Granny Bowers Part 2, History of Muskoka

A BEAUTIFUL MUSKOKA MORNING - A GREAT SUMMER SO FAR - JUST A LITTLE DRY

      I DON'T HAVE ANY REASON TO COMPLAIN ABOUT MY BROWN GRASS HERE AT BIRCH HOLLOW, CONSIDERING OUR FARMING COMMUNITY IS HAVING A BEGGAR OF A TIME GETTING ENOUGH PRECIPATATION TO MATURE THE CORN CROP IN PARTICULAR. I FEEL BAD EVEN WRITING THIS, BECAUSE MY LIVELIHOOD DOES NOT DEPEND ON THE GOOD GRACES OF CLIMATE. MY LAWN IS JUST A LAWN AFTERALL. THERE ARE SOME NEIGHBORS WHO THINK OF THEIR GRASS AS SOMETHING MORE, AND MANICURE IT EVERY DAY. I'VE GOT A NEIGHBOR WHO DOESN'T LIKE THE FACT I NEVER MOW CLOSELY, OR REGULARLY, AS I KNOW WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF I DO. YOU'RE RIGHT. IT WON'T RAIN AND BECAUSE THE SOIL BENEATH HAS MORE SAND THAN NUTRIENTS, WHEN IT DRIES OUT, IT TAKES MERE HOURS TO GO FROM SOMEWHAT GREEN TO DESERT BROWN. SO I ALWAYS LET IT GET LONG ENOUGH TO SHADE ITSELF THROUGH THESE DROUGHT PERIODS.
     SUZANNE DOESN'T LIKE TO GET "LOOKS" FROM THE NEIGHBORS, SO SHE WILL TAKE THE PUSH MOWER OUT WHEN SHE FEELS THE SCORN-LEVEL IS NEARING TEN OUT OF TEN. I JUST STARE BACK AT THEM WITH AS MUCH DISDAIN AS THEY FEEL FOR ME, THE ABSENT MINDED GARDENER. SO WHEN SUZANNE ASSURED ME LAST WEEK, THAT WE WERE IN FOR SOME RAIN, I TOOK THE GOOD WOMAN'S WORD FOR IT, AND MOWED IT NICELY AND NEATLY SUCH THAT I COULD HAVE EVEN PUTTED AROUND THE YARD. USUALLY, THE ONLY CLUB I COULD USE, AS A GOLFING ANALOGY, WOULD BE A WEDGE OR A NINE IRON. SO THEN CAME THE EXTENDED LACK OF RAINFALL, AND FROM THE ROAD INWARD, THE DEATHLY BROWN IS CLIMBING TOWARD THE HOUSE. "AT LEAST I DON'T HAVE TO MOW IT AGAIN THIS SUMMER," I SAID TO SUZANNE LAST NIGHT, AS SHE BRUSHED OVER THE DRY STALKS IN A SOFT STEP......AS IF TRYING NOT TO DAMAGE THE GRASS FURTHER THAN IT HAS ALREADY SUFFERED. ONCE AGAIN, I FEEL BAD ABOUT MENTIONING THIS LESS THAN DIRE, COSMETIC SITUATION, AS IT IS NOTHING COMPARED TO WHAT THE FARMERS ARE FACING THIS GROWING SEASON.
     AS FOR MY NEIGHBOR, WELL, I'VE HAD TO REDEFINE THE PROPERTY LINE, ONCE AGAIN, BECAUSE HE HAS DECIDED TO RUN HIS MOWER CLOSER TO OUR SHRUBBERY THAN HE IS FAIRLY ENTITLED. IN FACT, THE CHAP MOWED BENEATH THE FOLIAGE, AND I'M WONDERING WHEN HE MIGHT DECIDE TO TRIM THE BRANCHES HE MISTAKENLY ASSUMES ARE ON HIS PROPERTY. WE HAVE HAD MANY INSTANCES, IN HOMES WE'VE LIVED SINCE THE BOYS WERE BORN, WHEN OUR NEIGHBORS DECIDED TO MOW OUR LAWN, OUR DECORATIVE FERNS, AND CUT OUR NICE TREES......ALL BECAUSE OF THAT FUNDAMENTAL FAILURE TO CONSULT THE OFFICIAL SURVEY. SO I MIGHT HAVE TO RAISE THE "CURRIE FAMILY" FLAG AT THE PROPERTY LINE, IF THE INFRINGEMENT CONTINUES. ANYWAY, THERE SHOULDN'T BE ANY PROBLEM IDENTIFYING OUR PROPERTY LINE, AS IT IS MOST CLEARLY DEFINED BY THE SHORT BROWN AND NEWLY DECEASED GRASS.
     THIS MARKS THE THIRD DAY I'VE WORKED ON ANDREW'S LAPTOP AT THE MUSIC / ANTIQUE SHOP ON MUSKOKA ROAD, (FORMER MUSKOKA THEATRE BUILDING), AND SO FAR, NOT TOO MUCH INTERFERENCE WITH THE JOB(S) AT HAND. I'VE BEEN STANDING TO WRITE, LIKE IF MR. ED (THE TALKING HORSE) HAD BEEN A WRITING HORSE.....INSTEAD OF A "TALKER." I'M TOLD IT'S BETTER FOR MY BACK, LEGS AND HEART IF I STAND AT MY WORK STATION. MEANWHILE THE SOLES OF MY FEET FEEL AS IF I'M STANDING ON BURNING COALS. I MOVE AROUND A LOT, WHICH IS OKAY I GUESS. EVERY NOW AND AGAIN SUZANNE CALLS ON ME TO TOTE A TRUNK OR BOX OF DISHES TO A CUSTOMER'S CAR, OR TO GET UP ON A LADDER TO HANG A PICTURE, WHICH ALLOWS MY FEET TO RELAX A BIT. I HAVE A DETECTABLE LIMP THESE DAYS, IN PART, DUE TO A LENGTHY STINT AS A GOALTENDER, IN HOCKEY, AND AS A WRITER WHO HAS NEVER HAD GOOD POSTURE. THE ONLY TIME I HAD THE CORRECT FORM, WAS IN HIGH SCHOOL TYPING CLASS, WHERE THE INSTRUCTOR USED A YARD STICK, TO CHECK OUT MY POSTURE, WITH FINGERS ON THE KEYBOARD. SINCE THEN, I'VE SLOUCHED, SLUMPED, HUDDLED AND CURLED IN MY OFFICE CHAIR, AND IT HAS PLAYED A WICKED TOLL ON MY HIP. IT GOT TO THE POINT WHERE IT TOOK TEN MINUTES OF PLANNING, TO FIGURE OUT HOW I WAS GOING TO EXTRACT MYSELF FROM THE OFFICE CHAIR, THAT I SEEMED WELDED TO BY BODY WEIGHT. SO AS FAR AS FEELING BETTER, TYPING WHILE STANDING, I DON'T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT PULLING MYSELF UP.....JUST PUSHING MYSELF AWAY. SUZANNE WANTS ME TO BUY SENSIBLE SHOES.....AND NOT FROM A THRIFT SHOP. I'VE BEEN WEARING DEAD GUY SHOES FOR DECADES. "WELL, THAT'S ALSO WHY YOU LIMP YOU CRAZY OLD MAN," SHE SCOLDS. I RETALIATE, SIMPLY, "YEA......YOU TOLD ME IT WAS OKAY TO CUT THE GRASS, BECAUSE IT WAS GOING TO RAIN. THAT DIDN'T WORK OUT SO GOOD, DID IT?"
     THE MAIN STREET DIGS HAVE BEEN QUITE ENCOURAGING, AND I LIKE THE DIN OF ALL THE MUSIC ACTIVITY IN THE FRONT OF THE SHOP, AND THE ANTIQUE TALK IN OUR SECTION. I'M TUCKED JUST BEHIND, IN A LITTLE ALCOVE, WHICH KEEPS ME FROM TRIPPING CUSTOMERS, OR CHATTING WITH THEM TOO MUCH. SUZANNE REMINDS ME I TALK TOO MUCH. I WRITE TOO MUCH AS WELL, BUT SHE WON'T READ MY COPY. IT'S A WIN, WIN FOR ME, BECAUSE I TELL THE WORLD ABOUT HER EXCESSES. I SUPPOSE ONE DAY, A READER MIGHT RAT ME OUT TO HER, BUT BY THEN I'LL HAVE A GOOD COME-BACK, TO SUPRESS ANY SERIOUS REPERCUSION.
     HERE NO IS A RESUMPTION OF THE GRANNY BOWERS' STORY.


THE JOURNAL OF GRANNY BOWERS - A LIFE OF HARDSHIP - A LIFE OF FAITH

A MUSKOKA HISTORY GEM, FEW KNOW ABOUT TODAY


     ON ONE OF THE FIRST LOCAL SIGHTSEEING VENTURES,  SHORTLY AFTER OUR FAMILY MOVED TO BRACEBRIDGE, BACK IN THE WINTER OF 1966, MY FATHER ED, DROVE US A SHORT DISTANCE OUT THE FRASERBURG ROAD, FOR A STOP AT ST. PETER'S ANGLICAN CHURCH. IT'S UNMISTAKABLE, BECAUSE OF ITS LOG CONSTRUCTION, AND THE FACT THE STRUCTURE IS PERCHED ON A ROCK KNOLL SITUATED SO BEAUTIFULLY AMONGST THE EVERGREENS. I IMAGINE IT IS ONE OF THE MOST PHOTOGRAPHED SITES IN THE WHOLE REGION. MY DAD TOOK PHOTOGRAPHS OF MY MOTHER AND I, ON THE STEPS UP TO THE TINY CHURCH, WITH OUR OLD BROWNIE CAMERA......THE BOX WITH FILM THAT TRAVELLED THOUSANDS OF MILES ON OUR VACATIONS.....AND THANKS TO MY FATHER'S LACK OF KNOWLEDGE ABOUT SUCH THINGS AS COMPOSITION, AND PROPER HANDLING OF THE CAMERA, THERE WAS ALWAYS A TELL-TALE SILHOUETTE OF A THUMB IN THE CORNER OF ALMOST EVERY IMAGE.
     THE STORY OF GRANNY BOWERS IS TIED INTO THIS LITTLE LOG CHURCH, AND IT WAS BUILT FOLLOWING HER DEATH, FROM TIMBERS SCAVENGED FROM AN OLD FARM SHED. TO HER LAST BREATH, SHE HAD HOPED FOR A CHURCH UP ON THE HILL, ACROSS FROM HER HUMBLE ABODE. YOU CAN ARCHIVE BACK TO YESTERDAY'S BLOG TO CATCH-UP ON THE JOURNAL ENTRIES BY GRANNY BOWERS AND FATHER ROLAND PALMER OF THE SOCIETY OF ST. JOHN THE EVANGELIST, THE PUBLISHER OF THE SMALL BOOKLET IN 1942. WE RESUME THE STORY:
     "I can remember when I was a young girl long years ago. I was one of a happy family who lived on a farm in Alliston. I was healthy and strong. I could enjoy life. I remember when I used to get up at five in the morning to watch the sun rise and in the cool of the evening I liked to go to the little river and fish. It was more for a pastime as I never cared for fish to eat. After father died, mother took his place in doctoring and nursing the people. She freely gave her help to all suffering humanity and was always ready to go whenever called. She used to drive to Toronto about three times in the winter to buy her summer's provisions. She would take loads of pork, butter and fowls all the way to sell. Pork at that time was $4.50 a hundred weight for the best. It took one day to go from our home in Alliston to Holland Landing, stop there and return home the next day. My brothers hauled their wheat to Bradford in winter along with the other farmers. That was the nearest market. They would take about three loads a week and about forty bushel a load. The trip from Alliston to Bradford was a distance of about 36 miles so they had to rest the horses every other day.
     She writes, "I used to help my brothers clean the wheat for market. We had a good farm and grew a great quantity of grain. The people in those times had big tin horns to call the men to dinner. When the women would blow the horn the men would hear at the far end of the farm about a mile away. I would take great pride in being the first one to blow my horn, which was usually 11:30 and was generally thought to be the smartest girl but am not much use now at the age of 83. The people in those times used to plan to have land cleared, and cut down acres of trees and underbrush. In the fall of the year at home, they would cut down about twelve or fourteen acres at a time and all with the axe. Wood was of no value then when the country was just opening up, so they piled it in the fallows and burnt it. They generally left about one acre of standing timber on each farm for wood and the rest was all cleared.
     "The farmers each year cleared land for the next year. In September and October they piled all the underbrush in winrows and left the gib trees to be felled in the winter. The next spring about the 24th of May or 1st of June when the brush was dry, they went with a torch on the windside of the winrows and lit up the brush heaps. In about half an hour the whole thing would be in flames as high as the tree tops. Then when the fire cooled down the men came with the oxen and piled up the logs, and in the evening they burnt them. These they would burn two or three days before they cooled down, then the remains were branded up again and continued in this way till all was burnt and the earth was nice, soft clay loam. Then about the 15th of September they planted their fall wheat, with grass seed. Next year they cut the grain and the following year had a good crop of high timothy hay. They had fires all over the country then as all the farmers were doing the same. We had a log barn to store our hay and grain until the last summer, I was at home when they put up a good frame barn and that year both were well filled.
     "Two years after father died when I was little more than sixteen years of age, I was married. Then my misfortunes commenced. We had five sons and three daughters and had to work very hard to support them. My husband could drink all the money he and I both earned. He wanted children but would not provide for them. This made it very hard for me after being used to plenty. When we were a year and ten months married, our first child was born. About that time pioneers were settling in Muskoka, and my husband went to see the country too, thinking he would make a home for us there. He liked the country fine and so came home to get us. His brother drove us out there with his horses. It was the 21st of January when we started. We went from Alliston to Price's Corners the first day. From there to Michael Bowers near Severn Bridge, about noon the next day, and to Gravenhurst that day and stopped there for the night. We lived in with some other settlers till our shanty was put up. The virgin forest stood at that time untouched by the hand of man. Huntsville was a trading post and there was no railway accommodation north of Barrie. We were not long hewing out a site for our home and we soon settled. That spring my second child arrived and that summer and fall my husband got work helping to cut a road through five miles of bush. The job lasted three or four months, the men were very glad to get the work then as they needed the money to hep them along, but they didn't get much. It was ninety cents a day and board themselves.
     She records that, "As there was no more work when that job was done, we decided to go back to Alliston as the best thing to do, so we started next morning. We walked to Gravenhurst the first day, about 20 miles, and carried the two children and two small bundles and stopped at a hotel for the night. The next morning there were cadge teams returning from a trip up north so we had a ride with them as far as Orillia, about three miles. There were two teams, one to a market sleigh, the other a jumper sleigh. The man who drove the jumper was drunk and not able to manage his horses so he offered my man a free ride if he would drive the team. The other man was boss of the two teams and he charged me $1.50 for myself and the children to ride with him. We got to a half way roadhouse near the Kashe (River). When we arrived here they had to stop and feed the teams. The men also refreshed themselves with a few glasses of beer. My man was feeling pretty good and was not able to manage the horses; as a consequence the horses left the jumper and men sprawling in the snow. The boss left the jumper by the side of the road and assisted the men to get on the horses's backs, and they came along behind us. But the horses were very poor and they had no saddles, and the men were shouting that they wanted a drawing knife to cut the hubbles off the horse's backs.
     We arrived at the next town near night and put up at a hotel. In the morning the children and myself went in the stage to Barrie. My husband said he would walk and arrive there about 3 p.m. He told us where to stay at a hotel till he came along, and he paid the stage driver $1.50 for our fare. It happened the hotel keeper had left and another (stranger to me) was keeping it. Well, I went into the bar room and told the keeper, if a man called inquiring for a woman and two children that he was able to tell him I was waiting in the sitting room. But as it happened there was another man in the bar room when my man arrived, and when he asked for us, the man knew nothing about us. My man then went to another hotel to enquire but could get no word, so he walked the streets till night and gave up looking. He thought I had got a good chance of a ride and went on, so he engaged a room for himself in a hotel and went to bed. I didn't know what could have happened. I thought he must have been drinking again. I had no money and could not get a bed anywhere, so waited in the sitting room till midnight. I began to think we would soon be turned out when they locked up for the night. We were both tired and hungry as we had not had anything to eat, and to think my man was sleeping peacefully in the hotel across the corner. One of my neighbors was at the hotel and was passing the sitting room door when he saw me. He said my man was alright as he had seen him, so he went across the street and found him for me, and he came over so we went to his hotel for the night. We had a bite to eat and a good rest as we were very tired. In the morning we had another lunch in our room and left Barrie carrying the children to Thornton which took all day. We were short of money so had to walk. We went in to get warm and got permission to stay all night but the mistress was very cross and ugly so we travelled on, and didn't stop till we arrived at Cookstown and it took us till bed time."
     I will rejoin the journal penned by Granny Bowers, in tomorrow's blog. Please join me for the conclusion of this compelling pioneering tale. It gets much more interesting. She was a tough lady, with strong convictions and enduring faith in God's goodwill.