A WRITER’S LAMENT

I can remember the din of traffic all day and all night, in central London, and I’ve known the historic peace of a quiet nook in Robin Hood’s (Nottingham’s) Sherwood Forest. I have written in the city, on buses, trains and airplanes. I’ve written in a seaside cabin in Florida, and wrote a journal about our honeymoon in Colonial Williamsburg, in Virginia. I’ve written in a miniaturized manor house, known as “Seven Person’s Cottage,” on the shore of Lake Joseph, a cottage on Lake Muskoka, an old family homestead on Lake Rosseau, at residences ranging from a Toronto apartment, two Bracebridge apartments, and three bungalows including our present abode we call Birch Hollow. I’ve worked in busy newsrooms, and written rough drafts of crime stories while sitting in the midst of court proceedings. I’ve worked with the circumstances I find myself in......whether wild and woolly with noise, or as silent as the morning dew settling on my scraggly front lawn.

At Birch Hollow, however, I must confess to having lost some capability of working with distraction. There was a time in my life that I couldn’t write, without the din or the skirl of bagpipes coming from a partying neighbor’s home. Here it is so quiet most of the time, I have admittedly lost some of my earlier capabilities. When I write here now, the only intrusion is the one that works for me.....the chatter of birds and all natural sounds. I can no longer work with a radio on, and no matter if it’s Mozart or Pink Floyd, I started to find that the music would adversely influence, what I was trying to write. So I had to settle down here in my office with lesser distraction, now mired in my elder years.....and although I still get wildly interested in writing when there’s a storm brewing, or wind singing through the evergreens, I find these days, a purring cat on my lap one of few welcome intrusions.

I hate phone calls that halt me in the middle of a column, and when the earth movers start rumbling away, and the lawnmowers, chainsaws and leaf blowers churn up the solitude, well, I just find something else to do. I don’t ask the world or the neighborhood to conform to my work schedule, or pay any attention to this writer in residence. I will find my time to work, with the sounds of nature, sooner or later in any given day.

Here is another installment of the Ada Kinton biography, being prepared for submission to both the National Art Gallery and Art Gallery of Ontario archives, dedicated to the Gravenhurst Food Bank, operated by the Salvation Army........and yes, I did it during a most precious calm here in urban Gravenhurst. Not a chainsaw buzz within two blocks.

IN THE WORDS OF THE ARTIST - ADA FLORENCE KINTON IN MUSKOKA

By Ted Currie

A chickadee, just this moment, hit the window pane above my desk. I ran out onto the verandah, to see if it had survived the substantial bump. I cradled it in my hands for a few moments, and just when I thought it had succumbed, the wee creature opened its eyes, began to moves its wings, as if to push free of my hand, and when I put it down on a chair cushion, it soon sat upright and stared right at me. I wondered if we had met in some previous life. It was that kind of look. As suddenly as our paths had crossed, the chickadee hopped up onto the verandah railing, fluttered about for a few moments, and took off for parts unknown. I was delighted. I thought it was an appropriate way to commence this months column, on a pioneer artist in our region of Ontario.

In the early months of 1883, Ada Florence Kinton began to explore the narrow lanes and winding country paths, in and around the pioneer settlement of Huntsville, Ontario, in the northern part of the District of Muskoka. Artist, writer, and eventual mission worker, with the Salvation Army, the young Miss Kinton had come to stay with her brothers, Ed and Mackie, both Huntsville businessmen. After the death of her father, and the earlier demise of her mother, family felt it best if their sister left city life in England, for the health and healing benefits of the Canadian wilds. It took awhile before Ada Kinton found much in the way of benefits in the rugged, hardship-laden, pioneer lifestyle.

What makes her work so significant for regional and art historians, is that she made copious and highly detailed notes about what she was painting. Even without seeing her paint-boards, the written descriptions allow us the full pleasure of her creative insight. Ada never thought her journal would be published one day. Her sister, Sara Randleson, crafted the handwritten notes into book-form, in 1907, entitled “Just One Blue Bonnett,” a reference particularly to Ada’s eventual work with the Salvation Army. The artist / missionary had died several years earlier, after moving back to Huntsville to convalesce. We have to go back to a colder season to re-join her journal. The date is March 9th, 1883, Huntsville, Ontario.

“Went into Miss Godolphin’s shanty, an odd, nice little wooden house, having a certain indescribable English air. Took tea, afternoon tea, English fashion. It reminded one so delightfully of home ways. It seemed quite a change to have tiny cups of pink china that felt like egg-shell in comparison, handed to you to sip slowly, and slices of thin bread so delicate and small that they might have been petals of a flower, and baked dough biscuits just a little larger and thicker than a dollar, cut in half and buttered, and passed round on one big plate, to hold between the thumb and finger, and nibble delicately, and dear old Granma Dolphi, at the tea tray with a little brown teapot, asking if you ‘took sugar.’ It seemed so sweet and homey to me, but to Mrs. Kinton (here sister-in-law), the scraps of food seemed aggravation with her Canadian ideas of plenty.”

“March 10th. Snowing heavily. Foddie (a Kinton child) flung her head at mine and broke my glasses a little. Felt worse than a toothache. A settler’s little girl tramped in to get some goose-oil for the baby, sick with bronchitis. Goose-oil is considered very efficacious in such cases. Afternoon, went for a walk to meet Ed, returning from Burk’s Falls. Didn’t meet him and had to return on foot with the children. Boyo (another child) refused to walk and had to be carried. He looked quite picturesque, lying on his back in the snow, in his little crimson wool coat and cap, and scarlet socks, with arms and legs spread so far and wide over the land, with his eyes screwed tight and his cheeks about as red and brilliant as holly berries, causing the forest to ring again with his screams and cries.” It’s quite easy to visualize the scene, as described by Miss Kinton, as she painted with carefully chosen words. It might have compelled her to later sketch the wee lad in his bright winter contrast.

She writes, “There had been quite a heavy fall of snow and it was still coming down steadily, but the air was soft and mild, and the track well covered with nice elastic, sandy dry snow; so walking there was pretty easy. But coming back, the falling snow was just as downy and soft, and light, and warm-looking, as if it were the big blanket Ed speaks of, spread over the old earth to keep it warm - all feathery - or like an ermine mantle, and just lightly spread over every branch and shrub tree. The silence almost appalls one, and if you stand and listen, no sound but the almost silent beat of the tiny myriad flakes, as they fall with their noiseless thud on the trees around you, in a sort of faint musical tinkling, and yet not harsh enough to be a tinkle even.

“You may also hear a gentle tapping perhaps; and if you look, right steadily above, somewhere between earth and sky, among the exquisite Gothic arches, formed by the branches and slender trunks in the forest cathedral, you may hear a woodpecker tapping at the bark for ‘brekbust,’ as Foddie and Boyo say. Or you may hear the jingle of some coming sleigh bells - but that’s all on a day like this. We got home very wet and tired but thankful and hungry. Ed came in soon after, having been immersed in a vast buffalo robe in the cutter.”

The author-painter wrote the following description, on the eleventh of March. “Strong wind, snow drifting and swirling about violently. Slight fall of snow, said to be heavy and strong outside, beyond Toronto. Sat on the lounge in the buffalo robe by the stove all the afternoon, knitting my first sock. Mrs. Kinton and I gossiped steadily, and the babes ate taffy-sugar melted and poured onto a plate of snow. The new houses here look rather nice, about the colour of thick rich cream, little oblong blocks with slanting roofs with a window or two and a door. In the sunshine they get as golden as buttercups, and the pure snow gleams on the roofs. The sunrise and sunset bring out some very pretty colouring (hot buttered biscuit) among the shadows, purple violets, blues and pearly grey, or every tint and hue, but tender and vague in tone.

“The children are so pleased to see their father. He stoops down on the carpet, and they hover around him, fluttering their wings, and twittering like young birds. He brought some big fungi home (from his trip to Burk’s Falls), and the most enchanting was a wee mossy bird’s nest, with about a foot of birch bark attached - white birch.” “The inclement weather became known as ‘Wiggin’s Storm,” she noted in her journal on March 11th, 1883.

I raised my head, from the task at hand, the final edit before sending this tome off to the publisher, and I couldn’t help but notice my wee friend, the chickadee, had returned to the railing. The tiny bird was back at the feeder with a chum, and all appears safe and sound once more. I believe Ada would have found something inspiring about this brief liaison. I can so clearly visualize her cradling the injured creature, and sense her joy, watching it re-awaken, and fly off into the shadows of the leaning old hardwoods, here at Birch Hollow.

The series of feature columns, on the life and art of Ada Florence Kinton, will continue in the next issue. The year-long series is dedicated to the Gravenhurst Food Bank, operated by the Salvation Army, a cause that Ada would have heartily approved. Please consider making a donation to a food bank in your community, to assist those facing unfortunate circumstances.

Looking out at the picturesque Ontario countryside, I think about the young Ada Kinton, on a wagon or leaning from the window of a rail car, making her copious notes, and planning out the sketches she would make, at the conclusion of her journey. Take time to enjoy this amazing time of year in our province.