Algernon Blackwood, Horror Writer, In Muskoka Part 7

PART SEVEN

Note: Watch for Part 1 of Beatrice Scovell's, The Muskoka Story starting tomorrow.

"Episodes Before Thirty," explains Algernon Blackwood's Muskoka experience circa 1892

By Ted and Suzanne Currie

     "This capacity for invention and imaginative detail of most ingenious sort, using the tiniest insignificant item of truth, as starting point, suggests that even the dullest people must have high artistic faculties tucked away somewhere in them. M any of these tales we traced to their source - usually a person the world considered devoid of fancy, even dull. Here, evidently, possessing genuine creative power, were unpublished novelists with distinct gifts of romance and fantasy who had missed their real vocation. The truth about us was, indeed, far from glorious, but these wild tales made us feel almost supermen. Many years later I met other instances of this over that dull, even stupid people could keep carefully hidden till the right opportunity for production offers - I was credited, to 'name' the best, with superhuman powers of Black Magic, whatever that may be, and of sorcery. It was soon after a book of mine, 'John Silence,' had appeared. A story reached my ears, the name of its author boldly given, to the effect that, for the purposes of this Black Magic, I had stolen the vases from the communion altar of St. Paul's Cathedral and used their consecrated content in some terrible orgy called the Black Mass. Young children, too, were somehow involved in this ceremony of sacrilegious sorcery, and I was going to be arrested." (Algernon Blackwood; "Episodes Before Thirty")
     Blackwood continues, reporting that "The author of this novelette was well known to me, connected even by blood ties, a person I had always conceived to be without the faintest of imaginative gifts, though a credulous reader, evidently, of the mediaeval tales concerning the monstrous Gilles de Rais. Absurd as it sounds, a solicitor's letter was necessary finally to limit the author's prolific output, although printed editions continued to sell for a considerable time. There is a poet hidden, as Stevenson observed, in most of us."
     Algernon Blackwood and his former business associate, and actor, known only as Kay, had only recently arrived on what is now known as Wistowe Island, in Muskoka's Lake Rosseau. The date is the summer season of 1892. Accommodations on the island are basic and altogether rustic, but both men would have gladly slept out under the stars for those five months of solitude and recovery. Both men had experienced unfortunate business failures in Toronto, immediately prior to the visit, and were on the island thanks to the kind charity of a lawyer friend, the had met during their few months as hoteliers at "Hub," which at this time of escape, was in the hands of a Receiver.
     Blackwood writes, in his biography, published in 1923, "Meanwhile, summer began to wane; we considered plans for attacking New York; hope rose strongly in us both; disappointments and failures were forgotten. In so big a city we were certain to find work. We had a hundred dollars laid aside for the journey and to tide us over the first few days until employment came. We could not hide for ever in this fairyland. Life called to us. Late in September, just when the lakes were beginning to recover their first solitude again, we packed up to leave. Though the sun was still hot at midday, the mornings and evenings were chill, and cold winds had begun to blow. The famous fall colouring had set fire to the woods; the sumach blazed a gorgeous red, the maples were crimson and gold, half of the mainland seemed in flame. Sorrowfully, yet with eager anticipation in our hearts, we poured water on our camp-fire that had served us for five months without relighting, locked the door of the shanty, handed over to (Mr.) Woods the canoe and boat, and caught the little steamer on one of its last trips to Gravenhurst, where the train would takes us, via Toronto, to New York.
     "It had been a delightful experience; I had seen and known at last the primeval woods," he wrote. "It never occurred to me to write even a description of our picturesque way of living, much less to attempt an essay or a story. Nor did plans for finding work in New York - we discussed them by the score - include in their wonderful variety and suggestion of a pen and paper. At the age of twenty-two, literary ambition did not exist at all. The Muskoka interlude remained for me a sparkling radiant memory, alight with the sunshine of unclouded skies, with the gleam of stars in a blue-black heaven, swept by forest winds, and set against a background of primeval forests, that stretched without a break for six hundred miles of lonely and untrodden beauty."
     It was long before the two gentlemen were living in New York City, trying to find employment, but largely failing as there were few jobs available that either man could handle; or wished to be employed. When there were jobs they were low paying, and barely covered expenses, leaving little leftover for food. It was not a contenting time for either man, and although it was an enlightening experience, over several years, it was also full of physical and emotional hardship, so that memories of those five easy, inspiring months on the Lake Rosseau island, were amongst the affordable respites, for peaked imaginations.
     Working as a crime beat reporter, for a New York daily newspaper, compounded the disenchantment with the city and the urban catastrophe, witnessed up close in the jail-house, where there were murderers awaiting the administration of their penalties. The following passage identifies just how desperate Blackwood was, at times, to escape his circumstance, to retreat again to the wildernress he found so restorative in the region of Muskoka.
     "My former life became more and more remote, it seemed unreal; the world I now lived in seemed the only world; these evil, depraved, tempted, unhappy devils were not only the majority, but the real ordinary humanity that stocked the world. More and more the under-dog appealed to me. The rich, the luxurious, the easily-placed, the untempted and inexperienced, these I was beginning to find it in me to look down on, even to despise. Mutatis mutandis, I though to myself daily, hourly, where would they be? Where would I myself be.
     "Bronx Park, Shelley, the violin, the free library, organ recitals in churches, my Eastern books, and meetings of the Theosophical Society, provided meanwhile the few beauty hours to which I turned by way of relief and relaxation. One and all fed my inner dreams, gave me intense happiness, offered a way of escape from a daily atmosphere I loathed like poison. Sometimes, sitting in court, reporting a trial of absorbing interest, my eye would catch through the dirty windows a patch of blue between the clouds...and instantly would sweep up the power of the woods, the strange joy of clean solitary places in the wilderness, the glamour of a secret little lake where loons were calling and waves splashing on deserted, lonely shores. I heard the pines, saw the silvery moonlight, felt the keen wind of open and untainted spaces, I smelt the very earth and the perfum of the forests."
     There are two of Algernon Blackwood's stories, that were probably influenced by the young author's stay on Wistowe Island, or later, as rumoured, on North Boehemia Island (in later years), both on the picturesque Lake Rosseau. "A Haunted Island," and "Skeleton Lake," each containing references that can be attributed to his experiences in Muskoka, as he wrote about in his biography, "Life Before Thirty." He has placed different realities regarding the setting of the stories, specifically "Skeleton Lake," that he establishes in the wilds of Quebec instead of Ontario. There are references to Skeleton Lake and its name, that seem quite close to the history of the lake a short distance from Lake Rosseau, which Blackwood would have been aware of, undoubtedly, during his 1892 stay in the region.
     In New York, for those first hours of adjustment, the young Blackwood reported, "The furious turmoil of the noisy city, boiling with irrepressible energies, formed an odd contrast to the peace and stillness of the forests. There was indifference in both cases, but whereas there it was tolerant and kindly, here it seemed intolerant and aggressive. Nature welcomed, while human nature resented, the intrusion of two new atoms. Nostalgia for the woods swept over me vehemently, but at the same time an eager anticipation to get work." "New York, I felt, was not to be trifled with; the human element was strenuously keen; no loafing or dreaming here; work to the last ounce, or the city would make cat's meat of one! Whereupon, by contrast, stole back again the deep enchantment of the silent woods, and the longing for the great, still places rose; I saw our little island floating beneath glittering stars; a loon was laughing farther out; the Northern Lights went flashing to mid-heaven; there was a sound of wind among the pines. The huge structure that reared above me seemed unread; the river of men and women slipped past like silent shadows; the trains and boats became remote and hushed; and the ugly outer world about me merged in the substance of a dream and was forgotten."
     Instead of repeating the contents of both of these interesting stories, or any other of Algernon Blackwood's work, you can read them online, by visiting algernonblackwood.org.
     Thank you so much for joining Suzanne and I for this glimpse back in time, to the experiences of Writer Algernon Blackwood's stay in Muskoka; a very under known and celebrated reality in the history of our region of Ontario.

Algernon Blackwood, Horror Writer, In Muskoka Part 6

PART SIX

Algernon Blackwood finds his Canadian paradise in the lakeland of Muskoka circa 1892

By Ted and Suzanne Currie
     "Many liked 'scenery,' either perceiving it for themselves, or on having it pointed out to them; but very few, as with myself, knew their dominant mood of the day - influenced - well, by a gleam of light upon the lake at dawn, a faint sound of music in the pines, a sudden strip of blue on a day of storm, the great piled coloured clouds at evening - 'such clouds as flit, like splendour-winged moths about a taper, round the red west when the sun dies in it.' These things had an effect of intoxication upon me, for it was the wonder and beauty of nature that touched me most; something like the delight of ecstasy swept over me when I read of sunrise in the Indian Caucasus..'The point of one white star is quivering still, deep in the orange light of widening morn beyond the purple mountains,' and it was a genuine astonishment to me that so few, so very few, felt the slightest response or even noticed, a thousand and one details in sky and earth that delighted me with haunting joy for hours at a stretch."
     The passage above was written by British Horror Writer, Algernon Blackwood, in this 1923 biography, "Episodes Before Thirty." As we resume our series of stories, about Blackwood's relationship with the District of Muskoka, in the Ontario hinterland, the campers, including a former business partner, named Kay, have arrived by train, steamship and small boat at the Lake Rosseau island where they would spend the next five months. Both men suffering the depression of having lost a Toronto hotel and bar business, Blackwood having also lost a small dairy operation before this, losing a large amount of investment money.
     The soon-to-be author writes, "With Kay, my late 'partner in booze,' as I had heard him called, there was sufficient response in these two particulars to make him a sympathetic companion. If these things were not of dominant importance to him, they were at least important. Humour and courage being likewise his, he proved a delightful comrade during our five months of lonely island life. What his view of myself may have been is hard to say; luckily perhaps, Kay was not a scribbler. He will agree, I think, that we were certainly very happy in our fairyland of peace and loveliness amid the Muskoka Lakes of Northern Ontario."
     As he recalls, "Our island, one of many in Lake Rosseau, was about ten acres in extent, irregularly shaped, overgrown with pines, its western end running out to a sharp ridge we called Sunset Point, its eastern end facing the dawn in a high rocky bluff. It rose in the centre to perhaps a hundred feet, it had little secret bays, pools of deep water beneath the rocky bluff for high diving, sandy nooks, and a sheltered cove where a boat could ride at anchor in all weathers. Close to the shore, but hidden by the pines, was a one roomed hut with two camp-beds, a big table, a wide balcony, and a tiny kitchen in a shack adjoining. A canoe and rowing-boat went with the island, a diminutive wharf as well. On the mainland, a mile and a half to the north, was an English settler named Woods, who had cleared the forest some twenty-five years before, (1860's), and turned the wilderness into a more or less productive farm. Milk, eggs and vegetables we obtained from time to time. To the south and east and west lay open water for several miles, dotted by similar islands with summer camps and bungalows on them. The three big lakes, - Rosseau, Muskoka and Joseph, form the letter 'Y' our island being where the three strokes joined.
     "To me it was paradise, the nearest approach to a dream come true I had yet known. The climate was dry, sunny and bracing, the air clear as crystal, the nights cool. In moonlight the islands seemed to float upon the water, and when there was no moon, the reflection of the stars had an effect of phosphoresence in some southern sea. Dawns and sunsets, too, were a constant delight, and before we left in late September we had watched through half the night the strange spectacle of the Northern Lights in all their rather awful splendour."
     As you will read later in this lengthy series of stories, regarding the life and work of Algernon Blackwood, as it relates to his stay, (reportedly on two occasions), he was very much inspired and influenced by his wilderness experience, as short as it was on those stays. Once on North Bohemia Island, according to information from a piece written by historian and ghost sleuth, John Robert Colombo. Once again, in the words of Algernon Blackwood.
     "The day we arrived - May 24th - a Scotch mist veiled all distant views, the island had a lonely and deserted air, a touch of melancholy about its sombre pines; and when the small steamer had deposited us with our luggage on the slippery wharf and vanished into the mist, I remember Kay's disconsolate expression as he remarked gravely: 'We shan't stay here long!' Our first supper deepened his conviction, for, though there were lamps, we had forgotten to bring oil, and we devoured bread and porridge quickly before night set in. It was certainly a contrast to the brilliantly lit corner of the Hub (their former Toronto hotel) dining-room where we had eaten our last dinner. But the following morning at six o'clock, after a bathe in the cool blue water, while a dazzling sun shone in a cloudless sky, he had already changed his mind. Our immediate past seemed hardly credible now. Jimmy Martin, the 'Duke,' the Methodist woodcuts, the life insurance offices, to say nothing of the sporting goods emporium, red-bearded bailiffs, Alfred Cooper, and a furious half-intoxicated Irish cook - all faded into the atmosphere of some half forgotten, ugly dream.
     "We at once set our house in order. We had saved a small sum in cash from the general wreck; a little went a long way; pickerel were to be caught for the trouble of trolling a spoon-bait round the coast, and we soon discovered where the black bass hid under rocky ledges of certain pools. In a few weeks, too, we had learned to manage a canoe to the point of upsetting it far from shore, shaking it half empty while treading water, then climbing in again - the point where safety, according to the Canadians, is attained. Even in these big lakes, it was rare that the water was too rough for going out, once the craft was mastered; a 'Rice Lake' or 'Peterborough,' (canoe) as they were called, could free anything; a turn of the wrist could 'lift' them; they answered the paddle like a living thing; a chief secret of control being that the kneeling occupant should feel himself actually a part of his canoe. This trifling knowledge, gained during our idle holiday, came in useful years later when taking a canoe down the Danube, from its sources in the Black Forest, to Budapest.
     "Time certainly never hung heavy on our hands. Before July, when the Canadians came up to their summer camps, we had explored every bay and inlet of the lakes, had camped out on many an enchanted island, and had made longer expeditions of several days at a time into the great region of backwoods that began due north. These trips, westward to Georgian Bay with its thousand islands, on Lake Huron, or northward beyond French River, where the primeval backwoods begin their unbroken stretch to James Bay and the Arctic, were a source of keen joy. Our cooking was perhaps primitive, but we kept well on it. With books, a fiddle, expeditions, to say nothing of laundry and commissariat work, the days passed rapidly. Kay was very busy, too, 'preparing for the stage,' as he called it, and Shakespeare was always in his hand or pocket. The eastern end of the island was reserved for these rehearsals, while the Sunset Point end was my especial part, and while I was practising the fiddle or deep in my Eastern books, Kay, at the other point of the island, high on his rocky bluff, could be heard sometimes booking 'The world is out of joint, Oh cursed fate that I was born to set it right,' and I was convinced that he wore his Irving wig, no matter what lines he spouted. In the evenings, as we lay after supper at Sunset Point, watching the colours fade and the stars appear, it was the exception if he did not murmur to himself, 'the stars came out, over that summer seas,' and then declaim in his great voice the whole of 'The Revenge,' which ends 'I, Sir Richard Grenville, die!' - his tall figure silhouetted against the sunset, his voice echoing among the pines behind him."
     Algernon Blackwood, obviously spellbound by the picturesque, restorative qualities of his island paradise, adds to the recollection, noting, "Consideration for the future were deliberately shelved; we lived in the present, as wise men should; New York, we knew, lay waiting for us, but we agreed to let it wait. My father's suggestion - 'Your right course is to return to Toronto, find work, and live down your past,'- was a counsel of perfection I disregarded. New York, the busy, strenuous, go-ahead United States, offered the irresistible lure of a promised land, and we both meant to try our fortunes there. How we should reach it, or what we should do when we did reach it, were problems whose solution was postponed.
     "On looking back I can only marvel at the patience with which neither tired of the other. Perhaps it was perfect health that made squabbles so impossible. Nor was there any hint of monotony, strange to say. We had many an escape, upsetting in wild weather, losing our way in the trackless forests of the mainland, climbing or felling trees, but some Pan-like deity looking after us....The spirit of Shelly, of course, haunted me day and night; 'Prometheus Unbound,' pages of which I knew by heart, lit earth and sky, peopled the forests, turned stream and lake alive, and made every glade and sandy bay a floor for dancing silvery feet: 'Oh, follow, follow, through the caverns hollow; As the song floats thou pursue, Where the wild bee never flew..." I still hear Kay's heavy voice, a little out of tune, singing to my fiddle the melody I made for it. And how he used to laugh! Always at himself, but also at and with most other things, an infectious, jolly, wholesome laughter, inspired by details of our care-free island life, from his beard and Shakespeare rehearsals to my own whiskers and uncut hair, my Shelley moods and my intense Yoga experiments.
     "Much of the charm of our lonely life vanished when, with high summer, the people came up to their camps and houses on the other islands. The solitude was then disturbed by canoes, sailing-boats, steam-launches; singing and shouting broke the deep silences; camp-fires in a dozen directions blazed at night. Many of these people we had known well in Toronto, but no one called on us. Sometimes we would paddle to some distant camp-fire lying on the water just outside the circle of light, and recognizing acquaintances, even former customers of Hub and Dairy, and the Sporting Goods Emporium, but never letting ourselves be seen. Everybody knew we were living on the island; yet avoidance was mutual. We were in disgrace, it seemed, and chiefly because of the Hub - not because of our conduct with regard to it, but, apparently, because we had left the town suddenly without saying good-bye to all and sundry. The abrupt disappearance had argued something wrong, something we were ashamed of. All manner of wild tales reached us, most of them astonishingly remote from the truth."
     More from Algernon Blackwood and his 1890's stay in Muskoka, in tomorrow's post on this page. Please join us.

Algernon Blackwood, Horror Writer, In Muskoka Part 5

PART FIVE

Algernon Blackwood arrives in Muskoka for his five month retreat, circa 1892

By Ted and Suzanne Currie

     In the spring of 1892, when Algernon Blackwood and his companion, Kay, arrived on what is now known as Wistowe Island, they would have witness a still-pioneering era countryside. While lakeshore resorts, such as Windermere House were enjoying the late years of the Victorian period, with its characteristic protocols and elegance, there would have been a significant number of dwellings visible, that might have been described, even then, as homesteader's cabins and shanties. There were significant cottage and lodge accommodations, but by and large, there was modest recreation compared to what we recognize know as the cottage Muskoka lifestyle.
     The twosome, in their very small shelter, with a rustic finishing as was the style of the day, they would have witnessed the comings and goings of steamboats large and small, some pulling booms of the winter cut of logs, on the way to assorted sawmills around the lakeshore. They would have witnessed many rowboats during the summer season, as rented to tourists, and watched as canoes of all vintages, passing by, some loaded with visitors to the region, enjoying the sights, and others with loads of supplies headed to various locations, to supply cottage pantries. It would have, until the fall of the year, at times a very busy location in this part of Muskoka. By the later days of August, the population in the vicinity would have greatly thinned-out, and most of the marine traffic would have been local labourers and business interests, connecting to work on islands and on shore parcels still not connected by road. There would have been the scent of woodsmoke and steamship exhaust mixing with the aroma of tall pines, open water and the soggy leaves, floating in large clusters, having fallen from the hardwood boughs by late September. The solitude of the autumn in Muskoka, circa 1892 would have been all consuming, there being few lights visible on the lake and shoreline, except for the few passing boats and steamships tending the last chores of the shortening season of navigation.
     Algernon Blackwood, standing out on that island shore, at dusk, would most certainly have heard the shrill call of a loon, last to leave the lakeland, the rhythmic thrust of the steam engines, of the ships in the vicinity, and the distant howl of resident wolves, reclaiming the hinterland from its human occupation. In short, it would have been a visibly lonely place, a long way from the city-life both Algernon and Kay were used to, and most familiar with as far as lifestyle and business. But it was what the young Blackwood was most interested in observing, and living, as he had felt beaten-down by city existence. So he may well have been revitalized and inspired by the distant howl of wolves, and watching the intense roll of autumn thunder storms etching down on this hollow in the earth, that held such magnificent bodies of glistening water. These observances and experiences, often garnered from long paddles around the lakeshore, would serve him in good stead, when he began writing his famous stories in later life. Did he get some ideas for his horror stories, of which he would become famous, from those months in the embrace of the lakeland? Possibly he did!
     "Venetia. This portion of Lake Rosseau is fairly gemmed with islets, and as they were early selected for their beauty and admirable situation, more island population has been accumulated in this part than in any other. On almost every island can be seen some pretty home, each varied by the tastes or fancies of the owner. Home-made architecture and amateur carpentering have put some together out of the materials to be found on the spot; others have called in more specially instructed aid, but none are pretentious. Comfort rather than display, simplicity and make-the-best-of-it seems to be the ruling influences among the 'Muskokans'. They are clannish in their upholding of the special beauties of the vicinity in which they are settled, but national in united assertion that there is no place like Muskoka.
     "Hospitable they certainly they are, and to overflowing, for when the steamer touches at their islands, and one sees the number of people and babies that run down to the dock, and the number of heads that pop out of the windows of the house itself, one wonders where they all put up, and whether some, like the Indians, wrap themselves in blankets and sleep beneath the spreading trees. But another turn of the wheel and the white ridge of a tent or the clustering poles of a wigwam, tell where the boys - and what boys the Muskoka boys are - have overflowed to make room for the welcome guests."
     The following overview, written by Barlow Cumberland, was published in the book, "The Northern Lakes," in 1886, six years before the arrival of Algernon Blackwood in Muskoka, for his five month retreat on Wistowe Island, Lake Rosseau, not far in navigable terms from the Village of Windermere. Blackwood's introduction to Muskoka, and Lake Rosseau specifically, is documented in his 1923 biography, "Episodes Before Thirty," and follows-up several unfortunate business failures, that cost the future writer a considerable amount of the money family had provided, so that he could acquire property in Canada, in the 1890's, in an attempt to start a new life in a new land. It didn't work out as his father had hopped, and in just over a year, it can be said with some accuracy, the younger Blackwood was near destitute.
     Algernon Blackwood writes, "The pain of the failure was mitigated for me personally by the intense relief I felt to be free of the nightmare at last. (Referring to the Toronto hotel investment that failed) Whatever might be in store, nothing could be worse that that six months' horror. Besides, failure in Canada was never final. It held the seeds of success to follow. From its ashes new life rose with wings and singing. The electric air of spring encouraged brave hopes of a thousand possibilities, and while I felt the disaster overwhelmingly, our brains at the same time already hummed with every imaginable fresh scheme. What these schemes were it is difficult now to recall, beyond that they included all possibilities of enterprise that a vast young country could suggest to a penniless adventurous youth."
     He writes, "What memory still holds sharply, however, is the face of a young lawyer of our acquaintance, as he looked at me across the fiddle (Blackwood was playing), and said casually: 'You can live on my island in Lake Rosseau if you like!' Without a moment's hesitation we (with business partner Kay) accepted the lawyer's offer of his ten acre island in the northern lakes. The idea of immediate new enterprise faded. Kay was easily persuaded into a plan that promised a few week's pleasant leisure to think things over, living meanwhile for next to nothing. 'I shall go to New York later,' he announced, 'and get on the stage. I'll take Shakespeare up to the island and study it.' He packed his Irving wig. It was the camping-out which caught me with irresistible attraction: the big woods, an open air life, sun, wind, and water. 'I'll come up and join you later,' promised the sanguine Louis B. 'I'll come with some new plan we can talk over round your campfire.' He agreed to pack up our few belongings and keep them for us till we went later to New York. 'We shall go to the States,' he urged. 'Canada is a one-horse place. There are far more chances across the line'."
     The biography continues, "We kept secret our date of leaving, only Louis knowing it. On the morning of May 24th, the Queen's birthday (Victoria), he came to fetch us and our luggage, the latter reduced to a minimum. There were no good-byes. But this excitable little Frenchman, who loved a touch of the picturesque, did not come quite as we expected. He arrived two hours before his time, with a wagonette and two prancing horses, his fat figure on the box, flicking his long whip and shouting up at our windows. His idea, he explained as we climbed in, was to avoid the main station, where we should be bound to see a dozen people we knew. He proposed, instead, to drive us twenty miles to a small station, where the train stopped on its way north. There was not time to argue. I sat beside him on the box with the precious fiddle, Kay got behind our two bags, and Louis drove us and his spanking pair along King Street and then up Yonge Street. Scores recognized us, wondering what it meant, for these were principal streets of the town, but Louis flourished his whip, gave the horses their head, and raced along the interminable Yonge Street till at length the houses disappeared, and the empty reaches of the hinterland took their place. He saw us into the train with our luggage and our few dollars, waving his whip in farewell as the engine started. We did not see him again till he arrived, then, worried, anxious, and gabbling in the East 19th Street boarding house (in New York), the following autumn."
     Blackwood confesses in earnest, "My Toronto episodes were over. I had been eighteen months in the country and was close to twenty-two; my capital I had lost, but I had gained at least a little experience in exchange. I no longer trusted every one at sight. The green paint had worn thin in patches, if not all over. The collapse of the Dairy made me feel old, the Hub disaster made me feel like a Methuselah. My home life seemed more and more remote, I had broken with it finally, I could never return to the old country, nor show my face in the family circle again. Thus I felt, at least. The pain and unhappiness in me seemed incurably deep, and my shame was very real. In my heart was a secret wish to live in the backwoods for evermore, a broken man, feeding on lost illusions and vanished dreams. The light-hearted plans that Louis B. and Kay so airily discussed I could not understand. My heart sank each time I recognized my father's handwriting on an envelope. I felt a kind of misery that only my belief in Karma mitigated.
     "This mood of exaggerated intensity soon passed, of course, but for a time life was very bitter. It was hard at first to 'accept' these fruits of former lives, this harvest of misfortune whose seeds I assuredly had sown myself long, long ago. The detachment I was trying to learn, with its attitude of somehow being 'indifferent to the fruits of action,' was not acquired in a day. Yet it interests me now to look back down the vista of thirty years, and to realize that this first test of my line of thought, whether it was a pretty fancy merely, or whether a real conviction - did not find me wanting. It was, I found, a genuine belief; neither then more in the severer tests that followed, did it ever fail me for a single moment. I understood, similarly, how my father's faith, equally sincere though in such different guise to mine, could give him strength and comfort, not matter what life might bring."
     Of his and Kay's rail adventure north, he writes, "As our train went northwards through the hinterland towards Gravenhurst and the enchanted island where we were to spend five months of a fairyland existence, I grasped that a chapter of my life was closed, and a new one opening. The mind looked back, of course. Toronto, whose Indian name means 'Place of Meeting,' I saw only once or twice again. I never stayed there. At the end of our happy island-life, we rushed through it on our way to fresh adventures in New York, Kay hiding his face in an overcoat lest some creditor catch a glimpse of him, and serve a blue writ before the train's few minutes' pause in the station ended. The following winter, indeed, this happened, though in a theatre and not in a railway carriage. The travelling company, of which he formed a member, was giving its Toronto week, and a creditor in the audience recognized him on the stage, though not this time in his Irving wig. The blue writ was served, the balif standing in the wings until the amount was paid.
     "In the mood of reflection a train journey engenders, a sense of perspective slipped behind the eighteen months just over. Shot forth from my evangelical hot-house into colonial life, it is now seemed to me rather wonderful that my utter ignorance had not landed me in yet worse muddles, even in gaol (jail). One incident, oddly enough, stood out more clearly than the rest. But for my ridiculous inexperience of the common conditions of living, my complete want of savoir faire, my unacquaintance even with the ways of normal social behaviour, I might have now been in very different circumstances. A quite different career might easily have opened for me a career in the railway, in the Canadian Pacific Railway, in fact, on one of whose trains we were then travelling. But for my stupid ignorance, an opening in the C.P.R. would certainly have been found for me, whether it led to a future or not. The incident, slight and trivial though it was, throws a characteristic light on the results of my upbringing." Blackwood in no uncertain terms, was open to new adventures, and sources of inspiration, to influence his future choices. The desire to be a writer? At this point he hadn't given this much, if any thought, and although he might have written down stories, as they came to his mind, he had no intention of releasing them for a publisher's consideration. But he could write, and write with considerable proficiency, which would soon earn him a reporter's position on a New York City daily newspaper. The money helped keep a roof over his head, and food in the cupboard but not much more. It just wasn't the kind of writing that appealed to him, but enough of an apprenticeship, with veteran newspaper colleagues, to garner him on-the-job tutoring, to hone his skills, and pen more compelling stories for public consumption.
     In tomorrow's story, Algernon and his friend Kay, finally arrive in Muskoka, by rail and steamship, and are transported to their Lake Rosseau island retreat. The year is 1892. Please join us for part six.

Algernon Blackwood, Horror Writer, In Muskoka Part 4

PART FOUR

Horror Writer Algernon Blackwood's retreat to Muskoka circa 1892

By Ted and Suzanne Currie

     "Another effect, in troubled later years especially, was noticeable; its dwarfing effect on the events, whatever they might be, of daily life. So intense, so flooding, was the elation of joy nature brought, that after such moments even the gravest world matters, as well as the people concerned in these, seemed trivial and insignificant. Nature introduced a vaster scale of perspective against which a truer proportion appeared. There lay in the experience some cosmic touch of glory that, by contrast, left all else commonplace and unimportant. The great gods of wind and fire and earth and water swept by on flaming stars, and the ordinary life of the little planet seemed very small, man with his tiny passions and few years of struggle and vain longings, almost futile. One's own troubles, seen in this new perspective, disappeared, while at the same time, the heart filled with an immense understanding love and charity towards all the world - which, alas soon disappeared."
     It can be stated with bluntness, that British writer, Algernon Blackwood, never anticipated, as a young man with typical dreams of success, questing awkwardly for a meaningful and profitable profession, that he would one day, make a lasting impression on the world of literature, as an author horror stories. It wasn't that he wasn't competent as a writer, because his work in the daily newspaper grind, in 1890's New York, showed clearly, his capabilities as a crime-beat reporter. As it turned out, handling the often gut-wrenching news stories, of murder and general mayhem, in the bowels of the old city, the grunt work in the field of filling a daily paper with readable editorial copy, and having to meet strict deadlines, worked to his benefit in later years as an author of copious books. He had endured what he described as a horror-filled routine of living, on a miserable wage, in a terribly inadequate rooming house, having very little money left each week to purchase food. It was his unyielding devotion to nature, and his frequent escapes to hinterland areas, within the city, where he built small campfires, ate modest picnic lunches, and slept out under the stars, that kept him sane; there always being a reason to endure more suffering knowing there would be a respite coming, that would serve to restore his faith in the possibilities of the future.
     The opening passage was written by Algernon Blackwood in his 1923 biography, "Episodes Before Thirty," published as a first edition by Cassell and Company.
     The author noted that, "It is difficult to put into intelligible, convincing words the irresistible character of this nature-spell that invades heart and brain like a drenching sea, and produces a sense of rapture, of ecstasy, compared to which the highest conceivable worldly joy becomes merely insipid. Heat from this magical source was always more or less present in my mind from a very early age, though, of course, no attempt to analyze or explain it was then possible; but, in bitter years to come, the joy and comfort nature gave became a real and only solace. When possession was at its full height, the ordinary world, and my particular little troubles with it, fell away like so much dust; the whole fabric of men and women, commerce and politics, even the destinies of nations, became a passing show of shadows, while the visible and tangible world showed itself as but a temporary and limited representation of a real world elsewhere, whose threshold I had for a moment touched.
     "Others, of course, have known similar experiences, but, being better equipped, have understood how to correlate them to ordinary life," wrote Blackwood. "Richard Jefferies explained them. Whitman tasted expansion of consciousness in many ways; Fechner made a grandiose system of them; Edward Carpenter deliberately welcomed them; Jacob Boehme, Plotinus, and many others have tried to fix nature and essence in terms, respectively, of religion and philosophy; and William James has reviewed them with an insight as though he had had experienced them himself. Whatever their value, they remain authentic, the sense of oneness of life their common denominator, a conviction of consciousness pervading all forms everywhere their inseparable characteristic."
     Recalling his youth, and exposure to compelling landscapes, Blackwood writes, "If Kentish gardens saw the birth of this delight, the Black Forest offered further opportunities for its enjoyment, and a year in a village of the Swiss Jura Mountains to learn French - I often wandered all night in the big pine forests without my tutor, a bee-keeping pasteur, at Bole, near Neuchatel, discovering my absence - intensified it. Without it something starved in me. It was a persistent craving, often a wasting nostalgia, that cried for satisfaction as the whole body cries for covering when cold, and nature provided a companionship, a joy, a bliss, that no human intercourse has ever approached, much less equalled. It remains the keenest, deepest sensation, of its kind I have known."
     In his early experiences with failed business ventures in Ontario, he wrote of nature as his one true, honest and compassionate confidant. "Here, in Toronto, opportunities multiplied, and just when they were needed: in times of difficulty and trouble the call of nature became paramount; during the vicissitudes of dairy and hotel the wild hinterland behind the town, with its lakes and forests, were a haven often sought. Among my friends were many, of course, who enjoyed a day in the country, but one man only who understood a little the feelings I have tried to describe, even if he did not wholly share them. This was Aldon Haultain, a married man, tied to an office all day long, private secretary to Goldwin Smith (whose life, I think, he subsequently wrote), and editor of a weekly periodical called 'The Week'. He was my senior by many years. At three in the morning, sometimes, he would call me at the dairy in College Street, and we would tramp out miles to enjoy the magic sunrise in a wood north of the city. And such an effort was only possible to a soul to whom it was a necessity. The intensity of early dreams and aspirations, what energy lies in them?"
    "At length the bitter, sparkling winter was over, the sleigh-bells silent, the covered skating-rinks all closed. The last remnants of the piled-up snow had melted, and the sweet spring winds were blowing freshly down the cedar-paved streets. On the lake shores boats were being repainted. Tents and camping kit were being overhauled. The talk everywhere was of picnics, expeditions, trips into the backwoods, and plans for summer holidays. Crystal sunlight flooded the world. The Canadian spring intoxicated the brain and sent the blood dancing to wild, happy measures."
     Blackwood adds to his story that "The Hub (Toronto hotel) was now in the hands of a Receiver; Adams and Burns, the wholesale house, controlled it. Kay (his former business partner) and I had to pay cash for everything - the Hub Wine Company was 'bust'." "It was a hectic last week. Our friends came in crowds to sympathize, to offer advice, to suggest new plans, and all considered a liquid farewell necessary. The etiquette was strict. A private word with the Receiver brought us back our tea bottle. The Upper House did a fair business again, while Louis B. bursting with new schemes, new enterprises, that should restore our fortunes, was forever at the piano in the upstairs room. We played together while our little Rome was burning - Tchaikowsky, Chopin, Wagner, and the latest songs with choruses. Kay donned his Irving wig from time to time and roared his 'Bells,' and 'Suicide'. Our last days rattled by."
     There was a more promising adventure ahead, and it involved a five month retreat to the north country. Join us tomorrow as Algernon Blackwood is introduced to what would later become Wistowe Island, on Muskoka's picturesque Lake Rosseau, circa 1892.

Algernon Blackwood, Horror Writer in Muskoka Part 3

PART 3

BRITISH HORROR WRITER WAS ENCHANTED BY THE BEAUTY OF LAKE ROSSEAU CIRCA 1892

By Ted and Suzanne Currie

     The canoe glides along the rocky shoreline, fading in and out of the small inlets and coves, disappearing into the bosom of evergreens, growing from small pockets of soil cradled by the craggy landscape. There is a gentle rocking of the watercraft, as the lone canoeist paddles in and out of the shadows of the late afternoon. The lapping of small waves against the rocks makes a rhythmic gurgling sound, as the action turns down upon the sand bottom, re-sculpting the environs as it has done since the beginning of time.
     The color of the water in this stirring channel changes with the positioning of the sun toward its setting in a few hours, in this clime of late October. It can appear silver one moment, dark and precarious when cloud cover distorts the sun glow temporarily. It will appear quite different, in reflection, when the sun gives up on this day, and after the orange and red tint upon the rippling tide, the water will soon appear black and cold, despite the fact the weather betrays this attitude. It is still quite warm for this time of the autumn, the trees having avoided heavy frost to this point. The trails of colored, fallen leaves smooth over the water at this time of day, as if they are floating down through the sky. There are many optical illusions in this haunted lakeland, and it is not surprising that British Horror writer Algernon Blackwood found his stay on this Muskoka lake so remarkable, such that he never forgot his five month camping experience on Wistowe Island for the balance of his life, which, as a matter of interest, extended into his 86th year.
     The white canoe is only a dot on the waterfront at this point, as the channel opens into the wider Lake Rosseau near the Village of Windermere. The old sun is not long for this day, and the encroachment of heavy clouds suggests the voyeur might soon wish to seek cover from the coming rain. There is the eerie shrill of a loon, still residing in this lakeland, and the sound of wheezing wind rising from the west, singing through the border evergreens, in a most beautiful and haunting refrain, as the gentle first stage of inclement weather pushes across this storied lake. It was the kind of scene that played out for the young Algernon Blackwood, standing out on the shore, in the embrace of autumn twilight, thinking about the spirits dwelling within. The spirits identified by poets and philosophers who attended the Muskoka Assembly of Writers, on Tobin's Island, in the 1920's, almost three decades after Blackwood's initial stay on Wistowe Island.
    "By far the strongest influence in my life, however, was nature;" asserted Algernon Blackwood in his 1923 biography, "Episodes Before Thirty". Adding, "it betrayed itself early, growing in intensity with every year. Bringing comfort, companionship, inspiration, joy, the spell of Nature has remained dominant, a truly magical spell. Always immense and potent, the years have strengthened it. The early feeling that everything was alive, a dime sense that some kind of consciousness struggled through every form, even that a sort of inarticulate communication with this 'other life' was possible, could I but discover the way - these moods coloured its opening wonder. Nature, at any rate, produced effects in me that only something living could produce; though not till I read Fechner's 'Zend-Avesta,' and later still, Jame's 'Pluralistic Universe,' and Dr. R.M. Bucke's 'Cosmic Consciousness,' did a possible meaning come to shape my emotional disorder. Fairy tales, in the meanwhile bored me. Real facts were what I sought. That these existed, that I had once known them but had now forgotten them, was thus an early imaginative conviction."
     The author recalls that "This tendency showed itself even in childhood. We had left the manor house, Crayford, and now lived in a delightful house at Shorthands, in those days semi-country. It was the time of my horrible private schools - I went to four or five - but the holidays afforded opportunities.
     "I was a dreamy boy," writes Blackwood, "frequently in tears about nothing except a vague horror of the practical world, full of wild fancies and imagination, and a great believer in ghosts, communing with spirits and dealings with charms and amulets, which latter I invented and consecrated myself by the dozen. This was long before I had read a single book. I loved to climb out of the windows at night with a ladder, and creep among the shadows of the kitchen garden, past the rose trees and under the fruit-tree wall, and so on to the pond where I could launch the boat and practice my incantations in the very middle among the floating weeds that covered the surface in great yellow-green patches. Trees grew closely round the banks, and even on clear nights the stars could hardly piece through, and all sorts of beings watched me silently from the shore, crowding among the tree stems, and whispering to themselves about what I was doing.
     "I cannot say I ever believed actually that my spells would produce any results, but it pleased and thrilled me to think that they might do so; that the scum of weeds, might slowly part to sow the face of a water-nixie, or that the forms hovering on the banks might flit across to me, and let me see their outline against the stars. On returning from these nightly expeditions to the pond, the sight of the old country-house against the sky always excited me strangely. Three cedars towering aloft with their great funereal branches, and I thought of all the people asleep in their silent rooms, and wondered how they could be so dull and unenterprising, when out here they could see these sweeping branches and hear the wind sighing so beautifully among the needles. These people, it seemed to me at such moments, belonged to a different race. I had nothing in common with them. Night and stars and trees and wind and rain were the things I had to do with and wanted. They were alive and personal, stirring my depths within, full of messages and meanings, whereas my parents and sisters and brother, all indoors and asleep, were mere accidents, and apart from my real life and self. My friend the under-gardener always took the ladder away early in the morning."
     Blackwood adds to his biography, noting, "Sometimes an elder sister accompanied me on these excursions. She, too, loved mystery, and the peopled darkness, but she was also practical. On returning to her room in the early morning we always found eggs ready to boil, cake and cold plum-pudding perhaps, or some such satisfying morsels to fill the void. She was always wonderful to me in those days. Very handsome, dark, with glowing eyes, and a keen interest in the undertaking, she came down the ladder and stepped along the garden paths more like a fairy being than a mortal, and I always enjoyed the event twice as much when she accompanied me. In the day-time she faded back into the dull elder sister and seemed a different person altogether. I never reconcile the two."
     In his most profound declaration, about his spiritual connection with nature, Blackwood writes, "This childish manifestation of an overpowering passion changed later, in form, of course, but not essentially much in spirit. Forests, mountains, desolate places, especially perhaps open spaces like the prairies or the desert, but even, too, the simple fields, the lanes and little hills, offered an actual sense of companionship no human intercourse could possibly provide. In times of trouble, as equally in times of joy, it was to nature I ever turned instinctively. In those moments of deepest feeling when individuals must necessarily be alone, yet stand at the same time in most urgent need of understanding companionship, it was nature and nature only that could comfort me. When the cable came, suddenly announcing my father's death, I ran straight into the woods....This fall sounded above all other calls, music coming so far behind it as to seem an 'also ran'. Even in those few, rare times of later life, when I fancied myself in love, this spell would operate - a sound of rain, a certain touch of colour in the sky, the scent of a wood-fire smoke, the lovely cry of some singing wind against the walls or window - and the human appeal would fade in me, or, at least, its transitory character becomes pitifully revealed. The strange sense of a oneness with nature was an imperious and royal spell that over-mastered all other spells, nor can the hind of comedy lessen its reality. Its religious origin appears, perhaps, in the fact that sometimes, during its fullest manifestation, a desire stirred in me to leave a practical, utilitarian world I loathed, and become - a monk!"
     One can imagine, in this light, the silhouette of the young Mr. Blackwood, standing out along the shore of Wistowe Island, after sunset, admiring the vast embrace of the nature he so adored. What did he perceive or see of this 1890's scene, in a still pioneering era region, that enforced his opinion, nature abounded with spiritual energy, compelling him to be its interpreter. When he was engaged in this five month retreat on this island in Lake Rosseau, he hadn't given much thought to engaging himself as a writer, though it is known he jotted-down stories the natural environs, at the time of a particular vigil, inspired him in the creative sense. Which, according to his biography, were filed away for some later posterity. It fact, a friend of his, borrowed some of these early stories, and without Blackwood's permission, gave the folio to a publisher for consideration. He was therefore, quite shocked when he got a letter from this same publisher, wishing to talk further about his company's willingness to put them in book form, for the reading public's benefit. He agreed that it was a financially interesting development, being still of modest income, to have such work, he originally thought unworthy of a publisher's attention, on the bookshelves of England. The rest, as they say, is history.
     Please join us tomorrow, for part four of our series of articles, on the relationship between Muskoka and internationally acclaimed horror writer, Algernon Blackwood.

Horror Writer Algernon Blackwood And Muskoka Part 2

PART TWO

INTERNATIONALLY RESPECTED HORROR WRITER, ALGERNON BLACKWOOD, AND HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH MUSKOKA, ONTARIO

     By Ted and Suzanne Currie
     To suggest that Lake Rosseau is a haunted lakeland, is that ripe, time etched speculation, saved as the fertile domain of poets and writers, certain of its inherent spirituality, and rich enchantments. Yet failing in usual course to prove their point beyond the speculation of ghosts, "the lady in white" and claims of bandy-legged wee beasties, dwelling in the dark secrets of the enclosing woodlands. Including all the strange abstractions of age-old folk tales and first person confessionals. Does it inspire thoughts of the paranormal? Or of a deep well of spirituality, profoundly more complex than the familiar pretty picture, of a mist-laden waterway, we still see in news stand postcard images, and those glossy regional promotions that draw the reader's attention to the glories of the "Muskoka lifestyle". There was one voyeur in the early history of Muskoka, who found Lake Rosseau to be a very enchanted place, and he used his experiences gathered here, as a background inspiration, to his well known stories of the paranormal. Horror stories, of which Algernon Blackwood was a master.  
     At the time of writing today's story, the continuation of yesterday's introduction, to the biography of author Algernon Blackwood, overviewing his five month stay in Muskoka, circa 1892, there was a heavy afternoon thunderstorm with torrential rain pounding over our little hollow of topography here in Gravenhurst. The noise of rain hitting the roof here at Birch Hollow, made it impossible to hear the comforting tick-tock of my old wall clock, only an arm's reach from my desk. The chatter from the radio broadcast was inaudible.
     Due to the deepening darkness of the early moments of the storm, passing over, I had to turn up the flame in my faithful oil lamp, the one that was once used at the Muskoka Assembly of writers, on Lake Rosseau's Tobin's Island. The lamp had once belonged to Reverend Charles Applegath, of Epworth Inn (later Wigwassan Lodge), where the Assembly was held in summer seasons, during the 1920's and 30's, hosting some of the most revered authors and poets in Canada at the time. The lamp still gives off an inspirational, warm light, as it did a century ago, in its cultured environs, possibly in the presence of poets such as Charles G.D. Roberts, Wilson MacDonald, and Bliss Carmen.
     I suppose it was a fitting circumstance, with the echo of thunder in the hollow, in which to commence this story, about one of the world's best known horror writers, and his relationship with Muskoka, dating back to 1892, when he was in his early twenties. A lawyer friend, in Toronto, following two catastrophic business failures, one being an overly ambitious dairy operation, the other being an ill-famed hotel, offered Algernon Blackwood, new to Canada, an opportunity to hideaway for a period of time, on a secluded island he owned in Lake Rosseau, in the District of Muskoka. He and his former business partner were quick to accept the invitation, and within days, they were housed in a small, simple cabin, on the beautiful little island, not far from the Village of Windermere.
     It is acknowledged in his biography, published in 1923, that this five month escape from the city, and creditors looking for his partner to cover back debts, and a hiatus from further risky business ventures, would come to be one of his most cherished memories. Hailed in its inherent simplicity, as wilderness camping, it became a respite for spiritual recuperation. It became an ongoing source of inspiration for the rest of his life. Especially when he began authoring his famous tales of horror, after his turbulent years scrounging for stories on the crime beat, as a New York newspaper reporter. It was the hinterland experience that renewed his interests in exploration and adventure; knowing that there was so much more to see and experience of life, than the inside of a gloomy old hotel with its notorious bar and bad actors, of which he had been a partner.
     Algernon Henry Blackwood was born on the 14th day of March, 1869, at Shooter's Hill, London, England, and died at the age of eighty-six, at Bishopbourne, Kent, England. He was cremated and his ashes were scattered in the mountains of Saanenmoser, Switzerland.
     His father, a postal executive with the British Postal Service, was Sir Stevenson Arthur Blackwood, and his mother was Harriet Sydney Dobbs, the Duchess of Manchester. When Algernon Blackwood passed away, in 1951, his personal property was valued at approximately 14,189 pounds.
     The fact that the writer lived to the ripe old age of eighty-six is a miracle in itself. As a matter of personal misfortune, firstly being seriously malnourished as a young man, out on his own, stricken-down by poverty, caused by poor paying employment, while living with roommates of the same financial disposition. Dwelling in a bug infested New York rooming house, he struggled with the anxiety, over several long years, feeling certain that his dire circumstance would never change. Then, at his most vulnerable, physically, emotionally, and financially, he survived a nasty bout of illness, that kept him bed-ridden for more than a month, the toxic aftermath of an untreated abscess, that very nearly killed him before he had reached the age of twenty-three. He let the abscess go untreated because he couldn't afford the price of a doctor's visit, and it wasn't until a friend solicited help from a physician he knew, that Blackwood agreed to have his now angry abscess lanced, and treated with healing ointment.
      "My parents were both people of marked character, with intense convictions; my mother, especially, being a woman of great individuality, of iron restraint, grim humour, yet with a love and tenderness, and a spirit of uncommon sacrifice, that never touched weakness," wrote Algernon Blackwood, in his 1923 biography, "Episodes Before Thirty." "She possessed powers of mind and judgement, at the same time, of which my father, a public servant - financial secretary to the Post Office - availed himself to the full. She had great personal beauty. A young widow, her first husband having been the 6th Duke of Manchester, also of the evangelical persuasion, she met my father at Kimbolton soon after his return from the Crimean War, where he had undergone that religious change of heart, to the movement as 'conversion.' From a man of fashion, a leader in the social life to which he was born, he changed with sudden completeness to a leader in the renounced world, the flesh, the devil and all their works. The case of 'Beauty Blackwood', to use the nickname his unusual handsomeness gained for him, was, in its way, notorious. He became a teatotaller and non smoker, wrote devotional books, spoke in public, and held drawing-room prayer meetings, the Bible always in his pocket, communion with God always in his heart. His religion was genuine, unfaltering, consistent and sincere. He carried the war into his own late world of fashion. He never once looked back."
     Blackwood noted of his family in the following kindly overview, that "Without wholeheartedly sharing my father's faith however, his religious and emotional temparment, with its imperious need of believing something, he certainly bequeathed to me.....  The evangelical and revivalist movements, at any rate, was the dominant influence in my boyhood's years. People were sharply divided into souls that were saved and those that were not saved. Moody and Sankey, the American Revivalists, stayed in our house."
     "In a short time I came to look upon the whole phenomena of 'conversion', so far as my type of mind and character was concerned, with distrust and weariness. Only the very topmost layer of my personality was affected; evidently, there was no peace or happiness for me that way. None the less, I had one or two terrible moments; one (I was reading with a private tutor in Somerset for Edinburgh University) when I woke in the very early morning with a choking sensation in my throat, and thought I was going to die. It must have been merely acute indigestion but I was convinced my last moment had come, and fell into sweating agony of fear and weakness. I prayed as hard as ever I could, swearing to consecrate myself to God if He would pull me through. I ever vowed I would become a missionary and work among the heathen, than which, I was always told, there was no higher type of manhood. But the pain and choking did not pass, and in despair I got up and swallowed half a bottle of piles of aconite which my mother, so ardent a homeopathist, always advised me to take after sneezing or cold shivers." Blackwood writes, "They were sweet and very nice, and the pain certainly began to pass away, but only to leave me with a remorse that I had allowed a mere human medicine to accomplish naturally what God wished to accomplish by His grace. I was certainly released from my promise to become a missionary and work among the heathen. And for this small mercy I was duly thankful, though the escape had been a rather narrow one."
     He continues, "A year and a half in school of the Moravian Brotherhood, in the Black Forest, though it showed me another aspect of the same general line of belief, did not wholly obliterate my fear of hell, with its correlated desire for salvation. The poetry of the semi-religious life in that remote village set among ancient haunted forests, gave to natural idealistic tendencies another turn. The masters, who we termed Brother, were strenuous, devoted, self-sacrificing men, all later to go forth as missionaries to Labrador. Humbug, comfort, personal ambition played no part in their lives. The Liebesmahl in their little wooden church, for all its odd simplicity, was a genuine and impressive ceremony that touched something in me no church service at home, which Sankey's hymns on a bad harmonium, had ever reached. At this Communion Service, or Love Feast, sweet, weak tea in big white thick cups, followed by a clothes-basket filled with rolls, were handed round, first to the women, who sat on one side of he building, and then to the men and boys on the other side. There was a collective reality about the little ceremony that touched its sincerity with beauty. Similarly was Easter morning beautiful, when we marched in the early twilight towards the little cemetery among the larch trees and stood with our hats off round and open grave, waiting in silence for the sunrise. The air was cool and scented, our mood devotional and solemn. There was a sense of wonder among us. Then, as the sun slipped up above the leagues of forest, the Eight Brothers, singing in parts, led the ninety boys in the great German hymn, 'Christus ist auferstanden'."
   "The surroundings, too, of the school influenced me greatly. Those leagues of Black Forest rolling over distant mountains, velvet-coloured, leaping to the sky in grey cliffs, or passing quietly like the sea in immense waves, always singing in the winds, haunted by elves and dwarfs and peopled by charming legends - those forest glades, deep in moss and covered in springtime with wild lily-of-the-valley; those tumbling streams that ran for miles unseen, then emerged to serve the peasants by splashing noisily over the clumsy water-wheel of a brown old sawmill before they again lost themselves among the mossy pine roots; those pools where water pixies dwelt, and those little red and brown villages we slept in our long walks - the whole setting of this Moravian school was so beautifully simple that it lent just the proper atmosphere for lives consecrated me an impression of grandeur, of loftiness and of real religion....and of a Deity not specifically active on Sundays only."
     The recognition and celebration, of the natural environment on the soul of Algernon Blackwood, is a recurring theme throughout his biography, and plays well in his discovery of the solitude of Muskoka, specifically his island retreat on Lake Rosseau in the early 1890's. It is also reported, according to a piece written by John Robert Colombo, that Blackwood returned to Muskoka much later in life and his writing career, to stay for a shorter period, on North Bohemia Island, also in Lake Rosseau. His first retreat in Muskoka, had been on what is now known as Wistowe Island. More on this interesting biography, of internationally revered horror-writer, Algernon Blackwood, in tomorrow's facebook post. Please join us.

Algernon Blackwood in Muskoka Circa.1892

A PREAMBLE TO OUR STORY ABOUT HORROR WRITER, ALGERNON BLACKWOOD'S STAY IN MUSKOKA
By Ted and Suzanne Currie
     As we've noted previously, and quite honestly, in this section of our business facebook page, we are most enthused these days, when we have a research challenge of an historical nature, to companion our day to day shop duties. We don't really think of this kind of labour as being a burden, because we have always found it recreational to undertake research.
     We don't host big or even small events, at our Gravenhurst shop, because every day situations here, more than make up for our lack of parties otherwise; and "meet and greet" socials are not our thing either. Never have been! We don't attend them either! We're antique dealers and regional historians, not party hosts, or social butterflies. We take our antique hunting and gathering responsibilities seriously, because that is a necessary protocol of our storied profession. Just as with our historical delving, and fact finding; we don't want to misrepresent a single detail, that might cause an error-riddled trickle-down effect, distorting the story forever more. We're kind of hooked on the mission of due diligence, and all it represents, and exercising it daily, because it's what our customers have come to expect. It's the same when we undertake a story like the one we're going to offer on this facebook page over the next week.
    We're open six days a week to meet and greet you, but we're closed on Sundays because we're a family run business, and it's the one day each week we travel together in business and good fun, restoring ourselves somewhat for the next six day odyssey.
     While we don't offer our patrons a carnival atmosphere, in which to shop, or dawdle if that's your preference, we hope we more than make up for this deficiency, by offering a truly historic experience for discerning collectors. Our bells and whistles, if we have any to utilize, includes this little editorial space each day, where we love to demonstrate our enthusiasm for the history enterprise as a whole. We really get our jollies working on various research projects through the days and nights, when we get a little down time, and the Katherine Day biography was just one example of the exciting overlap of the antique business and the historian's hobby-craft.
     The upcoming series of articles is a case in point. We have long known about Algernon Blackwood's stay in Muskoka, in the late 1800's, on an island in Lake Rosseau, but we never understood until recently, just how much the adventure meant to the soon-to-be writer, who would go on to become one of the best known horror writers of his period. We are so glad we put some research hours into this project, because what we came out with, at the conclusion, was a totally different opinion than when work was initiated.
     It began with the purchase of the book "Episodes Before Thirty," an autobiography by Algernon Blackwood, with a lengthy section about his first (of two) stays in Muskoka. We purchased the book from an antiquarian book dealer from the Advance Book Exchange (abe.com), which you can access on-line, and we acquired a nicely bound, secure, 1923 first edition, published by Cassell and Company. There is also his story of "The Haunted Island," which is one of his classic horror tales, probably, in part, inspired by his five month stay on the Lake Rosseau island, circa 1892, when he was twenty-two years of age.
     Suzanne and I are pleased to offer our friends this multi-part, pre-Hallowe'en series of articles, that will show how our region of Ontario, and Canada, helped shape the future of this talented British writer, known for his "weird" tales of horror and the otherwise supernatural. Hope you enjoy the collection of stories, ending on Hallowe'en.


PART ONE - ALGERNON BLACKWOOD IN MUSKOKA

     "A strong emotion, especially if experienced for the first time, leaves a vivid memory of the scene where it occurred." (Algernon Blackwood)
     One of my writing mentors, from the past, and a good friend in the field of local history, Sylvia Duvernet, once explained to me, upon my enquiry about what, in her opinion, has made Muskoka so attractive to authors and artists, replied, without hesitation, "It's a very spiritual place." If anyone could make such a claim, and validate the opinion of "spirituality," it was Sylvia DuVernet, the author of numerous books about Muskoka. One in particular profiling the activities of the writer's retreat at the Muskoka Assembly, on Lake Rosseau's Tobin's Island, in the summers of the 1920's and 30's. A collective of creative types including some of Canada's best known authors and poets, at the time, who very much appreciated what Algernon Blackwood had found of the same lakeland environs thirty years earlier. A pleasant haunting sensation!
     I have lived for periods on Lake Muskoka, Lake Joseph and Lake Rosseau, and Suzanne, of course, grew up in Windermere and had a family cottage on Lake Rosseau opposite Wellsley Island. We had both long appreciated the spiritual allure of the lakeland through the four seasons. I have always found Muskoka a wonderful place in which to write, a reality of considerable pleasure that I continue to this day, from Birch Hollow, now looking out over a beautiful little paradise of lowland we call The Bog. We understand what Algernon Blackwood and the writers who attended the Muskoka Assembly found so spiritually significant and enduring about the natural elements of the regional environment. To sit out on the end of a dock to watch a sunrise over Lake Rosseau, breaking through the morning mist, or to watch the milky moonlight rippling across the water surface at midnight, is to appreciate from the roots-up just how hauntingly strange yet beautiful it all is, as the environment subtly manifests thoughts, in its voyeurs, of the joyful play of roaming spirit-kind. Sylvia DuVernet and I probably agreed, on that day, that Muskoka is, and will remain, an enchanted place on earth, to benefit creative enterprise.
     Well respected Canadian ghost sleuth, John Robert Colombo, who also wrote about Algernon Blackwood's late 1800's stay in Muskoka, suggested a few years back, that I should compile a sort of compendium of Muskoka ghost stories. It was John who wrote the lead article in a series of ghost stories, I had researched and written, that summer, published in The Muskoka Sun. You never know. Maybe this is one of my next projects.
     To begin this series on Algernon Blackwood, it's necessary to provide some biographical background into writer's early life, and his budding philosophy, and enduring kindred relationship with what he regarded as the spiritual essence of nature. For this information we will consult his biography "Episodes Before Thirty."
     "We arrived in New York towards the end of October, (1892) coming straight from five months in the Canadian backwoods," wrote Algernon Blackwood, in the opening paragraph of Chapter Two, in "Episodes Before Thirty." "Before that, to mention myself first, there had been a year in Canada, where, even before the age of twenty-one, I had made a living of sorts by teaching the violin, French, German, and shorthand. Showing no special talent for any profession in particular, and having no tastes that could be held to indicate a definite career, I had come to Canada three years before for a few weeks' trip. My father, in an official capacity, had passes from Liverpool to Vancouver, and we crossed in the 'Etruria', a Cunarder which my mother had launched. He was much feted and banqueted, and the C.P.R. bigwigs, from Lord Strathcona and Sir William van Horne downwards, showed him all attention, placing an observation car at his disposal. General James, the New York postmaster, gave a dinner in his honour at the Union League Club, where I made my first and last speech - consisting of nine words of horrified thanks for coupling 'a chip off the old block,' as the proposer called me, with the 'Chief of the British Postal Service."
     The author notes that, "In the lovely autumn weather, we saw Canada at its best, and the trip decided my future. My father welcomed it as a happy solution. I came, therefore, to Toronto, at the age of twenty, with one hundred pounds a year allowance, and a small capital to follow when I should have found some safe and profitable chance of starting life. With me came - in the order of their importance - a fiddle, the 'Bhagavad Gita,' 'Shelley,' 'Sartor Resartus,' Berkley's 'Dialogues,' Patanjali's 'Yoga Aphorisms,' de Quincey's 'Confessions,' and a unique ignorance of the Methodist Magazine, a monthly periodical published in Toronto, and before that licked stamps in the back office of the Temperanfe and General Life Assurance Company, at nothing a week, but with the idea of learning the business, so that later I might bring out some English insurace company to Canada."
     Blackwood's business experience, which was a near-constant source of self inflicted agony, especially in those early years of trying to make a gainful position for himself in the world, became the polar opposite for what his escapes into the bosom of nature restored in kind. He took a large amount of money, given generously from family coffers, sent for his prudent use to invest in Canadian farmland, being instead squandered on a number of high-risk investments. He invested in a Toronto area dairy farm, said at the time to be a leading one, that would innovate the industry and increase milk production to an approving marketplace. In less than a year he lost his investment as the business venture failed to live up to its claims; and the promises of his partners to return a healthy profit on Blackwood's money. Shortly after this failure, he and another partner, who saw a similar pie-in-the-sky opportunity, that would return big money over a short term, also caused the future writer another business horror. This time it was in the joint purchase of a Toronto watering-hole, hotel known as "The Hub," which was entirely contrary to his father's innermost Christian values; being a fierce temperance advocate, and having raised the young Blackwood to adhere to the vow of abstinance as far as alcolhol was concerned. The Hub failed as a business investment, and cost him the final few dollars of his family's endowment, to set up, and operate a successful business in Canada.
      It was at this time, on the cusp of his 22nd year, that he and his former business partner, at The Hub, accepted a generous invitation from a lawyer they both knew, from their near-year as hoteliers, to retreat to an island he owned in Lake Rosseau, in the District of Muskoka, a hundred and twenty miles or so from the big city. He came to Muskoka feeling a failure as a son and businessman, betraying family values, and as it turned out, he had bottomed-out even before he began a career in earnest. There would be more failures to come, when he would eventually move to New York with the same business partner, and this time, it became the struggle of a rookie reporter for a well known city newspaper. His experiences in Muskoka for those five months however, continued to inspire him of a better life yet to come.
      As conditions of his existence in New York were always a hair's breadth away from starvation, and the final snuffing-out of poverty embrace, it is interesting to note, that his most called-upon source of rejuvenation, was to venture to the then forested Bronx Park on Sundays, to relive some of the wild splendors he had known in Muskoka. He would make a campfire in the woods, and wax poetic and rework his philosophy through the day and nights, studying nature as if trying to squeeze nourishment from every hour spent in its company. He felt a spirituality in these natural settings, and it would be a source of nourishment and companionship cherished for the rest of his life. Muskoka was never far from his thoughts, and like former United States President, Woodrow Wilson, who had vacationed frequently on the same lake (before he was elected to office), staying at The Bluff resort, operated by Thomas Snow, also very much feeling the inherent enchantment of those mist-shrouded mornings, watching the sun rise, and celebrating the haunted moonlit revels on warm summer nights. On his deathbed, the President recalled with family, those wonderful days spent in Muskoka.
     Please join Suzanne and I again tomorrow, for part two of this seven part series of stories, on Algernon Blackwood and his relationship with our district.

Muskoka Ghosts, Why Not?

WHY NOT TALK ABOUT GHOSTS? UFO'S AND THINGS THAT WENT BUMP IN THE NIGHT?

THE VERY REAL FEAR OF RIDICULE

EVERY FEW MONTHS, A STUDENT WILL COME UP TO MY PARTNER, SUZANNE, AND ASK HER IF SHE IS THE MRS. CURRIE IN THE GHOST BOOK. SHE HAS A STANDARD RESPONSE, BECAUSE THE QUESTIONS ARE ALMOST ALWAYS THE SAME. "DO YOU MEAN THE STORY OF 'HERBIE,' IN THE GHOST BOOK, BY BARBARA SMITH?" "WHY YES," THEY REPLY, LOOKING AT HER BECAUSE, WELL, THERE'S SOMEONE THEY CAN ACTUALLY TALK TO, WHO CAN HONESTLY CLAIM, "TO HAVE SEEN A GHOST." SO ARDENT ABOUT THIS, THAT SHE AGREED TO HAVE HER STORY PUBLISHED IN A MAJOR COAST TO COAST GHOST ANTHOLOGY. I'M IN THERE TOO, BUT THEN I'M ALSO INCLUDED IN ANOTHER BOOK ON THE PARANORMAL, BY WELL KNOWN GHOST SLEUTH, ROBERT JOHN COLOMBO. SO IT'S PRETTY NORMAL CONVERSATION AROUND HERE, TO TALK ABOUT GHOSTS. THERE'S JUST ONE THING MORE UNUSUAL THAN SEEING GHOSTS, AND THAT'S ADMITTING YOU'RE NOT FRIGHTENED OF THEM. WE'RE AS CURIOUS AS THEY ARE…..AND I CAN SPEAK FOR THEM (THE APPARITIONS); BUT WE DON'T MIND THEIR INTRUSIONS, UNLESS IT COSTS US SLEEP. THE GHOST OF HERBIE, WHICH YOU CAN READ ON THIS BLOGSITE, BY GOING BACK A COUPLE OF MONTHS, WAS THE WAYWARD, EARTHBOUND SPIRIT OF A LOST LAD, OF ABOUT TEN YEARS OF AGE, WHO USED TO VISIT SON ANDREW IN THE WEE HOURS OF THE NIGHT…..HIS FACE APPEARING AT THE WINDOW OF HIS BEDROOM. WHEN HE'D AWAKE, HE COULD LOOK UP AND SEE THE CHILD'S FACE, ILLUMINATED THROUGH THE GLASS. HE MADE ME GO OUTSIDE, ON THESE OCCASIONS, TO FIND HIM. ANDREW BELIEVED IT WAS PETER PAN, AND HE DIDN'T WANT TO GO TO NEVERLAND. SUZANNE EVENTUALLY SAW THIS GHOST TWICE IN THE HOUSE. I HAD ONE EXPERIENCE WITH HERBIE.

IN THE EARLY 1980'S, I UPSET THE NEWSPAPER EXECUTIVES, AT MUSKOKA PUBLICATIONS, IN BRACEBRIDGE, (WHICH HAPPENED EVERY THIRD DAY DURING MY TENURE), WHEN I ANNOUNCED A GREAT UPCOMING FEATURE FOR THE PAPER, ON GHOSTS AND HOBGOBLINS I'D MET IN A MAINSTREET HOUSE. THIS WAS A STORY ABOUT THE MCGIBBON HOUSE IN BRACEBRIDGE, THAT HAD FORMERLY BELONGED TO WELL LOVED MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT, AND TOWN DOCTOR, PETER MCGIBBON. EVERYONE WHO LIVED THERE, FROM ABOUT 1977 TO ABOUT 1984, UNDERSTOOD THE RAMBLINGS AND BUMPS IN THE NIGHT, FROM SOME RESIDENT PHENOMENON. IF YOU GO BACK A FEW BLOGS, YOU WILL FIND THE ONE THAT DETAILS MY FIRST WRITER'S LOFT, OVERLOOKING BRACEBRIDGE'S MEMORIAL PARK. I LOVED THE HOUSE, AND ALTHOUGH A TAD UNSETTLING THE FIRST FEW TIMES, THE ALLEGED HAUNTINGS WEREN'T FRIGHTENING, BUT THEY WERE FREQUENT. SO WHEN I DECIDED, AS EDITOR, TO RUN THE FEATURE, WITH THE HELP OF OUTSTANDING PHOTOGRAPHER, HAROLD WRIGHT, MANAGEMENT TRIED A NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS TO TONE IT DOWN…..OR BETTER STILL, SAVE IT FOR THE SUMMER PAPER….THE MUSKOKA SUN. WELL, I WON, AND WE MADE SOME BRACEBRIDGE HISTORY. I HAVE WORKED ON HUNDREDS OF SIMILAR FEATURES, BUT THIS ONE GOT THE BIGGEST RESPONSE OF THEM ALL. IT WAS APPARENT, MY ADMISSION THAT I BELIEVED IN GHOSTS, WAS ENOUGH TO ENCOURAGE OTHERS, WHO HAD EXPERIENCED SIMILAR APPARITIONS IN THEIR HOMES, COTTAGES ETC., TO SHARE THEIR STORIES. THE PROBLEM OF COURSE, IS THAT WHILE WE GOT EXCELLENT RESPONSES, NO ONE WANTED TO ATTACH THEIR NAMES.

I MUST HAVE HAD TWENTY OUTSTANDING GHOST STORIES. I COULDN'T USE ONE OF THEM, BECAUSE I NEEDED THEIR CONSENT, AND IT WAS STILL THAT TIME IN COMMUNITY HISTORY, THAT FOLKS WORRIED TO A FRENZY WHAT OTHERS WOULD THINK OF THEIR CONFESSIONS. I HAD CONVERSATIONS WITH TWO YOUNG LADIES I KNEW, ABOUT GHOSTS AND THEIR KIND, AND THEY WANTED TO HEAR ABOUT ALL MY ENCOUNTERS. I KNEW THE WAY THEY WERE LOOKING AT ME, THAT THEY HAD ALSO SEEN SIMILAR APPARITIONS…..BUT HAD BUILT-UP SUCH A DEFENSE, ABOUT THE ENCOUNTERS THAT I COULDN'T RELAX EITHER ONE OF THEM…..OR ASSURE THEM ADEQUATELY THAT THEIR STORIES WERE SAFE WITH ME. IT'S A PROBLEM OF BEING A WRITER, THAT MOST PEOPLE THINK THAT UNLESS THEY SAY "OFF THE RECORD," EVERY FIVE MINUTES OF CONVERSATION, I WILL BE QUOTING THEM IN MY NEW GHOST BOOK…….THAT BY THE WAY, I'M NOT WRITING. I CAN TELL, WHEN I'M TALKING TO SOMEONE ABOUT GHOSTS, IF THEY'VE ALSO HAD AN EXPERIENCE. IT SHOWS, NO MATTER HOW HARD THEY TRY TO DEFLECT THE FOCUS AWAY FROM THEMSELVES. THEY STILL BELIEVE, THEY WILL BE RIDICULED IN THE COMMUNITY, FOR HAVING BELIEFS IN THE PARANORMAL…..WHICH IS STILL TRUE TO A MINOR EXTENT TODAY….DESPITE THE FACT WRITERS LIKE BARBARA SMITH AND JOHN COLOMBO HAVE MADE IT FAR MORE ACCEPTABLE TO ADMIT TO HAVING SEEN GHOSTS. WHICH I THINK IS A GOOD THING.

John Colombo had even suggested that I put a book together of Muskoka ghost stories, and he helped launch my first full-season series, of local ghost stories, one summer in The Muskoka Sun, in the late 1990's, which was also an enormous success. It's not every fledgling ghost hunter who is endorsed by one of the best known paranormal researchers in Canada. But the problem was a big one. They, my story sources, would spend hours setting up the story, and explaining every detail, and then say, "But you can't use any of this in print." I got to the point that I asked the question before going to the interview, and if they said "no way," to me using the story in print, then I dropped the interview. Some required quite a bit of time and driving to meet with, and at the time I was working free-lance, and simply couldn't justify the expense. So several years ago, I started to compile my own accounts of paranormal encounters, on the Muskoka and Algonquin Ghost blogsite…..containing our family's inventory of strange meetings with those wandering spirits trapped on earth.

The main reason I adore these stories, is the fact we have lost so many cultural beliefs and traditions, and no one has given much attention, to the loss of this important aspect of Muskoka and regional Canadian history. Not just about ghosts, and their mortal / immortal coming together. But the fact, from the beginning of our region's settlement, dating back to the late 1850's, family historians, and historians generally, didn't spend much time recording the cultural attachments that came with European settlers, to the wilderness of the Muskoka woodlands. It wasn't just religious beliefs that came across the ocean with the homesteaders, seeking their free grant land. They brought with them the beliefs and superstitions of the old country, and the rich, ancient traditions from countries like Ireland, Scotland, England, Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Germany. If they had even a smidgeon of belief in the paranormal when they left the cities of Europe, I'm willing to bet that when they arrived in these haunted woods, they were more than wary of what may have been hiding out in the pine shadows, and over the rock cliffs, and through the misty bogs. Was it fair to say our region may have looked frightening to those early pioneers? Could they have imagined new world leprechauns, and banshees, trolls and ogres, ghosts, witches, sundry other hobgoblins and run-of-the-mill ghosts? In the isolation these folks found themselves, I think it's very likely they were particularly watchful for those fanciful creatures that haunted the countrysides in their homelands…..which lived under bridges, and others that carried pots of gold, or frightening old hags that would turn the innocents into wart-covered toads. What about the fairies and Queen Mab, and the fairy circles the children looked for in the mornings, matted down in the enchanted woods, where the midnight revel had been held.

This is very much a part of our culture as Muskokans, but very few historians dating back to the 1860's, bothered to deal with these superstitions, and belief in the paranormal……by simply writing them down for future posterity. Thus we have to rely on the heritage of these settlers, to understand how they looked upon strange occurrences in a new land. And because of the isolation, some fears were exacerbated most definitely, such that even the winds of an approaching storm sounded like banshees howling for blood…..trolls stomping up to homestead windows for a wee peak. A lot of superstition centered around death, and rituals / traditions practiced, depending on the religious and cultural thinking, of the time. Remember the omen of a "bird in the house"? I can so clearly recall a sparrow getting in through our apartment window, once, in the 1970's, and my mother Merle freaking-out because it was a sign that someone in the family was going to die. Merle was a mix of English, and German ancestry, and in her family, her mother Blanche was a keeper of the traditions……the old and dear tales of what to be guarded about in everyday life……..and my mother lived by those traditions, and superstitions for her entire life. She would never, ever walk beneath a ladder, and she hated black cats. If she dumped a salt shaker….or even if I did, I had to toss some sprinkles over my opposite shoulder, to get rid of the curse that apparently went side by side being clumsy. She didn't linger on any 13th day, that happened to be a Friday, and she eagerly scooped the froth off her stirred tea, saying it was "money," if you sipped it first, from a spoon. I broke a mirror once and I thought she was going to hold an exorcism for me. I was informed, "Teddy, you're going to have seven years of bad luck." I think she may have been right on that one, because every girl I went with during those years, gave me the proverbial heave-ho, just when I thought things were going great. Merle was scared of tea leaves, and would never go to a reading, because she feared what revelations they might prevail upon her. She apologized to God for thinking bad of people, but she wouldn't attend church. She thought I should go, but she wouldn't. Yup, she was a contradictory person, who had more bugaboos than I could list in ten blogs. She had a new one, to hit me with, whenever I wanted to do something she felt was risque. I always remember her saying to me, that when I had bad thoughts for a prolonged period, I was wishing that same event on myself. As the years went my, I seldom used my mother as a confidant. And for good reason.

Getting back to gathering stories about ghosts, UFO's, and almost anything else in the paranormal domain; I have received a wealth of information about occurrences here, in the District of Muskoka, but once again, they become an information base for me, but not an omnibus of stories to share with you. John Colombo included some stories about UFO's showing up in the Huntsville area of Muskoka, in a small book he wrote back in the early nineties if memory serves. There have been quite a few sightings here, and from some very credible people. Now it is worth noting, that Muskoka, according to several historians, and other published accounts I have read, have numerous meteor deposits. It is said, of course, that the imprint of Skeleton Lake was made by a meteor strike, and that there was one that hit near the Brackenrig Road, and another that may have landed in Portage Bay, of Lake Rosseau. I was told by a well versed local, of the Portage Bay area, that there is a place where a compass will gyrate wildly, giving improper readings, until the location is bypassed. I can't say that this is true, but it is what I have heard over the years, from a number of sources. I remember a well known writer telling me once, that Muskoka was a spiritually powerful place on earth, and I think part of that came from the meteors that hit here once upon a time. I have met and talked with those who have seen UFO's in Muskoka, and places like Vankoughnet have had a few interesting sightings, although you won't find much in print to support this claim. When, in the 1970's, a UFO was seen in vicinity of Three Mile Lake, in the Raymond area, I believe, it made the city dailies. There were witnesses that night, miles away, who later corroborated everything that the primary witness had observed, yet because they feared being ridiculed, the chap who came forward with the claim, was hounded without mercy, and made to look like a fool for being honest, and forthcoming. For years after this, many folks would talk in hushed tones, admitting they had been outside their homes on the same night, and had experienced something quite out of this world……yet they left this poor chap to take the brunt of the ridicule. What was an important story, with many avenues to investigate, was turned into a circus…..because that's the way the news accounts were written…..with a bias from the get-go. There weren't many scholarly, scientific types, around for these interviews with the witness, and eventually, he just avoided discussing the matter. No one blamed him either. I believed him the first time I heard the story, which was through the grapevine, before I read the first newspaper account. We were a small town with a long, long grapevine with big ears.

I have so many neat stories about ghost hitch-hikers, on the roadsides where accident fatalities had occurred. There are dozens of stories, from motorists, who stopped to give these apparitions a ride, only to find them missing, when they reversed their cars. One other claimed to have given a ride to a ghost, who never once conversed during a ten mile ride between Bracebridge and Gravenhurst, and disappeared out the door, at the end of the journey, without opening it first. There's the story of a Victorian-attired young woman, being seen in the moonlight of a summer night, in the Township of Muskoka Lakes, trying to step over the fence of a small community graveyard. The witnesses, of which there were two, believed she had been, like them, that night, taking a shortcut through the cemetery, but having got her gown caught on the wire of the half-fallen fence. When they went to help her, untangle the fabric, she turned to them and suddenly vanished. There was another specter that would sit on the staircase of an old house in Bracebridge, and cry in the night. She was seen sitting on one of the stairs, about halfway up, always in distress. They could hear the crying and when they'd investigate, she would stare at them for a moment, then vaporize. There was another malevolent little beggar, possibly the ghost of a child, that used to continually open and close doors in a tiny little house in my Bracebridge neighborhood. It was a constant, and although it wasn't seen as a vapor, it would open a door only seconds after the householder would close it……almost as if a game between the living and the dearly departed.

Post Victorian Ideals On How To Create a Positive Atmosphere At Dinner

TURN OF THE CENTURY, POST VICTORIAN IDEALS - ON HOW TO DECORATE THE DINNER TABLE TO CREATE A POSITIVE DINING ATMOSPHERE

1901 EDITION OF SMILEY'S COMPLETE GUIDE FOR HOUSEKEEPERS, PUBLISHED BY THE TORONTO STAR

     IT WAS THE BEGINNING OF THE POST VICTORIAN ERA, WHEN THE GOOD FOLKS OF "SMILEY'S" RELEASED THEIR "COMPLETE GUIDE FOR HOUSEKEEPERS," PUBLISHED IN ONTARIO, BY THE TORONTO STAR. MAKING NO MISTAKE OF COURSE, THAT THE BOOK HAD ALREADY BEEN PUBLISHED NUMEROUS TIMES BEFORE THIS, IN THE LATE 1800'S, SO IT REALLY CAN'T BE SAID, TO BE ANYTHING MORE THAN A REPRINT OF VICTORIAN ERA TRENDS, BELIEFS, EXPECTATIONS, AND HOUSEHOLD STANDARDS. BUT, IT WAS NEW IN THIS SOMEWHAT REVISED FORM, LAUNCHED INTO A BRAND NEW CENTURY. IT'S OUR PAST, SO WE SHOULD FAMILIARIZE OURSELVES, IF WE DON'T ALREADY KNOWM, ABOUT WHERE SOME OF OUR CONTEMPORARY VALUES CAME FROM, INCLUDING WHAT WE SET-DOWN IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DINNER TABLE AS A MOOD ENHANCER. A MINIATURE STANLEY CUP? A NOSTALGIC VASE WITH PLASTIC FLOWERS? A RACK OF BILLIARD BALLS? I'VE HEARD ABOUT A LOT OF STRANGE CENTER PIECES, WHILE I'VE BEEN WORKING IN THE ANTIQUE TRADE, INCLUDING OF COURSE, SOME VERY EXTRAVAGANT AND BEAUTIFULLY APPOINTED ADORNMENTS, SET OUT FOR LARGE DINNER PARTIES, THAT COST A KING'S RANSOM TO CREATE. WHATEVER MAKES YOU FEEL GREAT ABOUT THE DINING EXPERIENCE BEYOND THE GOOD FOOD BEING SERVED; GO GO FOR IT!
     There is an interesting section in the text, dealing with "Table Decorations." This is still working on the late, late Victorian theme of decoration, but it's a subject that deserves a little extra attention. You won't read too much about it these days, as the dinner table isn't what it used to be; even from twenty years ago. We're a go-go modern society, and seldom find time to sit down at nightly, or weekly dinner events. It's kind of neat to watch the television, prime time, police-drama, "Blue Bloods," with a background of New York City, and catch the weekly supper gatherings with the Police Chief's (Tom Selleck's) whole family, seated around the large diningroom table; from grandfather to grandchildren. It certainly reminds Suzanne and I, of some of the mandatory gatherings, we were called to, as youngsters, on a weekly basis (every Sunday), as a means of bringing family and friends together socially, and culturally. Missing it meant you had to be out of the area; far, far out of the area. Otherwise, you were expected to be in attendance. They weren't extravagant by any means, except the food, which was country cooking at its best. The center pieces weren't all that elaborate, but there was always something with ferns hanging out of it, and some colorful flowers rising above.
     In the years we've been operating our antique business, there have been numerous occasions, when customers have posed the question, "what do you have that would make a neat center-piece for a dining table?" These folks were not looking for extravagant or predictable floral arrangements, in attractive glass or pottery vases, as convention might dictate. They had been looking for unique and interesting center pieces, that would create some intrigue amongst their guests, trying to figure out what the antique item was used for in its day. As an example, I have sold four vintage oil, and kerosene lamps, from antique cars, and from photographic dark rooms - called "safe" lights, because they have red glass, safe for exposure to photographic paper being processed in a darkroom. Why would these lamps make good center pieces?
     I have often been in a position, while hustling about second hand shops, and flea markets, that I have found a single kerosene car lamp, in useable condition, on sale for a small price. I have sold lots of single lamps from old wagons, even hearses, and antique cars and trucks in the past, but two of the most unusual, and useable, were made into a "guess what this is" center piece, for large dinner parties. The same with the "safe lights" which looked like old tin lanterns, except for the color of the glass. The idea, you see, is to use something like the auto lamps, and safe lights, as the middle of the crafted center piece, with a wreath of smaller, but equally odd antique pieces, from tools to kitchen implements few have ever seen before. There is a little contest run, at these celebratory dinners, to correctly guess all the pieces that have made up the antique-decoration of the table. Mixed in with these relics of course, are small florals, as accents. I've seen photographs of these, the customers kindly came back to the shop to show us, and they've all been thought provoking, not to mention quite attractive. When I was looking through the pages of Smiley's self help book, from 1901, I came upon a section about table decoration, and although it's not quite the same as what I've described above, it's still interesting to look back in time, to learn about the preparations for making a somewhat unique and remarkable statement, in the way of table decoration. Here now are a few lines from that turn of the century perspective, about what would make supper time even more memorable, than just the good taste of the prepared dinner.
     "The tasteful decoration of the table is no small item, and fortunately the tendency is now to decorate the tables more than formerly. In some circles the hostesses vie with each other, as to whose table shall be the most elegant, and in some cases, as much is spent on the flowers as on the dinner itself, employing for this purpose professional decorators. And yet a very large class of people do not sufficiently understand, the importance of appearances. It is a mistake to think that it is necessary to go to large expense in order to decorate a table prettily. Many flowers which are perfectly adapted for table decoration, can be bought for a mere trifle, or grown at home, while wild flowers have been found so pretty for this purpose, that they have been used by professional decorators at many grand dinners. Ladies with taste will find this a very pleasant task, while young people should be allowed to assist in decorating the table, and have their taste for arranging flowers encouraged."
     The book continues, "The great thing is to make the table pretty and attractive, and at the same time not like every one else's, and this can be very easily managed, and with very little expense, by using a little taste, forethought and time. Fashions change so often that it is impossible to give anything but hints for table decoration. One good rule is that the decorations should not impede the view across the table. Another is that they should all be of one color, or two colors, which harmonize well. It will be found easier to produce a good effect with one color in the flowers used, and variety in the foliage, than to blend a miscellaneous collection of blossoms. A good decorator will aim to place the flowers so that they will look natural, and as if growing. It detracts from their beauty to crowd them together. Let them stand clearly apart, their stems showing, with the grasses or ferns with which they are intermingled veiling, but not hiding them, nor resting on the blossoms.
     "If economy is an object, flowers can easily be had for nothing in the country, and each season of the year brings some flowers or foliage, with which very pretty ornaments can be arranged. In the spring, there are the primroses, cowslips, and other flowers, of that season; in the summer, water-lillies, grasses, etc.; in the fall the rich tinted foliage and berries, and in the winter, the fresh, dark evergreen needles. Those with taste and skill can arrange a lovely table with foliage alone, quite as pretty as a floral one. Field flowers mingled with grasses form a charming decoration, and so do buttercups properly arranged to stand up well without any crowding, with plenty of feathery foliage. One great charm about wild flowers, is that they possess so little scent. Strongly scented flowers are not advisable for table decorations, as many people cannot endure the odor. The only perfumed flower that seems to find general favor, is the rose, which is lovely for table decoration, and may be put into low bowls or baskets, or in single blooms in small glasses with only their own foliage. Yellows are a great favorite for dinner tables, and small dwarf sunflowers, alpine poppies, iris and marguerites are all favorites. Dried seaweed is a novel decoration, and one that may be made quite ornamental. Some of the finer, more delicate seaweeds, if carefully dried, keep their colors wonderfully. Palms can be used and made to form  very pretty centers on dinner tables, if the pot is hidden by moss and covered with flowers and foliage. Trails of colored ivy also look extremely pretty on a table cloth; they may be used as an edge to the colored strip, or as a border where there are small vases, or a basket of flowers on the table."
     The 1901 Household Advisor, notes that, "Where time cannot be spared for much decoration, plants may be used, and ferns especially look well. A dining room can be transformed into a veritable spring garden, with great branches of apple, cherry or peach blossoms; the deep, pink blossoms, of the flowering peach, make a most effective decoration. The smaller sprigs can be put in rose bowls, and placed on the table and sideboard; the most simple arrangement being the most pleasing. For a long table two or three vases of flowers, and dessert dishes of fruit, can be placed along the centre of the table, alternating with lamps or candelabra in the evening, but the decorations should not be so high as to obstruct the view of people across the table. The low globular vases of various sizes, called rose-bowls, are the best for this purpose. Flowers can be easily arranged in them, and they are not too high. The maidenhair fern is well suited for a foundation of green; two or three fronds with short stems, can be first placed in the vase, hanging gracefully over the sides of the glasses, then only a few flowers are needed to finish them. Roses, carnations, pansies, bright berries of the mountain ash, bush cranberry, small branches of red cranberries, and holly berries, are all desirable for decorative purposes. Goldenrod and other pungent flowers are best left off the table, but all delicate wild flowers, and ferns are pretty. They should be carefully shaken and examined for insects before they are placed in glasses.
     "The bouquets which we sometimes encounter at hotel tables and elsewhere, crowded with flower stems, and leaves decaying in water, unchanged for days, are repellant. The flower stems should be stripped of all leaves, in order that the water in the vases may not be discolored, and the water should be changed before each meal; and all faded flowers discarded. An inexpensive and effective way to decorate a table, is to make an imitation lake, although, it is rather troublesome. For this, a piece of looking glass is needed, long and narrow if possible, or take the glass from an old looking glass. The glass must be placed exactly in the centre of the table on a thick piece of brown paper, or double the thickness of newspaper, with the edge projecting an inch or so beyond the glass. The edge of the glass and the paper, must be well covered with moss and sprays of fern; pretty leaves and a few flowers are placed in the moss to hang partly over the glass. The effect is enhanced by placing four 'fairy' lamps at the corners of the imaginary lake with pieces of fern arranged to bend around the light. A great variety of figures may be arranged around a mirror and endless effects can be arranged around the edge of the glass, and raised in unequal heights to give the impression of a snowdrift, and the mirror powdered to represent ice. Spears of ivy, grasses and colored leaves, can be scattered around the drifts. Another pretty decoration, is to have, down the center of the table's narrow bank of ferns, pink tulips arranged as if growing. With a little taste and skill, a bed of flowers may be arranged in the center of the table, by laying damp ferns and moss, not on the cloth, but on a piece of oiled silk. For a small dinner, where the table is oval, the center looks well, completely hidden with folds of Chartreuse yellow silk.  "Stand in the center a large silver bowl, and at each corner place smaller bowls or cups. These would look charming filled with yellow marguerites, maidenhair fern, and asparagus grass. The bowls should be filled with sand, and the flowers arranged to look as if growing."
     The text suggests, "Buttercups, daisies, poppies, grasses, and wild clematis, are very pretty arranged in saucers of wet moss, so that none of the saucer can be seen. A pretty way to arrange flowers, which are not put in water, is to tie a few flowers and many grasses together, like sheaves of wheat, using ribbons which correspond in color with the flowers, and the sheaves may then be stood upright; but flowers should be selected which will stand heat, and being out of water without wilting. Wreaths may also be made of suitable flowers, tied with ribbons and strewn about. Again, two horse-shoes can be placed at each end of the table, and down the sides place alternately smaller ones, made of primroses and violets, in which the menus are placed. Daffodils always look pretty, and so do wild roses. Mountain ash berries, when ripe, set in richly tinted autumn foliage, make a lovely decoration. Upon very large tables, tall vases and high decorations are best. Choose flowers according to the season, and the center piece, if there is one. In summer a cool effect is needed, and plenty of white and green should be found upon the table; while in winter, it is pleasant to see brilliantly colored flowers, that seem to give warmth as well as brightness. Glasses through which the stems of flowers can be seen, should be filled with water, but bowls or opaque stands can be filled with moss or sand, in which it is far easier to arrange flowers than in water.
     "This is not the age of heavy dinners nor heavy decorations. The dinner tables of fashionable people, are things of lightness and delivery, and the menus to correspond. The best rules in floral decoration are to keep to one or two kinds of flowers, using their own foliage as much as possible; to consider color and shade, and aim to produce light and airy effects. Never put flowers in a vase without adding green of some kind, like leaves or ferns, and never put too many flowers into the same vase, as they never look pretty when crowded together. In picking flowers and foliage, get the stems as long as possible, as they can then be more easily arranged. Do not allow any leaves to be in the water; when they grow down to the bottom of the leaf stalk, strip away all the lower ones so that nothing but the stalk will enter the water. Put flowers, as much as possible, into vases so shaped, as not to upset easily, and which will at the same time make them look natural. For table decorations, avoid flowers that have a peculiar or strong scent. Finally, remember that practice makes perfect in this, as in other things. If the tables are lighted by lamps they should be well shaded. It is most distressing, besides being injurious to the eyes, to have the unshaded glass of a kerosene lamp, shining into the eyes while at the table."
     As our family now is one that seldom gets together for any meals, except while dining out, the center piece concept is best only for Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, and Easter. I feel bad about this, because Suzanne and I grew up with these large family suppers as embedded tradition. But it's a new era in home dining. Long, long past our Victorian way of doing things.