challenges. We didn’t always agree. Wayland and I got into a terrible fight over the removal of huge trees, that lined the steep lane up to the Bird house. He was trying to protect the century old pines and I advocated cutting them down. I was wrong. I told him so later. By then some of those trees had been removed. I won the initial argument, siding with the town, but it was no victory when I realized I’d crushed my partner.....a keen environmentalist who cared so much about the heritage of nature.....

Wayland may never have known this, because I certainly gave the appearance of being an unflinchingly independent, arrogant son-of-a-bitch, but he became one of the only mentors I’ve ever had. I read everything he’d put his pen to, and I thoroughly enjoyed his company for those early Historical Society evenings. He was an important man but you’d never know it, being in his company. It’s at Woodchester now that I see him so clearly. Every time I visit the site, I think about our first tour up to the Bird House, all boarded-up and desolate in early 1978. Gail and I walked around the property with him.....and despite how desperate the situation to reclaim the building, he had confidence something construction could happen here. And it did. He called his friends. Those friends called others, and it kept going and going, until there was a battalion of volunteers. I spent a lot of time in Wayland’s company, usually with my chin stuck against my chest, in absolute awe how he did what he did!

While to many Bracebridge citizens today, Woodchester Villa isn’t even a blip on the community radar. Why would it be? It’s just a museum. It has become largely a tourist-only venue, in its own thirty year history, although that was never the intent by those who faithfully tended the restoration. There is something important here that has been lost....just as much in need of refurbishing as the building itself. It’s the attitude we nursed along for that first decade, trying to make Bracebridge citizens as proud of the museum as we were. It was the exceptional show of citizen action, the diverse backgrounds and accomplishments of folks who worked on that restoration......, and set-up the museum, that inspires me even today about the power of a hometown to attain incredible milestones. I think now about the thousands of hours spent on paper work issues, negotiations for the Alvin Kaye collection, gardening, decorating, painting and trimming.....not to mention work spent on so many elaborate fundraising events in those early years. To many weary folks, exhausted from exquisite Empire Dinners, and both Blueberry and Strawberry Socials, that took so many, many hours away from family, home and business responsibilities. It did result in family stresses. I was threatened with divorce many times during my years of near-residence on-site. Yet, at the end of every event, at closing time every day, sitting on those steps of the front verandah, it all seemed worth the effort. It seemed so very relevant to Bracebridge.....and it’s true that all the work, and blind faith in what we were doing, tended to blind us to the reality many citizens still had no interest in visiting.....even when we suspended admission charges. We just didn’t have the money to invest in promotion and counted on the generosity of two local newspapers to help us out. But that was running into opposition as well, by the late 1980's, as their publishers decided the free-ride was over. It was a back breaker but they were right. We should have been able to pay for and profit from promotions. It didn’t happen that way. Then came the recession. Change was imminent.

When it comes to a thorough examination of Woodchester’s future, I will have no hesitation whatsoever, barking out in a loud, clear, and arrogant voice, about my very great pleasure in life, to have been associated with the grand effort of the Bracebridge Historical Society, the Bracebridge Rotary Club and the Town of Bracebridge, in a hometown partnership that produced a really fine museum. What might now be considered a nuisance expense, and a civic burden, was once considered the hallmark of citizen action. It was not just the “who’s who” of Bracebridge who rebuilt Woodchester, but a mixture of casual acquaintances who became friends; good and lasting friends.

The last time I spoke with Wayland Drew, it was at an outdoor literary event, sponsored by “Muskoka Ink,” held at Woodchester, long after we had both retired from the Historical Society. Quite ill, by this time, I remember him walking across the lawn to shake my hand, after I’d read a short paper about former Toronto Sun columnist, Paul Rimstead, a former Bracebridge lad. I didn’t know it prior to this, but Wayland and I were both Rimstead fans. He let me know I’d written an excellent tribute piece. From him, it was a moment to be cherished. The fact that he acknowledged my writing at all, was a great honor. We stood for awhile talking about the old days at Woodchester, all the work, the frustrations, anxious moments, and successes we both felt had been achieved on this beautiful hillside, overlooking the Muskoka River. It was such a perfect, warm and memorable evening. We shook hands, made the same trustful eye contact, we had on our first meeting, and wished each other well. And I knew this would probably be our last meeting. It was.

When it comes to making a decision about the property, there are many who should be consulted about its fate. There’s a lot more to this old building than what appears to the eye. It is very much a monument to so many people, who had the best intentions for the site.......but if they can be at fault for anything, it was a general misunderstanding of grants and revenues, long past those first five years of operation. The fact so many of these people were elderly at the beginning, meant an ongoing need to bring aboard enthusiastic young folks to carry the burden. It didn’t happen with the same vigor as it had begun. As the town debates this site’s future, I hope it will consider its history with some sensitivity and compassion......because to dismiss it casually, or disregard its storied past, would be unforgivable to all hometown values.

Let Town Council know what you think. They know my opinion!

WOODCHESTER PRESENTED CHALLENGES FOR THE ROOKIE DO-GOODER

The problem with funding Woodchester Villa and Museum, in Bracebridge, was an unrelenting issue. It was the reason we couldn’t advance in normal museum cataloguing and program development. We couldn’t get enough money annually, from grants etc., to benefit from a curator. We could muster staff for touring and general maintenance of the property, but what we really needed was a full time curator. It wasn’t financially viable during my time serving with the museum in the 1980's.

Every year we were forced to spend hours and hours filling out the paperwork to apply for an Operational Grant. Our deficit situation was that we couldn’t meet the governing agency’s demands......in large part because we didn’t have the leadership of a curator. I became the first “president / manager / curator.” I was part volunteer, part paid staff at the end but in no way a worthy substitute for an experienced, well educated curator. But it was what we had to work with unfortunately. Not having full time staff killed us every time we applied for a grant.

From the beginning we had to deal with moisture problems. As we had drainage issues around the building, and a concrete structure, there was a percolation of moisture from the ground up the wall, gradually turning the cement into a mush. At one point I could gouge out portions of the cement with my bare hands. Measures were taken but a lot of the damage was done already. We couldn’t stop the high moisture readings in the house, there was no money to do anything more than patch and watch, and the operational grants, because of these nagging shortfalls, couldn’t be successfully completed with these deficiencies.

The day to day stuff at the museum was mostly positive. There was an occasion when staff or volunteers, had taken one of the Victorian wedding gowns, from a cupboard, and placed it on the bedstead of the master bedroom. I remember getting a frantic call, one night, about something I wasn’t familiar. “We’ve had a blow-back Ted......a blow back.....we’re in big trouble.” The caller had my attention. “What’s a blow-back.” I asked. “A soot blow-back......from the furnace.....there’s soot everywhere through the house.” I’m trying to appreciate this new and troubling reality, from an obvious malfunction of the oil furnace. “Ted, it’s awful. There’s a covering of soot on everything.” “Everything,” I asked again. “Everything,” was the answer. Then, at that precise moment, the caller and I uttered the same words; “wedding dress!” It was a black dress now.

It took a long, long time to repair that dress. I had to send it to a national heritage restoration operation, in Ottawa, where it remained for years. Think about the intricate lace on such a dress, and how minuscule particles can get between the fibres, and multiply that by the trillions. I think we got it back within the years of my management but I’m not sure of this. I am sure that a soot blow-back is a nasty event. Even after years of cleaning, I was still finding black blotches around the house that hadn’t been previously detected.

With a tight budget, even in a good year, we lived in absolute fear something or other was going to happen, that would require an expenditure. We purchased everything on the cheap. Even the toilet paper. Discount lightbulbs. Paper towels. I often had to bring my own lawnmower to do the lawns in the early years, after the museum’s mower broke down. We eventually did get the town to assist with funding lawn cutting. But this constant chase for financial stability, and having to live with so many shortfalls, for so long, meant that directors were in a perpetual mission to fundraise. This became a drag on us all. It sucked the fun out of being involved in a museum. There was so much we couldn’t do that would have enhanced the place. By far, the biggest problem we had, and it did limit our visitations, was that Woodchester Villa was on a peak of land......that while wonderfully scenic, was somewhat more difficult to get to......(especially on hot summer days), than most other community museums in Ontario. While we got car loads of visitors, the fact we didn’t have a front entrance, and that guests had to come in off side-streets, and through a residential neighborhood, definitely confused tourists. It was a mistake at the beginning, that we didn’t have a proper front parking lot, and a more gradual walkway up to the museum. We got very little walk-in business. It hurt us. Even though we were in close proximity to the cataract of the Bracebridge Falls, visited by thousands of tourists each year, Woodchester’s out of the way position, always worked against us. And as we needed every dime of revenue, and fifty percent more, it was like running in the three legged race, blindfolded, with arms bound as well as feet, and expected to hit the finish line first. When we tried to explain this to town councillors, we got nods and grins, a few shaking heads and that’s about it. It’s a thirty odd year problem with museum design and strategy.

What we found out over the years, was that despite our convictions, (which really didn’t mean too much more than pig-headedness), there wasn’t a great need, or more than a thin desire, to visit a no-frills Victorian era museum. We were faced with this same problem, when I was director of the Muskoka Lakes Museum, in Port Carling, which has an even better, more convenient location. There was a huge need to recognize the interests of the public....not just the interests of the historical purists.......with the crusty, tired mantra “if we build it, they’d better come.” It just doesn’t fly. The advantage in Port Carling is that they have been able to employ a long-term curator, which does guarantee stability and compliance with funding agencies. They have become a far more vibrant operation than they were during my period of participation.

If I had to do it all again, and I hate to admit this, but I would have pitched a brand new museum building be built instead, somewhere on the straight and level, where there is a good daily traffic flow by the front door. A building that is equipped with proper climate control and adaptable to all kinds of uses and set up, in advance architecturally, for the ease of future expansion. Most of us knew that the restoration of an 1880's house was going to be a money pit, yet we embraced it none the less. It hasn’t been a lost cause because we did save an important architectural relic in North America. Attached to this, of course, was the subtle acknowledgment that, as it is a jewel, it was going to take a king’s ransom, each year, to maintain. It’s no different than many other historic buildings in Muskoka. The Gravenhurst Opera House comes to mind. The Town will get a real eye-opener one of these days, about the cost of serious new restoration. It’s the cost of owning and operating any old structure. As far as architectural conservancy, the problem is always the same. Money. Constant availability of money. Stages of restoration, versus big, expensive ones, when it’s found out deterioration is greater than anticipated.

Spending half a million dollars, or more, on Woodchester Villa’s restoration, is something to worry about.....because it won’t end there. Unless there is a serious plan to keep a large reserve fund for annual physical upkeep, ten or fifteen years from now there will be a similar dilemma. At a tough economic time, it will be a serious drain on finances.......but that’s not what was intended when so many kind citizens pooled together, and worked so hard, to make the town museum a reality. We just didn’t set down a good working relationship with the town until the late 1980's, when for all intents and purposes, the museum was already on a downhill slide......money and volunteers were in ever-declining numbers.

As one of the founders, I’m sure that I will upset some of my contemporaries, when I suggest that the late 1980's stressful decision to divide the property, to allow the Muskoka Arts and Crafts community, to take over the museum annex as a gallery / administrative centre, was not only the right move then, but potentially the right move now to expand their operations into a much larger arts resource centre. I took a huge amount of flack from directors and Historical Society members, when, with the town’s backing, I initiated negotiations to diversify the property use. The Chapel Gallery is a huge success story, and one I’m proud to have been involved with from the onset. I think there is a good potential for expanding their operation, and making that picturesque hillside into a much larger gallery, workshop, resource centre.

I expect a similar outcry today, as it happened in the late 1980's. I think that to justify the expense of restoring Woodchester Villa, a better-use plan has to be developed, that will guarantee more visitor traffic to the site, and be an even better town attraction over four seasons. The museum, as much as I love it, and helped operate it over many years, is not enough of an attraction to make much difference to traffic flow on that hillside. I think it may be time to look at a further diversification, and a reduction or removal of the museum collection, to be replaced by an arts related use.....gallery, resource centre, workshops, with an artist in residence potential in exchange for housekeeping services rendered. The possibility of getting access to art centre funding may be more successful now, than getting museum operational funds......because it won’t happen without a full time curator. Muskoka Arts and Crafts has the stewardship situation well in hand, and I think they would be appropriate users of the entire Woodchester property......if indeed they could see the future potential for themselves, and an expanded resource centre and gallery.

I recognize this is presumptuous of me. Forgive this friend of Woodchester Villa, for writing on its behalf. I’d love to see it have a great future potential, but as a renewed museum, I think the move would be futile, unrewarding and expensive, as an examination of its history over three decades clearly shows.

As an historical purist for much of my life, I have become a seriously concerned ratepayer of Muskoka. And I realize that critically important questions were not raised in 1979-80, about long term museum operation and restoration contingencies......and that inevitably determined we would reach this point of decision sooner or later. I think Bracebridge should have a new library with a museum attachment, in an accessible area of town, where the community’s heritage can be displayed and used in a modern, climate controlled, easy to maintain, modern structure. It’s worth waiting for.

I can see myself, visiting my old friend on the hillside, (I always talked to Woodchester as if it was a living entity), sharing memories of the good old days, the labors, the trial and error, and the laughs, and feeling good about the bright new use for an historic building of its acclaim. I wouldn’t feel at all bad, to see the property being used like it should be.......and frankly, I think having more use would please many of us, who do feel bad it has fallen on hard times.

The arts community has very much improved life and times on the Woodchester hillside. I didn’t have a doubt about their success, when I opened that Pandora’s Box......and despite a rough patch of dissent, even the critics would have to agree, it gave Woodchester a few more years of viability.

Only an idea.

LIFE AT WOODCHESTER VILLA AND MUSEUM - A TEST OF LOVE AND ORDEAL

A LOT OF ORDEAL

I got the bright idea, sometime in the late 1980's, to host a Canada Day Open House at Woodchester. The plan was to tap into the Canada Day fireworks at Bracebridge Bay Park, an easy walking distance to and from the museum. If we opened well before the fireworks began, we might be able to get two or three hundred visitors, at least, to climb the hillside above the falls. As I had before, and I do feel like a cad for asking, Suzanne agreed to make a huge cake out of four regular size pans, to offer our guests on their visit. We had lemonade and coffee to go with the cake, and of course a free admission to the museum.

On the way up the hill, on a windy July evening, the wax paper covering the huge cake (which had impressed somewhat in the icing on the drive from home) was picked up by a gust, twisted around (icing facing out), and blown onto my face on the way up the incline to the back door. I couldn’t get it off my face, with my arms outstretched with the cake. Andrew was killing himself laughing, and Suzanne had already gone into the building. The wind kept pushing it tighter around my head, by this point, and you know.....for a moment, I really thought a resident ghost of Woodchester, was letting me know it had a sense of humor. For about five minutes I couldn’t get up over the grade because I couldn’t see. I was covered in icing and wax paper, and the only hope I had, was Andrew relaying a message to Suzanne about my chagrin. It was one of those images, one of those strange special events as Woodchester manager I will never be able to forget.

On another occasion, staff and I came up with a plan for a Christmas in July celebration, in an attempt to bring in a little extra revenue. Back then, admittedly, I used my position as editor of The Herald-Gazette, and assistant to The Muskoka Sun, to promote Woodchester events. On this occasion it worked better than I could have imagined. Long past the days of the elaborate Strawberry Socials, on the lawns of Woodchester, we went for a seven day program instead, which would wrap-up with a large Salvation Army Band concert on the front lawn. All that week we had large and enthusiastic crowds. One day in particular stands out. We were offering a “Teddy Bear Picnic,” and some culinary demonstrations for youngsters. I thought it would be neat (as I did with the Canada Day cake) if Suzanne would assist staff to make butter as a demonstration of pioneer crafts. What I hadn’t expected was that my publicity for the event would attract several hundred screaming, running and leaping kids......many without parents in attendance. I watched a couple of parents, I’m assuming, stop their cars at the driveway, to let out a mob of kiddies........and I knew we were in deep trouble. It was a day to remember. Suzanne was supposed to be an advisor for staff, to make butter, not the actual butter-lady.

We had to abandon doubling-up for crafts to fan out amongst the children and teddy bears, and my mother Merle shut down the museum to keep the house ice cream and lemonade free. Suzanne, with Robert (now about six feet tall) in a snuggly on her shoulders, had to demonstrate butter making, on her own. I had to look after Andrew and keep the kids out of the trees. Robert would fuss up and flail his arms, knocking butter off Suzanne’s spoon.....and onto some kid’s nice white shirt. I got the dirtiest looks that day, let me tell you. There were no words, at the end of this day, covered in ice cream, butter, butter-milk and sweat, that could possibly have pacified her......other than possibly, “dear, I’ve run you a hot bath,” and “I’ll look after the kids this evening.....so you go ahead and lay down.”

Some times I’m delusional enough to believe that my involvements with community projects over the years, has given our family an exceptional, dimensional, experienced, positive sense of hometown pride. “What other dad would let you join in his great adventures.” If Suzanne even reads this, I’m a gonner. There hasn’t been a single major project, from the operation of the Sports Hall of Fame, in Bracebridge, the Crozier Foundation summer skating and hockey camp (we were the volunteer kitchen staff for five days of food preparation), the Muskoka Lakes Museum (when I was a director there) and Woodchester Villa, that hasn’t swallowed our family alive. When I told her last night that I had volunteered my years of experience, to help Woodchester at its time of need, she just stared through me.....very much looking for a fibre of soul to grab and wrench from my mortal coil. Yet she recognizes that I had given her ample warning before we got married, that getting hitched to a writer / historian / antique obsessive-compulsive, was going to be an odyssey of poverty, wealth, poverty again, and many, many excesses. I’ve delivered on my promises. Not just run of the mill adventure either. We’d be like Hope and Crosby, always “on the road again.” To say she’s been a good sport is of course demeaning, and I won’t do that.....even though it’s true in the sporting sense. Life with me is sort of sport, you know. I just finished Paul Rimstead’s book, ( I just bought an autographed copy for my collection), and the good news.......I’ve never been quite as adventure-laden as the Rimmer. Suzanne still lives here, at least.

Andrew used to come home from school nearly in tears because his teacher challenged some story or other that he had presented to the class. It wasn’t unusual at all, for a teacher to suggest he must surely be fibbing, to claim, for example, he owned a hundred model planes. I can remember taking one of these teachers to task, asking whether or not she would like to come and visit our home, to count for herself. I said, actually, “he’s got 125 models in his collection, so he underestimated.” We weren’t bragging although he may have been. That’s a kid for you. But he wasn’t fibbing. He didn’t have any reason to. At one sale I probably bought him thirty unfinished model planes still in their 1960's packaging. You see, the teachers didn’t have much idea what Andrew’s parents did besides writing for the local press and teaching at the school down the road. So I decided that we should have a little preamble meeting, with any new teacher in advance of the school term. The advisory was that if either boy, Robert or Andrew, claims to have a thousand vinyl records in their collections, they weren’t being boastful or inaccurate. We saw a lot of chins on chests in those days. But it was hard for our boys to represent their childhoods, as did their contemporaries, because their parents happened to be eccentric antique dealers, who started building their kids’ future professions early in life. Visit their music shop on Muskoka Road, and then tell me I’m fibbing.

Maybe it was their early immersion at Woodchester, surrounded by a wonderful array of antiques, from stuffed birds to vintage toys. Consider this the privilege of being a museum manager. Andrew was allowed to sit and play with the toys in the children’s room, at the top of the stairs, at the Villa. I was always in the vicinity, at the time. Robert was too young then to play without potentially damaging the Victorian era play-things, so he stayed with me. The funny thing about this, is that Andrew just loved to sit on the wood floor, and play quietly for hours with toys you’d expect would be half as interesting, as the Dinky Toys and Hot Wheels he had at home. These were neat items that deserved to be played with. I agreed. Any kid who wanted to touch or play with these toys, was welcome to, if I happened to be the tour guide. There is a famous full length color photograph, on the front page of a Herald-Gazette Christmas edition, featuring Andrew on the Woodchester Villa rocking horse, with a young girl at his side. It was in the pre-online period of newspaper circulation, so less than 6,000 papers made it to print. I think Suzanne hung onto about 1,000. The point is, we immersed our lads in many of our adventures in history.......even with my research work on the Tom Thomson murder mystery, up on Canoe Lake. Andrew and I paddled to Mowat on a number of occasions, visiting the many points on the lake Thomson fished, painted, and traversed. From the mid-1990's we all became Thomson and Algonquin Park zealots, and we mixed research and discovery with some great camping adventures we still hold near and dear as memories.

Woodchester was kind of a turning point for us as a family. It was the beginning, in many ways, of an immersion style of involvement we’ve practiced ever-since, whether it’s Andrew and Robert designing an Irvin “Ace” Bailey, or Roger Crozier showcase exhibit, at the Bracebridge Arena, or working with many of the music world’s performing legends.....as they have been here in Gravenhurst and Bracebridge. They still have folks who disbelieve them.....(judging them by age not experience) when they say they’ve worked with particular music stars, or sold them guitars, drums, accessories, or vintage vinyl from their store. We don’t worry too much these days whether they believe our stories or not. We really don’t use any of our experiences or connections as a bragging right........but forgive us if we’re just really proud of having participated in life, as relatively poor sods, in the many adventures that have.....for whatever reason, come our way. Maybe, if you ask, they’ll tell you about handing out the first issues of “Muskoka Today,” during a Christmas Parade in Bracebridge, while Hugh Clairmont and Wayne Hill (plus Mark I believe) played trumpet and drum in back of a pick-up truck. Then there was the time Roger Crozier (my boss at the time) asked both lads to join a summer-time parade in Bracebridge, to give out candies. The candy was loaded into Guy Waite’s vintage car, and the boys were in and out of it for candy refills for about three kilometres of parade route. You could see in Guy’s eyes, “watch the paint boys, watch the paint.” Guy is always quick to volunteer a ride for a good cause.

It’s also true we never forced them into any summer job.....and offered them good remuneration for helping us sell antiques at a wide variety of venues, or assisting us otherwise with many projects from parades to exhibitions, butter making to cake eating.

We’re not special people, and we’re not rich. We are folks who give our word, and stick to it. And now when we work to help out the local Salvation Army Food Bank with fundraising, by golly, it sure feels GOOD to immerse in a GOOD cause for a GOOD hometown.

AT WOODCHESTER VILLA, THE LOVE FOR ANTIQUES AND WRITING INTERESTS CAME TOGETHER

It’s now more than 30 years now since I helped launch the Bracebridge Historical Society, and eventually Woodchester Villa and Museum. A university grad with a degree tucked under his arm, back to the hometown, to lend my two cents’ worth. Whether it was wanted or not!

News this week is that it will take a half million dollars to renovate the octagonal concrete building, which dates back to the late 1800's. The outside, second story walkway, which wrapped around the building, collapsed as a result of the snow-load, deposited during the wicked December storm of 2010.....the same week my father had a stroke. It was a milestone period. The museum I operated for many years was in great disrepair, and I had to pass it daily on the way to visit Ed Sr at the hospital. Both caused me grief.

I began the museum project with great enthusiasm. So did everyone else. It was a behemoth effort to acquire, restore, re-furnish, promote and operate the unique property. Right from the beginning however, there were signs we all picked up on, that just possibly we should have been better prognosticators of the future. Even after a couple of years of museum operation, the volunteer brigade was exhausted. After incredible strawberry and blueberry socials, antique car shows, antique shows, Christmas in July events, concerts on the lawn, theatre in the round, and a hundred programs of every description, we’d spent more of our volunteer’s time than they could afford to invest. It caused stresses on everyone involved, and by the five year mark of operation, and the ongoing challenge to fundraise, and obtain grants, even the Board of Directors roster looked like swiss cheese. It was a weary bunch. It’s not to say they didn’t have fun working at Woodchester, or at the many Historical Society events, but it was all becoming more like work than feeling pleasurable.

From the beginning the town was worried about the burden a museum could represent down the road. They were right to be concerned. In this case, they were not just prophetic but realistic. It would become a burden, and in my time as president to boot. We just reached a stage when it was absolutely necessary to approach the town, cap in hand, and explain how we went from zero to a hundred miles per hour and then back down to near zero again within several years. By the late 1980's, Suzanne hated me for asking her to phone some of the volunteers on our tattered list. She was tired of rejection. It became almost impossible to get any one to help out. There were a lot of critics but nobody wanted to pitch in with everything from lawn mowing, painting, weeding the walkways and gardens, cleaning the house, volunteering for daily tour guides or even offering to spell us on occasion from what had become a drudgery. I hated to think this way but while Suzanne was teaching at the high school, I was looking after two wee lads, while working at Woodchester on a list of chores as long as your arm. Carol Scholey, as one of the last volunteers standing, used to work up a list for me that, in her mind, was a week’s worth.....when in reality it was more like a year-long project. I even had a play-pen set up in the museum annex for son Robert, while working in the nearby office. Andrew played with his toy cars amidst a towering volume of farm implements hung on the walls, and set out on floor displays. Andrew thought it was neat. His music shop today looks the same.....as he still considers clutter and heritage his true comfort zone.

Suzanne and I used to rush to Woodchester at all times of day and night, to handle tour groups, school outings, and any other visitors passing through the region. We’d open the museum for a small group if and when we could. I conducted many tours with one youngster in tow, and another in a snuggly against my chest. Family responsibilities were getting in the way of museum life and times. Then there were the midnight runs with the OPP. That was because, when the attic was wired for a security system, the coating on the wire......to a squirrel, apparently tasted like licorice. I can’t tell you how many nights in a year, I had to travel through the house with an officer, looking for evidence of a break-in. It took most of that year to figure out that our perpetrators were squirrels. When they weren’t eating the wire coverings, causing false alarms, they were setting off the motion detectors.

The real gem was when some of our student staff decided to play with a Ouiji Board during their lunch and coffee breaks. As communications director, at the time, as well as editor of The Herald-Gazette, I found a breaking ghost story, on my desk, written by a reporter for that week’s edition. We were a pretty conservative bunch on the Historical Society directorate, and this communicating with the deceased feature-story, looked like trouble. It was far more complicated than this but suffice to say we decided it was relatively harmless. “Ghosts speaking through Ouiji Board at museum.” What could it hurt? Right?

I just didn’t expect it would involve the word “kill”, “murder,”or the statement “Get out of the house.” I certainly hadn’t anticipated that the staff would turn their attention to an allegedly unoccupied family grave, found in a local cemetery. Next thing I know, a television crew was on its way to report on the alleged murder that might have happened on the upper staircase of the old house. Implicated in this was the family of woolen mill founder, Henry Bird Sr. It didn’t take long before the poop destroyed the fan, and the public relations director was in serious trouble, having to make apologies all round. How they linked it all into a concealed murder was beyond me but it was on the nightly news so.....according to most of the town’s population, it must have been true.

It wasn’t. Plain and simple. But the damage had been done. The Ouiji board was removed from the museum, and the staff was asked to take a more passive approach to drumming up business......until the controversy blew over.

It’s not that the house didn’t have its spirit-kind. It most certainly did. And we weren’t the only ones who experienced manifestations. To me it was a fascination more than a haunting, as such, and we took it pretty much in stride. I’ve written about this extensively on my Muskoka and Algonquin Ghosts blog site. I spent a lot of time alone in that house and I was never frightened by anything I encountered. It was a cheerful place to work, most of the time, and I looked forward to the special occasions we had planned for open house......such as the Christmas event. What great fund it was to decorate a Victorian home for the holidays. I used to play a tape recording of “A Christmas Carol,” while we worked.

I’d sit in Henry’s office, overlooking his former mill site, and write about my experiences with the museum. I wrote a lot at his former desk. It was a quiet, interesting office. Generally it was a calming, embracing old dwelling......and maybe it did have something or other to do with its octagonal design.

In the late 1980's, as the recession loomed, and I had three jobs and an antique business, on the go, two kids, and a new Gravenhurst residence, I couldn’t handle the same level of responsibility. I didn’t have the best working relationship with town council at the time, especially my liaison, and it seemed the perfect time to turn over the reins to someone with a better plan. I was happy to have been able to revitalize the museum annex, which was turned over to the Muskoka Arts and Crafts community, to use as a gallery.......a thriving centre still a going concern after twenty years. It was hard walking away from the museum and I don’t get teary-eyed often but a lot of my early family history was etched on this hilltop overlooking the Muskoka River. I didn’t get so much as a card of thanks from any one, including the town, and I assumed their opinion was “good riddance to Mr. Currie.” I think we all needed some distance and time.

Several moments ago, I submitted a note to the media, suggesting I’d be more than happy to assist the town or a new committee, to support the refurbishing of this wonderful old building which still possesses the strong spirit and intense character of Henry Bird, that I admired way back when........and what still compels me to come to its assistance. I’ve got good memories of Woodchester Villa. And although Suzanne and the boys still wince a wee bit, when I talk about the old days at the museum, we still get a chuckle about how our family album was so much different than any one else’s. Woodchester always seemed to be in the background of important moments in our budding family history. My mother worked part time as a tour guide in the late 1980's, and Ed would help out where he could......mostly looking after the boys when I had meetings and labors that didn’t allow for child-minding.

I don’t know if they’ll want my help or just rub a clove of garlic and make the sign of the cross when they find out I’m willing to rejoin the museum gang. I’ve mellowed over the years and I don’t bite any more. I hope other folks will offer help as well. It is a good cause. But a big one.

I owe it to old friend and former Historical Society President, Wayland Drew, to give it a try, at the very least......just as we did in 1978 and for many years thereafter.

DRAWN CLOSER TO CRISIS IN THE WORLD - BY HUGE COMMUNICATION ADVANCES

Think about what profound situations could have developed, politically and militarily, if the media advancements of today, had been in existence during the Second World War......available to capture scenes from the Nazi death camps. The greatest history lesson is being taught now,..... the visual truths of this violent actuality unfolding in the Middle East. What we didn’t want to know, what we may have wished to remove ourselves from, is becoming increasingly difficult to sidestep because it is, as they say, just an inconvenient truth. For those who wish to know everything about this evolving world, the reality is now prevailing upon us in all its rage.....as if a dam has finally burst and the water set free to sculpt the new world. We are seeing world events, as tragic and unsettling as they are, only minutes after they have occurred. It is changing us all. We are learning about the world by media advancements. What we didn’t learn at school, we are being taught by immersion. By camera. Instant reporting.

I have this deep seeded respect for truth-seeking, pretty much the result of having been a reporter for so many years. I expect this is a trend that will continue in the world and everywhere else there is a citizen with a camera phone etc. Sometimes we localize here, to a fault, and fall back into a sepia tone image of our former town......as if locked in the 1950's, somewhat oblivious to the reality things will never be the same again. We simply have to adjust to the new normal we thought came with 9-11 but now surely realize, is even more profound today.....as we find ourselves nervous and fidgeting, watching the growth of rebellion across the Middle East. It does effect us, and will alter our way of thinking in perpetuity. As long as we rely on oil from this same hot spot on the planet, our lives will all be affected one way or another. As we depend on oil and gas, we must surely realize this current instability, has the expansive potential of putting us back into recessionary economics. Abruptly!

While we all localize by necessity, we need to globalize our outlook, to many new challenges heading our way.........from a place “a half world away”.......getting closer to us every day.

If ever we abused the word “pro-active,” in political rhetoric, it is high time we put the word into our survival mantra......and the first tidal wave anticipated will be the huge impact of rising oil and gas prices, particularly on food prices which are already increasing.

It is a rapidly changing world. Some changes, as Charles Dickens observed of the industrial revolution, will be violent and unforgiving. What shall we do, but side with liberation, and a free world?

BACK TO ANTIQUES FOR ANOTHER SEASON

I picked up this oil on masonite, painted by an artist named Dan Titman, while on an antique and vintage guitar (and accessory) hunt this past week, with lads Andrew and Robert. We’ve been doing this habitually since they were born. I’ve walked through many antique malls wearing a snuggly wit human cargo. Either Andrew or Rob. I dare say they could carry me in a snuggly today. I might be okay with that because of my bad hockey knee and rickety hip. The only thing I had to watch for was when a hand came whipping out of the snuggly to grab a piece of pottery or glass we were passing. Both boys had lightning fast reflexes, and it very nearly cost us in damage. Andrew once grabbed a several hundred dollar wood carving, of a duck, at the home of Muskoka artist Weldon Tracy, during an on-site interview. We were able to unfasten his fist on the waterfowl’s throat, without serious damage to the bird. Even as a kid, he knew quality when he saw it!

But we have always hunted for antiques and collectables as a family, and it’s no different now. Well, the only real difference is, we have a lot less time to hit the road these days. The boys have their music shop, on Muskoka Road, here in Gravenhurst, and both work during the evenings, in the tech departments of local entertainment venues......and they have a significant cast of students they teach as well. We have to rob Peter to pay Paul, you might say, in order to get enough travel time to pick up inventory. It’s a great and nostalgic trip then, for the old gang (mom had to work) to head out on the open road......right off the pages of “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” and dawdle in the stores we adore. While I got a great painting.....the sugar bush above, Andrew picked up a good-condition RCA Victrola, circa 1907, and Robert picked up an excellent reference book on early Canadian bands, and the personalities who made-up the music scene of the 1960's and 70's. They get these music legends popping into the store frequently, and they want to know more about the great and endearing talents who cut the trail from here to there. Andrew also picked up a neat tube radio at Carousel Collectables, (mainstreet) in Orillia. We like this tidy and interesting shop and plan to visit often.

We came back, after a day’s hustling about, with a plethora of drums and drum accessories, a banjo, and three guitars. Not quite a full van load but what we consider a worthwhile outing in the “old stuff trade.”

It’s at this time of year that I think about sugar bushes, my experiences visiting many of them, and about the joy of the antique business.......that usually quiets down during the winter season. That’s the traditional time in Muskoka, when dealers start fanning out around the province and beyond, to find items for their shops and sales for the summer season. We’ve taken a few months off our online antique enterprise due to the high Canadian dollar, which hurts our many American buyers, especially on shipping costs. For about ten years now, seventy-five percent of online sales have gone to our friends to the south. The Recession did hinder some of our business, particularly art sales, although we have found new avenues for historic paper and documents, old photographs and smaller collectibles. The boys’ music business is flourishing with nostalgia and affordable, good quality guitars and drums. Their vinyl business is a going concern. It’s keeping up with demand that pushes us out on the road more these days, to build back inventory for the summer season. It the typical Muskoka hustle most retailers enjoy because it means “coming into season,” versus “heading out of the season,” which can mean slow times ahead. We’ve been spiriting right along.

I’ve got a dozen significant restoration projects on the go and the first warm days of March will find me fumbling around the shed, trying to pull the tables and trunks outside for preliminary repairs. I love this time of year. While many folks despise restoring old pieces, I’m in my element. All the frustrations of the winter season are swallowed up pretty fast, scraping and sanding old steamer trunks and pine tables. I enjoy writing but to be honest, it’s killing me and not softly. I suffer from a bad back from years of this writing stuff, and I very nearly cripple myself after a winter-season jag. I need to get outside and work on these relic pieces, where I can stand for awhile. I can’t find a chair that suits my back, so I just try to limit my hours at the keyboard. I’m thinking about a lap top for the future. Suzanne thinks I should buy a portable Smith Corona from the thrift shop instead, and set it on a board across my lap......so I can sit in my easy chair writing all day. I think she’s being sarcastic but I just nod that I’ll consider it. Having spent most of my life on manuals, and typing so hard that it actually ripped apart the ribbon, as well as the paper, I don’t think it’s a viable solution.

My very next writing project, is to finally commence the first part of a future website for Andrew and Robert’s music business......which will be a regularly updated story-line, all about their businesses, their newest friends and upcoming projects......as a sort of permanent record of how it all began. They like the idea of one day putting the copy into book form, for the benefit of customers. It has been done before, by other well known music shop owners. And dad, afterall, is always looking for a new and interesting writing assignment.....and word is, he work’s cheap. Seeing as Suzanne and I did a lot of the ground work to get both boys into the industry, we’d be crazy not to document our role......just in case one day, in all their fame and fortune, they were to forget the actuality of a family enterprise. Suzanne is shaking her head, just now. She knows they’d never forget their favorite and only accountant, general manager and woolen mitten knitter. The cookie maker for the store! Hell, I’m just the gnarly old roadie with the van, who knows how to wordsmith.

As far as the painting above......it reminds Suzanne of her relative Bill Veitch’s sugar bush in Ufford, a place she loved to go with her father (Lion) Norm Stripp, leading up to the maple syrup festival put on by the Windermere Lions every April. This painting......although we are in the business of selling them, has made it to our permanent collection of Canadian art.....and I wouldn’t even think about trying to unclench her fingers from the frame.

By necessity of our family industry, I will have to divide my time a wee bit differently, if I’m to get these restoration projects done by the summer season. We had a good autumn season (antique) “picking” from around Muskoka but a lot of the pieces were in the rough. We got them for a better price but in order to sell them for a greater dividend, we have a lot of work to invest first.

Our theme this year is woolen colletables and Suzanne is currently restoring numerous old blankets......and when not doing this, she’s knitting socks and mitts which are available from the boys’ music shop in the old Muskoka Theatre building.

Lots more to come. I’ll take you out on the antique hustings for a little actuality, and you can see through the eyes of an obsessive compulsive collector, just how exciting it can be to hustle and sometimes wrestle for a coveted piece. Whatever you think you know about the antique business, you will find this upcoming collection of blogs, enlightening, entertaining, and possibly a little scary. We’re cut, you see, from the same cloth as the tomb raiders. Adventure is the fatal attraction for all those who enter the profession. I’ll explain soon.

If you know anything about the artist or the location of the painting included with this blog, please drop me an email. We believe it is from Quebec.

MY PARTNER THREW ME THE WRITER’S LIFE-LINE - TIME AND PATIENCE

Suzanne and I have enjoyed a good life immersed in history. There was no other girl I dated back then, who could have handled a relationship with a guy who pre-occupied as both a writer and antique hunter. She not only helped me change my life away from the bars and beer swilling cronies but helped our antique business survive, through as many ups and downs as my lengthy jag as a writer. I’ve quit the profession 500 times in three decades.

At one point I possessed about 40,000 old books here at Birch Hollow......60,000 less than my book buddy, Dave Brown, who had jammed 100,000 books into his small Hamilton bungalow. After he passed away,.....and I make no apology for reiterating this, the executor’s of his estate couldn’t remove the books from the basement first.....as they had planned, because they were holding up the beams of the first floor. They only found this out later, when the floor began to sag, and they had to stuff the load-bearing books back in place. Dave’s wife left him at about 40,000 books but Suzanne, being the good sport she is, stuck with me despite, as she said, “having way too many books.” I’m way below that now as I have had two years to cull it all back to a modest 10,000 or so. I saw the look of divorce in her eyes but never got the paper-work.

Suzanne has been enormously patient with me as both a collector / dealer and a writer, two professions known for their eccentricities and obsessive behavior. I’ve never once heard any one call me normal or someone without baggage, so I’m assuming eccentric fits somehow into my character profile. No one’s stepping up to write my biography, so I’ll deal with that later.

While always prepared for a writing funk, or a collector’s hiatus (when I can’t find any treasures out on the hustings), Suzanne refuses to let me wallow in self pity. The very fact she refuses to validate my feelings, always makes me mad, but at the same time, she knows full well it will push me back to the keyboard.....or out to the local second hand shop for another wee peek at the new offerings. She has never made a habit of reading my copy, although there are times when I will read a column to her, to get some feed-back on a controversial issue. As for her picking up a copy of the publications I write for......or have written for, since we married, it doesn’t happen. Suzanne recoils when I mention this but it’s undeniable. It’s not that she doesn’t care what I write about but she doesn’t want her opinion to be the pivot, or the crossroads, of whether I stay writing, or decide to become a golf pro. I realize the worst thing I could do is ask her opinion of my work. It’s one thing for a legal opinion, because we have strict rules about that in my copy, but quite another for her to be put on the spot, to have to critique a highly sensitive spouse.

We live in a museum, she knits and I write, and we occasionally watch television......Coronation Street being the one show all things stop for at Birch Hollow.....even the cats cease running around or else. Strange right? We’ve been Corrie fans for years.

My partner has opted to give me the room to create what I wish to create. Her influences are subtle, and while I don’t think about it daily, I know when I get all biographical and stuff, her indifference is more of a challenge than condition of avoidance. For years she’s been my manager, and handled thousands of calls from happy readers, and from those who wanted to hang me in the town square. Hers is the voice of reason and over the years, she has made friends from my adversaries, simply by exceptional phone manners. And don’t think for a moment that she’s on-side with my opinions, just because she’s supportive most of the time. We have a lot of differences of opinion. She knits and I write. I don’t tell her she’s knitting a wonderful pair of socks and she doesn’t tell me I’m a budding Joseph Conrad. It works.

When I started out in the news business, I used my status to impress my lady friends. Shortly after starting at The Beacon, in MacTier, my girlfriend at the time, was enthralled by my ability to gain access to events, and mingle up close and personal, with politicians and leaders of the business community. She admitted I had a good job and the perks weren’t bad either. For the next five years I had a number of short-term girlfriends, who liked going out to dinner shows at big Muskoka resorts, as guests of management. I milked it baby.....I milked it! It seemed like the good life, and I enjoyed having partners who liked to watch over my shoulder as I lived the Hemingway dream. I was an exotic guy. Well not really but that’s what I thought. Truth was they’d soon leave me for a toothless hockey or baseball player, from the local industrial league, who couldn’t spell two words in a row.

Suzanne was interested in me. Not because I was the editor of the local rag. Not because we got to go out a lot, on someone else’s dime (I do realize I was in ethical conflict a lot), or hang around with people a lot richer than us. We’d known each other back in high school, and we both liked the same things.....a nice house, a close-knit family, and good company. She proved to me I didn’t need a groupie as a partner, but more of a Punch Imlach, Toe Blake kind of coach......seemingly unfeeling about my bo-bo’s......my injured ego, or my many stalemates in either writing or antiques. If you asked Suzanne what her husband did, as a profession, she would answer without hesitation....”he’s an antique dealer.” They would have to ask, “he wouldn’t be the Ted Currie, who writes that column?” She won’t lie that’s for sure. But she won’t go much further than admitting. “Yea that’s him.” Half expecting to get reamed for some indiscretion I committed in the past 30 years, of both entertaining folks and pissing off the other half. Like I wrote in the beginning, she’s been a brave soul facing my audience as my manager and spouse.....not being able to separate the two. Which only comes in our house when she knits and I write as individual passions that must never collide.

I just finished the final edit of a preface, I wrote for a friend’s book of short stories, anecdotal and otherwise, about life on a modern day homestead. She asked me one day, as I was writing it, whether it was a “War and Peace,” kind of tome, because it was taking me so long to compose. She doesn’t usually make such comments but she wanted the computer. I wasn’t sure if there was a point here. Was I slowing down. Having been trained in a hectic newspaper office, I was pretty efficient with copy in, and copy out. She must have thought I was losing my touch or that this assignment was tougher than usual. Maybe it was a little of both. I do find myself polishing a little more than usual these days. It was then, like a hockey player being accused of slacking, and lacking enthusiasm, that I decided to up the ante, and start spending more time working-out at the keyboard. I’ve had a dozen projects on the back burner, and have decided to get them done. So the other night, after a two week writing frenzy to meet some tough deadlines......I said to her, one night, while she was knitting away...... “Hey, are you ever going to get those socks done?” It was like a skit from a situation comedy. “You mean these ones,” she fired back, pulling a finished pair from her knitting bag. Of course these were the ones I thought she was working on, as I had seen her with the night before. What a jerk, right? Point taken.

Suzanne’s policy has always been, to allow her eccentric husband to enjoy the freedom of space and time, and the opportunity to create without imposition or intrusion, limitation or restriction of what I need, to get the task completed. I haven’t asked her if I could have a muse as the great bards enjoyed but I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t care....... as long as it wasn’t her. She has no interest in being the source of my inspiration......it would be too hard to live with me if that was the case. I’d have too many expectations. I’d want her to stand in the garden, a silhouette against the lilacs, or standing with a flower in her hand, looking wistfully into a dreamscape of my concoction. It’s not that we’re not romantic together, it’s just that we don’t really understand each other’s craft. The ticky tack of those knitting needles drives me nuts and my vigorous tapping at the keyboard demands volume increases on the television. Still, we arrive at the end of the day, contented by each other’s company.

Later this afternoon, she will come home and file this editorial. I don’t know how. I refuse to learn. That drives her crazy. But she’s given up trying to show me. And she won’t read one word of this copy before its saved to the hard drive. We seem to thrive on our respective eccentricities.

The great equalizer is that we both very much enjoy hunting for antiques and collectibles. The weekends are ours to roam. Until I see that she’s brought my competition along for the ride. The knitting bag. I’m going to find a muse!

BOOZE AND DRUGS - A RISK WORTH TAKING -

A DESPONDENT YOUTH WITHOUT A CARE IN THE WORLD - OR SO I THOUGHT

I drank beer on a school trip. I was dating two girls at once. I sucked back two large cans of beer when word came down there was going to be a room check. I stuck the crushed cans behind the dresser. And I stayed real close to the bathroom for two reasons. The upchuck and the fact I’d consumed enough liquid to require an almost non-stop urination. No, I didn’t get caught. Close but as they say, that only counts in horseshoes.

When I hear stories today about teenagers getting wasted at parties or while on school trips, I might blurt something like, “What the hell’s wrong with those kids anyway,” and become holier than thou, until my conscience rears-up and reminds me, I was one of those misbehaving teens myself. A babe in each arm, a cigar in my clenched teeth, and a bottle of rye within easy reach. What a life. I wasn’t hippy but I was tuned-in, turned-on and tuned-out before I was twenty.

It was that stupid period of adventure-seeking that most youngsters stretch to the outer reaches of the ridiculous. I can remember going on a canoe trip, into Algonquin Park, with enough booze to meet the needs of a battalion. There was only four of us. We were hammered by the 2nd portage. I came over one of the hills, only to find a canoe on the ground. We couldn’t find our mate anywhere. He was a six footer so he’d have made a hungry bear very contented. If he’d fallen into the lake, with the snoot-full of beer, how were we going to explain that to his parents. Jesus, we were at our first conundrum with booze, and it was only the second portage. It wasn’t until we decided to haul the canoe over the rest of the portage, and heard the muffled yelling from below, we realized the lost canoeist had been found. Seems he had momentarily passed out after falling into a muddy hole. Up to his waist, and being happily pissed, just kind of nodded off in the shade of his own canoe. It only got worse after this. So here we were in the middle of beautiful Algonquin Park, during spectacular weather, with great food in tow, and hated all of it because we were hungover by early afternoon. Why did we self-contaminate. We thought it was an act of liberation. A way to get the camper babes we’d find out on the Big Misty (Lake) campsites. Never happened by the way.

I was on a hockey trip once, as a teenager, and had to travel home in the back of a pick-up truck. Guess what we found in the back, beneath all the hockey gear. Well, by time we got back home, most of the brewskies were gone, and so was the hockey equipment. It seems we started chucking it out the back from about Powassan heading south. I didn’t do it, but I know who did. Needless to say the coach wasn’t impressed to find his beer had been emptied and his skates and stick were somewhere between Novar and Huntsville. The worst part was, I’d forgotten that my girlfriend Linda, was going to be at the Junior hockey game that night, and seeing as we got back before it was over......and the fact she didn’t think I drank anything more potent than sarsparilla, I was in shock when I saw her at the front of the rink. She was a wonderful girl and her OPP father was so pleased I didn’t imbibe.....as I had confessed before my first date with Linda. So here she was, and so was I, and when we hugged.....I was busted. Like Ricky Ricardo asking Lucy, I had a “lot of splaining to do.” I hated when she got teary eyed, thinking of me as her drunken boyfriend.

One night, three of us young lads, decided to go to a hockey game in Sundridge. We were so drunk to start with, and avoiding cops by taking the backroads north, we didn’t catch on to the fact we had taken a wrong turn, winding up on this treeless barrens with only these strange little huts along the trail. I remember thinking through the fog of alcohol, that, unless we had landed in Lilliput, these little houses looked an awful lot like fish shacks. Christ, we were out on the ice road, down from Wilson’s Lodge on Skeleton Lake. I don’t think the driver had any idea how to make a pursuit turn but did one anyway, and in only seconds, we were back on the main road thanking God for sparing our lives. So what does a drunken jerk do next. Well, that’s easy. I chucked a beer bottle out of the car. Not behind, but ahead. It hit the ice covered snowbank and rolled down in time for the front tire to run it over. So then, having survived the lake misadventure, we now had a flat tire in the blackness of a country night. To make it more interesting, the tire had been replaced a short time before, and nuts put on with an air wrench. We had the smallest tire wrench in the world. It took more than an hour to change that tire. No gloves. No flashlight. But lots of booze.

I’ve got stories about booze excesses that would have made Paul Rimstead wince. And if you ever read his adventures in the Toronto Sun, many years back, you’d realize that it would have taken a lot to find someone with more legendary antics than his. In later years, Rimmer’s column was my daily source of motivation. As a young writer, he was my mentor. I lived out his lifestyle the best I could. The difference being, I survived and he didn’t. I credit my survival to Suzanne and her kind badgering about the health risks I was creating for myself, and economic woes I was causing the family.

I realized that I didn’t drink alone. The biggest incentive to booze-it-up was the group precedent. I’d belonged to the sports regimen from childhood. Baseball and hockey associations were my downfall, especially in my elder years because they were based on the culture of......beer and lots of it! When the local lads went golfing, we had more booze in our bags than that trip I took to Algonquin.......the one I wrote about earlier. We were absolutely tanked by the ninth hole. It wasn’t until I gave up all of these sporting activities, on the recreation scale.....that I could see that a life without booze was possible. At work, a few of us staff writers had got into the habit of having whisky in the morning, for noon and afternoon coffees. I started to need it at home, and Suzanne, having to budget for our growing family, didn’t want to upset her writer-husband by asking me to spend less on booze.

After a Sunday morning hockey game, and five or six beers before the noon hour, I drove home, begged Suzanne to bring along Andrew, for a wee drive in the countryside. I remember so clearly today, the moment I came to my senses. I had taken them to a small log church on the Fraserburg Road, known as Rocksborough. My parents had taken me there, as a youngster, to sit in the pews of this historic Muskoka church. Here I was, doing what my parents had done....for my wife and young son. But my dad didn’t arrive here drunk. That was a big difference. I stood looking in the window, and all of a sudden, as if my Guardian Angel slapped me in the head with a wing tip, I saw my reflection. It wasn’t a pretty sight. At that moment, I knew over-indulgence would hurt our family. I asked Suzanne, standing beside me with Andrew in her arms, how we got to the church. I had apparently blacked out you see, and had no recall whatsoever, other than her word, how we had arrived, by car, with me driving. I had risked my family’s life by driving. The worst part was, I had intimidated my good wife from being honest with me, and refusing to get in the car. We had many arguments, and I think she felt it was better to go along, and avoid anything that would offend me. Whether I knew it or not, I had offended everyone I cared about. I stopped drinking that day.

For the next ten years I wouldn’t touch a drink. I quit hockey and baseball and sold my golf clubs at a yard sale. I moved away from the newspaper office, to work full time from my home, where I looked after our son as a committed Mr. Mom. I did the same with second son Rob, and lived booze free.....and flourished.

I won’t tell you I don’t drink today. I do. I enjoy seasonal and birthday treats of world (exotic) beer, and the occasional glass of wine with a nice dinner. I do not purchase any of it. And I have no interest in doing so.

At the end of his life, Rimstead wrote in his column, that he had asked his doctor how long he would live if he gave up booze altogether. With the damage he had caused himself to that point, I think it was a case of maybe eight more years without a taste of alcohol. When he asked how long he’d have drinking daily, the doc said only a few years. It was Rimmer’s viewpoint that he much preferred a couple of carousing years as a drinker, than eight years of boredom. I think he felt bad about admitting this but as his fans cherished his honesty, we knew his problems were all mortal......such that we could only abide by his rules, and read his work until the end.......and be satisfied he knew what he was doing. I was a non-drinker by this point, and it crushed me that my favorite writer was gone.......the result of excesses. I became a writer because of Rimstead. Stuck with it through hundreds of rough patches, when I hated my employers, my assignments, and even my readers at times. It was Rimmer’s columns that gave me the reason to sit back down at that Underwood, and commit to freedom of the press. So when he died, geez, I felt totally abandoned, and the booze that help kill him, once again seemed so alluring. I got over it. You know, I’ve still got a copy of Rimmer’s “Cocktales and Jockstraps,” on the shelf beside me......and every now and again, when I get the urge to binge, for old times sake, I just read a couple of chapters and I’m good.

When I hear and read about young people having problems with booze and drugs, I can certainly become outspoken.......until that is, Suzanne reminds me about an incident at a church, and a reflection I didn’t like. I do understand how excess can ruin a life. I know the huge need to feel a part of the action, and not be stuck as a discontent watcher. I wanted to be able to talk to girls without feeling like a nerd, and booze was the great liberator. At one time in my young life I had two girlfriends at the same time, and a really big ego, and a few years later, I had three girlfriends on the go, and everything was related to alcohol consumption and parties. Just as it had been at teenage parties when I cheated on my girlfriend(s) as a matter of necessity. I wasn’t at all pleased when it went the opposite direction, and I’d find my best mate with my best girl. I can’t tell you how many parties ended the same way. A wrestling match over matters of the heart, fought on the front lawn. All because of booze.

I have written about my exploits in the past, pretty much as a needed confessional, to acknowledge a great imperfection of character in my days of yore. But today it is painful to watch as so many people, injure themselves and their families, in order to be popular and the life of the party. I cheated death a thousand times. I wonder how lucky these people will be. Luck, you see, doesn’t enter into it. My luck, wasn’t to find Suzanne, it was my salvation. She eased me gently away from a crappy existence. I wonder if these drinkers and drug addicts will ever have the saving grace of a caring partner.....to help them out of the dark place of addiction. If I’d carried on, the way I was drinking at the time of our marriage in 1983, I would be as dead as Rimstead.....just not as well known.

When I get up on this soap box of mine, and talk or write about my past association with “the drink,” I will always see that snowy churchyard......on the Fraserburg Road, and the footprints in the snow I couldn’t remember making. And then see a contented life with a wonderful family, in the only reflection I care about today.

We need to help our friends in denial about their excesses. We need to be friends and good parents, who by love and compassion, wish to stop the Reaper in his tracks.

ADA FLORENCE KINTON BORN IN BATTERSEA ENGLAND

BUT ADORED MUSKOKA-

By Ted Currie

This has not been a typical Muskoka winter. At this moment there is a wonderful stream of sunlight coming through my office window, currently being enjoyed by two old cats, sitting on the sill, purring in that gentle, calming harmony. It feels good on my arthritic knuckles, and I apologize for taking this hiatus from typing, to let the warm rays sooth these gnarled hands. While we expect snowfall every other day, here in the lakeland, this year, as last winter, has prevailed with a milder version of Canadian winter. While others across the continent have had brutal weather, ours has been quite kind. So far, of course. Knock wood, things can change.

There has been a wonderful amount of sunshine across our region, and despite some very cold days and wood-snapping temperatures overnight, for anyone who suffers the ill-effects of light deprivation, these past few months have been more cheerfully bright than usual. Today it’s sparkling out over the birch hollow, the diamond light of ice and sun, creates a stark contrast of light and shadow. I think this would be the kind of morning artist Ada Florence Kinton would find compelling and inspirational. She very much enjoyed sunny winter days likes this, wandering along the well trodden paths through the woodlands, to sketch and make notes about the surroundings.

This was in the 1880's, while staying with her family in Huntsville, a picturesque community in North Muskoka.

"Her first experience of picking primroses was a delight to be recorded and unforgotten; and not seldom did it happen that flowers would awaken in her mind ‘thoughts too deep for tears’," This passage was written by Ada’s friend, Agnes Maule Machar, a well known Canadian writer, and was published in the biography, "Just One Blue Bonnet." The book is a compilation of Miss Kinton’s letters and journal entries, released in 1907, two years following her death in Huntsville. The book had been prepared by her sister Sara Randleson, as a lasting memorial to a life well spent.

"Her vivid imagination and playful fancy often prompted her to read into their (flowers) passive life, human feelings and emotions, resulting in graceful little parables which she wrote with as delicate a touch as that which characterizes her drawings, wrote Machar, who frequently corresponded with the artist. "This habit of mind would come out frequently in talk as, for instance, when on a country visit in June, she referred lovingly to a ‘conscientious little lilac,’ which had unfolded its first snowy bloom at an age when such an effort could hardly have been expected of it. That shrub is still distinguished by the epithet which she then bestowed. Of all the many exquisite blossoms which Florence loved and idealized through her large gift of sympathetic imagination, the nearest to her heart were the Passion flower and the pansy - the Passion-flower reminded her of a suffering Saviour, from whom she always drew her deepest inspiration; the pansy for the heart’s ease, which she found only in following him,"wrote Agnes Machar.

"Ada Florence Kinton was born in Battersea, England on April 1^st, 1859, to parents John Louis Kinton and Sarah Curtis Mackie. She would become the third of four surviving children born to the Kintons. John Kinton was an instructor of English literature, at the Westminster Wesleyan Training College. He once said of himself that, ‘Gladly would he learn, and gladly teach’." Florence’s mother died when the youngster was only ten years of age. "How great the sorrow and loss was to this sensitive girl needs not be told. Hence forward I was all the mother she had," wrote her sister Sara Randleson. "The days of childhood and youth sped away all too fast. Study at home, visits to relatives in the lovely Thames Valley, scenery of Maidenhead or on the chalk cliffs of Kent, girlish friendships, and letters from Canada, whither her two brothers emigrated, gave these years their character."

Mrs. Randleson noted that, "In the summer vacation of 1880, we two sisters crossed the Atlantic to visit our brothers in the charming backwoods village of Huntsville. The romance and excitement of this expedition into the new world can not be told. Florence was too taken up with absorbing new impressions to make any record of it, except by a number of pretty pencil sketches of pioneer life."

According to her sister however, another profound event in her young life was about to occur. "The blow of her father’s death, (December 1882) was almost paralyzing. Florence’s health and life, even seemed to hang in the balance, and only the sustaining power of religion helped us endure the severe bereavement. Miss Leonard, an American lady, had lately been holding meetings for the promotion of holiness, which brought great comfort to our hearts. Our eldest brother, Edward, receiving the news by cable, came swiftly to us by sleigh and steamer, the tears freezing on his cheeks in the bitter winter cold. We decided that the home should be broken-up, and he shortly took Florence back with him to Muskoka. This change, while a solemn one, was to afford her a new beginning."

At 24 years of age, Miss Kinton wrote a card to her sister, while having a wretched cross-Atlantic voyage aboard the S.S. Sarmatian. "February 6, 1883. "You will be sorry to hear that we have had a very rough voyage. It is said to have been the stormiest that the Sarmatian has ever had. As soon as we got away from Liverpool, the fun commenced. We had eight lady passengers, and we were all sick in our berths before Thursday dinner-time. The captain told someone that we ‘were just in the nick of time to catch the whole storm.’ Then for about a week we had a real merry time. A storm at sea is certainly a fine sight, particularly to anyone who may be reclining in their cabin. On Sunday there were only three gentle men to dinner. I won’t try to describe how the rest of us felt. Suffice to say we were knocked down, whacked and banged and battered about until we were just worn out, even after the feeling of deathly nausea had passed away. The universal cry was for rest - just one half hour of dry land."

The artist writes, "For a week I lived mainly on ice. I didn’t grow much fatter. It was greatly amusing to hear the sea coming over the deck and down the stairs and past the cabin door, hissing and seething, fizzing like champagne in a passion. Once the stewardess could not get to me unless she waded knee deep in water through the passage. And the doctor was taking a mustard plaster to a patient, and he fell and dislocated his knee, and a passenger slipped on deck, cut his head open and knocked himself insensible.

The next letter however, was composed on February 21, 1883, and was posted from the Town of Huntsville. It contained information about the train and sleigh journey west and north to Muskoka. It presented an unexpected, abrupt arrival at the cross-roads in her life, between mourning for her old life, homesickness, fear of failure, and yet the spark of challenge liberation presented. It would allow the artist to flourish, with a period of solitude yet inspiration, a deep well that would bring her back to Muskoka many times, following world-wide missions with the Salvation Army. It was the place she would choose for her final vigil, due to illness, simply enjoying the view from the porch of her brother’s Huntsville home. We’ll save that part of the journey of Ada Florence Kinton for the next issue of Curious; The Tourist Guide.

This column series is dedicated to the Gravenhurst Salvation Army Food Bank, in Ada’s memory. I hope you can find it in your heart, to make a donation to a food bank serving your community. The need for many extends well beyond the Christmas season, and is a 12 month a year struggle for food bank operators. You kindness is greatly appreciated.

As for these cats on the window sill, I think March agrees with them.

WE WANTED OUR BOYS TO FEEL A PART OF GRAVENHURST’S HERITAGE

AND THAT’S A TRADITION THEY KEEP UP TODAY IN THEIR MUSIC SHOP - THE GLORY DAYS OF THE MUSKOKA THEATRE -

BUT HERE’S HOW IT ALL BEGAN-

When I worked for Muskoka Publications, in Bracebridge, I took every opportunity to dive into the old newspaper files kept in the basement. Not a good place to keep papers, and we did have floods down there over the years. I loved to spend an hour or so, when I had my work caught up, and for every hour I spent in this newspaper archives, I’d find two our three good ideas for future feature articles. Most of these multi-issue feature articles would run in our summer publication, The Muskoka Sun. At that time we might hit 100 pages for the Civic Holiday weekend, so it would devour lots of editorial copy. In those musty piles of old newspapers, I found just the kind of ideas that would keep Bob Boyer happy.....as the Muskoka Sun was his jewel and I was his ace in the hole. Of course in those days I burnt the midnight oil because I didn’t have children. A flask of whisky kept my coffee crisp for the midnight revels. I’m a prolific writer, you see (as if you didn’t know) and I’m always looking for story ideas. While today I get a lot sent in by readers, back then, it was a little more difficult finding enough story ideas to meet Bob’s demands. You’d be surprised how much copy can be swallowed by a 100 page publication, running just over 60 percent ad copy. A lot of publications today are closer to 75 percent ad copy.

When Bob came up to my office on press day, by Jesus I’d better have some copy in reserve. I hated to disappoint Bob. So I just got in the habit, early in my writing career, of preparing material well in advance. My writing colleague Brant Scott, would see Bob coming up the stairs and yell over, “You better have something in the bag for Bob.” “The bag,” in this case meant having ready-to-typeset copy. It got so bad sometimes.....that Bob would run two or three of my feature series installments in one edition. I won’t kid you. I loved the bylines and Bob was never stingy about affording me the best blocks of space in the paper. But on an hourly wage basis, I actually began losing money because I wrote too much.

When we moved from Bracebridge to Gravenhurst in the fall of 1989, we began a never ending adventure. As I used to pour over those old newspaper files, as if the holy grail of obscure but important history, Suzanne and I started to gather every bit of written history we could obtain.....so that we could better relate to our new home town. I hate being considered a newbie. I hate being considered ill-informed or not informed at all. Suzanne’s family dates back to the earliest pioneers in Muskoka, being of the Shea and Veitch families, of the Three Mile Lake area, and the hamlet of Ufford. Her ancestor’s dug-out canoe is in the collection of the Muskoka Lakes Museum. As well, her father’s family settled in Windermere in the early 1900's, and Sam Stripp and his son Norman (Suzanne’s father) used to paint the steam yacht Wanda for the Eaton family. While I’m a transplant from Burlington in the 1960's, I have worked ever since to learn everything I could about regional history, to be able to write about Muskoka and her communities with responsible reporting and accurate representation. But to shed the newbie status I married into a local family. It worked best and fastest.

I began this fact-finding obsession, in earnest, back in 1979, working at a newspaper office in the Village of MacTier I knew it was critical to get a good working knowledge of my host community.....and let them tutor me about what made their hometown tick.......and we got along pretty well. I was a research fanatic because I knew, from several run-ins with the local citizenry, that reporters before me, hadn’t been as persnickety about reporting town events. I hated getting yelled at because of a slip-up in research. It doesn’t mean I’m mistake-proof but I always triple check my work to at the very least, bring it down to a fraction of “error potential” over many miles of feature articles.

We read about Gravenhurst, we travelled to the historic sites, learned about them by asking questions of those who did know, and took an interest in being a part of this town’s vibrant heritage. Our boys, Andrew and Robert spent much of their childhood wandering around the Calydor property, on Muskoka Bay, the former site of the Calydor Sanatorium for tubercular patients, a German Prisoner of War Camp, during the years of the Second World War, and onward to its service as the Gateway Hotel in more recent history. While it was just ruins by the time we arrived, it was a fascinating place to wander about. At the beachfront, we all enjoyed picking up broken pieces of pottery and glass buried in the muck, that had some provenance attached from those the late 1800's years as a hospital onward. The boys had broken off big chunks of barb wire from the old camp, and we had boxes full of finds made, from glass and pottery, to square nails and hand forged spikes. We used to stare longingly at the ruins of the camp building, wondering how they could be preserved for posterity. The boys at a young age, knew a lot about the Second World War, and we all benefitted, in one way or another, from being in the neighborhood of this incredible international history...... only a street over from where we were living. Suzanne used to take them berry picking in the summer, on the former tennis courts on Lorne Street, and they knew all the inter-connecting trails throughout the large vacant property. I wrote a lot of feature articles based on those many visits, all of them published in the late 1980's in the Muskoka Sun or the Muskoka Advance. They played, Suzanne searched for artifacts around the shore and I made notes. What a family? It was at the very least, a cost efficient form of recreation, at a time when were broke. There would be very few folks who could say, in this country, that their children’s playground was a former Prisoner of War Camp. Feel free to ask our boys about the experience.

I was turned onto the Calydor Prisoner of War Camp by a writer colleague of mine, Scott McClellan, formerly of Gravenhurst, now Australia, who had written a lengthy series of articles about the site for Mr. Boyer in the early 1980's. It had been based on research, years before that, done by the committee responsible for the publication of “Light of Other Days,” a wonderful local history with a meaty section on the camp. Long before we moved to the Calydor Subdivision, on Segwun Blvd., I had fantasized about the incredible opportunity to be in the same neighborhood as this war relic. I even got to conduct a tour once for a group of ladies on a local history tour, and have led many impromtu expeditions with my historian friends since.....always with an eagerness to share the history of my hometown. When Cecil Porter invited me to the launch of his new book, on the Camp, a number of years ago, I was absolutely delighted. It’s one of the most important books in my Muskoka collection......and believe me.....Suzanne and I have a big selection of rare and out-of-print histories.

Over the years I’ve been a curator / manager for Woodchester Villa and Museum, (Bracebridge), curator for the Bracebridge Sports Hall of Fame, (Bracebridge arena), a director of the Bracebridge Historical Society, the Muskoka Lakes Museum, and historian of South Muskoka Memorial Hospital, but I’ve never been as contented anywhere else......as I am here in this history-laden town I used to read about......in those halcyon days in the bunker of The Herald-Gazette, hustling for feature material to keep Bob in a goodly supply of editorial copy. From what I’d read, over that decade with Muskoka Publications, Gravenhurst was going to be a good place to land.....with a young family, a teacher partner, and a desire to immerse in this town’s enthusiasm for its heritage. While at times I’m disappointed by the general indifference of elected officials, the loyalists to historical preservation here, are second to none for getting the job done. I’d love to one day, feel I’ve accomplished as much as the Archives Committee, and all the other working historians here, who I so admire. It gives a middle age historian something to work toward, I suppose.

To me, and most certainly our entire family, it’s all evidence of a “living history”..... to be recognized and celebrated.

THE RESOURCE OF HISTORY - WHAT WE DON’T USE FOR PROFIT THAT WE COULD

Back at the turn of this most recent century, I produced a small book about the naming of the Town of Bracebridge. It was back in 1864 that Federal Postal Authority, William Dawson LeSueur, tossed out the name “North Falls,” substituting instead, a name made famous by American Author, Washington Irving. It was taken from the 1820's book, “Bracebridge Hall,” a story and author W.D. LeSueur had considerable admiration.

What has always been misunderstood about Dr. LeSueur, is the reason he refused the hamlet’s consensus, that “North Falls,” was a perfect name......for a village on the brink of a major Muskoka waterfall. LeSueur, you see, wasn’t just a career civil servant, but doubled as a great literary mind, and was a revered critic as such, being published in some of the most respected and prestigious magazines of his time. He was as much a highly regarded historian in Canada. So when he selected the name “Bracebridge,” it was with thought and serious contemplation, what the name and that association would mean on a “forever” basis. As I’ve noted before, in the discussion of LeSueur, I can only fault the man for one thing......and that was the fact he didn’t explain the provenance attached to his naming choices. It would have been helpful that’s for sure.

Washington Irving had only recently passed away when LeSueur, in his position to name new post offices, opted to make this literary connection between a Canadian hamlet, on the Muskoka River, and the fictional “Bracebridge Hall,” in England. Crazy eh? Consider also the activities of the Civil War at the time, and the fact a Canadian community has just been named after the work of an American author.

The citizens of Bracebridge have, over the decades, modestly embraced the connection with Washington Irving, especially having held “Christmas at Bracebridge Hall,” dinners (Bracebridge Hall does involve a Christmas celebration at Squire Bracebridge’s countryside estate, pre-1820). But my postmortem after the book’s release, in 2000, was a resounding......”I can’t believe they couldn’t care less!” The book was a success in publishing, and sold-out but the purpose was to properly introduce the public, and the local municipal council, the Chamber of Commerce, the BIA and any other group interested, to the freaking huge opportunity that exists to connect properly, with the whole Washington Irving heritage-thing. This is the gentleman who gave us “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” the “Headless Horseman,” “Rip Van Winkle,” and the whole Haunted Hudson River Valley legend. Here was this historical purist, me, so pleased to be able to turn over my research and connections made with the Irving museum, Sunnyside, in New York, so others could exploit my work. Geez, talk about underwhelming success. It was so poorly received in fact that I made it the subject of a summer lecture I gave, at the Muskoka Lakes Museum a few years ago. Here was this marketing gem handed to the town, on a silver platter, and it was greeted without a smidgeon of enthusiasm.

I had advance knowledge of this near boycott however, when I was made aware there were folks unhappy about my research, and frankly promoting something that wasn’t quite homegrown. I actually had people suggest to me the town got ripped off when LeSueur denied “North Falls,” as the name of their new post office of 1864. But what really bothered my critics was that a long-held assertion that LeSueur also named Gravenhurst, after a name found in the same book, “Bracebridge Hall,” had been debunked. It wasn’t too hard. It involved buying a copy of Irving’s book and reading it. No one had to this point. Most seemed abundantly content with historical fact as written decades previous. The problem was that the Bracebridge historical crowd, since the late 1800's, had been making ill-informed assumptions about Gravenhurst all along. Up to just before 2000. I ran a series of articles about this, and Jesus, did the poop hit the proverbial fan. I was a heretic. How dare I challenge historical record? Well, it was going to come sooner or later, as some historian found it odd why, in 1862, when Gravenhurst was named by LeSueur, he allegedly borrowed a name buried deep within the book......, versus taking “Bracebridge” instead. Wouldn’t that have been reasonable? If LeSueur was going to use, as he did, names from the titles of books he had read (which has always been the generalization of his handiwork), why wouldn’t he have named our town Bracebridge instead. Afterall Gravenhurst needed its name two years earlier that Bracebridge. So how could historians believe for a moment, that LeSueur would have searched through the text of Bracebridge Hall instead, looking for a worthy name, and then two years later, selecting “Bracebridge,” as an easy choice because it was the title of the book he’d used earlier. No sense here.

I asked the assistance of Washington Irving scholars, if they had known the author to have ever used the word “Gravenhurst,” in any of his works throughout his long literary career. The answer was “no!” It is possible however, Irving, on his travels in England, may have come across a community named Gravenhurst, as it does exist, yet he didn’t use the name such that LeSueur would have found it in his popular work. The word is not contained in Bracebridge Hall, even though the historians in Bracebridge believed it was. All it took to prove or disprove was reading the book. What made me mad was that Bracebridge historians, for over a century, were perpetuating a myth and being unapologetic. So when the Bracebridge Examiner published stories on the naming of both Gravenhurst, and Bracebridge, by the pen of Currie, I was a considered a “turd” if ever there was one.

The highly supportive historians, here in Gravenhurst, had recognized before 1967, or earlier, that there may have been a relationship between an author / philosopher by the name of William Henry Smith and his book, “Gravenhurst.” They just didn’t go out of their way to debunk what the Bracebridge folks were claiming. While they hadn’t read the book Bracebridge Hall, prior to my insistence that they should, they certainly were keen to read my findings, and learn more about two gentlemen in particular.....Dr. William Dawson LeSueur, and William Smith’s career in England. I was able to get them a copy of “A Critical Spirit - The Thoughts of William Dawson LeSueur,” by A.B. McKillop (Carleton Library Original), and an antiquarian copy of the book, “Gravenhurst,” by Smith. Both were donated by our business, Birch Hollow Antiques, to the Gravenhurst Archives Committee. Actually, it is true, the title was a little troubling at first, when I phoned Cyril Fry, to tell him the book had arrived safely from an American bookshop. Actually, it’s kind of funny as a keepsake historical anecdote, but the book was actually returned to the sender in the U.S., because nobody here knew a “Ted Currie.” Apparently the address was off by a postal code number or something. I always thought that it was neat to know that the book that had inspired the postal authority of 1862, to name the hamlet’s first post office, was sent back by the same post office as undeliverable mail. I had to tell Cyril over the phone. the full title of the book they were receiving, was actually, “Gravenhurst, or Thoughts on Good and Evil.” It’s not as bad as it looks on paper. It’s a philosophical tome so it isn’t to suggest LeSueur thought we were an evil community in the 1860's.

The name was borrowed by LeSueur after Smith’s death. The fact that a literary rising star selected the name “Gravenhurst,” from Smith’s work, is affirmation that he believed the work brilliant and remarkable.....just as he had felt Irving was a more than worthy author, deserving tributes from the public. From what research I have done on LeSueur, the citizens of both towns should be over the moon about the literary connections he afforded the pioneer hamlets of 1862 and 1864 respectively. We should be celebrating the provenance today. But we don’t!

I have written about this many times since the late 1990's. For one thing, I have a longstanding tradition of “never, ever,” letting something go that I believe deserves better treatment. This is one of my “never, evers!” It’s like many examples of local history in our communities, that have certainly made it to print, and have ample record attached, but are relegated to bookshelves and file cabinets for lack of any further action needed. In Gravenhurst, where we have a fine group of historians who have done Yeomen’s work building a research base in their library-situated archives, far too many citizens here.....and representatives of our elected council.....haven’t got a clue what our “keepers of history” do with their archives......or show much interest in having a wee look inside. I’ve been a guest in that room, and during a session of cataloguing, and I have great respect for all their efforts expended, to guarantee we know how our town has evolved from those first ramshackle pioneer abodes in a vast hinterland.

The troubling aspect is that there is so much for this town to benefit from, and utilize as tourism generators, left in the low light and climate control of a reference collection. If at times I seem a tad agitated because I believe there is an unhealthy amount of apathy, about heritage matters, it’s due to the frustration I witness constantly, when people complain about shortfalls of living and working in Gravenhurst.......but are consumed only with the present tense, as if the town was opened for occupation last week. When I have suggested that local elected officials need to smarten up, and upgrade their own shortfall of knowledge, it’s because I firmly believe it’s impossible to be adequate stewards of our resources.......and be so woefully unaware of what resources we do possess.

I found this out when working to save The Bog from being carved up into residential lots. I couldn’t believe how many council members refused to visit the site, and talk to us in person.......so that we could give them a tour of what they had believed was surplus property to be sold as a municipal fundraiser. To hell with it being an important filtering wetland for Muskoka Bay. Once again, I was considered, without question, the biggest “turd” in the town, because I was acting disrespectfully, to their assumed rights and privileges as elected officials. We did have some who visited, and we were delighted. And we didn’t bite any of them, as I’m sure they had been warned might happen.

There are many aspects of Gravenhurst history, beyond steamships and boat building and Dr. Bethune, worth exploiting.......not just for a buck gained for tourism, but because it shows a pride in our hometown from the inside out. Accomplishments our town has made, events and unfortunate circumstances we have survived......days of triumph, days of misfortune, milestones achieved, and disasters met by a determination to survive. From great fires to building booms. The citizens didn’t walk away from challenges and upheaval because the going got a little rough. They cleared away the debris and rebuilt. In those archives, in the books that have been published about Gravenhurst, are stories of incredible endurance, and accomplishment, despite prevailing crisis, in spite of those naysayers consumed by gloom and doubt. If we think things are tough now, it’s because we don’t appreciate the precedents of our past......because if you take the time to research your town’s history, you’ll appreciate the citizens have never backed away from challenges......despite getting shut-out of many investments afforded other Muskoka communities, and losing dozens of its longstanding enterprises and institutions. Gravenhurst was known throughout North America for its care of tubercular patients. Not just for its gateway to the Muskoka Lakes.

When we look out at our economic shortfalls today, we can blame a lot of things......and it’s more than common to blame the town for business failures. The town has broad shoulders and will survive the critics wrath. If there is anything this historian would like to accomplish, it’s to foster a renewed appreciation for what heritage can do for us all......when we begin losing our place in history, because it no longer seems as important as once. Council should realize what the stewardship of this town’s history truly means.....not what they think it means, but what it actually means.....recognizing that it is a huge honor to be representing it on the global stage.....at this time of our history.

Cecil Porter, one of my mentors in local history, wrote a landmark book on the German Prisoner of War Camp in Gravenhurst. Calydor. Have you read it? If you haven’t, and you are representing the interests of the Town of Gravenhurst, get to the bookshop or the library and redeem yourself. It’s that simple. There’s no excuse for not knowing about this internationally significant history......none at all if you’re a Gravenhurst councillor.

Of this I am a harsh critic. With no apology. Just as I was when I was told to accept the fact Gravenhurst had been named after “Bracebridge Hall,” and to leave well enough alone. Hey, I got kicked out of Cubs for challenging authority. I still survived to fight another day.

To lead this town requires knowing this town. It’s a homework assignment.