Antiques, history, and all the Zen adventure in between –
A million miles traveled on a lark–

Family members who dare tag along on antiquing adventures know better than to ask about destination in the first half hour of a motor trip. I’m a little bit like the late, great showman W.C. Fields, who was legendary for his extravagant automobile junkets to nowhere in particular. He carried enough provisions for several days to a week on the road, stopping for picnics wherever and whenever the mood presented. He seldom if ever gave his traveling companions an itinerary but they loved his company and the lavish roadside picnics complete with champagne and caviar.
Not being quite as affluent as Mr. Fields, we tote along much plainer food and beverage but we do think our picnic locations are just as scenic and invigorating as his entourage enjoyed. When our boys were younger, we had to take along a wide array of treats and time-occupiers (games to Lego), and any other offering to appease the unsettled. Even through the winter months out gad-abouts carry-on, sipping hot chocolate instead of lemonade, and enjoying a selection of homemade Christmas cookies instead of
ice-cream cones. While we don’t drive through blizzards, we very much enjoy winter travel; as much, in fact, as outings during gentler seasons.
My wife and business partner Suzanne, asked me one day if I had any Nordic region relatives, to explain my passionate, everyday embrace of Thule; the wanderlust to explore toward infinity. Just recently I’ve been looking into my family tree and although I can find Irish, English and Dutch, (a Sandercock on my Grandmother’s side, a Currie from Ireland, and a Jackson from England) there’s nary a Viking connection. So why do I wander so?
I have never liked being cooped up whether at home, school or in the work place unless it is of my choice. As a cub reporter, working for the Georgian Bay-Muskoka Lakes Beacon, back in the late 1970’s, I let this “Thule thing” ride shotgun, as I spent a lot of time on the road chasing stories and photo ops. I didn’t mind working in the office for short periods but it was on-the-road where I got the biggest buzz. I traveled every inch of road throughout Muskoka in my years as a roving reporter, and my mileage claims must have reflected this insatiable appetite for seeing the sights. The publisher used to give a Homer Simpsonesque “Doah!!!!” when I’d submit the monthly tally. I did however, get a larger number of spot photos of accident scenes and fire calls simply by being in the action, versus sitting waiting for a source to return my phone call.
When I decided to start my own antique business, after my first attempt with a family partnership ended with “who are you calling stupid….stupid?” Good times! When I opened Birch Hollow Antiques, in our livingroom, stuffed like a pimento into a tiny olive, my new partner Suzanne and I agreed to make this a life-long enterprise from the beginning. It was a business that needed to be worn like a skin. It was as much a part of our lives as home and family, pets and hydro bill. Our mission early on, was to make it work-in with our life and times, not falling victim to what can easily become unwieldy free enterprise. This was in the fall season of 1986. We have moved numerous times since and had a mainstreet Bracebridge storefront during one insane period of our lives, when we thought this would bring about stability and in tow, prosperity. Gads, how could we have been so wrong. My Thule started acting up after the second week. I was trapped like a rat and although business wasn’t bad, I needed my freedom.
I can remember so clearly penning out future plans for our business, sitting behind the counter watching the clock tick my life into a thin, failing vapor, attempting to sculpt a simpler, more adaptable retail enterprise that would concentrate business, lessen daily costs and of all things, reduce hours of operation. Long before I knew about the possibilities of online auctions like ebay for example, I had actually become quite visionary; a business model well ahead of its time. As I was still using an antiquated Smith Corona typewriter, and longhand to compose my newspaper submissions (I hated computers more than being confined), it was laughable to even suggest that one day our business would become by and large “virtual,” employing every dynamic and reduction of in-house labor, I planned a decade in advance.
What about this Thule thing?
As we are amongst the cyber-space business community now, with flexible time and adaptable agenda, I’ve never been happier (except if I was allowed to have a motorcycle to go along with my favorite book, “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.”) On weekends my wife and I (the boys after years of traveling have settled down into a guitar shop in Gravenhurst), grab up our traveling supplies, and make the destination contingent on our mood at the time. In our overly structured, robotron lives, what a true pleasure it is to set out at sunrise with no particular place to go, just an open road ahead and a passion for sightseeing. I like to linger at hole-in-the-wall country shops, and do not feel at all compelled to live up to any schedule that isn’t of our own unique design,
I have always appreciated that antiquing was a means to an end. I have been a lover of history from childhood, a Viking in spirit, and a collector by obsession, and each time I set out from our Muskoka home here at Birch Hollow, the world unfolds at our beck and call. There are times when we strap the canoe onto the old family truckster, just in case we pass a particularly alluring lake or river, and opt to enjoy a hiatus from one adventure, to paddle another. When we were actively camping in Algonquin Park, I used to make many stops along the way north and east. I’ve got pictures somewhere of our campsite adorned with antiquities purchased at the two or three shops between Gravenhurst and the West Gate of Algonquin Park. I’d have paintings propped up against the campsite evergreens, artifacts, crocks, treenware lined up on the picnic table, as if a pioneer cabin exploded and this was what was left behind. I always had a vintage oil lamp or lantern to add light to the evening’s nature vigils. I have traditionally put my interests into one lump enterprise; each adventure comprises elements of historical education, antique investigation (and possible purchase), and outdoor education. I’ve enjoyed the Muskoka and region at every time of the day, every month of the year, and in rain, snow, or heat of day. I’ve seen Muskoka in the midst of storm, in the warm glow of autumn sunset, sculpted in drifting snow, and dazzling with the morning dew. I’ve stared with profound awe at the hilly miles of country lane stretching ahead, and been held spellbound by the painted woodlands of late Septemeber.
Many times, as we settle at a scenic roadside park, such as the picnic area at the locks on the Muskoka River, near Huntsville, we dine for a wee bit, lounge according to our prevailing exhaustion, and possibly we will read aloud for entertainment, from one of the antique books we have just acquired between here and there. We have set out pieces of crystal and ruby glass, old platters and bone china cups and saucers on those picnic benches, examining our finds in the best possible light. There is no separation for me now, between the historian, the collector, and the gad-about nature lover, because it all comes to play the moment we commence the next greatest adventure into the hinterland. And while, by necessity we run into the protocol of good business, and must set aside time for the routine exercises of cyberspace enterprise, it makes our escapes all the more celebrated. Each trip to unknown destination, is an exercise in discovery, a treat for the senses, and no matter how many times we travel down these regional roads and country lanes, we never arrive home without having witnessed something spectacular, something out of the ordinary, or met up with someone quite extraordinary.
Associate antique dealers ask me if I miss the person-to-person contact of the old storefront we had in uptown Bracebridge. They wonder how we could ever muster enough business operating on-line only. And my historical cronies, hunched over their research challenges, wonder how I ever get any work completed traipsing all over the place. As for those who read my environmental editorials, they ponder where I gather all these observations about the toll of progress on the hinterland. I have always worked longer and harder in an environs I consider encouraging, gentler, and kinder. This is a case in point. I’m more productive than ever before but none of it seems like work. It’s a joy to get up in the morning and think about the interesting travels ahead.
It all comes down to this uncontrollable, unyielding but to-be-cherished “Thule thing.” I might not be a Viking by ancestry but by golly I’m a convert none the less. I’m living the life of the antique dealer-collector, the historian, the environmentalist, by simple, uncomplicated, uncompromised “immersion.”
Where am I headed tomorrow morning? Honestly, I won’t know until I get back! Every day’s an untold, unfolding adventure. Every day brings enlightenment. Sure, I could re-open a storefront again. Gads, I’ve got enough stuff. But all I’d think about is that ever alluring length of open road and so much expectation left unfulfilled. I have, without regret, chosen a semi-gypsy, half Viking, part W.C. Fields lifestyle, and there are too many adventures yet to come to close out this chapter before every word is spent.
Good luck with your own antique collecting. If you should choose to follow the same road as I have taken, bring along a picnic and we’ll meet-up for lunch.
Thanks for taking the time to read this blog. Feel like a drive some place?