THE INSIDE STORY THAT NEVER MADE IT TO PRINT - ABOUT A TRAGIC DAY IN BRACEBRIDGE HISTORY
There are about a dozen times every year, honest, when I mount a retirement campaign in our family circle, because I've been frustrated by someone or, most often, a regional politician, who has decided to dismiss certain unpopular aspects of our town chronicles, because they don't fit the model of what they want to achieve. And every time, Suzanne and the boys suggest I sit down and watch television and enjoy myself. You see, this is the point. I enjoy the work Suzanne and I get up to, as regional historians, and the only reason I ever entertain the idea of quitting outright, is out of that short-lived belief, we're not making any real progress, or changing public opinion, about things we believe are milestone events and occurrences that have, for long and long been downplayed by others. I recover enthusiasm, by the morning, and dive back into the archives to see what else needs the light of contemporary times. I'm not suggesting it's a thankless business, but close.
I've been writing a lot, (with an outrageous amount of print volume), in the past few days, about the shallow glory, modest appreciation, and general avoidance, that welcomes (but not really) community historians, into public forums, and decision making, as being intrusive and fuss pots, about the preservation of public record. Who cares about this stuff anyway? It's old news! We live in the "now", right? So why drag the anchor as we do, when it would be so much easier to just go with the flow?
We can't help ourselves. Really! We feel compelled to uncover the truths of what has been going on in our communities, out of the public eye, that has influenced our home town character. Some citizens don't want us digging where it is not warranted, and they want to decide this for us. And there have been many occasions when power was exerted to thwart our efforts. These nervous reactions always whet our appetite for discovery. Not simply to dredge up scandal or resolve unsolved criminal acts. Sometimes, like the story below, there is a profound inner story, from the hub of tragedy, that is very much deserving of public recognition. It paints in the black and white images with the color of the moment, and it was a vibrancy, and drama I will never forget.
I knew Charles Peacock from our Grade Five class, I think it was, at Bracebridge Public School. I had only just arrived at the McMurray Street school, after our family moved north from Bracebridge, in the late winter of 1966. I didn't know Kenneth Chisholm, Charles' friend, both lads enjoying their recreational time playing with plastic soldiers, and re-enacting battles of the Second World War in the grass outside, or carpets indoors. I had played these games at the Peacock house, on a weeknight, only a few days before he suffered a life altering misadventure. He lived, at that time, with his family, only a block away from the school, and it certainly could have been the case, Charles might have become one of my best friends, that year, and in the future, if he had not been the victim of a tragic accident, which occurred about five minutes walk to the east, on the Saturday of the same week. Kenneth Chisholm was with Charles on that day, a cold rainy morning and early afternoon, that was definitely not suited to playing war games outdoors. My mother refused to let me out of our apartment unescorted, that morning, because you see, I had used a word, describing what we were going to be working on, when I asked permission to attend the play session, in a plea bargain the night before.
"Tunnel!" I had informed my mother that Charles, and a bunch of other neighborhood kids, (as there were supposed to be at least five others) were going to be playing war games, with plastic weapons, and completing digging work on a tunnel that Charles had initiated sometime earlier, possibly in the spirit of the movie "The Great Escape." My mother made it clear, that it would be "over her dead body, that I would ever be allowed to dig a tunnel." No matter how much I pleaded to be allowed to meet-up with my mates, my mother refused, and this was reinforced later, when my father Ed, joined the one side debate, also refusing to relent on my day of confinement, as far as my participation in any war games, other than playing with soldiers on our livingroom carpet.
Just now, I looked up the incident in the book, "A Good Town Continues," published at the turn of this new century, so I could reference the details of this tragic event, and it was summarized in the following paragraph. There isn't even a date given, other than it was the fall of 1966. "The entire community was shocked and saddened when 10 year old Kenneth Chisholm, only child of Mr. and Mrs. John Chisholm, and Charles Peacock, only son of Mr. and Mrs. Alvin Peacock, died in a tunnel cave-in, in a gully along Charles Street."
In my opinion, having been somewhat close to this tragedy, it was deserving of a lot more ink in this book than it got. Even in newspaper coverage after the accident, the story was limited, and to me, there was much less printed that issue, than should have been reported-on, to satisfy the public's interest. It was a huge news maker in a community of 2,700 souls, at that time in the town's history. Most of the telling-of-the-news, in the early moments of rescue, came via hurried "word of mouth," facilitated by every frantic parent in the entire community, calling neighbors, and relatives; and who, at the moment news of the cave-in reached them, with stark brutality, via the grape vine, also couldn't find their own kids. Is it possible they were in the tunnel when it collapsed. It was a Saturday afterall, and the kids were doing what kids do to pass the time of day. It created a justifiable panic that afternoon, and I was in the middle of the chaos, downtown, under my mother's supervision, with sirens blaring from all directions; police cruisers and ambulances, lights and sirens engaged, flying down Hunt's Hill, one after the other. Fire engines leaving the hall, up on Dominion Street, and parents driving all over town desperately trying to find their children.
But it was on Charles Street where rescuers, shovels in hands, found one child's legs protruding from the collapsed earth, of what had moments earlier, been a tunnel, carved out by a couple of lads at play, in an unremarkable hillside, above a depression of land that was open space between houses.
This story came to mind, as it always does in the fall of the year, or whenever I find myself passing the spot on Charles Street, just above the railway tracks, a half block away from Bass Rock, where the misadventure unfolded, which in this autumn makes it forty-nine years ago. I had turned eleven years old that summer. The story of this tragedy also reminds me of why I became an historian. There was so much of this critically important story ignored by the press, at this time, for whatever reason, that I simply had to infill in the years since. It was a community tragedy in every way imaginable. Everyone suffered the familys' agony, and it was the occasion when families held their kids tight, and demanded they never, ever, build tunnels.
Here's a blog I wrote a few years ago, that tells a more complete story of the deaths of young Mr. Peacock and Chisholm, and what it changed in our sleepy hollow, that still haunts the community nearly a half century since it occurred. As for what historians are good for, in the regional sense, I'll let you decide if we, who sleuth because we want the truth, and to conserve history that might otherwise be lost, are adding anything at all, to the appreciation, of what our towns and neighborhoods were built-on, and are forever characterized by; when one wishes to know what makes a hometown special. Well I'll tell you!
TWO CHUMS DIED BUT ONE WAS SPARED - THE WRITER, AND THE GUILT HAS NEVER DIMINISHED
THE DIFFERENCE A MOTHER'S INTUITION CAN MAKE ON A YOUNG LIFE
IF THERE WAS ONE EVENT IN LIFE THAT CHANGED MY OWN COURSE OF HISTORY, IT WAS WHEN I FOR ONCE, LISTENED TO MY MOTHER. I WASN'T HABITUALLY INSUBORDINATE, JUST A YOUNG LAD WHO FOUND DISCRETIONARY PRIVILEGE A GOOD WAY OF CREATING LOOPHOLES. AUTHORITY FIGURES HAVE ALWAYS FOUND THIS WITH ME, AND I USED TO DRIVE PUBLISHERS NUTS. IT'S NOT THAT I DON'T RESPECT PROTOCOLS, JUST NOT STUPID ONES. MY MOTHER MERLE WAS A WORRY-WORT UNTIL I GOT MARRIED. IT WAS LIKE SHE FOBBED-OFF RESPONSIBILITY FOR ME ONTO MY YOUNG BRIDE. I BET SHE HAD A TWINKLE IN HER EYE TOO, AS SHE ESTIMATED HOW MANY THOUSAND TIMES I WOULD RAZZLE-DAZZLE SUZANNE, TO GET AND GO WHERE I WANTED TO, AT THAT PRECISE MOMENT. TRUTHFULLY SUZANNE HAS LEARNED ALL MY TRICKS. I MAY HAVE A FEW COVERT SITUATIONS I'M GOING TO KEEP UNDER RAPS FOR NOW, SO PLEASE DON'T SNITCH ON ME.
BUT AS I'VE BEEN WRITING ABOUT ANGELS, GHOSTS AND THE PARANORMAL, LATELY, THERE IS ONE STORY THAT I'VE BRUSHED BY MANY TIMES, AND WRITTEN ABOUT ONLY ONCE OR TWICE IN THE PAST FORTY OR SO YEARS. IT WAS A TRAGIC OCCASION, SOON AFTER OUR FAMILY MOVED TO BRACEBRIDGE, BACK IN 1966. THE REASON IT WAS TRAGIC FOR MY FAMILY, IS THAT I HAD SOME SORT OF INNER SENSE OF DANGER, SUCH THAT WHEN MY MOTHER REFUSED TO LET ME VISIT CHUMS, I WILLINGLY SUCCUMBED TO STAYING HOME THAT DAY. MY MOTHER USED TO CALL ME "HOUDINI," AFTER THE GREAT ESCAPE ARTIST HARRY HOUDINI, AS I COULD SLIP FROM INCARCERATION WITH STEALTH AND GREAT EASE. USUALLY. COMMONLY. BUT NOT ON THIS DAY, AND I CAN STILL RECALL HER HAND DIGGING INTO MY SHOULDER, TO SHOW HER DETERMINATION TO KEEP ME FROM HARM'S WAY.
I WON'T USE ANY FAMILY NAMES BECAUSE EVEN AFTER ALL THESE YEARS, THE TRAGEDY STILL RESONATES, BECAUSE IT WAS PREVENTABLE. AND BECAUSE IT COULD HAVE INVOLVED MANY MORE YOUNGSTERS THAT DAY, AND EXTENDED THE PAIN AND SUFFERING THROUGH MORE NEIGHBORHOODS AND MULTI-CHILD FAMILIES.
WHILE ATTENDING BRACEBRIDGE PUBLIC SCHOOL, I HAD MET A CLASSMATE WHO SHARED MY INTEREST IN MILITARY SET-UPS, SUCH AS CREATING ELABORATE BATTLEFIELDS WITH PLASTIC ARMY-MEN. I WAS ASKED IF I COULD COME OVER TO THIS HOUSE, AFTER SCHOOL, TO HELP SET-UP ONE OF THESE MILITARY CAMPAIGNS, WHICH I BELIEVE HE WAS WORKING ON, IN THE PORCH AREA OF THEIR OLD HOUSE. I DID GO, AND WE PLAYED RIGHT UP TO AND PAST THE DINNER HOUR. HE WAS A SMART LAD BUT WAS SERIOUSLY DEVOTED TO ACCURACY. HE KNEW ABOUT BATTLE-ENGAGEMENTS, AND THE PLACEMENT OF ARTILLERY TO INFLICT THE GREATEST CASUALTIES. I REALLY DIDN'T HAVE CLUE ABOUT THE REALITIES OF WORLD WAR II AT THAT AGE, WHICH MUST HAVE BEEN GRADE SIX. THIS WAS ON A THURSDAY NIGHT IN THE FALL OF THE YEAR, IF MEMORY SERVES. THE NEXT DAY AT SCHOOL, MY NEW CHUM ASKED WHETHER I COULD COME ON SATURDAY, TO A VACANT RAVINE LOT, NEAR THE RAIL LINE, WHICH WAS ABOUT ONE BLOCK FROM BASS ROCK, THE RAPIDS ON THE MUSKOKA RIVER. HE WAS PUTTING FORTH SOME OF THE MILITARY ENTHUSIASM, HE HAD, TO CREATE A LARGER WAR GAMES, WITH OTHER KIDS HE KNEW AT SCHOOL. IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A LARGE GROUP, TO TAKE UP SIDES IN HIS PLANNED MILITARY OFFENSIVE. FIRST THERE WAS A JOB TO DO, AND HE ASKED US TO BRING SHOVELS.
I would have had no inkling, none whatsoever, that there was any more danger related to what this friend was concocting, of a modern day battlefront, than my usual play with buddies up on Hunt's Hill, on the other side of the Muskoka River. We'd have great recreational outings in both The Grove and in Bamford's Woods, and then up in the sand pit that Wayne Weber owned, behind the Alice Street apartments. It was in a high corner of the hillside sand pit, that we had carved out a substantial cave, in the exposed bank of the hollowed landscape. My mother watched us playing there and never said a word, other than when lunch or dinner was being served. By the fifth time she called, which was then more of a yodel than a loud voice, I arrived at the door covered in sand. She hated sand, and made me strip to my underwear, because she believed the sand would break her vacuum. It was always the occasion one of the girls in the apartment, would make it to the third floor on a lark, and find Teddy exposed. "Awe Mom," I'd cry-out while scampering for cover. The sand pit is important to understand, as a sort of parallel to what else was happening around town. I can't remember why it was a big deal, or if a television show had planted the idea, but a lot of the local rapscallions were digging tunnels. Including my friend Charles.
I remember that Saturday morning, all excited to be going to help Charles excavate his tunnel. When Merle asked me bluntly where I was going, hat in hand, out the door, I was honest that day….no deceit, no run-around, or fog-of-war tricks to get what I wanted. "I'm going to help Charles dig a tunnel, so we can play war games." A look came across her face, as if just then, God had slapped her. Her eyes got dark, and she scrunched up her face, and grabbed me by the shoulder, saying, "You are staying home. Take your boots and coat off, and find something to do in the apartment." I remember walking back to my room, feeling mildly dejected, but when I looked at the rain hitting the front window, it was the kind of day, well, you wanted to stay indoors. It was rare, let me tell you, that I backed down so easily, without any significant come-back to change her mind. I had a sense of something impending that day, but it wasn't so imposing, that it stopped me from playing with my hockey game, or reading comics on the bed. It was in the early afternoon, that Merle came to me, and suggested we go downtown, and that for my agreement to stay home, she would spot me the treat of my choice. I wanted to go to Waites Bakery that's for sure, because their chelsea buns were spectacular. Their hot chocolate, heavenly, with marshmallows.
I can so clearly recall getting to the bottom of Hunts Hill, just about to cross the bridge, when we heard the loud blare of the main fire siren from the fire hall, on Dominion Street. By time we got to the former Muskoka Trading building, opposite the Downtown Garage, all hell was breaking loose. There were racing police cars, ambulances, and volunteer firemen racing to somewhere in the town. I remember seeing people running along the main street, and hearing yelling off in the distance, much as if there was a major fire raging just beyond our view. By time we made it to Manitoba Street, we saw my father Ed, racing toward us in the car, coming around the corner at Thomas Street. He waved my mother over, and was telling her something, I assumed, about the incident occurring. There was a look of fear on his face I'd never seen before, and as he was an old salt, having served in the North Atlantic, he didn't show emotion very often. When Merle came to me, she was crying, and took a hard grasp of my shoulder, and looking me straight in the eye, asked, "Who else was supposed to be digging that tunnel today Teddy?" I didn't have that many friends who also knew Charles, so I wasn't of much help. My Hunt's Hill cronies didn't even know him. "My God, My God," she kept saying, over and over, as she pulled me back toward home, only saying, 'We've got to go back home right now…..until we find out more about what's going on." She was dragging me home. Finally at the top of Hunt's Hill, and being out of breath, I demanded she tell me why I was being punished for knowing Charles. She stood there, at the crest of the hill, looking down onto the main street, and all the flashing red lights, with the sirens echoing through the hollow, and said, "There's been a cave-in of the tunnel, and there are boys trapped inside."
The circumstances that day, were the same for many young families in Bracebridge. It was at a time of day when lots of kids were on the loose, doing all kinds of crazy adventure stuff. There were at least five to eight more kids that had been invited to help dig the tunnel, on that particular Saturday morning. Only one other mother that I know of, insisted her son not go to the lot, where Charles and a close friend were digging some inter-connecting tunnels. As it turned out, most of the kids who were going there, to engage some mild war games, had simply been distracted by other recreation that morning, and never showed up to dig in the mud. The problem with this, is that when the cave-in was first noticed, and word spread fast around the community, a lot of kids were out and about but couldn't be located easily. So there was unbelievable panic, as parents couldn't find their kids, and the speculation raged, that many more bodies may have been buried in the side of that collapsed hill.
When a neighbor casually glanced over to the vacant lot, where the boys had been digging, all that was visible at that point, were two legs sticking out of the side of the hill. There was no longer a tunnel opening, just a wall of earth and a victim stuck in the middle. There was no way of knowing for sure, how many were in the tunnel when the ground gave way. Neighbors and parents, who couldn't immediately find their kids, could be seen running with shovels, ready to help with the rescue. It was pandemonium. There were greatly exaggerated claims about the number of children buried in the tunnels. There was a pall that dropped over that day, I will never forget. While there was no good news that afternoon, because two young chaps had suffocated in the collapsed tunnel. But many more lives were spared by circumstance. A lot of school mates who didn't show up, just didn't want to dig out in the rain. So they stayed away. A few of us listened to our mothers.
On Sunday, when the tragedy had sunk in, and the potential losses examined, volunteers in numerous neighborhoods, went to other properties they'd heard had similar bunkers, caves and tunnels, and started collapsing them all, including the one we had in the sand bank of the pit behind our apartment. I watched the men pounding their spades into the embankment to remove any overhang that might also have collapsed on us. You know, I've played this over and over in my mind for decades, when at times I pass by the property where the two boys perished. I can't get it out of my mind, how easily, that morning, I surrendered to my mother, who must have thought it odd, her son didn't muster more than the traditional retort, "Awe Mom! It's Saturday!" It's as if there had been another act of divine intervention to spare my young life, because I would have been there, and in that tunnel without question……because I'd been the mastermind of the cave in the sand pit.
When we lived on Harris Crescent in Burlington, I was always defying my mother, and I was three years younger. I'd trundle my way along the shore of Ramble Creek, and make it as far as the deep water, that pooled under the bridge of Lakeshore Blvd, that eventually emptied into Lake Ontario. I was forbidden to go near that bridge. The water of Ramble Creek was quite shallow, but at this point, the water was just over my head. She could tell if I'd made it that far along, because the closer to the lake, the more I smelled like Lake Ontario fish. That's usually how I got busted. Why did I go, when I was warned against? Call it femme fatale, I think it's called. There was a magnificent little creature named Angela, with a porcelain white face, sparkling blue eyes, and soft warm hands, who I was madly in love with, who coincidently, used to invite me to play on the swings in her backyard; which, if I remember correctly, backed onto Ramble Creek, a whisker from the deep water under the Lakeshore bridge. I wasn't old enough to even know what a crush was, but she was a most compelling, lovely, delicate creature, who used to hold my hand as we stood on the bank of the creek, watching water spiders darting on the mirroring surface. She'd cry when I had to leave, and that made me feel wretched, and forced me to return time and again, against my mother's wishes. I was weak when it came to the coaxing of friends and significant others. I was a good friend who would come when asked, even if it meant I was going to get in trouble at home. On the day I was supposed to help Charles, it took only a minor effort, to convince me that it wasn't a good idea…..at least at that time, on that day of my life. Truth is, it was probably the only time I paid attention to my mother's warnings, and it's the reason I'm typing this blog today. God Rest Her Soul.
What really stopped me from out-mustering, and manipulating my mother, that day, as I had on a hundred other occasions, to play where I wanted to, and with whomever I chose? What did Merle know that day, almost instinctively, that she took a major general's rank, and ordered me out of commission? I had a message. I didn't feel like arguing with my mother. I surrendered without a fight. And I lived because of it! My mates weren't so fortunate.
Why was I spared, and not them? I couldn't understand a God that would take two innocent kids just playing around on a school year Saturday. I pondered the negligence of an angel that would allow something like this happen. What I did learn from that experience, was to live my life for those lads as well. You see, many of us kids, wondered silently, into our own adulthood, about the very real possibility, had we been there on that day with our chums, that we could have pulled them free ourselves, saving their lives with a quick response. These are just thoughts. Those haunting "what ifs" we must all deal with in life.
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