A Long Hard Winter – But Isn’t it Beautiful Here in Muskoka

This has been a critical turning point winter season here at Birch Hollow. It’s been one of those dedication periods of a life, when stock simply has to be taken. My stock. My stuff. All of it jammed into an archives room that was too small ten years ago but I decided to make new acquisitions fit none the less. If architecture could cry this room would be screaming. So it has been two months now of sorting, selling-off, and distributing materials to various organizations, such as local archives and heritage groups. I really burdened myself and our home with all this historical material….but then I am an historian afterall…..apparently an obsessive one at that! Funny, I used to call other collectors obsessive. I never thought of myself as “having to” do anything but obviously I had to have all this assorted literature. There are stacks twenty books high.
This is probably the first winter since I began writing in earnest back in 1977, from my portal onto the world, in the McGibbon home on upper Manitoba Street, in Bracebridge, that I have under-composed in the prime authoring season. I have always been much more prolific in the autumn and winter season…..and would much prefer penning pieces during a howling snow storm than on a calm summer night with nothing but distant lightning flashes and insects hitting the window screen.
I haven’t even been traveling much through the woodlands in our neighborhood this winter because of the treacherous conditions along my old pathway into The Bog. This is of great disappointment because dog Bosko and I spend hours every day wandering amongst the birches and cedars and following the tracks of a thousands critters that make this woodland home. So it is with a heavy heart that I inform readers of this blog that I have not provided much in the way of new editorial material this winter so far but have high hopes for the spring and summer.
One of the biggest decisions I have made in my life so far this industrious winter season, other than to become a senior “roadie” for my two boys’ band and music enterprise, here in Gravenhurst, is to pull away from political involvement and community heritage groups……that often leave me at a loss for words. Sometimes miffed, a little confused and frequently angry about their shortfalls in sensibility and application, I have little will to reform the unreformable. My days of trying to wrench social justice and fair, sensible play from local political representatives, here in Muskoka are over. While I will never give up the mission to save our neighborhood and the environment generally, I feel too old now to effect much change among the dunderheads who believe nary a shrub should survive economic development.
There are too many philosophical divisions between my appreciation and pursuit of heritage matters than the commercial-economic ambitions of historical wannabes….how they paint the historical mural they want to portray to the public….the visitors to the community, the glossy “good time was had by all” image….that is marketable, saleable, to the gullible! My appreciation of history is a realistic mix of life and times, success and tragedy, failure and misfortune, contentment and fulfillment. Honest assessment of what happened here since the late 1950’s is critically important to me as an historian and I won’t be a part of painting a pretty picture of local heritage to please market expectation.
My history is the history of the people who built the community from the first homesteaders to the present. I don’t glamorize the folks with the most money and the businesses that raised the biggest profit. What I do appreciate is the history of the citizens who worked together to build a community….the bakers and clerks, loggers and preachers, the waiters and waitresses, sign painters and candlestick makers. I would rather sit and talk to a descendant of a pioneer furniture maker, farmer, tanner or brick layer than research the construction of a building or edifice…..or quagmire down in the details of local politics and the eras of the big wigs and posturing celebrities, buffoons and assorted glad handers looking to inspire the historian’s pen. Naw, I can’t find myself selling out to the new vested interest, old Fezziwig noted when asked to sell out his life and sense of well being to modernization, technology, and diminishing individuality of place and person, in Dickens “A Christmas Carol.” No, I shall remain loyal to the old ways and die out with them if I must.
I’m much more fulfilled as an historian walking through Muskoka’s pioneer cemeteries than paying to see artifacts in glass showcases in a museum. I am a museum supporter and did found one and help save another in my “wanting to belong years,” but I got tired of being pounded by financial concerns, poor numbers, poorer grant allocations, and volunteerism out the whazoo. My museum days were spent begging rather than researching and developing because it always came down to the almighty buck. Every meeting, all meetings, were weighted with financial burdens. I don’t feel to many burdens walking in the peaceful, historic graveyards, respectfully remembering the good folks who represent the real and important heritage of our region. They were the history makers. The force behind all that happened here. The characters. Boy oh boy, there are a lot of characters represented by these lichen covered markers. Some historians have simply forgotten about the lives and contributions made by these heroes…..and honor artifacts and edifices as if the sum total of history is physical presence only. It is a depersonalization of heritage such that we honor things and buildings more than the folks responsible for their creation and construction. I will always invest in the heritage of people versus “history as a good show.”
All this work in the family archives has made me a rather keen fellow for what I wish and do not wish to do in the future. I do wish to take this book, just recently recovered from mounds of old titles, of Thoreau’s “Walden,” more seriously, especially after my wife has traced her family heritage back to the well known American author. I still don’t believe it but there it is……Thoreau had some Shea molecules in him…..and a really nice cabin from which to write. I’m trying to convince my wife that I should have a cabin to fulfill my writing ambitions……now that kin have verified its value to the creative spirit.
More coming soon. Maybe from a cabin in the woods. You never know!