WE SHOULD ALL BE PROUD OF OUR GRAVENHURST HERITAGE

I have often bragged boisterously in these blogs, that Gravenhurst is well represented by its small but significant colony of active historians. Admittedly an aging, sage bunch of kind folks, who have devoted so much of their lives, to ensuring our heritage.....not just built-heritage, is conserved for future generations. The Gravenhurst Archives Committee, in particular, is a group of conservators and historians who busily catalogue our heritage photographs and graphics, documents and journals, that document how we have grown as a community. They have been the spark and generation of at least three important historical compilations, letting us all have a glimpse into the past we should know and care about. That our kids should know about and celebrate. If there is a worry we have, as historians serving our community and region, it’s the keen awareness of the void that could follow, as nature takes its course. It’s one thing to have such a wonderful asset, as historical record, for all to benefit from, but quite another to guarantee a healthy perpetuity to the conservation and accumulation of archives material, long into the future. If I casually suggest to councillors of this fine town, that they don’t know as much about their community as they should,....... well, they don’t get back to me as I’ve come to expect. Regardless of their unfortunate memories of high school history classes, they must understand the implications of having such an important collection, and appreciate fully that there is a shortage of apprentice historians mustering in the wings. The Archive Committee’s long-serving commitment, has given us a terrific collection we have largely bypassed, and minimized in value......ignoring what could be a pivotal, valuable resource in the future promotion of this community......our hometown.

We have quite a few working, thriving historians in this community, who have a great wealth of information to share......as partners, associates, and neighbors, not simply as teachers of history. At times when we get down about the economy and ponder the future of the mainstreet, we should delve into the past for at least some of the answers. We’ve invited the public to comment. Give the historians a shot at it. You might be surprised to find that historical precedent and future mindedness are linked by logic, such that it isn’t so hard to predict the trends of the future, if you’re truly aware how it has all happened in the past. Historians anxiously bounce on their springboard of information, just waiting to be asked their opinion.

We have to stop thinking about history as something to be placed in a box, or museum for posterity. It’s not just for showcase viewing, and a wee bit of revenue at the end of the day. It is a living history, and we are it! Letting the genie out of the bottle, in this case, is the right thing to do, at the right time to put it to work.

We have dropped a lot of pride in our community due to neglect and in-fighting. From conflict to redemption is the very next chapter in our history. Are we prepared to olive-branch ourselves into a new future-mindedness, with help from our old friends.....the keepers of the past?

It will depend entirely on local governance to sense the net worth of such co-operation.

WHAT CHARLIE WILSON TAUGHT ME ABOUT HISTORY - CHALLENGE, CHANGE AND THE CIVIL WAR

I so very much wanted to arrange a meeting between my old historian-friend Charlie Wilson, of Wilmington Delaware, and my historian-buddy, Tom Brooks, of Gravenhurst. Charlie was enthralled by the study of the American Civil War, and I often regaled him with stories about discussions I’d enjoyed with Tom Brooks, a truly dedicated and accomplished Civil War historian, living in our midst here in Gravenhurst. I hold Tom in high esteem, as both a writer and historian, and I would have loved the opportunity to sit in the middle of a conversation between these two “storied” gentleman. Now that would have been “historic” even for an historian like me! As a journalist Charlie had front line experience dealing with many breaking news events, covering a wide range of actuality, from race conflicts to large scale protests, politics and just about anything else a reporter on the beat might find front page material. In his elder statesman years he became a stalwart archivist.....and a good one. And he loved to talk about his latest research projects. I just salivated at the opportunities he was being offered, to go deeper and deeper into his state’s heritage.

Charlie and I got together as researchers, originally on a topic far from the battle for Little Round Top at Gettysburg. In fact, we were pulled together by a mutual friend / employer. It was back in the mid-1990's when I was employed with Charlie to help research a sports biography of Roger Crozier, of Bracebridge, formerly of the Detroit Red Wings, Buffalo Sabres and the Washington Capitals. I had written a small feature publication on Roger’s hockey career, back in 1994 or so, and it appealed to the folks where the former all-star goalie was working at the time. Roger invited me to participate on the larger book project. It was being promoted by MBNA, where Roger was a senior executive. Charlie, a well respected former journalist, outstanding researcher, was also put on the project from the Wilmington side. For a couple of years we corresponded three or four times each week, and after the research was completed, we still kept up our calls and emails. When Charlie did come up for a visit, we didn’t have much time to do anything but work, not enough time to pull together a decent social meeting with Tom. I thought Charlie would be a regular visitor up here. Things happen, you see. Unfortunate things that change our plans.

While we were supposed to be working on Roger’s bio, we did borrow a bit of time to talk about history, journalism and particularly the heritage of the Civil War. Suzanne and I have long been smitten by the movie “Gettysburg,” of which Tom played a re-enactment role, on the side of the South (Tom’s soldier character is actually mortally wounded twice in battle .....but that’s Hollywood.) He signed our copy of the video. I’m not an expert on the Civil War but I love listening to historians speak of the battles, and events that changed the direction of the war......and the course of history. One evening I was able to arrange for Tom to speak as part of the lecture series, at the Muskoka Lakes Museum, in Port Carling, and I can honestly say, the audience was spellbound.....learning just how many British subjects, Canadians, had enlisted in the American battle between the North and the South. I love an event, as such, when people appear to be honestly amazed by what they hear, and learn about......miles upon miles from the truth they had long believed about Canadians,......which they had wrongly assumed were only reading about the conflict from afar. Versus being hale and hardy soldiers in the great marches and charges, having participated in so many landmark battles. I’ve never run into Tom that he hasn’t engaged me in some short, meaningful discussion, that I think to myself, when we part, I need to know more. Much more. And if, like my critics argue, I am pompous and arrogant as an historian, he is so much the opposite; so much more accomplished and confident with the vast amount of information he possesses of life and lives past in that Civil War context. It is what any historian should aspire to, and be willing to dedicate to research, and understanding, for any subject of special interest.

Charlie Wilson came into my life, at a time, when I was admittedly at that proverbial crossroads. I realized that I needed to possess the enthusiasm, to invade a subject area, live it, chase it down, devour it. If, that is, I wanted to know my topic in its most intricate and dimensional sense. Not just from one angle or two but from every conceivable vantage point. I had to drop pre-conceived notions. I had to appreciate fully that my understanding of certain historical events could be drastically over-thrown by in-depth, no-holds barred research, time and education. Both Tom, without knowing it, and Charlie, who must have suspected he was actually tutoring me, with all my questions, taught me about the relevance of total immersion,...... in order to truly understand something as amazing and complicated as the battles of the Civil War. A lot of what I had done, to that point, was history by sideline reporting. I was good at pouring through the books and documents. There were so many aspects of history that had to be experienced by standing on the spot, where for example, soldiers fell by the hundreds, and rapid-fire explosions tore open the earth. Places where flags fell and were raised again, drums kept the cadence of the charge, and death and heroics were more often than not, one and the same. I had, you see, been an armchair historian to that point. These two gallant gents, who understood the battle cry, the charge, the fallen, the victors, and the victory, had very much influenced me to become involved in the history I was writing and representing.

I took projects, like the study of artist Tom Thomson, back to the lakes of Algonquin. Traversing the same waters as Thomson did, until his death in July 1917 (Canoe Lake). Hiking the same portages, fishing in the same bodies of water.....even standing on the rocks below the Tea Lake dam, to witness some of the wild splendor he’d experienced in those Algonquin years. I stood on points of land where Thomson had been known to stop and sketch, and I sat out on cold autumn nights watching the Northern Lights, just as he had sketched out in the open, being romanced, haunted by the elements he was trying to capture on his paint boards. I went to the location on the lake where his body was found, and I stood up by the memorial cairn, on Hayhurst Point, at Mowat, where he was known to paint. There was nothing written, researched, or illustrated, that could have been more poignant an experience, than being part of that Algonquin spirit, in order to understand what motivated his creativity.....what stirred his emotion. I would stay out as long as I could, during a legendary Algonquin storm, to feel the fear and trembling awe inspires, when the tumult of black clouds, gale force wind and cauldron whitecaps boiled on the lake. Lightning flashes went crashing deep into the earth.

I know Tom Brooks has stood, like Charlie Wilson did in his life, on some of the most memorable pieces of American landscape, important to the events of the Civil War. If there are such things as ghosts, then these two historians would have known them intimately, as the spirited, poetic remnants of a terrible war. And with their immense knowledge, could hear the distant thunder of a long ago battle.....see the same field strewn with the colors of two armies, the bodies of the fallen, the dead and wounded, and the great vision of catastrophe.....of a hell on earth. It was sharing their knowledge of the Civil War, and War in general, that changed my approach, my opinion, about the responsibilities of an historian to abandon arrogance and stubbornness, to respect, and learn instead from the ongoing discoveries of others.......and to never resign oneself that every shred of information has been revealed. The book must remain a work in progress.

I got a call one day, while writing at this same keyboard. It was another friend from MBNA who told me Charlie had passed away suddenly, the evening before. An important mentor was gone. The meeting I had hoped to instigate could never happen. Of this I was devastated. I wondered later, if this had been selfish of me. It was a meeting for my benefit I supposed, because of my admiration for these two military historians, and the wisdom they possessed. I do think they would have become good friends over time, even though their viewpoints and interpretations may have widely differed. While I’ve been an active Muskoka historian for more than thirty years, I know that in their company, I would have been a mere student.... but an attentive one. Appreciating now just how much I didn’t know......and how deficient I was as a result......and how fettered it made me feel, as an historian, to be so lacking in knowledge of these important world events. The Civil War was a glaring example. I was astonished at how little I knew when I first met these chaps. I was a good local historian but crappy in all places beyond. Muskoka’s history was hinged to all other histories. I had some upgrading to do!

It has taken me quite a few years to write about Charlie Wilson. He died not long after another chum / mentor of mine, Dave Brown......I adjusted to the news of his passing by writing a biography. For Charlie, suffice to say that I have been left with many fond memories. Remembrance of so many in-depth discussions about war and peace. Especially the appreciation of how keen he was to learn more, and see everything he could of life. I have known few visionaries in my life thus far but his fascination for continuous learning, with rare future-mindedness, was a characteristic I have embraced whole-heartedly..

When at times my opinions seem harsh and holier than thou, and my embrace of historic precedents and events seems staunchly entrenched, and unmovable, in respect to my mentors in this field, in reality, I am never beyond correction or re-education on any subject.....and welcome new information about any subject. I would rather embrace truth and reality, no matter how shocking and opinion re-setting, than remain perpetually fettered by ignorance. If I am particularly hard on those I have faith in, to lead and represent us, whether on a municipal council or a particular committee, it comes with good intent. The failure to embrace reality in favor of delusion, is a demon I’ve had to face many times. The way to move forward constructively is to companion with a critical approach......that commands a full appreciation of all sides of an equation, a problem, an initiative, in order to understand its true dynamic. I see this often in public life, when elected officials and civic representatives, prefer to position themselves away from uncomfortable realities, versus confronting them and making corrections based on sensible proportion. It’s the clear result from hearing what they want to hear, seeing things as they prefer, and positioning themselves in a safe zone as a means of self protection. Reality, as time, waits for no one. I’ve never known propaganda to have ever won over the rigors of truth and reality.

I wish for all those officials, who embrace status quo, to appreciate that it is impossible to find safe haven for long, from issues that will define us in the future. While the kind of change I write about, must seem dramatic and almost crazy to some, it seems to me a far greater ill, to refuse to budge when the flood of change arrives at our doorstep......as the first drops now appear.

I’ve spent a lot of time studying this town. I’ve watched a huge change in the home district since we arrived here, as a family in 1966. Some of it has been frightening. Some of it has been welcome, and a boon to the local economy. Other development has adversely changed the landscape for decades and longer. Maybe it is a battle with the future that I see, from my front-line experiences, and what I fear, is that while we should be prepared for development surge, we are still mired in petty squabbles, and fettered ridiculously by hard feelings and a long antiquated status quo.

I have studied for decades as an historian. I am my own harshest critic. I pay attention to those I believe know more, and are better informed. I am a messenger. Not a philosopher. I sometimes see our town as a future battlefield of values......economic, environmental, where there will be many future clashes about the transition of Muskoka into a new suburbia.....a trend, that to some watchers, has already had a twenty year head-start. Huge new urban stresses will challenge political, economic, and environmental will in the coming ten years. The problems of the downtown business sector will pale in comparison, to the behemoth of new investment initiatives that will be coming from the urban jungle. As I’ve written about before, there is no alternative to enlightenment. As Charles Dickens prophetically noted, the new vested interest of the expanding industrial revolution, would change the world forever......and those who opted to remain loyal to the old ways, would die out with them. Time waits for no man!

This may seem a far stretch from an opening discussion of the American Civil War, and the kindnesses bestowed this historian by two knowledgeable chaps.....but it is my own guidepost in ongoing work as a local historian......and while it is not the study of war.....it is the examination of the rigors of change upon us all, that affect our actions and re-actions; our disconnect at times with what can happen when reality is of lesser concern than a protocol respected. Reality needs to be embraced in this town before it’s too late, and an even greater wave of change is forced upon us.......

I don’t expect local politicians and committee executives, to all of a sudden embrace a local historian, and thank them for all the due diligence they’ve performed for all of these decades......the kind of work that ensures we have knowledge of how history has etched and sculpted who we are today, and the character of the town and district in which we dwell. But believe me, one of the most interesting conversations you can have, is with someone who has a passion for knowledge, and has never equated money with the ambition....... to be good at the task of respecting and representing times past. And if you ask them, well, they can predict the future.....based on their knowledge from then to now and beyond.

My lack of respect for certain outdated protocols, my bluntness, and unapologetic high regard for criticism, doesn’t make me a cuddly, “says nice things” member in good standing of any mutual admiration society. Seeing as I’m not the flattering sort, just to make others feel good with pleasant chatter, I don’t get invited to parties.....ever. I’m good with that! Yet every now and again, I will run into a kindred spirit, (also not invited to parties) who knows the allure of the unknown, and the rabid curiosity of discovery. Folks who would like to re-enact history a lot, because they feel bloody short-changed about missing such important world events.......just because they were born too late.

WHY NOT CHANGE THE NAME OF GRAVENHURST?

I must really love Gravenhurst. Because I’ve never been more irked than lately, at the way it is being portrayed......as the Muskoka community in dire straits. What it comes down to, is the determined handiwork of the complainers, etching out a new town motto. “The sky is falling.....the sky is falling.” (Apparently only on Gravenhurst) Get over yourselves. Broaden your horizons. Get a global perspective. This is 2011 you know.

Over my cold, dead, with outstretched arms, body! And those of my family, and every historian and longstanding citizen’s cold, dead, body will anyone succeed in changing the name of our town because it doesn’t sound customer-appealing.

Just heard a little feedback about the recent public meeting about mainstreet woes, and the suggestion our town’s name may be a tad unappealing to visitors. Was this a joke? An anecdote to get the juice flowing? I hope so!

That’s why I get the big bucks to debunk stuff like this. For those who think historians are a cuddly, fuzzy, amicable bunch, just try to change the name. Then find out just how Ninja we can get. It would become the full degrees of democracy.....the right to make such a suggestion, and our right to pound the mole back into the hole.

It’s what can be expected from a public meeting, about a strictly business matter, and while the intent was probably well meaning, if there were no investors in that audience, interested in locating a new business onto our main street, it was nothing more than “busy work,” antagonizing to some, entertainment to others, and a forum for the nonsensical, offering limited, narrow solutions to a situation the media calls “dire.” The only thing dire is the increasingly narrow perspective by some, who believe a street mall, for example, is the cat’s arse of success. And by the way, in this case, limiting democracy to an hour and a half, or so, makes perfect sense......just not in Canada. I’m in Canada right? Just wondered. It was a pretty clear example, just like the all-candidates meeting in October, that control is the name of the game. It was an event for appearances more than substance......on a strict budget of time. Why is this again? A meeting that started at dinner-time, ended when most meetings in the real world commence.

One day, when a council representative is wandering about the downtown, and would like to talk, free of business community mantra, please drop into our music shop for a chat. Just don’t mention that you agree with changing our town’s name, or suggest that we are part of the dire situation of the downtown.....unless of course you wish to engage in some hearty, honest debate about what is truly oppressing the main street. It’s not because of a name, that’s for sure.

If you truly love Gravenhurst as our family does, you’ll realize that nothing is better than heartfelt respect, and dedication to hometown heritage, to inspire revitalization......in spirit first, as appears most necessary at this time. It’s not in the name

BIA AND TOWN - A LITTLE BIT LIKE A MARX BROTHERS COMEDY

I have just found the perfect visual aid, to try and explain what I think of the BIA dealing with the Town of Gravenhurst, and the members of the public who think they know how to fix what ails the mainstreet business community.

Just look up the Marx Brothers Hat Gag, from Duck Soup. There it is!

MY REPORTING JOB WAS TO FOLLOW FRANK AND STAN - I CAME TO ENJOY IT

When my dad died just over a year ago.....and you’ve heard or experienced something similar, I realized how much I didn’t know about the former North Atlantic sailor - former undertaker’s assistant and lumber company manager. Lots of things I wanted to know but never asked. I vowed it would be different for my boys. I’d simply answer the questions before they thought to ask them. Ever since Ed’s demise, I’ve been busy writing down what I did know about his life, and my mother’s, so that Andrew and Robert can put the finished tome with the family tree their mother has been working on for the past four years. Without apology, I’ve been working on this blog series, in small part, as a sort of biographical inheritance. With everybody so busy around here, accept me, I thought it a good opportunity......for my grandchildren, at least, to make sure they have a skeleton of information about their long departed family members.....and of course dear old grandma and grandpa. Some of the stories aren’t the kind to be shared at the dinner table. I’ll warn them and you in advance.

This morning there’s a streamer coming in off the lakes, and at times I can’t even see the driveway for the February squall. It’s quite attractive, here at Birch Hollow, and the snow laden birches, and shadowed footpath across the The Bog, appears as if it is the work of artist A.Y. Jackson. The frame today is my office window. I have been reminiscing lately about my early years in writing, and thinking back to how I began in the print industry after graduating university. It was an awkward, unconventional start that you might have heard or read about in the old days.....when reporter’s wore “PRESS” cards in the bands of their trademark fedoras. Biographies of industry cronies who got their start in the mail room and worked up through the reporting ranks on to editor.

While it’s true I fancied the idea of being a published writer, I didn’t really anticipate starting out as a cub reporter for a small circulation, once a week publication, that at times, cost me more to go to work than I got in my pay packet. It was a hardship believe me. But like the French Foreign Legion, where one could join-up, to hide in anonymity,.....well, I went to MacTier to forget about the girl who had just dumped me for a classmate. After five years and the expectation Gail and I would get married, after university, suddenly I was alone (I found out that she owned all our friends). I buried myself in work all day. I hated the music on the radio. I still hate those same songs all these years later. I came home and went to bed. I repeated this for that first year on the job. I hated being alone. I was one of those pathetic males who couldn’t go anywhere with anyone without saying at some point, “This is where we used to come to get an ice cream cone,”......or something like that. I wrote poems instead about being an outcast and bitter, dwelling in a big old house......yes, where Gail and I used to hang-out. Gads what a year that was!

I know that it was a necessary break-up. Gail had found Toronto to her liking, and I couldn’t wait to get back to Muskoka, diploma in hand. If we had stayed together I would have likely remained forever in the urban jungle. It makes me cringe just thinking about it. Even though I was born in Toronto and raised until the age of eleven in Burlington, when our family moved to Bracebridge in 1966, I felt liberated by the hinterland as I do today. But it was that first couple of years back at home, after the rigors of university and city life, that required patience and a fair bit of healing. I went from having a hot chick on my arm, to hustling around with a camera bag over my shoulder, in only a matter of days. I cursed, I cried, cursed some more, took some photos, some notes, cried, and well, as my dad used to say, “soldiered on.” The following is a reminiscence I’ve written, in summary, several times previously. This is the version I hope my sons will find interesting one day, when they try to figure out why the old man was so weird.

I started in the reporting business in January 1979. I had just opened a small antique business in Bracebridge, finished up a local history research project for the Muskoka Board of Education, helped launch the Bracebridge Historical Society, and Woodchester Villa and Museum, and framed my degree in Canadian history from York University. It didn’t prepare me for the mitt full of hockey score sheets tumbled onto my desk that first week, on the job in the MacTier office of The Muskoka Lakes / Georgian Bay Beacon. It was my job, as a rookie and only reporter, to decipher the scribbled scoresheets and make them into sports page summaries. As you could hardly read the scribbling, I made a lot of spelling mistakes with player names, and heard about every one of them an hour or so after the paper hit the newstand.

My other job was to chase fire trucks. I had once owned a Polaroid camera but the toughest thing about that was affording and then re-loading the film. The boss handed me a 35 mm Minolta, some film, and sent me off down the highway to get a couple of accident-scene flicks. Talk about experience by immersion. I screwed up the hockey scoresheets for the first ten editions and messed up a lot of film. They didn’t have a line-up of second-string reporters, in the wings, so I guess it was a case of putting up with the misadventures, due to lack of available personnel. They probably figured the local kid would stop screwing up sooner or later. If he could graduate university he could figure out how to use a camera.

I got to stand in cold arenas, along stretches of local highways covering weekly traffic accidents, spent quality time dancing around weaving and bobbing firemen, at house and brush fires, and sat in a stupor for four and five hours at council meetings, trying to find a few newsworthy items for the front page. At one Muskoka council, hell, they used to ask my opinion on decisions they seemed reluctant to make. I wasn’t sure I was entitled to an opinion but I played along. I got myself in a lot of messes back then, like not knowing the difference between receivership and bankruptcy, which very nearly got the newspaper in hot-water when the story came out about a local businessman in peril. And then there was the reality, that in the middle of phone interviews or typing the big news stories of the week, I also had to tend the office supply portion of the MacTier business. You know what? University hadn’t prepared me to handle one blessed moment of my new job. I’m not sure where one would attend, to learn about puking discreetly, while at an accident scene, never missing any of the important actuality. Many times I had to exit quickly to gain composure, in order to come back to the scene for important photos and to make notes. I used to run back and forth to the nearby bush to regain composure. I’m so glad the emergency personnel didn’t pick up on this.......and if they did, they saved it for station house anecdotes.

Every time I heard that town siren I got queasy. I saw some terrible things out there on the road. At times you wanted to scream along with the victims, or plug your ears.....and I’m sure all the first responders felt that way a lot. The first head-on collision I went to, on the Highway 69 “S” curve, put me on my ass in the first two minutes on-site. A car had smashed head-on into a tractor-trailer and the debris field was massive.....the odor of burning fuel toxic. But it was the sound of the man trapped in the car that made me sick to my stomach. When they put the jaws of life to work, the release must have caused him severe pain because the scream was blood curdling. I was down more than I was up at that accident scene. The firemen didn’t know whether I was a casualty of the accident or the rubber-legged reporter.

I had never thought much about my own transition in the business, to be able to tolerate such horrible scenes. One afternoon, a few years later, I had to attend an accident in Muskoka Lakes. Two people had been ejected from the car, and when I got there the bodies were covered with a yellow tarpaulin. There were three reporters from the press at the scene.....(we all had emergency scanners at our offices), and one of them was a new girl who had never attended an accident before. She was acting pretty tough and I knew it was a front for being scared. She went on and on about stuff, while my mate and I stood reverently to the side. Then a substantial gust of wind lifted the tarp, exposing the two deceased on the tarmac. From rosy cheeked and bubbly, she went ashen to nauseous, and also disappeared into the woods behind. While you never get used to it, or at least I didn’t, there was a point of traverse between covering council happenings to road carnage that seemed a well trodden down and familiar path. It was a job. Like all jobs, some aspects just suck. I didn’t hate the calls as much as when I had begun.

I remember being at one terrible accident and looking down, at one point, watching a stream of blood washing against my shoe. It was then that I saw a distraught friend running to the scene, falling and screaming up to the wreckage. I had to leave. It was the last accident scene I photographed. I knew both of the young people killed. I was a writer, not a reporter.

When I got to follow M.P.P. Frank Miller, and M.P. Stan Darling around West Muskoka, it became a welcome reprieve. Both politicians were gentlemen and they treated the press with respect. Frank had known my father Ed for years, and was always kind to me at the plethora of “grip and grins” we covered most weekends. There were ribbon cuttings, anniversaries, birthdays, speaking engagements, club events, and wherever these two representatives showed up, Ted wasn’t far behind. The publisher sent me a list of events on Friday afternoons, and I was to notch every single event. We’d use those pictures over three editions if necessary....but by golly, I never took one of those glad-handing pics that it wasn’t eventually used for some purpose. As I wasn’t a very good photographer, some were a wee bit out of focus.

I’ve written about this before but I can’t forget how both Frank and Stan helped me keep my job. First of all, I didn’t pick up photo-taking easily. I endured many misadventures that, in those days, didn’t rear-up until the Monday afternoon, before press day, when the films were developed. By then, finding out that my flicks didn’t turn out well, usually left us high and dry. I learned how to bracket my photos so I could use different light settings to get at least one usable photo, at the very least. The publisher gave me permission to shoot as many photos as it would take to eliminate the pre-publication panic. Frank, in particular, seemed well aware I was going to screw something up, whether it was a battery failure on the flash unit, or the loss of a pen, or notepad, or something else. So after awhile he would actually talk to me before the group photo, to see for himself what was likely to happen that particular day. Frank would go so far as to help me set up a photograph, and pull every one together into the frame. He’d even help me get all the correct spellings of the folks in the photograph. I don’t know how many times in those years, Frank was my crutch, and photographic assistant at the same time, as he was the event’s special guest....the Member of Parliament.....and the Treasurer of Ontario. I wonder how many other reporters could claim to have had such an important man as an assistant.

Stan Darling was much the same. He was brilliant at public relations.....and had perfected this social aspect of his job. Admittedly he was also concerned about getting good press photos for the regular newsletter (of which I had many published over the years) and he figured the only way to get them from me, was to offer some photo direction and suggestions. Stan was a motivator, no doubt about it. When he thought it was time for the group photograph, no matter whether the host or subject of the party was ready or not, Stan, with a booming voice, would get every one’s attention. I was the first to catch the wink of Stan’s eye that it was time to get to work. Both men had busy Saturday schedules, and on many of these junkets, I’d be with them at two or three other events on the same day. Stan would organize my photo for me, if the others didn’t show the initiative. He was as photogenic as a million dollar model, and he always knew how to look good in a crowd. Stan got to know how many shots I needed to fire off to get some good ones, and it was only when I nodded that he broke rank, donned his fedora, and offered his thanks for the invite.

Frank always had a hard time getting out of events because he loved to talk with folks, some he had known for decades. There were times when I’d have to tap his shoulder to remind him that I was heading down the road for another grip and grin, and that both of us were running late. Stan would already be there and be impatient for “Scoop,” (that was me), to get there as well. While they weren’t always at the same event, I’ve got to tell you, it was great to get so many usable shots on the indoor circuit. I’d gladly fob-off the snowmobile races and ice fishing derbies for the Stan and Frank crawl through my region.

One day, early on in my first year reporting, I met Frank at a local diner in MacTier, about a half hour before the next photo shoot. I’d stopped for something to eat but realized I was short of cash. Frank asked me to join him for lunch, on his dime, and I’m not sure if it was a burger or hot dog, but by golly it was delightful either way. He impressed me because he was just an average guy doing his job for constituents and the province. Frank was a smart businessman and a straight-forward politician. He was immensely patient with me when we were working on an interview. But he took time to chat with a cub reporter and seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say. Actually I think we talked about his son Norman, now our Muskoka MPP, who I’d been to England with, as part of John Rutherford’s famous BMLSS Concert Band of 1974. I’d also played hockey with his son Ross, who I believe was a not-so-bad goalie.

Point is, I felt truly honored, to have had these opportunities, over so many years, of getting to know both Frank and Stan. We shared a lot of cake, cookies, coffee and time out on the hustings, especially at election time. While I didn’t start-out enjoying these ventures, because they were (at times) terribly boring events, gradually I came to appreciate time spent with two local political legends. These were well respected elected officials, I can tell you, and every event I went to, was greatly enhanced the moment they walked through the doors. While I probably expected them to be demanding and a tad cranky with their weekend workloads, they were anything but impatient or uncaring to anyone involved. Even when I suffered equipment failure, both gents were abundantly patient and obliging. Frank would even remind me not to forget my cap when we were about to leave an event.

I only have one regret and it was quite accidental. It is the reason I would threaten to fire any reporter who screwed with copy, as a lark, or made sport of photo orders to get a laugh. It happened a lot and sometimes the joke made its way to print. I’d had taken a series of photographs of Stan at the Rosseau Fall Fair one year, using a motor wind to get shots of the MP enjoying a hamburger....while the chef looked on. I had about a dozen good ones to use, and I thought it would be great to run three or four small, closely cropped shots, on page two of that coming week’s Herald-Gazette. My idea was to use one of him approaching the burger, then biting into it, and then looking satisfied after the first bite. Well, some clown in lay-out thought that switching the order would be neat. So instead, they changed the order I had numbered them, so that the “bite shot” ran as the first of three. Then the look of satisfaction, and then third in the row, was of Stan looking at the burger with a puzzled look.....as one might, who has just bit into something dreadful, or a mouthful of the chef’s hair. As they howled about the sequence on the layout table, Jesus I didn’t think they’d wind up that way in the paper. The publisher hadn’t quite expected it either, and as they were close friends, old Ted had to make a phone call of clarification. Stan, as usual, wasn’t perturbed because the photos were clear and posted with prominence. He didn’t seem to upset about it, but I did suggest I’d make it up to him somehow. I was laughing too hard to fire anybody that day.

The best candid shot of Frank, as I’ve written about before, was at a Huntsville overpass opening. Jim Snow, then Minister of Transport, pulled me aside and told me he was going to take the ceremonial scissors, and instead of cutting the ribbon, would snip off a portion of Frank’s new tie. Jim was a wonderful character, full of interesting stories, and had the kind of twinkle in his eye that meant, to me, he was serious. He let me know that he’d do this on the count of three. Sure enough, on three, with Frank staring at me, Jim dropped the ribbon, grabbed his tie, and took the scissors to the tip as promised. I got the shot. I sort of expect, with Frank’s expression, he knew his associate was up to a prank. Now this was my kind of reporting, all of it memorable and social. There were many times reporters were not treated very well but with these folks, every event they attended had a goodwill attached that was genuine. Including ribbon cuttings like this one.

Knowing Frank back then got me close, for many candid photographs, with Cabinet Ministers such as Frank Drea, Roy McMurtry, and Premier Bill Davis. With Stan and Frank I got a chance to get close to Princess Margaret and Lady Sarah, when they visited Muskoka in the early 1980's. There were many other photo-shoots that Frank and Stan afforded me, over their years in office, that gave me many good front pagers.

I got over the funk of that first year, as an unhappy single guy, in part, because I was occupied with interesting work. I know it may sound overly sentimental, to afford Frank and Stan credit for my recovery, but it was venturing out with these gentleman, into areas and social circumstances I’d never known or experienced in other ways, that was illuminating at a most important time in my writing career. The fact they didn’t blow me off as a rookie reporter was a start. I’m pretty sure in the highly competitive media scrums, newbies don’t get many helping hands to keep their jobs.

Just a bunch of neat memories now. Good for the boy’s scrapbook.

The snowfall this morning has become heavier, since I began this morning journal, and the challenge at this moment, for the writer in residence, is to leave this warm, comfortable, soothing domain, flanked by purring cats and a crackling hearth, to shovel that driveway......that apparently won’t shovel itself.

Farewell for now.

A ROOM WITH A VIEW

It might seem to some readers that old Mr. Currie is a political animal and environmental activist, having no other sport in life, than to ruffle-up status quo. What sometimes gets lost in any great debate or lengthy discussion about local politics, or economic challenges.....or whether a green belt should be hacked down for another box store, is that most of us critic types, are edgy this way because we love our home and region. There are critics of mine who loathe the idea of my writing yet another column about political ineptitude, or downtown business depression, let alone screaming in print (if you can imagine) about some environmental slaughter. They grit their teeth and read as if their eyes were sliding along sandpaper. I love to entertain. I really do like to inform, it’s just that as a freelancer, it’s quite within my rights to opine a tad as well.

Fact is, I love this town and district enough to give a crap, about everything that’s going on here......what you know about, and what I have ferreted-out that, as they say, could “scare Christ off the Cross.” There are times I wish politics could be avoided altogether, and as far as me being controversial, all it means is that I’m less conservative than those who make it their responsibility to present the news. The news behind the news has always interested me, since my days as a cub reporter. I’d be sent out to do a pretty basic story but I’d come back with something incredible, simply because I didn’t buy the official line......the one that was supposed to whitewash everything else. It used to drive my publisher nuts. What was desired and what they got were too different things, and a lot of folks simply didn’t want to be handed the truth on a newspaper platter.

Today I have been watching out the window of my office, and quite enjoying the fact my restorative measures have finally brought new life to the bird feeder. We had to disengage feeding the wee beasties because the deer from The Bog were visiting for lunch and dinner, and causing a real traffic problem here on Segwun Blvd. Having a lot fewer deer now, we have been able to get our feeder back in working order, now a little higher and closer to the homestead than before. What a de-stressing pleasure it is, so far from politics and news hounding, to just sit here with a hot brew, watching the birds dining out.

Thinking however gently, about the next great dust-up I might engage. I’m just too calm now to think past the warm bran muffin with the melted butter on top.

ANOTHER WRITING GIG - AND I’M SO GRATEFUL TO TOM THOMSON

There are times around Birch Hollow, when Suzanne realizes her writer/husband is in the murky mid-zone funk, between inspiration and lack thereof. A sort of self imposed hiatus, or internal exile, from projects that could and should be completed, yet holding-out for something remarkable. Something that will revitalize an interest in an area that offers a challenge and untold adventure. If I have any bouts of depression at all, it’s when I don’t have a big project coming to fruition.

When my son Robert phoned me from Toronto, one day last fall, and asked if I wanted him to pick up Roy MacGregor’s latest book on Canadian landscape artist, Tom Thomson, I knew it was an important re-commencement of one of my favorite research projects. It was only a few days earlier that I had emailed Roy about getting a signed copy, of “Northern Light - The Enduring Mystery of Tom Thomson, And The Woman Who Loved Him,” (Random House Canada) if he was planning a visit up to Huntsville......where he has deep family roots that stretch all the way into the history of Algonquin Park. He said he’d let me know but Robert came through first, with a signed first edition. An excellent read by a talented, accomplished Canadian author/historian.

It was an important book to add to my Thomson reference collection. I had a number of email exchanges with the author several years earlier, as he was just setting out on the book project. I was so darn happy to get the book, I had the privilege of relaying news about the release to David Silcox, (at that time in England) who I consider wrote one of the best Thomson reference books still on the market. It was the 1970's large format, fabulously illustrated “Tom Thomson, Silence of the Storm,” he co-wrote with well known Canadian artist, Harold Town.......one of the first books in my art reference collection. He said he was interested in knowing more about what MacGregor had found about Thomson’s mysterious 1917 death on Algonquin’s Canoe Lake. David is much less interested generally, in how he died, than in the ongoing, robust celebration of his art work......which does, at times, get reduced beneath the weight of investigation into the largely speculative cause of death. After years of pursuing this story, I must confess I do side with David’s point of view, and in my newly revived column series, I plan to write this year for a new publication serving Almaguin and area, there won’t be any doubt about my own true respect for Thomson’s art.......which has drawn me to Algonquin Park for years, just to look out and experience the spirit of this amazing lakeland.

My interest in Canadian art began as a kid. I was turned-on by Thomson’s reproduced landscapes in school textbooks......as well as work from the later Group of Seven artists (Thomson inspired formation of the Group but died before its official organization). The pages of full color graphics were the only characteristics of those school books I was interested in......I desperately wanted to be paddling a canoe, on the same lakes Thomson had featured in his paintings. In my mind, over so many boring classroom-bound days, I traversed all those magical lakes, Thomson as my guide. I was a proficient daydreamer. My mother and many teachers explained that daydreaming would hurt education. Baloney. I have always encouraged our boys to dream large and frequently. Hasn’t hurt them, and it didn’t harm me at all!

The second and most robust introduction into a wider Thomson study, came when I read a feature series, in a Muskoka publication, called The Weekender (circa mid 1990's), by long-time trapper and guide, Ralph Bice.....most definitely a legend in his own time. There were a number of columns about Thomson’s demise, which he believed, without question, was as the coroner, in 1917 ruled.....the result of accidental drowning. Bice criticized those writers who had suggested Thomson was instead the victim of foul play. From death, most likely caused from an unbalanced, upright “peeing over the gunnel” event, while mid-Canoe Lake, (having first imbibed a snoot full of liquor), Bice believe Thomson fell from the canoe, hit his head on the gunnel, and sank to the bottom of the Algonquin Lake. End of story. What caught my attention then, was that Judge William Little had only just passed away, and it had seemed grossly unfair to his memory, to publish this particular column, aimed at a man who couldn’t defend himself. While it was longstanding that the two didn’t agree, it just seemed at that point, a really good reason to start my own mission of discovery. I needed more to read for comparison.

An hour after I had read Bice’s assertion, that Thomson had died by peeing misadventure, I took my usual trip up to the Salvation Army Thrift Shop, in Gravenhurst, and you won’t believe the coincidence.......or, whatever would have fostered the union between myself, at that moment, and a signed, first edition hardcover, of William Little’s “Tom Thomson Mystery.” The landmark book in the Thomson investigation, that advanced the idea his death was the result of foul play. The book is full of evidence Thomson had enemies, a love interest, not to mention (after his death) a rogue body in a supposedly empty grave (according to historical record). It was this confluence of opinion between Judge Little and Ralph Bice that started my long relationship with the Thomson story. Now add the newest revelations from Roy MacGregor, revealing his family connections to the story, and intimate details about the artist’s relationship with a local woman. (First alluded to in the book he wrote, entitled “Shorelines,” a work of historical fiction, but somewhat closer to reality than we readers initially recognized).

I will be doing a more thorough review of MacGregor’s book, for an upcoming issue of a new Almaguin Publication, I’ve recently been asked to join. I’m absolutely delighted to be working on the Thomson story again. It is by far the most widely published and personally enjoyed research projects I’ve had in my 30 year career. I’ll give blog readers more information on the new publication in the near future.

As for my longstanding assertion that Gravenhurst is a great place to write.......live and work, this is as homegrown, and home-inspired, as you can get, and I hope it shows in the finished copy. Watch for updates.