CHRISTMAS IN GRAVENHURST - SIMPLE PLEASURES, QUIET REFLECTION, AND THE GOOD GRACES OF MUSKOKA

Early this morning, a powerful wind event knocked over my wooden snowman, that I got this summer at a yard sale for Cambodian School projects. I've been going to this annual fundraiser for years now, and I get some great stuff. This time, along with some old books, I got this wonderful painted snowman I wanted for my deck here at Birch Hollow. On it's first day up, well, the wind caught it by the big plywood head, and tossed it unceremoniously to the concrete pad below. My fault. Mother Nature is entitled her fury, and I knew better than to let a big piece of wood stand, untethered, in the event of a mighty wind. I'm not a very good steward of Christmas decorations. I have a bad track record, as my family knows too well, and each year, I accidentally toss out bags and boxes of ornaments. I'm following a long tradition because my grandmother and mother also used to do the same thing. My mother Merle lost our decorations each time we moved. We just mix up the boxes, and because we get lazy, and don't write a description on the box lid, we'd either donate them to the local thrift shop, accidentally, or haul them mistakenly to the landfill site with other refuse. So I'm sorry about the snowman, that did sustain some damage in the big morning fall. According to the local news this morning, there are quite a few Muskoka homesteads and businesses without power. The damage to my snowman doesn't really compare to a tree on a house….or a car etc. The gales of November.

THE PARANORMAL, BIRCH HOLLOW AND, WELL, IT'S COMING UP TO THE FESTIVE SEASON

In the mid-October issue of the Great North Arrow, a new publication I've been writing for, published for the Almaguin, mid-north region, from its base in downtown Dunchurch, I began a year-long series of feature columns on the http://hauntedmuskoka.blogspot.com/ paranormal…….assorted hobgoblins, malevolent, spiritual this and that, from a life-time of relationship with the unexplained. It's the third time I've written a lengthy series of these columns, and they require a substantial investment of patience. I've had paranormal encounters since childhood, and written about them extensively since the early 1980's. A full page spread in the former Bracebridge Herald-Gazette, on the hauntings at the former McGibbon House, on Manitoba Street, caused a fair stir locally, and many references to the writer being a "nutter," But it did connect me with one of Canada's best known "ghost hunters," and revered authors of many, many books, John Robert Colombo. John included a portion of my story in a book he published, some years ago, about Canadian ghosts, and he so kindly agreed to write the introductory column for me, when I wrote my first major series on Muskoka's paranormal, which ran in the late 1990's in The Muskoka Sun. It was John who encouraged me to write a book on Muskoka ghosts, and while I didn't get around to that, I have been working over the past several years, to put together a blog-site, full of stories about my own encounters…..plus a few other collected tales. You can view this by clicking onto

I even have a Christmas ghost story from Muskoka, involving a museum I helped establish. That story will run in the Christmas issue of Great North Arrow…..a fabulous little publication that reminds me so much of the great little news and feature papers we had in Muskoka, way back when……that contained a lot of community news and opinion, bringing the region's personal and social happenings to the forefront. As editor of The Herald-Gazette, it was my job to comb through the copy submitted by, what we called then, our "country correspondents." I had to edit columns from Milford Bay, Port Carling, Utterson West Road, Port Sydney, Ullswater, Windermere, Women's Institute reports, and a host of other hamlet news so important to our readers. I do miss those days, and it was an important part of that sense of community in Muskoka, that today seems watered down and of lesser relevance. It's not the case, but it seems this way.

The point of bringing up my dabbling in the paranormal, is that it is a hugely intense project that literally sucks the life out of me for weeks after a writing jag, to bank columns in advance. Having just finished the final edit on my favorite "Paranormal Christmas" column, I'm finding it rather hard to get out of that frame of mind. It took me two years to shake off the work I did, examining the Tom Thomson mystery, which has run in three different publications, each requiring massive re-writes to accommodate new information. As I've mentioned before, I pretty much immerse myself in these feature series, and it unfortunately influences other lesser projects. For Christmas this year, I'm kind of hoping to normalize a tad, seeing as I've already got columns dated up to March.

When I'm writing about the paranormal, you know, ghosts and stuff, the intensity of the situation can inspire other things to go bump in my night. I'm not clairvoyant and make no claims to being a qualified medium, but as I've validated those who have crossed over, for years now, it doesn't surprise me when I get a strange tap on the shoulder, working late in my office overlooking The Bog. I just toss a "hello" at my old historian friend, Dave Brown, who used to sleep in this room on his many visits, and wander with me down through the bog when we had time for a wee jaunt. I knew when the phone rang that particular, fateful spring morning, that Dave had passed away. In fact, I said "Dave's gone, isn't he," as soon as Suzanne got off the phone. I did know he was ill but not mortally so. But as if that call was for me, without needing the phone, the message had been received. He's been tapping my shoulder on occasion, ever since, especially when I was working on his biography back in 2000. I didn't feel ill at ease. It would have been more difficult if, as I had expected, Dave and I had co-written the book as planned. He would have been a brutal taskmaster, because he was fussy to a fault. I was sorry that Dave didn't make it, through his illness, but frankly I wouldn't have been able to get through our book, at least on talking terms, if he had been riding my back through its composition. The taps on the shoulder, each side, were gentle and affirmative, even though the book revealed far more than he would have permitted in life. Point is, when I get consumed by this kind of writing project, I know sooner or later Dave will show up, not as a vapor or in any spooky manner whatsoever, and just stand behind my chair. I've even felt my chair back being pulled, at times, and had books unceremoniously topple…..just as a wee reminder, he's still vacationing at Birch Hollow after all these years.

I probably don't look like a guy who talks to ghosts. Don't fit the profile of a ghost-hunter either. I have no sensory equipment on hand, above my own heart and soul. When I compose a sincere Christmas piece, or tell readers, via this blog, that I'm enthralled by the place I reside and work, you can assume that part of the reason I get along so well, and believe in this place so much, is my own spiritual connection with not only Muskoka, Gravenhurst, but this modest, no-frills house across from The Bogland. I can find no better way to explain this relationship, that began only days after arriving here, in the autumn of 1988. I had a lot more writing gigs then, and if I'd made a mistake, and found this homestead uninspiring, boy oh boy, would we have spent a lot of money on a lark……that wouldn't pay the mortgage. While we went through some intense periods, in those first years, especially an unanticipated recession, that shaved thirty thousand dollars off the value of the house, and cost me a radio spot on CHAY FM, in Barrie, and Muskoka Publications, I was relegated to a minor, minor position…….when in financial reality, I needed much, much more income. We thought about walking away from the mortgage but both Suzanne and I rival for intensity and determination. So we stuck it out. And well, it all worked out, and the antique industry kicked in where writing left off, and I was able to pursue research projects with much less stress. The deadlines were mine, not the publisher's command. I wrote more and better, and when I began writing a preliminary biography of Roger Crozier, former goaltender of the National Hockey League's Detroit Red Wings, it marked the beginning of a most remarkable relationship with not only the Bracebridge-born all-star, but his children's foundation for more than 12 years. I became Roger's public relations spokesman in Muskoka, before his death, and later, assumed this and the role of curator, for the Bracebridge Sports Hall of Fame, for one of the most exciting adventures of my life.

When I bestow thanks to my hometown, it is because of this important sense of well-being here, that has continued to inspire and motivate me since we arrived, and despite troubles met a long the way, professionally, I have very much benefitted from what this Muskoka paradise has so generously offered. I apologize in advance, for my periods of intensity, and my serious overtures, that may seem more of a constant with me, than a slight deviation. Those who know me better, would suggest seriousness isn't my best known quality…..except for when I was a goaltender, screaming at the defense for fifty of a sixty minute game, to get out of my crease. I'm more of a practical joker than a snarly old bard, pipe-in-hand, philosophizing all the live long day. It just isn't so. When I've been working on a weighty writing project, however, I ask family and friends to excuse my demeanor as aftermath, because mind and body are hurting real bad. If I don't get up and move about frequently, dumping these cats off my lap, my neck and back freeze….thus throwing off my hip, my knee, and everything else that is so hinged. So I walk like an old sea captain, with a wooden leg…..to replace the one bitten off by the Great White Whale. So I keep the writing periods shorter, these days, and attempt to do more in less time. I keep getting more projects, and want to cover them all, but I only wish they'd come about ten years earlier……when I didn't hurt so much.

I told Suzanne, two weeks ago, that I was going to add one more mission to an already prolific 2010, by writing a series of blogs about Gravenhurst, and how much I have benefitted as a writer-in-residence, residing here for all these amazing years. She knows better than to demand I cease and desist, because I've got one of the best pouts in the neighborhood, and it wouldn't be right, being the festive season and all. Suzanne knows all too well, how relevant it is to have her writer-partner feeling fulfilled and inspired. I'm a wanderer otherwise, and a general pain in the arse. When I have a good project, I think about it all the time, even after its received its farewell edit. My intensity of study and research, allows my dear wife to knit, and knit, and knit, without having to ask me "what's wrong with you?" twelve times a day. I self absorb you might say. As Christmas is, by far, my most prolific and celebrated time of the rolling year, Suzanne will never thwart me from writing something or other, unless it is a political piece…….(she hates those), and she expects I will disappear into my office a lot as Christmas approaches, as I connect fully with this spirited (to me) holiday. I emerge to be celebratory, of course, but it's just one of those things around here…….we let happen without need of explanation.

A funny note. Suzanne will not read my copy unless I read it to her, looking for feedback. It's not that she doesn't care, but she's scared to death of offending me, by offering an opinion I might not wish to hear. When I read her some story or other, she nods, smiles and kits away. A contemporary of mine, once called me, during one of my writing jags, that I was "crazier than an outhouse rat." Geez, and that came from another writer, who was more intense than me.

I am going to have a blast this Christmas, because I've got all the heavy stuff out of the way until spring. What I really want to do, is present an honest impression, of what Christmas means to me, and our family, in this wonderful, charming little place on earth……Gravenhurst, Muskoka. More to come.