EXCUSE ME, BUT I'M FINALLY LIVING THE WRITER'S LIFE, AND IT'S BLOODY WONDERFUL
WHERE IT BEGAN, WAS THAT STUFFY, NOSTALGIC LITTLE ROOM RITA WILSON RENTED TO ME AS A STUDENT
I have never written about Rita Wilson. This is an appalling truth to me, and I've nearly drowned in guilt as a result. I was thinking about Rita this afternoon, as I was finishing up a writing project, I've put off since the late 1970's. It was as far back as the autumn of 1974, when I took up lodging with a school chum, at Rita's neat little 1920's two story house, jammed into a no-space-wasted neighborhood in Toronto, a few blocks up from Jane and Bloor, one full block above Annette, and very near Runnymede Collegiate, where my mother Merle used to attend school when they lived near by. In fact, at Rita's Boarding House, I was a few blocks away from Jackson Boulevard, named after my grandfather, Stanley Jackson, who build numerous houses as a contractor back in the 1930's and 40's. At least this is the story my mother spun for all our years together.
Rita's little house, was a minor version of my grandparents' house, as I remember it, also not so far removed from where I was lodging, and I occupied the rear bedroom, that looked out on one of those typical narrow and compromised back yards, that a Group of Seven art panel might have depicted; the fenced in yards, with little gardens, a couple of metal chairs, a bird feeder, and tiny patio with a few brown ferns in broken concrete planters. It wasn't as inspiring to me, as looking out on Bracebridge's Bamford's Woods, up on Alice Street, or the Grove, as it might have appeared after a late season snow in the heart of April. In a way, it was what I needed, to be able to test myself as a novice writer, enrolled in creative writing classes at York University. I could write like a madman in almost any location, in Muskoka, because I considered myself a landscape style author, and that involved acres upon acres of wild, uncompromised hinterland. Trying to draw inspiration from the urban landscape, specifically the city-style backyard, would take a lot of time to get used to; but it was something I would have to deal with, because Rita only charged me twenty-five bucks a week, thirty if I was going to stay weekends. It was a long drive with two bus changes, to get up to York each day, but if I had stayed in residence, I would have been bankrupt before Christmas. With Rita, we got wholesome food, and I learned all about the "boarding house reach," which was employed by inmates to get the food they wanted, before there was no more. If I wanted the last bun in the basket, I was going to have to be faster than my housemates, Ross Smith, and Rod Baldwin, also from Bracebridge, attending school in Toronto.
After awhile, I did find reason to watch out that back window, watching the neighbors going about the recreations, and going to work at the same times each morning, and coming home, at roughly the same time each evening. I had left the city in the late winter of 1966, and even in only eight years, I had forgotten what it was like to live like sardines, and what bad neighbors were all about. I found something interesting about this way of living, based on the contrasts, of my experiences residing and going to school in rural Ontario. After about the first month of residency, I would sit by the window, in the afternoons, on days when I got off school early, and write anything down that came to mind, about what was framed by this window, as restricted as the fences were down below. I paid attention to my professors in creative writing, and learned that it was possible to be inspired by what didn't appear to be inspiring whatsoever. I finally understood what they meant, and my first foray was with poetry and it was fairly negative. To my professors, that was just fine, even though I wasn't used to this; preferring instead to by upbeat and positive most of the time. They were right and I was wrong. I was supposed to write objectively, and allow myself to be influenced in any direction, by what the landscape, urban or rural, inspired. If I was hateful of my surroundings, then this should have been reflected in my material. Gradually, Rita Wilson's back window became an important portal to understanding the urban jungle. It would be the place, on the other hand, that influenced me to move north after graduation, and for gosh sakes stay there. Rita was a wonderful host, and although gruff around the edges, she was a good house-mother for three lads on the brink of exciting new lives as graduates. She only let us have so much fun, before she reminded us, she had to get up a five in the morning, to head off to her job in the manufacturing sector. I think she worked int he automotive industry. She worked hard and went to bed each night, but not before consuming one bottle of beer to enhance her sleep. We never dared to touch any of her reserve stock.
When I moved back to Bracebridge, I soon took up lodging in an urban setting, on the main street of Bracebridge, Ontario, in the former home and medical office of Dr. Peter McGibbon, former Muskoka Member of Parliament, back in the times of Mackenzie King of the early 1920's. Our family operated a small antique shop on the main floor, and had an apartment in the back. I had use of the empty attic that had never been turned into an apartment, when renovations remodeled the rest of the old estate, that even had a carriage house in the backyard. My attic window overlooked the tree-lined Memorial Park, and over the four seasons, it was a writer's paradise, because of the near panoramic view the upper windows provided, and the amazing things that went on down below, through all times of day and night. I wanted that period to last forever. It was where I wanted to write novels and entertain associate authors and significant others. Then the economy got in the way, and I had to take a job with a weekly newspaper to pay the rent on that attic office. As a reporter I developed some really bad writing habits, and that spun into awful social habits, and well, is it any wonder I called the near legendary partyist, Paul Rimstead of the Toronto Sun, my idol. Instead of writing novels, I used to sit in my smaller apartment one floor below, look out a smaller window, and drink beer instead of writing. I did write my first book in that one bedroom apartment, "Memories and Images," with fellow Muskoka Publication photographer, Tim DuVernet, and the preamble for my second, "The Legend of Tall Pines," but largely I lived the life of a reporter; and it was happenstance including paying the rent.
All these years later, I have finally, once again, revisited those years of promise, when I very much desired authordom, and writing novels and sipping fine wine at the end of each fulfilled chapter. Seeing as I don't drink any more, I can save money on this, because my beverage of choice now is apple juice. The point is, I have finally dedicated myself to doing what I started out in terms of career. A little late but, what the hell. I'm at the very least, very, very experienced in wordsmithing.
I have been working on a few projects for Suzanne's newly launched facebook page, "Currie's Antiques," involving the creation of short stories about, and based in, our home region. Muskoka has been good to our family for many, many generations, and I want to spend the rest of my days, God willing, writing about its inherent joys and inspirations. It is the place, above all other locations I've lived and worked, that keeps inspiring me, like a bottomless well keeps the thirsty satisfied. I have many other co-operative projects in the bag, so to speak, and I'm looking forward to getting on with them; strangely at a time, when I truly believed my mind was sending back the message to the rest of my body, that it could no longer be business as usual. Honestly, I've got more aches and pains from this laptop than I would have after a game of smash-em-up hockey. From my fingers to my neck, the pain has been severe. But for some reason, working on fiction projects, with Suzanne, to give her business facebook page a little something extra, has actually relaxed the same strained muscles. Can't explain it, but I certainly don't believe in leaving any resource offered to me, unused, especially if I suspect it's from the Big Guy upstairs, telling me I've got a few more years to express myself, so I shouldn't dilly dally. If you want to know more about what I've been up to, you can join the 12 part series, that began on Saturday, on Suzanne's facebook page. Tonight, is the second full chapter. (But it's a short one). The opening was entitled simply as "Preamble," that you can look up if you didn't catch it already. Actually, the whole twelve part booklet has been written in advance.
Much more coming.
The vision, the spirits encountered along the way
The message, “You shall become a writer.”
During my fledgling days as an antique hobbyist, circa 1975, my girlfriend at the time, Gail Smith, hauled me to an estate auction in Bracebridge one summer afternoon. Her father had only recently introduced me to antique lighting, and I have to admit that it didn’t impress me initially but then I’m as fussy and peculiar as any collector. Oil lamps fueled by coal oil. I used to watch Gord take great care with his small but significant collection of both plain and elaborate lamps, and it was around Christmas that he would engage several different ones each night. On Christmas Eve he might employ the majority, and I was amazed by the heat these old lamps could generate. What really impressed me was the sparkling vintage glass, the original glass shades, and the colored glass fonts appearing with striking beauty as might church stained glass, backed by such soft illumination. It was a tantalizing and brilliant glow that provided a wonderfully historic patina to everything in that parlor. Gord was fond of antiques generally and expertly restored many charming furniture pieces from chairs and tables to sideboards. A piece had to be pretty badly damaged for Gord to give up on its future potential
. When Gail pointed out an old farm lamp, coming up next for auction, I confess to having no idea how to bid and frankly I wasn’t sure if I even had enough money to make bid-one. Gail told me not to worry about that and encouraged me to “cut my teeth” so to speak, on the country auction circuit. I did buy the old and very plain farm lamp, and it was the first item I had ever purchased at auction. Gail loaned me the money to back up my liberal bidding, and I couldn’t wait to see her father, and get some advice on how to upgrade the lamp to ignition standard. When I saw that lamp aglow, let me tell you, an obsession was about to be born. I have never been without oil lamps since. During the Christmas season I always like to reflect on that beginning interest in historic lighting, watching Gord carefully ignite those twenty charming oil lamps. The Currie family will have our own lamp lighting ceremony on Christmas Eve, and drink a toast to Gord Smith, for his tutorship of the young lamplighter apprentice. My partners in oil lamp lighting today are wife Suzanne, and lads Andrew and Robert. Actually, I always ask Santa for a lamp accessory each Christmas, and he has been particularly generous to the “collector-me.”
As I write these blogs, particularly during the cooler seasons of the year, I always have at least one oil lamp ignited. I adore the scent of burning coal oil and I’ve employed it as a mood-setter for decades. Of course when I first began writing historical tomes, I used an old Remington manual typewriter, and I must have appeared quite antiquated to my family, huddled over that machine in the modest, wavering light of the oil lamp…, in a cluttered office Scrooge himself would have found creature comfort. Not quite Charles Dickens or Washington Irving am I …..hopelessly committed to preserving the old and dear ways of times past.
A Christmas Discovery of Once Long Ago
It was shortly before Christmas, in December 1977, when the spirits took issue with my post-graduate indifference. Here I was, history degree in hand, operating a small antique business on Bracebridge’s Manitoba Street, and the recently appointed fledgling columnist for a brand new community newspaper. The short lived column was about antiques and collectables, and I’m pretty sure I expected to win the Pulitzer Prize for writing excellence. It was the first barb of many realities to come, as a writer who can boast a lifetime record of never winning an award. Not one! Even as a stalwart goaltender in local minor hockey, I never got the silverware. Ah well. It’s not in the cards, so I move on!
It was by all means a typical early winter day in Muskoka, and I thought it was the perfect occasion to don the cross country skis, and head out on a wonderfully scenic trail, running parallel to the Muskoka River on its slow, snaking flow to Lake Muskoka. I had travelled this trail numerous times before but on this occasion I brought along a camera, in order to take some photographs of an abandoned farmhouse, a considerable distance along the well defined trail.
The mood-in-tow, when I started out on the day’s ski trip, was typical of the baggage of indecision I had been toting around every day since I graduated York University, in the spring of that year. I was having quite a time figuring out what I was going to aspire to, diploma in hand, eagerness in heart but few job offers being extended. None! Although I kept a junior partnership with my parents in our fledgling antique business, situated in the former home of Dr. Peter McGibbon, across from the Norwood Theatre, it wasn’t earning enough at the time, to justify full time engagement. So it’s fair to say I was having a few doubts about survival and the net worth of a degree in Canadian history alone. I was accomplishment driven, so even in this time of uncertainty, I was plotting and planning for a future in Muskoka. I had already organized the preamble meetings to establish the Bracebridge Historical Society, the conservation authority that would eventually save an octagonal home, built in the 1880’s, by Bird’s Woolen Mill founder, Henry Bird, for future use as a community museum.
Despite feeling I was putting some of my newly gained knowledge and credentials to work, I was still on the brink of financial disaster. So what should a starving graduate do to improve his lot in life? Sure, become a writer! In fact, just shy of becoming a hobo and hitting the rails to the very next hobo jungle, deciding to become a full time writer was a binding, strangling declaration toward lifelong poverty. I read a story recently about a young person in our region embarking on a writing career with great hope and expectation. Well, I still possess great hope and a little battle-worn expectation, but there’s no more confusion about the “prosperity” part. And when someone casually talks about an artist “sacrificing for the craft,” geez, I get a palpitation and a lump in my throat at the same time. I want to tell this young writer about all the hardships, disappointments, discouragement, and unfulfilled expectations. I want to lessen the burden the new author will experience, and let her know about the periods of depression and the dashed jubilation when yet another rejection arrives in the mail, reading “Thank you for your submission…but.” As one expects a carpenter to be minus at least one finger, the carpenter in counterpoint undoubtedly anticipates our creative venues to be wall-papered with rejection notices. While I want, even now, to take this poor soul under wing and protect her from the onslaught of reality, alas it is an inherent part of any worthy writer, to have rejection and heartache as an equal partnership in creative enterprise. It’s the weathering of the artist that must not be denied its ravages; the glacial ice etching its retreat upon the hardest rock.
On my soon-to-be attempted late afternoon ski, cross country toward that abandoned homestead, I clearly recall my raging mental debate endured over that first snowy mile; should I listen to my girlfriend and go back to Toronto and find “a” job, work harder to build the dynamic of our present antique shop, seek a writing job in Muskoka, or pan-handle on the steps of our post office, to pay-off the most anxious of my fetters. The further along the trail, the more enclosed and darker it became, as the snow laden evergreens at the sides, blocked out the last fading glow of daylight. The newly fallen snow made it much lighter of course, so I wasn’t fearful of being enclosed entirely by the gloom of nightfall. As the night before, I expected to trail home by moonlight. The only condition I was concerned about, was if a snow squall off the lake arrived unexpectedly.
There was a point on this venture when I finally stopped contemplating life and times and bank account numbers, and let the countryside dictate the train of thought. The prevailing mood seemed to change every hundred yards or so, and I can remember the wind against my back, which at times felt as if there was a hand pushing down on my shoulder, propelling me faster down the trail. When the wind set free one or more of the tree boughs, it was an invigorating experience skiing through the spiraling mist of crystal ice. It was like they have used in movies, like Dickens a Christmas Carol, to inspire chill feelings and sudden mysterious turns of plot and mystery.
The light of day was nearly exhausted by the time I arrived in the lowland, situated just below the old house, perched in a guardian wreath of cedars upon a small elevation of land, now a short ski west from where I’d stopped at a junction of trails. The only sound other than my rapidly beating heart and the rustle of my jacket with the snow-clad collar, was the deep wash of the wind tumbling through the valley to my immediate left. It was a lonely scene, and when I got my first glimpse of the farm trail up the hillside that was the point where my vigil was no longer solitary. I might have been in fact alone, in so much that I was the only skier left out on the trail this afternoon, but I was amongst others. After years of writing about paranormal occurrences in Muskoka, I can attest that this abandoned farmstead, where I stood in awe of a family past and indeed lost, was the most haunted place I have ever known. Having published dozens of true experiences with the spirit-kind in our district, I’m familiar with most of the local haunts. This one was my first paranormal experience in the great outdoors, yet as most of my encounters have been, it wasn’t at all frightening. Instead I found it to be both invigorating and inspirational.
The first account of this stop in the woods on a snowy evening, to borrow a plume from poet Robert Frost, was published in a book I wrote in the early 1980’s with well known Muskoka and region photographer, Tim DuVernet. It was as memorable then as it is now, and whenever I find myself in a similar setting, particularly our woodland here at Birch Hollow. I can recall that strange, initially smothering embrace of history, past lives and Christmas, as if time has been frozen into a photographer’s carefully framed study It all comes back with a warm flood of sentiment. It was a lovely, enchanted experience being out on that trail, looking up at the remnants of homesteading labors, and seeing the twinkle of light from within, as if a lantern had been placed there to guide me along. As a haunt, it was overflowing with inmates. There was a great deal of activity and clatter, from windblown shutters smashing against woodwork, to creaking hinges and clanging tin. At least these were the sources imagined because darkness was limiting visibility, as was the snow beginning to drift against the ruins.
As I continued to ski along the lowland trail and then up the lane, compromised from its heritage by overgrown cedar and pine, there was a very great expectation that I was in company of a plethora of wayward ghosts. At times I’d stop in my tracks, take off my cap, to try and hear what I believed were voices (particularly noticeable by the time I arrived on the crest of the hill), only a few feet from the fallen-in porch, close enough to extend a hand to rap on the half open door. Listening intently I could, at that point, only hear the soft settling of new snow and the wind sculpting through the evergreens up the hillside. At times the near vapor of windblown snow appeared as drifting apparitions. This was not as much the degree of unsettling condition or haunting, as it was the profound feeling I had inadvertently discovered a portal from my time, this moment, to the days of full vigor and life for this farmhouse. Despite its lowly condition, there was a feeling of “homestead,” as if at any moment the keeper of the hearth would come through that open door, and beckon me to warm by the fire. It still appeared as a home, a family abode, and it reminded me in a glance, how many Christmases past had been celebrated here; the crackling hearth and steaming pudding “singing in the copper,” as Dickens might have penned for the benefit of absorbed readers. Possibly a winter tale, a Christmas revelation or two was read, and prayer, beside the humble crackling cedar fire, as wee ones shivered beneath the covers in anticipation of the visitation from old St. Nick. There was a spiritual presence on this hill and it may have been that I was a liberator of emotion, pent-up historical realities of another era, and the chosen one to carry forth a living testament in the anecdotal, personal history of Muskoka.
I remained on that hillside for about an hour, at one point having gained entry to a lower bedroom and then, in a crouch halfway into a seriously compromised parlor, most recently suffering a fallen-in ceiling. There was only enough snow-reflected light to make out the larger details of the interior and once again I could hear what appeared to be whispering all around me. I don’t recall ever feeling nervous about the strange sounds and shadows moving about me, as the wind was vigorously whipping all the tree branches against the building, scraping against the wood siding and remaining panes of glass. If you’ve ever, even once in your life, felt in the presence of something spiritual, a tad paranormal from everyday fare, then you will appreciate what it must have felt like, to be isolated in this homestead, hearing and witnessing first hand, a varied amount of interaction not of my own imagination. I had no interest in fleeing but rather consuming as much of this pleasant haunting as possible. I knew it was important to let this sensation envelope me, not in the quest to be frightened evermore but to understand all this confluence of energies, memories, events, tragedies, life and death, as experienced in this house over decades; the overwhelming feeling that I was there to represent this family history; to make sense of lives invested here that otherwise would be forgotten and grown over, like the family cemetery without a single surviving tombstone. Just the silver-iced barren stand of bending lilacs that will now only bloom half as brilliant come May.
It was on this snow graced hillside, in company of someone else’s legacy, some other family’s history that I understood the great relevance of being an historian. The rolled up diploma had meant practical accomplishment and a passing average. This consuming vigil, the footsteps, the actuality of wood and shingles, hearth and kitchen, lost souls and found, was the seeding of fertile thought for an apprentice historian with so many miles yet to explore. I could never betray the trust of this place, bestowed on the guest, the story-teller. In good faith I have written about this homestead often, and from the first paragraph to the final exclamation, it’s always as if I’m again standing on that peak of land again, in snow and sudden moonlight, consumed by the company of those guardian spirits. I vow to return in thought evermore.
When I strapped on my skis for the adventure back to the park chalet, I knew by the unclenching of strong emotion, I would never forget this visitation as long as I lived. As I passed quickly and with a subtle slash of ski on ice, along the frozen, barren stands of dead trees in the lowland, and towering pines along the rock ridge to the south, the last look back toward the homestead revealed that same twinkling light, as I had casually witnessed upon arrival. In the winter darkness it was hard to understand what caused that single spark of light and whether the work of spirit or imagination, it has been a source of enlightenment and expectation ever since.
Racing down the icy slopes, and pushing hard along the narrow trails between rock outcroppings and cedar, I composed poem after poem in my mind, as if suddenly there was no other mission on earth than to pen poetic. I didn’t become a writer or an historian because of any one thing that happened on that innocent ski into the hinterland. As a recollection however, it has influenced me continually for all these years, and I’m so pleased to be haunted by such a wonderful scene as that old Muskoka farmstead, amidst a beautiful, spirit-full winter.
There are people, some I call my friends, who have long criticized my romantic, nostalgic, idealistic way of looking at both Muskoka and history; and at least one of my critics was right many years ago when he told me bluntly, “You can’t live in the past,” and “Nobody wants to read this sentimental stuff; there’s no such thing as legends, ghosts, Ted. Reality, raw emotion, excitement, adventure, now that’s what sells books!” Well, I guess my problem for all these decades is that I never followed the critic’s sage advice. I’ve always been a dreamer and the possessor of an abundant imagination. Yet if I had to do it all again, I would re-visit that old homestead, as a rite of passage, because it was the engagement of all that was important to me….much as I would imagine Tom Thomson, revered Canadian artist, felt standing in the bitter cold, consuming the sheer enchantment of northern lights over an Algonquin lake. He was impressed to hear from a viewer of his painting, admiring one of his art panels depicting the Northern Lights, that the image evoked feelings of cold and loneliness. The shiver, the ecstasy experienced by discovery, is as much the eternal flame of creative thought, as it is proof of a warm soul’s existence. It’s true I have suffered for my craft but it has, in my own estimation, been a modest, fulfilled, contented life in close company with both history and nature; the true and honest parallels and coincidences of my venture to the homestead, the harmony struck poetic by a heartbeat in solitude re-visited..
Ask me if I will continue to defend the conservation of nature and history in Muskoka to my last mortal breath?
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