Gravenhurst – the writer’s quest for something different
For those who complain about the Gravenhurst of 2007, and its shortfalls as compared to other communities of a similar size, I’d like to yank them back in a tumbling time-travel a century or so, to see if they would like life here any better. Maybe back forty years. Seventy years possibly. Or by springing forward forty years or so. Would they have any less to complain about than at present? It has always surprised me a tad, as a resident here for almost twenty years, how the naysayers never really find satisfaction with life here, yet they refuse to move somewhere more appealing. I have a few issues of complaint, from time to time, but I’ve had those in every other locale in which our family has resided. If for example, the business community decided it was time to put the naysayers to work finding workable solutions to all the alleged shortfalls of main street commerce, it would I believe, be a watershed moment in Gravenhurst history. The business community has been at odds with itself and the governance of the day for decades, and I don’t really expect a resolution any time soon. This isn’t nearly as important as recognizing that we need diverse opinion, opposing concepts, disruption in commonplace from time to time, to instill new plans, better ideas, and future mindedness.
I like Gravenhurst regardless of the critics and doomsayers, who believe it is either expanding too quickly or too slowly. My only concern about progress is that the character of our town not be lost in the process, and yes this is worth fighting for long into the future. When we moved to Gravenhurst from Bracebridge, in the late 1980’s, our friends thought we had lost our mental capacity to reason. “Why would you ever move to Gravenhurst?” What they were saying quite clearly was that Gravenhurst was a town going nowhere quickly, had no ambitions to better its commercial base, and was mired in self-loathing. At first I wasn’t sure if we had made a mistake. As a news editor for The Gravenhurst Banner that first year of residence, I was aware that even long-time citizens were doubting the town’s future, and they were making concerns public such that it was pretty hard to avoid friendly fire; Gravenhurst citizens attacking their own town. I wasn’t used to this coming from Bracebridge, a town reasonably competent at bestowing the positives even if a few of us reporters sleuthed out more than a few negative actualities. While the Bracebridge business community had tough issues with the expansion of the Highway 118 commercial corridor, they kept disagreements within the governing group and committees. In Gravenhurst there was anger where there should have been the pro-active address of lingering, stubborn problems. Issues seemed to be layered over by first anger and then neglect, only to resurface time and again in the same folly. My only question was the “would there ever be harmony in Gravenhurst?”
When I gave up the news business and began freelancing feature material, I started to ignore the headlines and scathing editorials, and began instead to investigate Gravenhurst media-free. Gradually, I learned what many long time citizens had figured out years earlier, and that was to live life to the fullest, and make the best out of the combined qualities, of what has been a wonderful hometown for its citizenry since the late 1850’s….regardless of the hardships and tragedy, successes and failures each decade brings forth. I just refused to allow editorialists to influence my opinion about the true identity of the community. I had to experience it for myself. What I found was a jewel buried beneath the rage of conflicting opinion. The fact that we as a family, found the heart of the community when we did, is the reason we still dwell and I dare say prosper here now. Today we operate two successful businesses from Gravenhurst and have never once felt, or experienced any disadvantage being in Gravenhurst as compared to any other comparable rural community. We have never once believed our hometown to be the proverbial “sinking ship”. It’s the reason that when our sons Andrew and Robert graduated high school here, they decided to invest back in the town that provided them a safe, nurturing home, despite the deficiencies highlighted by the local press, and vocalized by the disgruntled among us. While all of us can be seen at some time during the week glancing over the pages of the local newspapers, we do so for the news and community profiles only; not the plethora of critiques about the failures of this, that and everything else.
Maybe we are idealistic to a fault but we’re chugging along none the less in respective enterprises, finding little if anything to complain about other than there not being enough hours in the day to get everything done. A few times I’ve thought to myself that Gravenhurst was my Bedford Falls, from the Christmas movie, “A Wonderful Life,” and in jest I have probably called my neighborhood both “Mayberry,” after the Andy Griffith Show, “Hooterville”, after the television show “Green Acres,” and even “Petticoat Junction,” a television community where “Uncle Joe was moving kind of slow….at the junction.” In a literary sense, it is remarkably similar to Stephen Leacock’s fictional Mariposa made famous in his book, “Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town.” While it might seem to some a slight of protocol, rude, or uncomplimentary to refer to one’s community as a work of humorous fiction, I never once, in reference, intended it to be derogatory. They were all places for one reason or another, I adored, from T.V. Land, and facing the parallels between fact and fiction, by golly, isn’t it true to life that every community has its share of characters and unique situations….. that might at times appear the work of a scriptwriter on a roll? I have always gravitated toward the truly eccentric characters cohabitating in the ballywicks I have spent time. We’d be a pretty dull hometown without our present share of colorful, opinionated, action-full characters, to make the rest of us dullards look more interesting. Like the movie (and play) “Our Town,” we need to appreciate the composite, the mural of respected individuality, partnership yet community that unfolds in pockets, in boisterous gatherings and generally around us every moment of every day; since the 1860’s, and of course these have been the amazing “days of our lives!”
Most of us preoccupy with our own immediate family matters, and those of the neighborhood but forget about the “actuality” of a constantly changing and diverse dynamic of town existence. Yet when there is an emergency, a family crisis, an economic disaster for someone or other, it’s truly pleasing to the heart, to witness how this dynamic contends and adjusts to the problem; comforting those in turmoil and fundraising to avert an otherwise imminent collapse. I’ve watched this community close ranks many times in recent memory, around someone or a family in need, a child in a health crisis, a neighbor in distress, or a displaced family left homeless the result of fire;…. and felt a sense of awe that we are very much a caring, compassionate, pro-active community regardless of the faults some folks love to play upon. Despite what you might read about the ineffective work of local politicians and the infighting in the business community, the weighty number of town critics and protestors as far as the eye can see, well, there’s a beating heart under all that verbiage and all it takes is getting out there to find it up close and personal. Even the harshest of critics, the most distant politician, and the seemingly indifferent civil servant, can be seen working at a fundraiser, side by side a sworn half-adversary, tending a Communities in Bloom garden project, carting donations into the Salvation Army, and generally being good citizens. So who really cares about occasional adversity, even fundamental disagreement, as long as everyone pulls together during those moments of greatest need?
Our family has explored every nook and cranny in our town. Admittedly we may be a little oddball about our most adored places to visit, such as local cemeteries and fly infested swamplands; open pastures, forest trails, and rolling, winding country lanes. We are including photographs, taken by son Robert (given lessons with a digital camera by our family friend, Fred Schulz) taken of places we love to visit in Gravenhurst. Some obvious locations we share with everyone, and there are other images of mysterious portals where we stare out, undisturbed, at the workings of our home town.
I have always looked at Gravenhurst through the eyes of a writer. Since the late 1980’s, I have not written a single line of editorial copy that hasn’t been influenced by my residency here. I would say without the slightest doubt, it has been a haven for my profession and there are few if any days that I’m void of inspiration to sit at this keyboard and compose until exhaustion. As Thoreau basked on the shore of Walden Pond, I watch over The Bog with equal admiration. I can never be removed from inspiration, as long as I have this forest nearby to wander in from sunrise until past midnight; bathed in sunglow during the day, and attired in an eerie, poetic wash of moonlight in the cradle of time between late night and early morning. I see a marvelous town full of interesting people and curious architecture. Great artists have painted here, great poets have recited here, great authors have composed here, and great musicians have performed here. Great lives have been created here, great careers have been initiated here. Just as many fulfilled lives have been invested here. This is why we live here!
Ongoing entries published in this blog journal, about life and times in Gravenhurst, Ontario, Canada, from a writer’s perspective, will take you on some Thoreauesque walks about my Walden Pond, and on visits to some other familiar places we find quite inspiring about living in the urban community of South Muskoka.
Until we meet again.
For those who complain about the Gravenhurst of 2007, and its shortfalls as compared to other communities of a similar size, I’d like to yank them back in a tumbling time-travel a century or so, to see if they would like life here any better. Maybe back forty years. Seventy years possibly. Or by springing forward forty years or so. Would they have any less to complain about than at present? It has always surprised me a tad, as a resident here for almost twenty years, how the naysayers never really find satisfaction with life here, yet they refuse to move somewhere more appealing. I have a few issues of complaint, from time to time, but I’ve had those in every other locale in which our family has resided. If for example, the business community decided it was time to put the naysayers to work finding workable solutions to all the alleged shortfalls of main street commerce, it would I believe, be a watershed moment in Gravenhurst history. The business community has been at odds with itself and the governance of the day for decades, and I don’t really expect a resolution any time soon. This isn’t nearly as important as recognizing that we need diverse opinion, opposing concepts, disruption in commonplace from time to time, to instill new plans, better ideas, and future mindedness.
I like Gravenhurst regardless of the critics and doomsayers, who believe it is either expanding too quickly or too slowly. My only concern about progress is that the character of our town not be lost in the process, and yes this is worth fighting for long into the future. When we moved to Gravenhurst from Bracebridge, in the late 1980’s, our friends thought we had lost our mental capacity to reason. “Why would you ever move to Gravenhurst?” What they were saying quite clearly was that Gravenhurst was a town going nowhere quickly, had no ambitions to better its commercial base, and was mired in self-loathing. At first I wasn’t sure if we had made a mistake. As a news editor for The Gravenhurst Banner that first year of residence, I was aware that even long-time citizens were doubting the town’s future, and they were making concerns public such that it was pretty hard to avoid friendly fire; Gravenhurst citizens attacking their own town. I wasn’t used to this coming from Bracebridge, a town reasonably competent at bestowing the positives even if a few of us reporters sleuthed out more than a few negative actualities. While the Bracebridge business community had tough issues with the expansion of the Highway 118 commercial corridor, they kept disagreements within the governing group and committees. In Gravenhurst there was anger where there should have been the pro-active address of lingering, stubborn problems. Issues seemed to be layered over by first anger and then neglect, only to resurface time and again in the same folly. My only question was the “would there ever be harmony in Gravenhurst?”
When I gave up the news business and began freelancing feature material, I started to ignore the headlines and scathing editorials, and began instead to investigate Gravenhurst media-free. Gradually, I learned what many long time citizens had figured out years earlier, and that was to live life to the fullest, and make the best out of the combined qualities, of what has been a wonderful hometown for its citizenry since the late 1850’s….regardless of the hardships and tragedy, successes and failures each decade brings forth. I just refused to allow editorialists to influence my opinion about the true identity of the community. I had to experience it for myself. What I found was a jewel buried beneath the rage of conflicting opinion. The fact that we as a family, found the heart of the community when we did, is the reason we still dwell and I dare say prosper here now. Today we operate two successful businesses from Gravenhurst and have never once felt, or experienced any disadvantage being in Gravenhurst as compared to any other comparable rural community. We have never once believed our hometown to be the proverbial “sinking ship”. It’s the reason that when our sons Andrew and Robert graduated high school here, they decided to invest back in the town that provided them a safe, nurturing home, despite the deficiencies highlighted by the local press, and vocalized by the disgruntled among us. While all of us can be seen at some time during the week glancing over the pages of the local newspapers, we do so for the news and community profiles only; not the plethora of critiques about the failures of this, that and everything else.
Maybe we are idealistic to a fault but we’re chugging along none the less in respective enterprises, finding little if anything to complain about other than there not being enough hours in the day to get everything done. A few times I’ve thought to myself that Gravenhurst was my Bedford Falls, from the Christmas movie, “A Wonderful Life,” and in jest I have probably called my neighborhood both “Mayberry,” after the Andy Griffith Show, “Hooterville”, after the television show “Green Acres,” and even “Petticoat Junction,” a television community where “Uncle Joe was moving kind of slow….at the junction.” In a literary sense, it is remarkably similar to Stephen Leacock’s fictional Mariposa made famous in his book, “Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town.” While it might seem to some a slight of protocol, rude, or uncomplimentary to refer to one’s community as a work of humorous fiction, I never once, in reference, intended it to be derogatory. They were all places for one reason or another, I adored, from T.V. Land, and facing the parallels between fact and fiction, by golly, isn’t it true to life that every community has its share of characters and unique situations….. that might at times appear the work of a scriptwriter on a roll? I have always gravitated toward the truly eccentric characters cohabitating in the ballywicks I have spent time. We’d be a pretty dull hometown without our present share of colorful, opinionated, action-full characters, to make the rest of us dullards look more interesting. Like the movie (and play) “Our Town,” we need to appreciate the composite, the mural of respected individuality, partnership yet community that unfolds in pockets, in boisterous gatherings and generally around us every moment of every day; since the 1860’s, and of course these have been the amazing “days of our lives!”
Most of us preoccupy with our own immediate family matters, and those of the neighborhood but forget about the “actuality” of a constantly changing and diverse dynamic of town existence. Yet when there is an emergency, a family crisis, an economic disaster for someone or other, it’s truly pleasing to the heart, to witness how this dynamic contends and adjusts to the problem; comforting those in turmoil and fundraising to avert an otherwise imminent collapse. I’ve watched this community close ranks many times in recent memory, around someone or a family in need, a child in a health crisis, a neighbor in distress, or a displaced family left homeless the result of fire;…. and felt a sense of awe that we are very much a caring, compassionate, pro-active community regardless of the faults some folks love to play upon. Despite what you might read about the ineffective work of local politicians and the infighting in the business community, the weighty number of town critics and protestors as far as the eye can see, well, there’s a beating heart under all that verbiage and all it takes is getting out there to find it up close and personal. Even the harshest of critics, the most distant politician, and the seemingly indifferent civil servant, can be seen working at a fundraiser, side by side a sworn half-adversary, tending a Communities in Bloom garden project, carting donations into the Salvation Army, and generally being good citizens. So who really cares about occasional adversity, even fundamental disagreement, as long as everyone pulls together during those moments of greatest need?
Our family has explored every nook and cranny in our town. Admittedly we may be a little oddball about our most adored places to visit, such as local cemeteries and fly infested swamplands; open pastures, forest trails, and rolling, winding country lanes. We are including photographs, taken by son Robert (given lessons with a digital camera by our family friend, Fred Schulz) taken of places we love to visit in Gravenhurst. Some obvious locations we share with everyone, and there are other images of mysterious portals where we stare out, undisturbed, at the workings of our home town.
I have always looked at Gravenhurst through the eyes of a writer. Since the late 1980’s, I have not written a single line of editorial copy that hasn’t been influenced by my residency here. I would say without the slightest doubt, it has been a haven for my profession and there are few if any days that I’m void of inspiration to sit at this keyboard and compose until exhaustion. As Thoreau basked on the shore of Walden Pond, I watch over The Bog with equal admiration. I can never be removed from inspiration, as long as I have this forest nearby to wander in from sunrise until past midnight; bathed in sunglow during the day, and attired in an eerie, poetic wash of moonlight in the cradle of time between late night and early morning. I see a marvelous town full of interesting people and curious architecture. Great artists have painted here, great poets have recited here, great authors have composed here, and great musicians have performed here. Great lives have been created here, great careers have been initiated here. Just as many fulfilled lives have been invested here. This is why we live here!
Ongoing entries published in this blog journal, about life and times in Gravenhurst, Ontario, Canada, from a writer’s perspective, will take you on some Thoreauesque walks about my Walden Pond, and on visits to some other familiar places we find quite inspiring about living in the urban community of South Muskoka.
Until we meet again.
