The Haunted House at Birch Hollow

There is the chill warning that a winter storm is now coiling itself into a tight fist, somewhere beyond this afternoon’s soft golden horizon. The temperature has warmed slightly since noon, when the air was still stingingly bitter as it was at first light, when I first broke trail through the newly fallen snow of the evening before. After only a few steps down the lane, my beard was silvered-over with frost, several clumped ice veins forming in the mid section, pretty much as a doomed sailor might have looked on the ill fated Franklin expedition, in quest of the Northwest Passage.
The wind has picked up and every now and again there is a steady, frigid blast that casts a trillion sparkling ice crystals at this window pane, the air current shaking the house as if to remind humankind, about the limitless power of the immortal to do as it pleases. Even the flame of the oil lamp on my desk flickers-about in the draft, coming from a less than perfectly sealed window.
There is a great sense of expectation and wonderment watching storm clouds gather over the horizon tree-line. I have lodged in this same protected place, in view of the lilac and raspberry garden planted in our front yard, watching the seasons mature through the year with their unparalleled exhibition of fire and brimstone; yet their gentle and soothing sunrises, and sentimental sunsets dear to our hearts. I’ve watched as summer storms have blasted this house, so powerfully that at times, I’ve succumbed to fear and offered latent but humble prayer to spare this watcher of Birch Hollow, and the family huddled within. I have braced myself at this desk during the most frightful November gales, rushing in off Georgian Bay, and Lake Muskoka, and recorded my observations on this keyboard as if my last will and testament. I’ve looked out this window and watched the snow being driven horizontally, penetrating like knife blades, deep into the wood-frame of Birch Hollow, and wondered aloud to anyone within earshot, whether the roof would hold against this brutish January wind.
I have survived these many encounters with Muskoka’s seasonal moods and rigorous transitions, and confess to adoring the opportunities to witness these natural occurrences, mostly from the safe haven of this alcove study, just inches beyond the snowdrifts and frosted panes that enhance this view from here.
The dulling light, so intense and crystal an hour earlier, has been tempered by a thin layer of cloud, and the sharp, dark lines of tree and shadow, are faded spirits now as the weather pattern intensifies over this frozen bay of Lake Muskoka. The wind gusts are more frequent and flurries have begun out over The Bog, soon to sweep over this half-buried abode; beyond the barren old lilacs and scraggly raspberry canes weaving back and forth this moment like a great loom in motion. I have just now increased the lamp wick to provide more light, as sudden darkness outside has changed the mood in my office. The stormfront has now arrived in Gravenhurst, and in only a matter of several minutes, the scene outside has changed from a brilliant sunglow to this near blizzard white that might bury us now in its fury.
I can only see the very edge of the garden now which is only a few feet from the window pane. The snow is being driven intrusively against the glass, and melting in big splashes as it hits the warm pane. An accumulation has already built up on the window ledge and I expect the trail, from the house to the main lane, will have to be cleaned several times this evening to keep it passable. There is growing anticipation about these sudden, often violent storms, and it’s possible to over-react to the bluster beyond the fact of what stresses are actually being placed on the physical structure. There is enough heart and soul within to save this place but without these timbers to protect me, the watcher shall quickly perish in the arctic embrace. Now for example, I’m seriously wondering whether the roof will hold this burden of new snow, on top of what has already been deposited so far, during this winter-pounded month of February 2007. I listen to every creak and curious other knock in this cavernous room, and hope against hope I can at least get through this storm to another clear sunrise, before I’m forced to don mountains of gear, in order to shovel off the roof.
Through all the expended fear and trembling I still reside safely in this comfortable portal, enjoying the warm glow of lamplight, and the spectacular show of weather upon earth. I feel honored to be in this position to watch yet another storm sculpt over the land, and look forward to the vista when the bluster has finally subsided. I have been privileged to watch hundreds of storms etch down upon Muskoka, and within each there is a spiritual light, a legend to be retold.
The awe I possess for nature keeps me vigilant, watchful and guarded. It would be a fatal omission of sensibility, if I was to venture out into this twisting, malevolent storm today, blasting down over our weak mortal grasp of life. I might not make it to the end of the lane before being struck down and frozen into a pathetic heap, to be drifted over until the release of late spring. I would be thawed from winter entombment just as these lilacs in front show their first bumps of new leaf-growth, and the trickling melt makes its life restoring flow from the rooftop to the garden below.
I shall always be in awe of nature until the day when it finally penetrates this safe haven, clutching me from this mortal coil, the last paragraph of one life, the commencement thusly of yet another.
I dim and extinguish the lamplight now and have my heart set on a hot cup of tea, and a more settling sojourn by the hearth, where the cedar fire sparks pleasantly into night.
How contently I reside, and write in this ever-enchanting, alluring embrace of Muskoka.
Good afternoon, dear friends. Thank you for reading this latest blog submission.

Please visit my other blog at http://www.gravenhurstmuskoka.blogspot.com/

Not ready to let go of the Bracebridge I knew – and adored

I could get into heated debates with most of the new progressives these days that are bound and determined to scale away all signs of the past. The imprint they want is that of 2007 to 2050, and if they could get rid of all signs of a past having been lived and I dare say even enjoyed, they would bulldoze it into a decaying pile of useless, rotting nostalgia. There are a few of us historical activists who thrive on this tired, musty old sentiment and refuse to accept the future without the bracing precedents of the past.
I arrived in Muskoka in the spring of 1966. We left the urban jungle for life in the hinterland of Ontario. Our new home was a small recently constructed bungalow on upper Toronto Street, and my father was employed by one of the well known, and historic, lumber companies in the region. Shier’s Lumber. The Junior hockey club was known as the Shier’s Lumber Kings. While the founder of the lumber company, J.D. Shier had passed away some years before the arrival of my father, it was still very much a respected name in the building and supply industry.
While it took a couple of years to get the lay of the land, and make enough friends to fully integrate into the neighborhood philosophy of play, I knew from about the second week in Bracebridge, that it was going to be a decent home site. Sure, there were a few adjustment moments, like getting past the schoolyard thugs. While I had a few antagonists at school in Burlington, the toughs in Bracebridge were much more numerous and pugilistic when settling a territorial dispute. Rather than dredging up a fair number of dust-ups that didn’t go in my favor, suffice to say it wasn’t long before I’d earned their respect by placing a number of well executed boots to the groin area, when my opponent(s) least expected a lower level assault. I learned it from the city school. So while I got off to a rough start in my new hometown, it was to be expected afterall. Word got around that the Currie kid was okay and gradually the bullies set their sights on a few others with less kicking prowess and I might say, accuracy!
I have always been an intense observer-type who spent a lot of time examining the characteristics, the events, and townsfolk of my new neighborhood. While most people these days seem oblivious to the day to day activities in their ballywick, I found it all so entertaining. I had shortcuts that put me within earshot of hundreds of backyards and by golly, the stuff I heard and witnessed could fill a tell-all book three times. I saw the best, the humorous and the controversial. I watched wives toss husbands out of their abodes, and I listened intently as they begged their spouses to re-consider. I saw booze-inspired donnybrooks where the bagpipes sounded the call for retaliation, no kidding, and I watched in awe as mothers dragged their sons home by the ear, and daughters (sisters) laughed and laughed and laughed at the sight.
It had the same characteristics as any home town. Some events were tragic and many twists of fate brought forth the kind of unsettling circumstances that affected the whole town, not just a family or neighborhood. There were community gatherings and sporting encounters that were just plain good hearted fun, and there were those impromptu gatherings in backyards on late summer nights, when neighbors talked on and on about the good old days. I remember laying in the cool grass at midnight, in the front yard of our apartment at 129 Alice Street, the only way to chill from the stifling humidity of a July heat wave. As I listened to the residents of the apartment talk about day to day stuff, gossip and offer-up tell-all confessionals, I scanned the universe for signs of extra terrestrial life. Four or five of us apartment kids would congregate for these late evening vigils planning our lives in the heat of the night.
When I witness all the allegedly progressive changes to Bracebridge these days, I can get as intense as those over-zealous days of childhood. The changes now are creating a deep chasm between the good town that was, and the urban life and times we are still, as a district, unfamiliar. While it’s difficult admittedly to expand and improve a town without sacrificing some relics and safe havens of the past, it seems to me that very few who have initiated this transition, gave much thought about the sacrifice of town identity; the characteristics of neighborhood and family history ingrained over a century. The most recent sacrifice of Jubilee Park, to accommodate a new university and college campus is a case in point. A neighborhood known as “The Hollow,” with considerable heritage and identity, dating back to the early tanneries and the houses for laborers constructed there, was changed forever by the stroke of a pen, selling land that should have remained parkland forever. There was only a small group, the innermost circle of the power elite, who knew differently, and only shared it with the constituents when it was, by and large, a done deal as they say. While there was debate about land use designations, and official plan requirements, set backs and sideyards, geez, not one councilor or proponent of the project, had anything to say about the heritage and identity of that neighborhood being sacrificed, as if the park had meant nothing to residents for over a hundred years.
It is the fault and ignorance of local government when the essence of community goodwill of an established, time honored neighborhood, is overlooked in the quest for the almighty buck. The decision will adversely alter this old-town neighborhood forever, and council showed absolutely no regard for the best interests of this small parkside community. The Hollow neighborhood was thusly hit with something “historic” for sure but in many cases, to many homeowners, the impact is just shy of tragic. They are told by the master builders of the new cityscape that they had better get with the program or die out with all others who resist progress. A few of us die-hard Fezziwigs question selling-out our rural values and our small town way of life in exchange for the promise of prosperity. Fezziwig was the Charles Dickens’ character in the book “A Chrstimas Carol,” who refused to sell his business to the new “vested interest,” preferring instead to carry on with the traditions and kinship of a small family business. Fezziwig’s reverence to “small is good” and “traditions are important,” has paralleled my own philosophy these many years; and indeed because of my personal miring in the past, alas I’m also part of a dieing breed, who cherish the values, the virtues of small town life and times.
I think the main street of Bracebridge is becoming a rather sad domain these days, far removed from the intriguing place it was when I spent my Saturdays haunting its corridor. If I couldn’t be found anywhere else in town, my mother knew to call down to the five to a dollar store and have staff send me home for supper. I spent a lot of quality hours staring in that store aquarium and budgie cage, and checking out the dinky toy display rack that was everso appealing to a dream-consumed kid. It wasn’t ancient times. It was the 1960’s. The 1970’s for God’s sake. The changes since have been profound and I hardly recognize parts of the community any more…. and I don’t think that’s necessarily a good thing. As the town sprawls out with malls and box stores, the main street, despite its most recent makeover, has become an intersection between the business nodes, and of a greatly diminished economic entity. Why?
From the founding business leaders in Bracebridge, the main street corridor was owned by those entrepreneurs who operated the businesses within. Today there is a greatly reduced number of building owners who actually run commercial operations. They’re landlords not retailers. When a business owner lived over the commercial establishment they tended daily, there was a greater devotion to their home neighborhood; Manitoba Street. From an historical perspective, the founders and developers of the community from the 1860’s onward, were investors in main street commerce and it can be documented they were also the political elite. There’s nothing like having the political elite as residents, to properly represent the rights and privileges of the neighborhood. If there were government and economic development officials living around the site of Jubilee Park, it is unlikely the park would have been declared surplus without much deeper and wider debate.
The main street of Bracebridge now, due to huge commercial pressure elsewhere in the community, is destined to a harsh and lengthy economic decline. If the business and professional leaders of the community were major property owners in the historic area of the mainstreet, commercial development away from the centre would be much different than it is currently….just as it was held in check for decades by what many called “protectionism.” Main street investors then did not want business expansion away from the downtown core, and I was one of the reporters in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, covering debates about the new stresses being placed on the main street, by proposed development planned for the Wellington Street, Highway 118 urban corridor….an old pasture where I used to skate in the 1960’s. Today it is, in my opinion, an urban eyesore, that makes Bracebridge look exactly like a thousand other small communities that believed strip malls and urban sprawl were signs of economic prosperity. They sold their souls so to speak, for the promise of economic well being. Without question substantial and ongoing profits on investments were made but what has been left in the wake. Urban sprawl contaminating a rural community in one of the best known tourist regions in Ontario!
While urban expansion is needed and beneficial, and it would be foolhardy to ignore the dynamic of growth, the course it has taken in Bracebridge will test the resolve of downtown merchants, loyal to the first business community, to hang on for the rough ride of commercial disconnect coming like a hurricane. I wish them the best. They can count me one of the unfazed, unfaltering supporters, who believe a community’s total well being rests with the health of the place where it all began….the mainstreet.
I enjoyed growing up in Bracebridge because, I suppose, it didn’t have the trappings, the hardships of city life. When I was playing minor hockey in Burlington, in the years 1963 to 1966, my games were held as early in the morning as 3:00 a.m. at both the arena, and the Kiwanis open air rink. When I think of my poor father driving me to those games (we had no practices because of ice shortages and expense), watching us play in the shivering cold, driving me home, and then having to be at work in Hamilton by 8:00 a.m., it was a dedication of time I will never forget. In essence it was a reality of city life. Everything seemed to be a hustle and bustle. When we moved to Muskoka in 1966 my games were Saturday mornings from 8:00 a.m. to noon, evenings through the week, with actual time for practices….all indoors at the Bracebridge arena. I liked my days spent in Burlington only because I grew up in a tight-knit neighborhood in one of the oldest parts of the fledgling city. In our Hunt’s Hill neighborhood, in Bracebridge, there were many similarities to what I had left in Burlington. There was however, no hustle and no bustle. Over time, this lack of city-characteristic was what I adored most. I guess it is what I fear is being torn away by those who fail to recognize that urban expansion is like releasing the proverbial genie from the bottle. The Pandora’s Box……piggy-backing one speculative venture on top of another at the expense of the mainstreet.
The population of Bracebridge is not doubling. Speculation is however, operating at break-neck acceleration. The shopping venues now and in the immediate future are not proportional to the day to day material needs and desires of the permanent population, and the seasonal visitors have many of these same venues in their own hometowns, in a much larger format, diminishing the relevance of having more of the same here in the Ontario hinterland. “Build it and they will come,” is the operative statement these days, and it all seems a hell of a big gamble to a way of life we have enjoyed in Muskoka for all these years. There are few urban planning experts that would give the downtown core a prognosis of good future health under the present stresses being placed upon it in 2007.
There are many consequences ahead for Bracebridge councilors, who will be held accountable for the negative side-effects of urban sprawl and the creation of development nodes where woodlands and pastures should have been preserved. If they believe they won’t be held accountable, or that the citizens today will forget who helped forge the path for urban sprawl, this historian has made copious notes all along to facilitate future reference when the need for historical overview is required.
I never thought Bracebridge was so lacking in economic sustainability that it needed to expand over God’s half acre, now requiring new transportation initiatives to connect the nodes. If the same capitalists and speculators had put their money into revamping the mainstreet buildings, or replacing them with newer, higher level structures, instead of sprawling outward, we would have a concentration of dynamic enterprise, in sensible, efficient buildings still in the traditional, easy to access downtown. And while expansion outward is inevitable, we would have, at the very least, a strong, resilient core to spin the commercial wheel;…. unlike today when the faltering hub is going to unbalance and wobble the whole community. In this case Bracebridge has the distinction of being like many other communities that neglected the health of their main business corridor. Their historic business centre. The place where it all began. The street adored by our tourist friends.
The Bracebridge downtown building owners and business community need to adopt a more aggressive approach to deal with this huge decentralizing commercial force before the nails are pounded in to the proverbial coffin. Some say it’s too late now! I say there’s still a chance for strong revitalization. Take it from the historian….the tourism industry is our number one financial contributor to this region, and as it began with the mainstreet business dynamic, it can continue, by the thorough recognition visitors wish to experience history and tradition…..and few get really excited by the strip malls and box stores they see every day in their own hometowns. The true Muskoka experience as it has been from the earliest days of tourism, is inseparable from the good graces of the natural lakeland. Thank you for reading this most recent blog submission from a passionate Muskokan.

What they miss on a Muskoka walk – I cherish with all my heart

I can’t remember one moment in my life thus far, (51 years in this body anyway) when I have found it tiresome to be in the company of unspecified enchantment(s). My mother once said to me that I looked at life through the eyes of an artist, and wrote with the heart of the poet. We count on mothers to say things like this, during moments of frustration and discontent. She had high hopes that I would eventually become a best selling author for all my hours spent huddled over the typewriter. Maybe I should be disappointed I haven’t achieved great acclaim as an author, yet as I’ve written frequently in these blog submissions, at the very least, “I’ve led a writer’s life.” By this I mean, my enterprise of immersion, observation and perpetual wonderment at all things surrounding me, has been reward enough for my toil in the profession.
I’ve sought it out. As a child, wandering the Burlington ravine where Ramble Creek meandered through the thickets of live and decaying vegetation, toward the stone-laden waterfront of Lake Ontario, I quested for signs of the “fantastic,” every step I took. I watched carefully for signs of ghosts and wee beasties lurking in the cavernous and dark places under outstretched boughs, and in the morning shadows fingering along the creek bed. I kept an open mind about such paranormal stuff through every play moment and creek-side frolic. I was allowed to freely wander the sun bathed lowland of my Burlington neighborhood. I was in paradise. A place of grand stimulation to every molecule of untapped imagination; a place to explore where nothing was entirely as it appeared, and magic was cast about like the sunglow dazzling down through the canopy of hardwoods, like gold veins exposed across the forest floor.
In my early days, wandering with a gypsy’s heart, I knew that my truest satisfaction on any day, was to be amongst these soft, thriving ferns; in the midst of the cheerful melody of windsong and waterfall, and the trickle of the shallow creek’s flow over the exposed flat rocks that made a perfect bridge from here to there,…. on the way to nowhere in particular. It didn’t matter to me that this little wooded ravine was in the midst of an expanding, soon-to-be city, Burlington, and that one day it would be stripped of its vegetation and replaced by an urban jungle. I was too young to know about urban sprawl but astute enough to find the importance of memorizing the experience, as if a mural study of the way things used to be here in paradise lost.
I don’t take anything for granted around me these days, especially those values of Muskoka community life I happen to adore. Change is rampant here now, and it seems that everything I have particular admiration for, gets gobbled up or knocked down sooner (than aspects I deplore), by the eroding wave of progress. I’m always making mental notes I suppose, although it’s not what I intend to do when I set out to walk the mainstreet, or sit in Gull Lake Park for a summer concert night on The Barge; one of the most fascinating, beautiful nights of entertainment you can spend in my hometown. I guess to some degree, I even worry about losing The Barge concert series, should political will to preserve it diminish in any way. I hate losing precious traditions, and sources of inspiration, and for my wife and I, spending our Sunday nights through the summer at Gull Lake Park, has become an end-all to a summer well spent.
As I used to wander and dawdle along the Ramble Creek ravine, seeking out every vestige of mystery and magic, I’m not much different today, as I amble slowly along my daily path from home to mainstreet and back. As a writer who frequently feels cursed by creative enterprise, I confess to observing my surroundings as almost a last will and testament, as if every venture could be the last biographical chapter. I worry a lot about Muskoka’s welfare these days and with considerable justification.
I have pondered many times that it would be helpful at times, to be able to turn off the adventurer’s quest of discovery, and just take an uncompromised, otherwise unremarkable walk. At no sacrifice of enjoyment of course. Alas, it is not possible. Just as it was impossible as a youngster to separate thoughts of the fantastic from the clear context and knowledge of reality. I could of course see each leaf and fern for what it was in nature,…. yet I never doubted these same plants could be the protective shelter from daylight, for Queen Mab and the midnight revel of fairies and their kind.
Think of me as foolish and disconnected from the mainstream of observation and dissection but I steadfastly fall upon the advice of author Washington Irving, who worried about the failings of tradition and lore by the exposure of precise science upon all the mysteries of existence. He wrote about the dissection of the elements of nature, in order to identify what properties of nature give and extend life. While not dismissing the relevance of science and its exactness to help man fully appreciate nature, he cautioned that it was important as well, to possess equally, the elements of intrigue that stir our imaginations from complacent thought. Iriving thought life would be a dull existence without the fantasy of keen imagination and expectation; a poor partner however, of this new study of life science. Afterall, what would the scientist, even today, say to the keeper of lore, who believes with heart and soul that fairies still haunt the woodlands.
If you, for example, stand out in this moor I call The Bog, for even a short period of time, you can imagine all sorts of mysterious events and sounds unfolding in dark, heavily wooded pockets of the gently contoured earth. When the crows are agitated in the early morning here at Birch Hollow, it’s as if they’re chattering about my intrusive footfall…. the unwelcome watcher in the woods. They will flutter noisily overhead as distraction, and perch directly above and “caw” with a ripping reprimand for the voyeur’s unwelcome entry into their domain. At once you take notice and look up, and recognize you are being closely watched by a half dozen wise old crows possessing the treetops. There are strange natural sounds the traveler tries to identify, as coming from friend or foe. There is a tree for example, that has made the most curious ticking, knocking sound for the past two years, and I have yet to appreciate why it emits any sound at all. Even after close inspection, all I can attest is that it is a “noisy” tree. Enchanted? Possibly! It ticks away whether in wind or the still evening air, yet there is not overlapping branches or tree top that would explain the rhythmic tapping all day long.
Throughout the day these often subtle enchantments will carry-on, defying the observer to identify the precise cause. The change of light and intensity, from morning until moonlight bathes across the scene, always manifests a profound change of mood, reflected by a certain fear and trembling of all mortals in its embrace. I cherish my walks in these haunted woods.
I can’t imagine even one day spent separated from this over-active imagination of mine. I couldn’t survive for one day without the company of expectation and passion for exploration; whether it is a pleasant stroll from snowy churchyard to corner store, or hike along the lakeshore to the pinnacle of cliff that affords such a startling view of golden sunset on a tranquil bay. I would be lonely indeed, without the partnership of enchantment, that challenges me each day, to look beyond the obvious, and regale the natural and the supernatural, as I benefit from the beat of a heart; alas I’m have remained the captive of childhood wonderment, of which I’m happy to remain thusly fettered.
Think back to that wild imagination you had as a kid. Now go and find it again, give it a good shake, and make up for lost time. Being young at heart isn’t just a cliché. It’s the science of emotion. Life’s too beautiful to be under-explored.
Thanks for participating in this blog adventure at Birch Hollow, Muskoka. More to come.

Apathy costs us all – watching from the sidelines as our Muskoka hinterland destroyed

It’s groundhog day and in reaction to a large meeting of the world’s leading scientists (today) to discuss global warming, it seemed the perfect time to chastise local government, AGAIN, for short sightedness in the home district. How can we fix a global disaster before making things right in our respective neighborhoods? Just some thoughts on how we can defend Muskoka….our own environs in certain peril!
With all this enlightened thinking about global warming and ecological well being, can we expect that a few local politicians will rise from their seats at council tables, to demand an end to urban sprawl across the Muskoka landscape?
Will just one politician rise and ask, “Why do we need this condo project in Muskoka?” “Why do we need this box store?” “What are the benefits to the environment of a strip mall?” “Don’t we have enough shopping opportunities already?” “Over-retailed,” is it possible?
I would cherish the day when a local council decided that there is more to Muskoka’s future than purely economic development.
Muskoka is a district ripe for exploitation. There is NO ceiling to development; new initiatives by government to appease development interests can change plans with surprising ease. To think we’ve got limits to growth in this region is nonsense. There are few iron-clad plans without built-in wiggle room.
When I think about local government today, and what they represent in our respective communities, I can’t see beyond their far too flexible economic development interests. It seems everything is to build-out, expand, and make bigger as an illustration of community dynamic and progressive enterprise. I don’t get the impression they spend much time examining social issues, such as needs of the local food bank, homelessness, social well being of the citizenry generally, and I can’t remember the last time I read a story about councilors cracking down on local crime and the sale of drugs in public places. I do hear about their dealings with developers and planners and other related empire building strategies but I wonder if they occasionally read about local occurrences of crime, and truly appreciate that city building causes city problems. Some urban experts might wish to suggest that local politicians start upgrading their education, to know the increasing social requirements of a large population and crime problems experienced by all expanding centers in North America.
I get the opinion that local elected representatives don’t get the full picture because they’re not tuned in to the right channels. When they re-locate an urban park, such as in the case of the recently sacrificed Jubilee Park, in Bracebidge, (now to be used as a university campus) they don’t talk about the negatives of robbing one part of town to pay off another neighborhood….as if in their wonderland they can do whatever they want “consequence free”! And when consequence does rear its head, well, the folks who got us in the mess have retired from politics or departed this mortal coil.
When a golf course was being constructed near us a while back, residents in our neighborhood would comment to us about the wolves, foxes, deer, bear and owls that had been coming into or around their yards. Gads, isn’t this great. Just like going to a zoo except it’s in our yard! Do you think one, just one elected official, would ponder before glad-handing such a mega project, what “habitat” means. What “declining habitat” means to all life on this planet. So while many in our town were tickled silly watching increased animal traffic particularly in the immediate area of construction, our family felt sick seeing the creatures displaced from their habitat, and found no joy seeing homeless wildlife looking for lodging like intruders in their own region.
I have stated quite publicly that I am not anti-development but I most certainly do not approve of developmental speculation that is running rampant in our region at present, affecting far more habitat than ever in Muskoka’s history. Our permanent population does not justify the urban and residential expansion, unless there has been a huge undetected migration to our region…..that hasn’t yet showed up in the grocery store cue which is pretty thin in the midst of a Muskoka winter. Maybe all the new property owners are in the tropics for the winter. Investment properties you say? If the new development in Muskoka was representative of a population shift, that would be something significant; more accurately is the statement, “if they build it, they will come!” So screw habitat in the name of “let’s build something else we truly don’t need!”
If I was to ask a local politician why we require this present orgy of development, they would more than likely quote some developer….. who may have uttered a profound comment like, “you want to prosper don’t you….you surely don’t want your town to roll over and die because you won’t except any new development?” As a long time reporter I’ve heard it all. Just not statements like, “Well, where will these foxes and wolves find habitat if we destroy this forest?” “Where will all the frogs and snakes and little critters slither to, when we tarmac over this lowland.”
I find it offensive that we are welcoming economic development to our region because it’s offered….not because it’s exactly what we need but because it just happened by when “we needed something, anything that looked progressive.” If our elected officials in Muskoka, don’t make environmental, ecological stands soon, and give the heave-ho to plans that don’t suit the wellness and recovery of our hinterland, we will be forced to deal with the same-old-same-old of every expansive urban area in the world. It will be at the expense of our tourism industry which, if this historian’s memory serves correct, is still after all these years, the number one industry in our entire region. Many of our visitors and cottagers contend with urban dilemmas at home, and don’t require an added measure of the same on their retreat into the hinterland.
I would like someone, a politician even, to tell me how in God’s name, a new shopping mall will help maintain the quality of life for my children? How it will companion with the environment to make the world a better place? The forest? If it had been conserved for its environmental contribution instead, would have assisted our capability to survive another generation. Maybe the biggest problem our elected officials have these days, is thinking beyond tomorrow and the next day. What they are facilitating today is a much quicker demise of the natural world whether they are enlightened enough to believe it or not.
I would like in the future to be able to take my grandchildren on a stroll through a Muskoka woodland and not hear a jackhammer, an earth mover, a nail gun, or smell freshly rolled tarmac; or see the ugly backside of a shopping mall rise through the woodland mist. I would like to think environmental conscience will one day share equal attention in the proceedings of local council. Being a progressive community might one day be synonymous with “ecological protection,” “conservation,” and “healthy environs.” I dream of the day of sensible proportion, when development isn’t just the lark of land sharks and speculators.
Thanks for reading this blog installment, and if you experienced some flames coming out of your monitor, it’s reflective of the chagrin of this writer-historian….watching helplessly as another acre of Muskoka is sacrificed out of greed not necessity.


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The Ghosts of February – Muskoka’s stormscape

In the last dim light cast into the woodland, from the street lamps that line our lane, the wavering veil of snow flurries now settle across the landscape in gently painted strokes. The more rigorously twisting sprays of ice crystals appear in a ghostly pirouette, rising slowly, eerily from deep within the darkened moor….as if vapor from a boiling cauldron. The moor, this lowland across from Birch Hollow, becomes so poignantly haunted when the snow blows in off Lake Muskoka, in waves against the border evergreens and gnarled old hardwoods, down hard through the dried marsh grasses and brown, fractured cattails.
As a frustrated landscape artist, I decided to use pen and notebook decades ago, when it became apparent my descriptions in words were much more exact to what I was witnessing, than any attempt I made by brush and paint. I would stand out along the Lake Muskoka shore watching a winter storm lash down at the landscape, and I could imagine Canadian artist Tom Thomson, holed-up in some protected alcove, sketching the windblown scene being sculpted west to east, with perfectly contoured, iced-over snow drifts against the dark green cedar ridge.
I wished my interpretations, oil upon canvas, with furious, determined brush strokes, had re-created anything that resembled the storm in flight. I confess to writing about the landscape as a second choice to the art interpretation I longed to perfect. I spent hours as a youngster perched on some rock ridge or valley rim, mentally sketching what it all meant. As much as I could sketch a tree and shape a hill or hollow in the landscape, at best my work was in the rank and commonplace of “pretty pictures” for the sake of drawing. There was so much more to these vistas than hard lines and snaking water courses; crystalline waterfalls and leaning birches. It has been said of Tom Thomson that his paintings could inspire feelings of isolation, loneliness, coldness and awe, such as his well known depictions of the Northern Lights from his Algonquin vantage point. Some critics have argued he portrayed the spirit of the lakeland as no other artist since; as if he was a partner to legend and lore.
I have a great and enduring appreciation of artists and their work, whether impressionistic, true to life, a sculpture that depicts life in transition, or a creation of folk art that captures the essence and innocence of time and environs. As a collector, I possess hundreds of paintings and art pieces, crafted by artisans I deeply respect. I wish only, in some way, they could have been generated by this admirer’s artistic proficiency…..the painter “me” instead, the creator of fine art.
Over the past decade I have written hundreds of short literary pieces which I call my landscape collection, and I have composed each as a separate art panel, written just as an artist would apply shape, texture and coloration to canvas by parallel enterprise.
On this winter morning, for example, with its twisting, dancing shrouds of snow moving quickly across the lowland, the artist would find immense opportunity to interpret spirits in revelry…. on this final day of January, in the year 2007. I find myself attempting to describe this spiritual merging of nature and legend, and fumbling about for the right words; much as a painter unable to match paint hue to sky blue, dark gray of shadow and striking white of snow and daylight. Words I fear that can never truly paint the essence of such visual, natural beauty unveiling before me. How can I capture for posterity the enhancements of this scene, without appearing the self-absorbed poet, the novelist lodged in the quagmire of lowly pulp fiction? As the voyeur stands at once speechless, staring into the tempest of a Thomson storm, then so gently easing to the gentle offering of an Algonquin autumn, a spring lakeside, or stirs again in the compelling presence of “The West Wind,” this writer can only cradle the hope, of one day finding the words to relate parallel experience with such profound reaction.
I remember making a claim, in a biographical piece back in the early 1990’s, that my mission as a writer, along the path of this mortal coil, was to one day be able to write about a particular landscape, a natural event, storm or mirroring lake, as well as Tom Thomson would have applied paint to board during those definitive Algonquin years. I can not today find even one piece that attains Thomson’s competence, thusly it remains this writer’s holy grail…..,to one day read-back a journal entry, and feel that it was absolutely representative of what I witnessed in the field. There are times when I feel the mission is simply unattainable and my work a misery of missed opportunity. The curious other side has been the mission itself, and the energy within, which seems an enduring fountain of interest. Despite so many failed attempts to deliver what I believe to be “a perfect canvas,” (written as it is) it always seems so much more important to endure whatever self loathing arrives in company, to carry on the same regardless. I can not simply look out over such an amazing vista and remain uninspired, or disinterested in putting the scene to print. If there is any real hope I might one day attain this elusive success in interpretation, I imagine it will be the result of this perpetual, seemingly endless pool of inspiration, as if spirit-sent, to maintain these vigils….even at the risk of one day freezing in the statuesque pose of “forever watcher in the woods.”
It is strikingly cold standing here, overlooking the work of wind and snow across the bog-land. Even though I’m protected by the willowy boughs of evergreen, and the ridge of woodland above the marsh, there is a sharp needle of ice striking painfully upon the flesh of toes and fingers, reminding the watcher how dangerous it can be to get lost in the ecstasy, the fantasy of a winter storm. It is worth the experience of frost and stabbing wind, to watch this world transform; the powerful gusts of wind breaking off snow burdened boughs across the bowl of this earth, sending plumes of crystal ice spiraling into a ghostly mist back up into the silver sky of just-now daybreak. You can’t witness this stormscape for more than a few seconds without wincing in mortal awe about the true rage of nature upon itself in this magnificent triumph of transition.
It would be impossible, without being witness in actuality, to truly appreciate the resolve of nature to transform itself, however violently we might perceive, toward its own new reality. How small and insignificant our mortal will when backdropped by this behemoth master of the universe.
What if this raging storm now, was to entomb us in this shimmering ice field? What final adjectives would we use to describe the beginning of the end.
We all need to pay more attention to the nature of which we are a junior member.
Thank you for joining this final blog entry for January 2007.


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