The Biography I Always Meant to Write - But Antiques Kept Getting in the Way!
Gosh It's Been A Wonderful Life!
By Ted Currie
I turned-on to Canadian history big time, back in 1967, along with millions of other students in this country. The year of course, when we, as a country, celebrated the 100th year of nationhood, proclaimed and loudly sung in celebration, sea to sea, by Bobby Gimby's memorable ovation "Can-a-da.". I went to Expo in Montreal that year, with my parents, and I must have visited the Confederation Caravan that stopped in Bracebridge, a hundred times over one weekend, when the large mobile trailers were parked down at Jubilee Park. It was also the year I turned-on to old stuff, which I realize now was my initial foray into the antique way-of-thinking, and my deeply seeded passion for Canadiana.
Well now, it's fifty years since that special time, of national pride and pageantry, and today, as you read this, we are officially recognizing the 150th year of existence as a Dominion. I guess you might say, I owe it all to Canada, that I became, in heart, and mild practice (until 1977), an antique apprentice. After forty years in the profession, I still consider myself an apprentice with a never ending or lowering learning curve ahead.
I'm in my sixty-second year of this wonderful old life. Admittedly a little gnarled and rough-hewn around the edges. An appearance in portrait, showing I have not-so-profitably weathered the storms of the seven seas, as if I had, for long and long, manned the crow's-nest of a tall, tall ship. Yes having a noticeable limp from the rigors of fun and games, and a furrowed brow from having lived at times, a rather wild life with wild friends, in some amazingly wild places. And by this I don't mean being outdoors, although it's often how I wound up after parties, and gatherings at the local Bracebridge, Ontario press club, of which I was a co-founder at the former Albion Hotel on Main Street. Opposite the old train station that was a true relic of Canadiana, that was torn down on day, before anyone could meaningfully mount a protest to secure its preservation.
This is a retrospective of a relationship I have openly adored, and written about frequently, since my first antique-themed column, which had a short run in the fledgling Bracebridge Examiner, way back in the spring of 1978. But it was a year earlier, in 1977, a decade after my trip to Expo, and all the other neat Centennial celebrations we enjoyed in small town Ontario, that I set out my first shingle, promoting "Old Mill Antiques," adorning the front of our new shop on upper Manitoba Street, in Bracebridge.
I now, for the sake of a good story, will openly confess to my many past misdeeds, misadventures, and often reckless abandon, in the early years of carving out a future in the antique profession; which will probably turn up in various bits and bobbs throughout this biography. This explosion of information then, will be put in place, via an intentionally rambling text, full of anecdotes, as an editorial reminiscence, headed, firstly, "the misdemeanors of a single fellow once at dangerous loose ends, seeking a little excitement." "A precarious but enjoyed existence," that my wife, by the way, refers to as having been the "charmed" period of life. Honestly, I was lucky to make it to the fall of 1983 when Suzanne and I were married, soon to become antique professionals in a business that has lasted to the present, and will carry-on God willing, with our sons Andrew and Robert, for many years to come.
At the time of writing this preamble, to a biography I have been sketching out for about ten years now, I think she has a valid point believing this, because I've certainly dodged a lot of proverbial bullets in my years thus far. And frankly I get a little nervous buying green bananas these days. Will I be around to see them ripen? Having this feeling of thinning sands left to run through the hour glass, I felt that this year, our 150th since Confederation, was going to be the one, to set it all into a formal yet informally composed manuscript, that I could share story by story with my online readers, before publishing it in a full text sometime down the road. I have promised my sons I would write our stories down, with all the adventure and intrigue I implanted, when spun in the past; the ones by the way, they've heard over and over throughout their young lives, but always felt they were generously more fiction than fact.
I opened my first antique shop with my parents, Merle and Ed, as partners, in the autumn season of 1977, only a few months after graduating York University with a degree in Canadian history. I shouldn't have done this, the antique shop part, especially with business associates who had no real interest in antiques. Instead, they filled our supposed antique shop with giftware, which in our case, was the preamble to disaster after only three years of business. It is a precarious balance to merge the two, and takes a special talent to pull it off as a profitable enterprise. Hardcore antique hunters are suspicious of businesses that combine giftware and heritage articles, and I knew this before we opened our door that day in October 1977. Giftware eventually became the dominant reality of the shop, because my parents had more money to spend in that regard, and seeing as we already had several high quality gift shops on the main street, at that time, we were fighting a losing battle from the beginning. But I got my taste for the antique trade in the form of a store-front, and I was never going to drop the idea of bouncing back with another shop when I had more money and better quality antiques.
This is my first and last attempt to compose an all-encompassing biography, for my sons, of how I first, and quite naturally became interested in collecting odds and sods, old stuff, relics, antiquities, and collectables; a bright electrifying spark that shot through my mind every garbage day, when we lived in the City of Burlington, Ontario, after I had reached an age when my mother would set me loose in our neighborhood, thinking of me as a typical kid at play. My play, contrary to her belief, was "scrounging," and I could be found on these days, before school, with my head buried deep in the tin garbage pails that were set out at daybreak, by the residents of Harris Crescent, one block up from the Lakeshore. For this reason, and being unwilling to reject this period as being unimportant to the collector / antique dealer I have become since, I have included a preamble series of stories explaining how my early years on the hustings, played a role in my advancement in the profession. Humble beginnings? You bet. It is how, then, that I infected my wife and present business partner, to launch our own enterprise, which we called Birch Hollow Antiques, in 1985, and subsequently, imposed our values, by immersion, on sons Andrew and Robert, who now have their own respective vintage music and collectables shop, partnered with us in this present tense of January 2017.
Thus, they both need to know how it all began, and how exactly, and why they fell helplessly into the quick-sand of emotion, that subtly inspires, over time and experience, the love for old and dear things; whether of a musical character, be it a drum, guitar, banjo or old record; or instead, a pine cupboard, piece of heritage glass, an old book, or relic of architecture harvested from a demolition site. They need to know about my forays in the profession, at a time when it was nothing more than a childhood fascination unfolding into reality. I never came home to the Nagy Apartments after such an outing, or even returning each afternoon from school, without pockets full to overflowing of found articles. It was my signature look, to have bulging pockets and broken hockey sticks wedged under my arm. It was my earned identity and my mother thought, as such, I was unusually special; because of my penchant to scrounge as if it was a near holy quest. Such that she told our friends and neighbors, when they inquired about my habit of garbage hunting, that I was just "an old soul," possibly a former pirate of the high seas, acting out treasure hunts in the contemporary sense. Maybe I was. I know I loved pirates and the quest for pirates' gold. I found an ally with history I can't explain, and I hated to see good stuff go to waste. My mother used to throw it all out when I left for school in the morning. It's okay because I could replenish quickly the lost loot.
I hope you won't be bored by the following recollections of childhood. It's most important because it was when I started this life-long obsession with collecting things. I was probably aged five or six when the collecting bug bit me, and I started investigating what others were throwing out, or in some cases, giving away to the "Currie kid." My sons have never been to Burlington although I want this to happen sometime in the near future. I want them to see my old neighborhood, and walk some of the streets I ambled along back in the late 1950's, to and from Lakeshore Public School, up to the Burlington Arena, and to my favorite cent candy outlet on lower Brant Street, which I believe was called Walmsleys Variety Store. The Burlington years provided the platform, that's for sure, to a career in the trade of buying and selling old things, and to write a biography missing this part, would be defeating the whole purpose of meaningful retrospective.
The antique profession, one of the most storied of all the professions in history, has entertained me for most of my life, and enchanted me in ways I will never truly be able to explain. If you know our business, and have visited in the past, you will appreciate that our respect for history is unyielding, and beyond compromise, as Suzanne and I are both long serving regional historians, with a passion for Canadian heritage conservation. I still, after all these years, find myself tempted to poke through our neighbor's garbage, each week, to check for interesting cast-offs; but obviously, it's no longer socially acceptable, at my elder age, as it once was, when neighbors in Burlington left out the good stuff, knowing the curious six year old Currie kid, would be dropping by before long to check out the goods.
I love this profession, as I'm sure you realize by now, and I hope it shines through the stories upcoming on this page, partly as biography, partly as a keepsake text for my sons and their families yet to come, and also to help recognize Canada's 150th anniversary of Confederation; because, as it profoundly affected me in 1967, to favor Canadiana as a collecting future, it still serves to inspire me to buy and represent items of Canadian heritage in our shop.
Please join me again tomorrow for more of this series of stories about the enchantments of being an antique dealer.
For the next few chapters in this biography, I want to share some of my earliest memories of my old hometown of Burlington, long before I even knew the definition of "antique," or "heritage." A substantial number of the stories will come from my own archives of mini-biographies I begun as patchwork additions over the past ten years, and reminiscences of the fine mentors known over this same time.
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