A FEELING FOR HISTORY I CAN'T EXPLAIN

A FEELING FOR HISTORY I CAN'T EXPLAIN

A PREVIOUS LIFE? MAYBE! BUT WHAT A CRAZY ADVENTURE

     I WILL STOP ALL OF A SUDDEN, BUT SOMEWHAT EXPECTED ON MY HISTORIC WALKS, TRUNDLING THROUGH THE OLD LOG BUILDINGS, WHEN BRUSHED EVER SO GENTLY, BY THAT HAUNTING FEELING, I NEED TO PAY ATTENTION TO MY SURROUNDINGS.....VERY MUCH AS IF I HAVE BEEN HERE BEFORE IN A PREVIOUS LIFE. WE ALL HAVE THESE FEELINGS. WE CAN'T EXPLAIN THEM, WE JUST HAVE A LITTLE SHIVER, MAKE AN ANECDOTAL COMMENT LIKE, "SOMEONE JUST WALKED OVER MY GRAVE," AND CARRY-ON, OCCASIONALLY LOOKING BACK.....AS IF EXPECTING TO SEE A GHOST. I'M SURE YOU'VE HAD SOMETHING LIKE THIS HAPPEN TO YOU. IT'S PROBABLY NOT ENOUGH TO WARRANT CONTACTING A GHOST BUSTER, OR A RESEARCHER OF THE PARANORMAL, BUT IT WILL STILL STICK WITH YOU FOR AWHILE AS A BELIEVE IT OR NOT.
    I WILL HAVE ABOUT FOUR OF THESE SITUATIONS, WHILE WALKING THE GROUNDS AND BUILDINGS OF STE. MARIE, AMONGST THE HURONS, IN MIDLAND, THE RECLAIMED SITE OF THE 1600'S JESUIT MISSION, THAT ENDED BADLY FOR THE MISSIONARIES AND ASSISTANTS. OF ALL THE HISTORIC SITES I'VE VISITED, INCLUDING IN ENGLAND AND UNITED STATES, THE MOST COMPELLING BY FAR, FOR ME, IS THE JESUIT MISSION. IT'S NOT A FEARFUL FEELING, BUT RATHER, A SENSE OF BELONGING TO THE HISTORY OF THIS REMARKABLE ACREAGE OF HURONIA LANDSCAPE, A SHORT WALK TO THE FAMOUS MARTYRS SHRINE, ONCE VISITED BY THE POPE.
     WHEN PEOPLE ASK ME WHY I HAVE MADE A LIFE, AND PROFESSION FROM HISTORY, I CAN'T REALLY ANSWER WITH ONE LIMITED-WORD RESPONSE. I CAN'T EXPLAIN WHY I HAVE ALSO SPENT A LIFETIME BEING COMPANIONED BY SPIRITS, I SEEM TO BE ABLE TO DRAW OUT OF THE STRANGEST PLACES.....AND CIRCUMSTANCES. IN A NUTSHELL, I AM DRAWN TO PLACES WITH HISTORIC AURAS, AND PATINAS OF PAST LIVES AND TIMES. WRITING RECENTLY ABOUT GRANNY BOWERS, A MUSKOKA PIONEER, WHO LIVED IN BOTH FALKENBURG, AND ON THE FRASERBURG ROAD, IN BRACEBRIDGE, AND THEN THE ICELANDIC SETTLERS WHO ARRIVED IN OUR REGION IN THE 1870'S, I HAVE FELT DRAWN INTO THEIR LIVES FROM THE VERY FIRST HOUR I BEGAN READING THEIR JOURNALS.
    BOTH THESE STORIES HAVE BEEN VERY INFLUENTIAL FOR ME, OVER A LENGTHY CAREER STUDYING AND WRITING ABOUT LOCAL HISTORY. I AM TRULY ABLE TO WALK INTO THE LIVES OF THESE OLD SOULS, AND EXPERIENCE WHAT THEY HAD TO DEAL WITH DURING THESE FRONTIER YEARS.....WHICH FRANKLY MAKE MANY HARDSHIPS TODAY, SEEM MUCH LESS SIGNIFICANT. CONTEMPORARIES WILL ARGUE THAT THE HARDSHIPS EXPERIENCED NOW ARE PROPORTIONAL TO THE ERA, AND THUS EACH PERIOD DEALT WITH ITS CHALLENGES ACCORDINGLY. SOME WILL SUGGEST THAT IT WOULD BE AN UNFAIR SITUATION, TO PUT TODAY'S YOUNGSTERS IN THE PIONEER ENCAMPMENTS, LIKE HEKKLA CIRCA 1873; EQUALLY SO, TO PUT SETTLERS INTO THE PRESENT WORLD ENVIRONS. TRUE ENOUGH. I STILL BELIEVE IT WAS MUCH MORE DIFFICULT THEN THAN TODAY, TO HURDLE SO MUCH, SO FREQUENTLY, JUST TO SURVIVE.
    
LIVING THE LIFE - ONE ERA TO ANOTHER WITHOUT TOO MUCH CHAGRIN

     I am just one of millions of folks who dwells.....or better stated, dawdles in the past, by choice. I feel comfortable wandering around historic buildings, and houses, and museums that subtly and gently, take me on adventures I hadn't even thought of, before entering the site. I do feel paranormal activity in a lot of these interesting places, either from the buildings, or from the artifacts and antiques in the collections. I'm never repelled by these situations, although I have talked to many visitors who dislike these strange interventions. As a former manager of Woodchester Villa and Musuem in Bracebridge, which is the octagonal former home of woollen mill founder, Henry J. Bird, the paranormal was just a day to day reality of the marvellous 1880's house, overlooking the rapids of the Bracebridge Falls. Some members of staff didn't like the ghostly, spirited stuff, but the older volunteers and guides couldn't have cared less about apparitions or anything else malevolent.      I didn't find the house threatening, just occupied by the family history of which it was perfectly entitled. I have sensed paranormal entities in dozens upon dozens of older homes I've visited, but I didn't make a habit of telling the hosts their humble, nicely appointed abodes were haunted. Maybe they knew or didn't care.
     When it comes to the reasons why I imbed myself in history, it comes down to the comfortable feeling and the reward of reliving it, that keeps me delving further and seeking out new avenues to stroll. I don't ever go anywhere seeking out ghosts specifically. I do head out on my travels around Muskoka, looking to be immersed in history, and since I worked on the creation of the Bracebridge Historical Society, and Woodchester Villa, back in the late 1970's, I've never been without a hand in some heritage project. This has included a stint as director of the Muskoka Lakes Museum in Port Carling, and Curator of the Bracebridge Sports Hall of Fame at the Memorial Arena. I've been in the antique trade since I was twenty, and had my first shop in Bracebridge, at 22. I just like the feeling of old stuff.....but when I say that to my partner Suzanne, the scorn sears through my soul. So I don't make jokes about age. Her birthday is tomorrow and I'm thinking about buying her something......old. Like me, she's hooked on antiques. Sewing materials, quilts and hand-made items in particular. So there you go. Antique dealers give each other antiques for special occasions. Thus, birthdays, anniversaries, and Christmas can get pretty expensive. In regards to supply and demand, antiques are pricey.
     There's something powerful about holding a painting that is one hundred and fifty years old, or a quilt that was made by a group of village women by the light of an oil lamp, in a drafty old farmhouse. There's is a definite aura attached to fine lace work done by a pioneer, carried over as tradition, from a long line of crafters from Europe. I have handled a sampler from the 1770's, and felt the imprint of the letter press, from the same vintage, in one of my many old books, some that have dated as far back, as 1602.......which was a goat skin covered German Bible, that I purchased from a former bookbinder who worked for Hunter-Rose in her youth. I have felt the strong, positive aura, holding onto Irvin "Ace" Bailey's skates, and Roger Crozier's goal stick, from the 1966 Stanley Cup playoffs, both of which I was once in charge, as hockey collection curator. Arguably, some people don't care about provenance. They wouldn't feel a spirit if it bit them on the forehead. That's okay. It's not imperative to feel the presence of the other side, still wandering the earth. But it is part of my profession, as a writer / historian, and antique dealer. Every one of our family members knows what it means when someone in our company says, "It spoke to me. I had to have it." It doesn't mean there was a ghost rider attached. It does mean, there was a vibe we couldn't avoid or neglect. I've brought home a lot of things like that, and yes, some of the items did have ghosts attached......if you believe in ghosts in the first place.
     I don't live in a haunted house. It's just mildly enchanted. I don't seek out haunted houses, buildings, fields or forests. We just kind of find each other, and the same can be said for items touched by the paranormal. Which leads me back to places like Ste. Marie, where I could actually live.....if they'd let me.....and I'd feel as if I'm home again. Was I a Jesuit Missionary in a former life? Maybe the builder of the structures, or chap in charge of the community gardens? Maybe the paddler of the birch bark canoes? Digging the outhouse holes? But if you are reading this, and you've got this far in the copy, I'm willing to bet you have had similar experiences, and made note of where and why, and the frequency. The deja-vu situation. The "I must have been in this place during another life." "Say, that smells like apple pie baking...like the ones my mother used to make." Yet there is not an oven in the vicinity, or a restaurant. The smell of your grandmother's flower garden, you remember from playing around it, during your childhood. When some sensory influence comes along, out of thin air, surely you ponder, even if you are a disbeliever, if there is a chance the deceased are trying to remind you of something?
    A lot of misunderstanding about this comes from the fact that Hollywood has established, in hundreds of depictions on film, what they and their art departments, believe ghosts look like, and what it is like to have a paranormal experience. The kind of ghostly encounters I've had, wouldn't make very good movies. There are no thunder storms and lightning when I visit with paranormal circumstance. I don't need an eerie moss-covered Victorian mansion, or any murder or bloodshed to feel elevated to communication with the dearly departed. It's all very casual and innocent, but whenever it happens, and wherever the message or reminder comes along, I take the time to ponder just what this could have been. It's true. Some times I do find a baking pie in the oven. Suzanne makes good pies. If the scent arrives while on a cross country hike, or in the middle of the night, after a cursory look for a source, I just say hello to all the family members who have passed, and who had invited me into their kitchens, as a youngster, or young man, to visit.    There are reasons for feeling this way, and science would explain it differently than those who subscribe to life after death. There are mediums, like John Edward, who might suggest someone who has passed, is trying to get a message to you or assistance from you, to extend the message to another person or acquaintance. As John Edward indicates that it is important to validate these messages, I have been doing this my whole life anyway, with some pretty interesting results. Whether I'm talking to thin air or not, who cares. If people see me talking to myself, or talking into the void of thin air, out into a field of wildflowers, in a forest glen, or in an otherwise empty attic, then they can think what they wish. I've had others approach me, at an historic site for example, and say, "did you feel that?" "Sure did. Did you smell the cinnamon?" The fresh baking from the cook's handiwork, when no kitchen was in operation? I love this sensory perception stuff. I am always so entertained to involve myself in heritage projects that are thusly enhanced by curious paranormal activity, and keep in mind that this doesn't mean ghosts and wee beasties criss-crossing. It can be as simple as a touch on the back or shoulder, as if your mother or father is guiding you along a path, or hallway, to show you they are with you.....in life and spirit. It can be an aroma you recall from childhood, or a special place you attended, that makes you remember a family time or member, and their reactions. You can brush it off like many do, and never mention the experience. Or you can validate the experience and intervention, as a sign from those who have departed, trying to get you to remember something you may have forgotten.....about your relationship with them in life.
     Here's an experience I had this week. Maybe when you read it, you'll say, "oh that's nothing.....just coincidence." I suppose if it happened once in a while, that might be the case. If it happens as frequently as it happens to me, it's an existence I depend on to get my work done. Let me explain.
     I have been working on a future feature blog and video, to recognize the 150th anniversary of the naming of the Gravenhurst Post Office, in 1862, by William Dawson LeSueur, in honor of the settlers here, and the British writer / poet, William Henry Smith, after his book that year, "Gravenhurst; or Thoughts on Good and Evil." I have a series of blogs and a video ready for the first of August. What I didn't have was the rough notes and photographs I had, when I first did the project back in the late 1990's. It was looking pretty bad when the historian / archivist couldn't find all his notes for a project a week away. For days and days I had a nagging feeling, I had to move a church pew on our front verandah, and take it to the store. Suzanne and I have had an emotional debate about the pew for several years. She's okay with selling it, but I'm a little reluctant, seeing as it was special to her mother Harriet (Shea) Stripp. Seems odd that Suzanne feels it isn't important, as an heirloom piece, but I do. Harriet always liked me. Before she passed, shortly after Suzanne and I were married, she gave me a few very important historical documents and books, relevant to her family, which we still possess. The most important, was the first Muskoka history, written by Thomas McMurray, published as a Settler's Guidebook in 1871. I know every word in the book by now. It had belonged to Harriet's father John Shea, of Ufford, in the Three Mile Lake area, of the present Township of Muskoka Lakes.
     The pew was rescued from the former United Church in the hamlet of Ufford, just before it was torn down. The pew was kept in storage for many years at our family cottage on Lake Rosseau, and when Suzanne and I lived there after we were married, I insisted on having the pew on the second floor, along the railing of the staircase. Suzanne was working at the Windermere Golf Club, the day I decided to haul it out of the basement, and carry it up the hillside, and through the cottage, up the stairs by myself. I won't kid you. I nearly died doing it, and Suzanne was furious that I did it without help. Harriet was encouraged about her new history-loving son-in-law, and told me all about the pew. When the cottage was being sold, Suzanne's father gave us the pew to bring home, and it was at one side of the harvest table for most of a decade. When we changed tables, the pew looked foolish, and we took it out for awhile, and stuck it rather unceremoniously on the deck. We even tried to sell it last year at a yard sale. No one had a room for a pew. So it wintered back on the deck.
     Suzanne gave me instructions to ship it up to the boys' store this week, and I must admit many reservations. I sort of owed it to Harriet to hang onto the pew for some reason. Strange enough this week, I got the feeling it was time to follow through, and regain our deck for use. The pew clogged it up, with our other more comfortable chairs. Having ignored the urges for three days, I finally got to the point, I had to move the ten foot long bench, that particular moment.....as if I was being told by something beyond, to get the job done now! So without help, I moved it off the deck, and by myself into the driveway. When son Andrew emerged, and yelled at me for trying to kill myself, "by pew moving," he asked if there was anything else he could help me with. I asked if he could please move the piano bench, also on the deck, that had also once been on the second floor of the Windermere cottage. He yelled back at me that there were many papers in the bench, and it was too heavy to move with them inside. I went to have a look, and there they were......ninety percent of my William Henry Smith papers. Only that morning, son Robert, who is my videographer for the William Henry Smith project, was worried about my delays, finding the graphics of Smith and LeSueur, that are supposed to be included in the video, he's been trying to wrap-up. Did Harriet lead me to the cache of resources that I needed on that precise day? You bet she did! She was a lover of history, and she would have known how mad I was, at misplacing the files. If I hadn't moved that pew, in the first place, I would not have looked in the piano bench. In fact, moving the pew allowed me the first access to the bench in over a year. I didn't have a clue how my files got in the bench. Suzanne may have been house cleaning and filed, what she hates of my clutter around Birch Hollow.
     As for the pew? I don't know if I can sell this Muskoka / Windermere heirloom, after quite a number of strange occurrences, of which it has played a part since I married into the family.
     Another strange aspect of this pew, may be the association to another interest she had in the United Church she remembered as a child. It was the fact she penned a list of all those who had been buried in the tiny cemetery, situated beside the old church, with one special inclusion she never fully researched.....but had wanted to find out about. She had learned that one of the congregation had been a veteran of the American Civil War, fighting as a Canadian, for either the North or the South. We gave the information, some years ago, to local Civil War historian, Tom Brooks, of Gravenhurst, but despite his best efforts, he couldn't conclude if the deceased veteran had actually been a participant, but there had been men with that name who had been enlisted.
     Suzanne will tell me that it won't fit behind our new dining room table, and I will argue that we may one day get another table, and an extended family to fill in the space availability. It will of course be another area for the cats to occupy when I want to sit down, and it will collect dust and need regular maintenance to keep in good condition. But for both of us, it will also serve to remind us, of pioneer faith, charity, neighborliness, and durability......like our marriage, to last through all kinds of events and challenges, and obstacles that are part of this grand and to-be-cherished mortal coil.
     Maybe we will sell it, or maybe not. We will let Harriet decide. I think she's already spoken, in that soft heavenly way, that we should do what we feel is right. Spirits aren't too interested afterall, in material things, like old church pews from once upon a time.
     Thanks for joining today's blog. Please visit again soon.