Part 6 Beatrice Scovell's "The Muskoka Story"

PART SIX

Where Would We Be Without Those Culture-Infilling Folk Stories, Such As Beatrice Scovell's "The Muskoka Story"

By Ted and Suzanne Currie

     When I worked as a painter, at South Muskoka Memorial Hospital, in Bracebridge, during those summers of the mid-1970's, trying to finance my university experience, I had a remarkable opportunity to hear some of the most amazing folk histories, as told by some amazing story tellers. First of all, I had never heard anyone tell a folk tale like Hospital Administrator Frank Henry, and when, during our coffee breaks, Bill "Willy" Andison happened to be at the table, gosh what wonderful entertainment. Willy and Frank would start competing with their reminiscences, and honestly, the telling of regional history was never as poignant as it was on those occasions. In my opinion as a wide-eyed, open mouthed voyeur of these master story tellers, Willy always had a little bit of an edge, but seeing as Frank was our boss, we made it seem they were even-steven at the end of coffee break.
     A story I will remember forever, was the one Willy, a tad older by the way, told about the day a few of his young cronies, got the idea to cause a little mayhem on the Queen's Hill in Bracebridge. The Queen's Hill, in case you don't know, is the incline at the traffic lights on Manitoba Street, and what I knew as Thomas Street. The corner where the old federal building stands with that magnificent brick clock tower that guided and reminded me of my time, throughout my youth. Actually, even in adulthood, when I used to tipple too much at the Hotel Patterson, and at the press club down at the Albion Hotel on Main Street.
     The Queen's Hotel afforded the steep hill its name, and at one time, it was a much greater incline that caused many horse and cart disasters. The Queen's Hotel became the Patterson Hotel and then the Hotel Patterson where I drank way, way too much, listening to some great local bands. In Willy's circumstance, in the early 1900's, there were round stones and sling-shots involved in the buddying mayhem. Each of the three lads had sling-shots, rocks in the bands, and waited patiently for the next milk wagon to be pulled up the Queen's Hill. Alas, they didn't have to wait long.
     Hiding behind a corner of the Queen's Hotel, the lads waited until the cart was nearly at the top of the hill, before running into the open, taking aim, and hitting each of the horses somewhere on their back sides. Of course, they reared-up after the stinging blows, and in turn, caused the wagon to pull up, and subsequently dump its load onto the still-dirt road. All down that hillside, rain gallons of milk, rutting the dirt, and nearly killing the driver, who probably toppled out of the wagon along with the milk cans. Mission accomplished.
     As you might expect, the lads were quick to exit the scene, and found safe haven in between the buildings near the Albion Hotel, beside the train station. But there were witnesses, and although coffee break was over, just at the point I wanted to ask if they were ever caught, there was a twinkle in Willy's eye that told me justice was served later. Willy, by the way, was the hospital gardener, and a former farmer out Purbrook way. He gifted many visitors to the hospital with his stories, and for many of those folks, anxious about being at a hospital in the first place, he gave them reason to relax and even chuckle.
     Beatrice Scovell, who probably knew Bill Andison, from hospital visits, the collected folk stories from her early 1980's regional and family history, "The Muskoka Story," parallel in story-telling enthusiasm, the elder gardener. One for example, is headed "Wanda, The Doctor's Horse," and while not humourously tinged as such, is heart warming and wonderfully nostalgic of a former time in history.
     "The only horse my father ever had was called Wanda. People all around Huntsville knew her. She was a direct descendant of the horses brought from the Prairies by the Indians before Muskoka was opened up for settlement. Before anyone came to the Grant Lands, the Menominees, who were Indians, had a farm on the shores of Vernon Lake (Huntsville). There they bred and trained horses, to sell other Indians and later to settlers. Horses were in great demand in those days. When the Menominee Indians decided to leave Muskoka, they sold their Prairie horses to a farmer in the area who carried on the horse farm."
     Beatrice Scovell writes, "Unless you knew Wanda, you would not believe she could be so clever. It was my uncle, Sam Ware, at the Canal, who bought her in the first place to be hitched to another horse, and do the ploughing. She balked. She would not be one of a team of horses. She was so strong and she had such willpower and was so stubborn, that my father thought it would be a very good thing if he could get her to work for him. So he bought her. It was a good thing, too. We had her until she was twenty years old. Sometimes she would have stubborn spells, and then my father would go and talk to her as if she were a human being. He would give her some candy or sugar, which he kept for her in his pocket, and his voice would change and he would call her a good girl, It worked every time.
     "One winter night, when there was a lot of snow beside the roads, Wanda stopped at a gate. She kept trying to get into the snowdrift at the roadside. Nothing would stop her or make her go ahead again. So my father took his flashlight and started to look in the snow. Eventually he found a man. He had been so drunk he could not make the trip into his house. He had fallen into the snow and would have been there all night, if it had not been for Wanda. He would probably have frozen to death.
     "My father got him to the house, beyond the gate, and found that he had been working at a wood camp to get money for his family. He was supposed to buy groceries and bring them home, but he did not have any with him. It was learned, later, that he had got into the hotel with his workmates, and there spent all his money. When my mother heard about this, she got a box and filled it with food, and returned next morning to the house with my father. When Wanda reached the gate of the home, where the family lived, she turned into it without being told to."
     Mrs. Scovell adds to the story of Wanda the horse, noting that, "When winter came the lakes froze and the ice was so thick that people could cut blocks of it to put in the sawdust of ice houses. A road was made across Fairy Lake. On one of his trips to the Portage, my father came to the Canal and got onto the ice road across the lake, to come back to Huntsville. Then Wanda balked, and started to back up. Nothing would make her go forward. When he took his flashlight to find out what was wrong with Wanda, she tried to nip his ears. While he stood there, talking to the horse, the clouds moved, and the moon showed open water ahead. The next morning, a farmer, coming to the office, told of another farmer who had tried to cross the ice on Fairy Lake, and who had lost his team of horse and his sleigh, when the ice had broken. He had been able to crawl to a safe spot and is life had been saved.
     "One trip was made, a long way from town, to call on a family who had come from England, bringing with them their young grandson. They had bought a property that was advertised for sale and moved to it, bringing the grandson as a baby. At this time, he was about four years old, and they had never taken him to town. This call was going to take some time, so Wanda was taken from the buggy and allowed to eat some grass, while the buggy was pushed up against a fence. The family used to buy candy for the little boy when they went into town, and they had told him about the store window there that was filled with candies. He wanted to see it. So he crawled into the box behind the buggy, and no-one saw him except Wanda. When Wanda reached her barn, she got round to the back of the buggy, and nosed it, just the way she would nose my father's pocket, if she thought there was some candy or sugar in it. When the lid of the box at the back of the buggy was opened, up popped the little boy's head. It was a good thing that this home, out in the country, had a phone. Someone came for him the next day, but first, I took him to see the store window full of candies, and let him pick some out for himself."
     She concludes her story, that "In 1919, Wanda was twenty years old, and we had her shot. She is buried on the Casselman Grant Lands at the Canal. My father dug a slanting ditch and walked her into it with a bag of oats around her neck. But he could not shoot her. He could not even fill in the grave, and neither could my brother help my uncle. It was like losing a member of our family."
     Please join Suzanne and I tomorrow for a concluding post on Beatrice Scovell's folk-laden book, "The Muskoka Story."