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| Homestead Chronicles; Now "Seasons of The Lilac" |
THE REWARDS OF READING - AND THE JOY OF A GOOD STORY FOR THE STARVING SOUL
KEEPING COMPANY WITH BOOKS, IS A GENTLE MEANS OF LIFE ENLIGHTENMENT
"IT WOULD BE PLEASANT TO SAY, THAT READING THESE BOOKS, WILL PUT MONEY IN YOUR POCKET; THAT IT WILL MAKE YOU SOCIALLY ATTRACTIVE, THAT IT WILL IN EVERY WAY PROMOTE YOUR MATERIAL WELL BEING. IT MAY EVEN DO JUST THAT, BUT THE MEN AND THE WOMEN WHO WROTE THEM TOGETHER, HAD NO SUCH IDEA IN MIND. THEY WERE WRITTEN AND COLLECTED TO GIVE YOU A GOOD TIME. YOUR LIFE IS DIVIDED INTO THREE COMPARTMENTS, EACH ONE OF WHICH SPILLS OVER INTO THE OTHER TWO; THE TIME YOU SLEEP, THE TIME YOU WORK, AND THE TIME YOU PLAY. IF YOU SLEEP WELL, YOU ARE READY FOR WORK; IF YOU WORK WELL, YOU ARE READY FOR PLAY; AND IF YOU PLAY WELL, YOU ARE READY TO GO EAGERLY BACK TO WORK. THESE BOOKS ARE FOR YOUR PLAY TIME, BUT YOU WILL FIND THAT YOU WILL SLEEP BETTER, AND WORK BETTER BECAUSE OF THEM." (THE POCKET UNIVERSITY'S GUIDE TO DAILY READING, DOUBLEDAY, DORAN & COMPANY, NEW YORK, 1934) "IT SEEMS TO ME THAT THE VARIOUS PLEASURES WE CAN ENCOUNTER IN BOOKS ARE PRACTICALLY INEXHAUSTIBLE." (WILLIAM ROSS BENET)
I was a story inventor even before I could write a complete and sensible sentence. I've been spinning stories forever. Well, you folks know this as fact. At least, my realm of "forever," stretches from those first days getting soakers in Burlington's Ramble Creek, and building sea-faring rafts that never lived up to expectation. I was a wanderer, as a child, but I never knew why. My mother suggested that I was the reincarnation of a viking explorer. My teachers, I think, would have liked to strap me to the school desk, if that had been permissible. Fortunately my mother, undaunted by teacher critiques, respected that I was different in this way, and she really must have felt I was representative of a former life. At times, she looked at me as if I was possessed by something unknown. Much as if she saw my aura, and figured that I was other-worldly. I think it's safe to say, she thought of me as marginally enchanted, because I saw things, that nobody else did. Like ghosts. I started young in this regard, and although she knew I had an over-active imagination, the stories I relayed of sightings, did make her gasp on numerous occasion.
I once over-heard her telling stories to our neighbor friends, about people I saw in the hall of our apartment, and even in our own residence in the old building, who were then of the biography, as being recently deceased. I didn't know they had passed away, which made my stories a little more compelling. I once had an elderly man stand in the doorway of my parents bedroom, where I was lodging that night, while my parents played euchre one apartment below. The grey haired, balding man, stood there, just outside the room, for about a minute, but I saw his features much more defined, strange as this may seem, once he stepped into the semi-darkness of the bedroom. He should have appeared as a silhouette, but had an illumination I can't explain. It was a fellow known as Mr. Haines, who had recently passed away, and although I knew him to live across the hall, in our three floor apartment, he had once lived in our front two bedroom unit. The bedroom I was residing it at the time, had been his, and he apparently liked the view looking over Bamford's Woods. The landlord told us so. When I finally got up the courage to speak to the gentleman, he looked at me, began to talk, but I couldn't hear him, and then, all of a sudden, he turned and walked back out the door. He didn't vaporize. He walked away, and it's why I didn't consider his visit all that weird. Before retiring to bedlam, many of the residents kept their doors open, and it wasn't uncommon to get folks walking in and out, to talk or borrow some cookery ingredient. When I told Merle the next day, that Mr. Haines had come to visit, she looked at me, as if she had seen a ghost. She told me that Mr. Haines had passed away a month or so earlier, so I must have imagined the encounter. I know what I saw, that night, in the doorway of my room, and it was definitely Mr. Haines. He meant me no harm, by the way. He was just visiting his former apartment. He didn't scare me, and even in retrospect, I wish I had been able to keep in there longer, so I so I could have learned more about this post-life visitations.
Maybe I had once been a ship's mate on a merchant schooner, or an Arctic explorer. When my teachers complained that I was a dreamer, and didn't pay attention, Merle suggested they revise their lesson plans, to accommodate the adventurer within all students. I was always looking out the window, and when opportunity presented, I would position myself, with elbows on the window ledge, hands holding my chin, daydreaming about the end of school, and what my route would be on the way home. It was never a straight path that is for sure. I sought adventure in this great wide world, and I saw the classroom as my prison; the teacher, my jailor. I can offer a belated apology for thinking this way, to all the teachers who were tortured by my constant squirming, and impatience, to arrive at recess, lunch-hour or the bell at the end of the day. I wanted to be out in this open spaces of our region, and it's exactly where I invested the bulk of my youth. It is the same pull today, that draws me for numerous daily walks through "The Bog," our neighborhood wetlands, thriving with all kinds of life-forms. The other evening I met a lone wolf, and he didn't eat me. We were respectful of each other's domain, and I was first to yield the right of way, on what was by rights, his traditional pathway.
In my late teenage years, I used to search for abandoned homesteads here in Muskoka. I would spend days looking to establish what a pioneer homestead looked like, by mapping out where the foundation was set out, the barn, other out-buildings, the cultivated pastures, and of course, the dumpsites, because every farm back then, disposed of their own cast-offs on their property. I was fascinated by how the pioneers lived in what was a particularly cruel environment, for largely ill prepared settlers. I love Muskoka, and I've been promoting it, as a region to visit, for the past three decades. But there's no way of minimizing just how difficult it was, to turn thick pine forests, and rock strewn ground, with thin arable soil, into productive farms, with significant harvests each late-summer season. I made it a project, on these visits, to learn as much about the pioneer resolve, to turn these rocky, hilly, treed boglands into family homes and economies, against what can only be considered impossible odds. It must be understood, that many of these settlers were from backgrounds, in the urban areas of Europe, that had little connection with agriculture, let alone, roughing it in the wilds. So I studied those cabins still upright, even after a century of abandonment, to the elements, and the hand-hewn timbers, honed from the surrounding woodland, that must have looked so forbidding in the 1860's and 1870's, the period of the Free Land and Homesteads Act; which by signing on, as a homesteader, gave out hundred acre grants to hopeful farmers, to occupy as farmers, clear and cultivate the land. I studied the remnants, including careful analysis of the garbage site, always on the most undesirable turf, usually below a rock hillside; and I'd frequently stop, having uncovered some unusual item, to think about the identities of these early Muskokans, and their attempt to survive in isolation.
I think my most startling investigation, of Muskoka homesteads, came quite unexpectedly, when a friend, Bruce White, and I, hiked into a backwoods family encampment, once owned by the Peacock family, of Bracebridge. The graves of some of these early settlers are in the Union Cemetery, in the hamlet of Falkenburg, just north of the urban community of Bracebridge. It was known by the locals, as the settlement of "Jerusalem," with its own "Hill of Judea," of which I have stood on top, to take photographs, of the hillside remnants of cabins and outbuildings. It is located west of High Falls, on Highway 11. What struck me, and left a lasting impression, was what we saw inside the old cabin. I do know, that it was occupied well into the 1900's, because the father of my former girlfriend, who had been raised in Falkenburg, told me he used to hike into Jerusalem as a teenager, to visit with the Peacocks who still, at this point, dwelled on the old homestead. The inside of the cabin was in rough shape, but there on a corner shelf, as if protected from all intrusions, of nature and curious other visitors, was a small number of old books. There were leaves on top, and they were definitely covered in the dust of ages. I can't tell you how badly I wanted to reach in, and grab those books off the shelf. I had too much respect for the fact they had survived for quite a few years, on that same shelf, through all the seasons, cold and hot, stormy and windswept. I simply couldn't believe they had remained untouched by all the hikers, who had obviously passed this way. We found pop cans and chocolate bar wrappers, so we know there had been a parade of folks, poking their heads through the glassless windows. There was evidence they'd even been inside, and tipped over chairs and tables. Yet for some reason, they had enough respect for this important reminder, of a homestead family's desire, for a few good books for enjoyment, and enlightenment. I know there was a small Bible on the shelf, next to a hymn book, but the titles of the other antiquated texts were impossible to read from a distance. I took a photograph of this shelf, but I didn't venture into the cabin. I wonder if they're still there. Wouldn't that be remarkable, considering I haven't been back to the property since the very early 1980's.
The feature article I wrote, following my visit, was one of the best read editorial pieces, I'd ever written to that point, and for the next ten years, I would routinely get a call each month, asking me for directions to the property. Until the day, that the actual owner of the property, found out I was handing out directions to trespassers. The biggest problem, like the former Bear Cave Church, in Cardwell Township (having had their icons and pew stolen) was that visitors weren't always satisfied with looking, and leaving the site undisturbed. They would take souvenirs, much like, how curious but vandalizing folks, ripped off the brass letters from the tombstone, at the cemetery in Leith, Ontario, where Canadian artist, Tom Thomson, is supposed to be buried. (There is evidence he is still buried in the Canoe Lake Cemetery, in Algonquin Park). The owner asked if I could please send them elsewhere, and it got to the point, that I was getting strange submissions, calls and letters, from other connected citizens, to the property, that the Jerusalem we had found, did not belong to the Peacock family. I was worried about this for a time, because I hate the idea that I was in error, when I wrote the original full page feature, in The Herald-Gazette, circa 1982. It turns out, it was a ruse. The idea was to convince me, I had discovered something other than Jerusalem, but what they didn't know, was that my story had been validated by two people who had actually been to the homestead property during its family occupation; one being Gord Smith, formerly of Falkenburg, who visited Jerusalem many times, and Alma Peacock, a resident of Bracebridge, related to the family who dwelled on that scenic hillside, below what they called, the Hill of Judea. I even assisted Alma and friends, find access the site, because late in her life, she wanted to see it once again. By photographs, she identified the site as being what she remembered of "Jerusalem," in that hilly terrain, just north of Bracebridge.
But it was the sight of the books, on the corner shelf, I most remember, of that first trip to the pioneer homestead. They needed these books. The spirits of those former residents, weren't finished with them yet. It was very clear to me, at a most influential time, when I was first becoming interested in collecting books, that there could be so much comfort and inspiration, connected to reading. I qualify this, as the lingering impressions of a once non-reader. As a youngster, I confess that I spent far more time in front of a television screen, than huddled somewhere with a good book. While I had my book of Grimm Fairy Tales, at bedside, I wasn't known to the Bracebridge Public Library, until late in my high school years, and I seldom if ever checked out a book at the Bracebridge Public School Library, or made a book purchase. Maybe a comic book, but even then, always "Archie," or "Casper the Friendly Ghost."
My parents didn't push me to read, and honestly, even at school, it was more important to read for in-class lessons, and homework, than for pleasure. It's not that I wasn't a good reader. I just found television easier to deal with, and it did worry my parents; but not to the point of worry, that they denied me access, or ever gave me money to visit the local bookseller and make a purchase. This may read as a giant contradiction, and I hope it does; making it so ironic, that someone who grew up indifferent to books, and almost hating reading assignments, would become a latter-day bibliophile, book collector, and seller. The irony is not lost, let me tell you. But there was a growing interest, deep within, to engage research, as a means of discovery. My choice of things to investigate. Not because of a teacher's homework assignment. And in order to find out more about these homesteads, and the period in Canada, considered the homesteading decades for our region, I had no choice but to seek out the written records so I could interpret, and fully appreciate, the actuality of on-site investigations; as compared to what had been written, even as raw as the actual pioneer journals that were being made available to me, as a fledgling historian. As I wanted to write about these visitations, and what I had found, I also needed to improve my editorial skills, and with the mentorship of some kind professors, at York University, I got a helping hand improving my composition capabilities. Yet, compared to my contemporaries in those english and history classes, I was reading a third of what they were, most out of general interest, more so than what was being assigned. Here's what happened to me, as a bastardization of books and reading.
I used to tell myself, "I'd rather write than read." In other words, "I can be so much more productive, if I spend my time writing material I can sell," than wasting my time, buried in a book, that will produce nothing more than a few hours of recreation each day. When I began writing essays, in University, I had no choice but to increase my comfort level as a reader; something that I hadn't been too concerned about throughout my junior and senior school years. I learned how to skim-read, because frankly, the books we were being asked to read in High School english "sucked." I can't stress this enough. "Sucked big time." I began to skim pages, and over years and years of doing this, I was actually finely honing my research skills. I became expert at finding relevant facts I needed, to answer exam questions with correct answers, and I put together a hundred or more essays, based on novel studies, that got me a passing grade, without reading the entire books. And never actually cheating, by using overview books on the subject. Of course, I was missing the whole spirit of the story, and finding out at various crossroads, that while I knew the facts contained in the book, I didn't grasp the story at all. Unless it was non-fiction, which was far easier to skim for facts, than a novel. Thus, I was becoming a researcher best suited for historical sleuthing, and definitely not someone who would sit down daily, and read from a work of fiction. Even today, I don't read novels. I do however, sell novels. I use historical novels, such as the ones written by William Henry Smith (the author of "Gravenhurst; or Thoughts on Good and Evil), and Washington Irving, (who wrote Bracebridge Hall), because of my work in local history. Smith was responsible for the name "Gravenhurst, Ontario," and Irving, for "Bracebridge, Ontario." I like the work of Charles Dickens, but I don't have the patience to sit down and read his lengthy books. Even as far as his "A Christmas Carol," goes, I vastly prefer watching Alistair Sim portray "Scrooge," in the movie, than read the book. I have read it, but I prefer to invest my time, in the several hour duration of the film instead. Irving, I confess, to reading more frequently, because I am a huge, huge fan of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow."
The marketplace, dictates, that even an old and used book dealer, should have a beefy section of fiction in stock, at any one time. I am different in this regard, because I only have regard for literary classics, like Robert Louis Stevenson's, "Treasure Island," the all those that parallel its story of adventure. I am slowly coming around, to the retail tradition, of the "customer" always being right. And apparently, they think we should stock more fiction, even up to an including the present, which sends shivers up (and down) my spine. Only because, I hated to be forced to read, and ninety-nine percent of the time, the teachers were demanding that I consume fiction for self-improvement; at a time when my heart and interest was in non-fiction. Let me read about Tom Thomson, and the Canadian Group of Seven artists, or about Confederation, or historic assassinations. I wanted the stories I read to have been real. Not made up. It's the same reason, that I have wadded-up, and thrown away, every novel I've clumsily attempted to write in the past thirty-five years. The only one to survive, was one I wrote specially for The Muskoka Advance, entitled "Homestead Chronicles," which contained more fact than fiction, truth be known, and was about all my adventures, in the field, investigating former Muskoka homesteads. I remember one day, having an elderly fellow, a resident of the hamlet of Lancelot, near Huntsville, show up in my office, on Dominion Street, in Bracebridge, with a bag loaded to overflowing, with fresh produce from his garden. He told me that he and his wife were enjoying my multi-part series on Muskoka homesteading, so much, that they wanted to give me a gift from the harvest of one of those old farmstead gardens, with a history as far back as the 1870's. All the while, they were asking me how the plot would turn in the next installment, and what adventures were in store for the pioneer family. I was startled, because it was the first time, I had actually considered what I was writing, as fiction, believe it or not. As I sat on timbers, and rocks, on these heritage properties, I was writing about what I sensed happened on the homestead, in its chronicle. I was actually, quite inadvertently, writing about ghosts. The spirits of the places I visited, without thinking about it, in the context of the paranormal, (of which I was also interested) or in any way, relating anything to fiction, or what they called, an historical novel, published in the pages of the paper I edited. It was honestly weird, and as a knee-jerk reaction, I finished off the series over the next three issues, almost as if, I needed rid of anything of mine, someone would refer to as fiction. A work of sheer creation, and nothing having substance. I didn't plan it this way. I just wanted to restore the homestead back to the way it was, in the 1870's, and to do that, I incorporated all that I knew about regional history, the background cultures and nationalities of the emigrants, and Canadian heritage; and the books I often referred for assistance. Low and behold, out popped a story that was padded with fiction, like a big, lumpy, chair in front of the television. I was entering an area I wasn't comfortable. I didn't know the people of the homestead. I just assumed I did, because I spent so much time visiting. I felt kind of betrayed by my own subconscious.
The same husband and wife, who had so generously given me a nice portion of their fresh produce, raised from that old homestead soil, met up with me, a year or so later, and asked if I would ever consider re-visiting my "Homestead Chronicles," because they felt there was so much left to infill, of this pioneer family's life and times. Just when they had got into the story, I crashed it to oblivion, just because I didn't want to be known as a novelist, historic or otherwise. How ridiculous. How narrow and foolish. What I was writing about, in that short-lived chronicle was far more historic, and accurate, and was entertaining for me. I just didn't like the close association with fiction. I'm good with it now, and I'd like to re-visit the story, in the coming blogs, to let you decide for yourself; based of course, on what I have just informed you, whether there was re-creation merit, putting an unknown family, onto a known homestead. To explain what it was like back then, as bleak as it was, trying to survive against what could be easily described as cruel and unusual punishment; while trying to improve the quality of life for themselves and family. So mixed with a lot of non-fiction, I'd like to dedicate this return engagement to Homestead Chronicles, in memory, to those kind folks from Lancelot, who gave me a compliment, I once found hard to accept. So much so, that it was better to kill the series, than admit it had been readable to these modern day homesteaders, who found something imbedded in the story, that reminded them of the toil and rewards their kin had found, tilling the soil, and rejoicing at the harvest. I owe them this, as posthumously as it is today. Please join me, for my foray, once again, back into the realm of historic fiction, as relates to Muskoka homesteading. But it will be based on fact, of that I guarantee compliance; my loyalty as a stalwart long-serving regional historian. Join me if you like the occasional adventure across the line between non-fiction and fiction.
Pull up a chair to the warming hearth. Take hold of a hot cup of coffee, tea, (or cider), and wander in spirit, back along the old winding trail across the landscape, to a homestead of once, over-grown, abandoned, but not without its resident ghosts. It's a place, peacefully haunted, and full of remembrance, if the only tell-tale traces that a family once dwelled here, are just the shallow imprinted names, long ago carved into the truck of a tree, and still visible; the rectangular impressions in the ground, marking the burial plots, of those kin who perished when the influenza epidemic overtook the hamlet, killing a quarter of the residents. It is a storied place, and we can learn from it, the true measure of hardship, that became the platform for everything we see today, of a highly progressed region of Ontario; known around the world for its recreational luxuries.
The format of the farmstead to farmstead story, to calm my nervous twitch, from getting too close to novelist-stature, will include the actuality of what I experienced, and witnessed, while holed-up in various, similar, but unique portals, on these isolated properties; at several dozen old farms and cabin homesteads, I surveyed at length, across, and deep within, the Muskoka hinterland. Dating as far back as the summer of 1974, when the allure of the countryside seemed at its most powerful for me. I used to beg my then girlfriend, Gail, to come with me, in quest of history in all its quarters, all its faded, ramshackle qualities, strewn through the overgrown pastures, and new pine forests, like the relic farm machinery, matted over by years of windblown, dried, aromatic field grasses. These are strange fictions, mixed in with all the nostalgic realities, of what I always found to be sweetly sentimental, romantic, and spiritually shadowed. I've never afforded myself the opportunity, to honestly explain this, in any significant detail; it will overview, I believe, what it has meant, in the honing of the historian over all these years. While I adore giving credit to my old historian tutors, for my ongoing work ethic, to represent Muskoka heritage, it would be wrong to deny it..., the Muskoka countryside, its influences on my old heart, have been profound and highly influential.
It will be called, "SEASONS OF THE LILAC," in daily chapters, because the "lilac" was a popular enhancement of the pioneer farmstead. It was also used to mark family burial plots, on the homestead, and in the rural community, and church graveyards. I can honestly say, that I never visited a long retired Muskoka farmstead, that was, during a lengthy sojourn, void of its past life. It's earthy character, and heavenly solitude, and then there were those traditional silhouettes of lilac stands; beautiful in the later spring, mournful in appearance, in the late autumn. Picturesque with the adornment of the first winter snow, so deep green, cool and liberated, in the hot, mid-summer. Each story-line will be markedly different, and it's lack of definable characters, is a true reflection of the way I have always interpreted, these wonderfully haunted but lonely places; but rest assured, there were always resident ghosts that made themselves known to me, in one form or another. I will represent all of them, to the best of my capability. These are not ghost stories as such, yet they are imbedded in each story, and sometimes will be reflected more in the lilac analogy, than in the actual sightings of strange, floating vapours, over the wet hollows of pasture where once, long years ago, the resident children used to chase the cows, and run with the dog, pursuing the old barn cat, through the weave of autumn-dried grasses. Please join me, starting tomorrow, for something a little different, in the vein of local history. Always sincere, always in the best interests, of the place I love to dwell.
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