MUSKOKA BLOG
The old homestead has a wonderful mantle of sparkling white, now that we’ve had the first significant snowfall of the late autumn season. Most of the autumn, it seems, has been spent, rather invested, in many writing projects that have been on the back burner for months and even years. Writers are an odd bunch. Back in my younger days, sitting in front of that old manual underwood, with the fancy scroll work and loud, significant tap, I could write just based on circumstance. It afforded me the vehicle to create, and I was prolific to beat the band. Today it takes a lot more it seems, to pull off the jags of yore, when I might write four or five hours most days. Physically speaking, I can’t handle the same hours. I’m old just not quite so feeble. That’s coming!
Although I played hockey for a lot of years, from about seven years of age onward, and suffered many injuries over the decades, the most injurious activity for the body has been sitting at this keyboard, and all the other keyboards in the past. My wife Suzanne criticizes my posture and I’m pretty sure she’s right about my slouching. I haven’t filmed myself hunched over the keyboard but she does tend to walk through my office from time to time......and observance is her hobby afterall.
I have been willing to endure the aches and pains of long writing jags, just to get a couple of new sites up and running before the end of 2009. One is particularly near and dear to me.......a blog and web site devoted to our hobby of collecting handwritten recipes. Suzanne and I have been collecting these excellent relics of cookery heritage for years but it hasn’t been until the past two years, that we’ve been able to make sense of where it was all going to lead.....we’ve got many hundreds now dating back to the 1850's. Most of the collection represents the Muskoka region, where we regularly hunt and gather collectibles. What began as a happenstance meeting.....falling out of old books we had purchased at auction and estate sales, has turned into a full scale devotion to finding more, explaining what we do have, networking a tad, and trying to broaden our horizons in cookery heritage generally. You can check up on our work by visiting the sites listed with this blog site. It will be the subject of a year long feature column starting this February 2010 in Curious: The Tourist Guide. You can find where it is available by searching online.
The newest blog site for me is my favorite.....because it has been brewing in me since the Christmas season of 1977, the year I finished my studies in Canadian history, at York University, in Toronto, and moved back to my hometown, Bracebridge, Ontario. Filled with vim and vinegar it was only a few months back home when I helped launch a family collectible business, called Old Mill Antiques, and helped establish the fledgling Bracebridge Historical Society, which would go on to found Woodchester Villa and Museum. But what I began writing about was the Muskoka landscape. I used to take long winter ski ventures, that winter season of 1977-78, and instead of hauling the materials the artist would have slung over the shoulder, I took notepaper and pencils to capture the winter scenes in the backwoods. I have always dreamed of being an artist but alas, there has always been a shortfall of patience and of course limited talent. I began writing landscape sketches instead of painting them, and it was perfect for the non-artist to feel part of the creative enterprise, even if it didn’t produce a single saleable art panel. I’ve used portions of my landscape pieces, from that vintage, in hundreds of feature articles, and in two early books I wrote back in the 1980's. So I decided it was time to produce a site where I can finally release the hounds, so to speak, and publish the current landscape work I’m hunched-over at present. While I’m no longer residing in Bracebridge, I’m still very much in the Muskoka woodlands here in Gravenhurst, where our wee bungalow rests on the north side of a wetland, a moor we call The Bog. This is a special location to my wife and I, and all our neighbors here, poignantly so, due to the fact it was nearly sold-off by the town several years ago for a new housing development. We stopped it. The only way I can explain how important this 20 acre site is, to me in particular, is via these landscape sketches published on the blog site . Please take a peak at my newest entries. I’m quite proud of the fact I’ve acted upon a 33 year old ambition. Now if only I could paint. I’m going to give that a whack in the new year.
As we near the Christmas holidays, and I’m divided between another four dandy research and writing projects, I wish now to extend our family’s best wishes for a wonderful and festive season with all the trimmings. Ours will be humble and quiet as usual but always inspired by these beautiful woodlands of Muskoka.

A LENGTHY HIATUS
Yup! I still live in Gravenhurst and I’m still offering scathing critiques of most things political...I hate tax increases and I complain under my breath each and every time I get my water bill. I try to keep my lawn neat.....although it’s arguably a little longer than most lawns in the neighborhood, and I try to be a good neighbor and a decent citizen. And when I’m not mumbling about the run of the mill stuff that just about everyone else blathers about.....well I’ve been working on improving my antique and collectable business mostly, and writing very little except the monthly columns for the travel publication I assist, and adore, Curious; The Tourist Guide. This was a planned 12 month project to get our online business past the mediocre stage and into the realm of what a good retirement business should be. My wife and I have been working on making our antique enterprise a much more dynamic retirement income in the future, and it’s still a wee bit off the level we would both like to ensure the bills get paid with a few coins left over for our benefit.
In fact this has been a good and worthy exercise because we have stepped up our sales and practiced better buying habits than in the past. I’ve simply had to put writing on hold temporarily in order to devote the time necessary to make sure the business lives up to its responsibilities. I began the business for our family back in the mid 1980's shortly after our first son, Andrew was born, and it has been a typical small business since.....earning modestly but continuously. Now with retirement on the horizon, one of the primary reasons we set it up in the first place, it does command a tad more attention than it has received. We’ve been antique dealers and collectors for a long time but retirement always seemed a long way off. Now with about three years to go, there wasn’t much choice but to work harder, longer and more prosperously to get a business that can pay the bills in the future.
Truth is I’ve never really had too much faith in freelance writing.......to be able to pay more than a sundry number of bills at any rate...... but seeing as I am passionate about the creative process I’ve never let the monetary realities deflect interest from writing in general. I have been off the mark this year with my writing projects and I do offer an apology to blog watchers for my tardiness. But there was a good reason......call it economic survival of the antique-kind in the midst of a recession that bangs off antique dealers like sitting ducks at the carnival shooting gallery. I’m planning a very active fall and winter season this year, so please stay tuned for more from our homestead in Gravenhurst, Ontario.

What Father taught me about hometown values - it only hurt a bit
I didn’t have a clue what a "hometown" was until after our family moved to Bracebridge, Ontario, in the spring of 1966. On that first morning, full of fear and trembling, amidst gangly strangers and glaring eyes everywhere, my new teacher at Bracebridge Public School, asked me to stand up and tell her, and my fellow classmates, from what hometown I had haled. In a sputtering, tongue-tied half panic-stricken, dry throated response, I honked out something like.... "I don’t know what the hometown was called but I used to live in Burlington,... Mam," then looking quickly all around before sitting down again, to see who was laughing or angry. No one laughed. Not the teacher. Not a peep from the classroom. No visible anger anywhere They just looked at me, the teacher, and back at me as if waiting for some profound reaction. Maybe I had sounded sarcastic. "Great, the new kid’s a smart ass," I surmised they were thinking.
"You mean Burlington was your hometown, Teddy," she asked, looking down at a piece of lined paper sitting askew on the corner of her desk, which I’m pretty sure was my unflattering biography up to Grade Five. I nodded to Miss McCracken that Burlington had indeed been my home but I was pretty confident it was a city.....so I wasn’t really sure a city could ever be a hometown. "Well," she said with a wink and smile, "I’m sure a city-boy is going to like his new hometown,..... won’t he class?"
Well, for a few moments at least, I felt,... quite at home. Until I got beat-up at lunch by both the girls and the guys, the ones who had smiled at me earlier. I was told the shellacking was a pretty ordinary, nothing special initiation to the "home" school. When I didn’t cry or make any attempt to run away from my adversaries, even after a whole week of fun-for-them initiation, I must admit the "home-town" thing was a little disconcerting. Was this the way hometown life was going to be.....forever? By comparison, Burlington had been a less "giving" hometown because I never once found it necessary to wrestle for acceptance before and after class.
On that second Monday of my new hometown adjustment period, the recess began just about the same as all the others. Only moments in the schoolyard, I was back on the bottom of a nasty little dust-up, and between hooks, jabs and hoofs to the nether region, all of a sudden, as if heaven-sent, there was an aggressive parting of the mob.....a hand clenching my shoulder, pulling me up out of the tumbling humanity of half bullies-half buddies. "Hey guys, let’s play some football," said the tall handsome stranger in the bulky knit sweater, who had spared me another round of "hey, let’s make Teddy feel welcome!"
From the quagmire of feet and fists, this chap they all called "Father," had already picked sides by the time I had brushed the imbedded schoolyard stones from my arms and knees. "Come on son....you’re going to play on this side," he yelled at me over the din on the grid-iron. "One hand touch okay," he asked us, while clearing a little patch in the stones with his shoe, to set the football down for the opening kick-off. "Okay Father......we’re ready," the other team yelled out to the trim and athletic father of some kid. Or at least that’s what I presumed of the guy they called "Father."
Well, he could run like the wind, do pirouettes around us all, leap to make impossible catches, and hand-off to us running backs while making two or three bootlegs to confuse the attackers. If he told you to button-hook at twelve yards, he wasn’t off the mark by an inch. When he flipped out a lateral to an innocent bystander, he knew the receiver would learn by immersion that one hand touch was the protocol not the reality. It was tackle. A big one. But valuable experience
about the significance of Father choosing you to be the lead man on a huge march up field.
Every recess and lunch this nimble sportsman showed up to run another game. Even if you weren’t interested in playing, Father wouldn’t take no for an answer, and pretty soon there was a football in your rib cage and a dozen drooling opponents ready to drive your face into the gravel. You had little to no chance of survival unless your knees hit your chest in a pumping zig-zag down-field to the goal-line.
I can remember a large fight breaking out one day on the sidelines, between several of the more aggressive inmates I had learned to stay away from, and in a ballet of leaps and bounds, Father had jumped in between and wrestled the combatants apart. He had a powerful influence on the young and vigorous because by the very next down, the same still-growling gents were playing on the same team, and very much contributing to the pass and pass and pass offence he employed to keep the came exciting. He had a curious way of bringing the pacifists, the boastful, aggressors, thugs and bashful into a fun game of Canadian football suited to the school yard.
On my own first run against Father, I had a huge head start off a nice twenty yard pass from the quarterback, and the goal-line was a modest footfall away. And then I heard the train coming behind. Feet pounding that rocky turf like a racing locomotive over the ribbon rails. I made the near fatal mistake of looking back.....glancing to see what on earth was coming behind....and it was Father, awfully determined the rookie running back wasn’t going to score. Out of amazement at the unfurling rage of humanity coming behind, I lost my grip on the ball, tried to recover at the expense of knowing where my feet were headed, and the grand arse over tea-kettle spill had commenced. What I didn’t see through the dust and stones flying up, was the Cadillac bumper bullets of the parked car immediately in my future. Somehow Father had grabbed the back of my shirt just as I lost my footing, and I’m telling you honestly, by the grace of God, he stopped my head from hitting the metal. We wound up in a twisted ball of football good humor with my head still stuck awkwardly on my neck. Father also had to pick a few stones out of his elbows and knees but two lives were spared a head-on crash with a Caddy..
Miss McCracken had seen the whole ugly tumble. On the way into the school after that recess, she took me aside, dusted off my shoulders, patted down my hair and said, "so, how do you like your new hometown?" "Ah, it’s okay, I guess, Miss McCracken," I answered. "Don’t be afraid to toss the ball to one of your team-mates," she said about my down-field run. "It’s what he wants you to do." Undoubtedly with a bewildered second glance at my teacher, while passing into the school, she added, "Father Heffernan wants you to play as a team.....remember that the next time." "Father Heffernan?" I asked. I looked at one of my team-mates, who added, "Pretty fast for a Priest aint he?"
What Miss McCracken meant was that Father wasn’t interested in the heroics of the downfield romp but rather the unselfish passing back and forth between team-mates to make the touchdown. Just as he wanted to occupy bored kids with sport, he wanted us to appreciate each others strengths and capabilities. It worked. The guys who had been beating me up ten minutes earlier were now passing and then blocking for me on the grid iron.
There was a moral to the story of my introduction to this new hometown. I had met our own Father O’Mally.....he was a dear man by the name of Father Bernard Heffernan, of St. Joseph’s Church next door. He had been coming over for recess and lunch games for years, and he had very much instilled a prosperous sense of goodwill each time he arrived.
One morning about fifteen years later, I was playing shinny at the Bracebridge arena, and on a down-ice rush I could hear what sounded like a train coming behind, the blades hitting the ice like two axe blades strapped to my opponent’s feet. I got just past the opposition blue-line when, against Don Cherry’s sage advice, I looked back......it wasn’t just a train. In a hook right out of Peter Pan, a gnash of teeth, and a chin on my shoulder, we were both icing our way like a curling rock into the boards. I pulled up onto my knees and started to scream at this jerk who tripped me up.....and well, it came down to this.... "Good morning Father......I thought that was you! Nice to have you back in town.....staying long?" "What gave me away Mr. Currie?" he quipped. "Oh, I don’t know, maybe the crashing to the ice thing," I retorted, wiping the ice out of my eyes. "You should have passed the puck.....your winger was all alone in front of the net," he advised with a wee Irish grin. Talk about the Flying Father. He was a much a hometown icon as anything I ever experienced growing up in Bracebridge....the town straddling the 45th parallel of latitude.
I thought back to when I believed he was someone’s kindly father who just happened to have some free time. Well, he was everybody’s Father, and we loved him.
-30-

Something enchanted about those autumn nights
By Ted Currie
I think we all have those moments of haunting reminiscence, when we challenge our own memories, pondering if they were truly moments lived, or passages of time found in a book we once read, a movie we remember, or a story told to us by another. Like when you are visiting some place for the first time, and feel a strange aura about a neighborhood or particular building, as if you have had some history there but don't have a clue why or when. A few of us will believe it is some sort of re-incarnation event while others dismiss it as a reference of vague familiarity with someplace else in the universe. A coincidence of emotional attachments playing tricks on the mind, you might say.
When I was growing up on Bracebridge's Hunt's Hill, I felt like that every day. I adamently believed that what I was actually living day to day, was somehow pre-determined, making me strangely aware I was living in the past, one foot in the present, the other back in a history I knew little about. I possessed a curiosity about everything around me, much as the reincarnated believer senses personal history from the realities of a presently encountered scene. The way I would one day look back at this childhood and its minute details, was eeriely similar, such that I knew what I would be writing about, decades before I became even modestly interesting in writing as a profession.
This isn't all that odd but what was peculiar moreso, came with my first few columns in the early 1990's, published in The Muskoka Advance (a weekend newspaper), entitled "Sketches of Historic Bracebridge." It became obvious after the first month of columns that I had indeed been a good watcher as a child, remembering things that would be easy for others to forget. Not historical milestones. Emotional history! Feelings about the environs, the people and circumstances of that 1960's community in rural Ontario. Things that in only a few short years, would change forever in the new era of "progress" and urbanizing ambitions even here in the hinterland.
I seemed to know, even at a young age, that what I enjoyed about small town life must be greedily, and heartily consumed. Observed to the finest detail, celebrated and eventually re-told in the decades to come. I believed the memories of that old, kindly, modest neighborhood, were just as important as all the other milestones recorded in the copious notes of town historians. All relevant characterisitics and accomplishments, if only from a kid's perspective, about what made a town a true "home town," and not just a place to hang a hat.
To a new-age town with city aspirations, it has always been difficult for this historian to clearly and unemotionally explain the importance of this perceived aura of goodwill, and why it must never be dismissed as simple nostalgia. I can't explain it other than to say I had a keen awareness as a youngster about the wonderful attributes of a small town's life and times, and an inner worry about the inevitability heart and soul would have no place in history's blunt, modern day reckoning. Nothing was being done to protect the true accounting of the mortal investment of goodwill, that was then the internal economic, cultural force in day to day existence. At at a time in our world when progress is measured by expansionary evidence, I'm afraid up an coming historians might fail to recognize that our communities of the past were progressive by being cohesive in ambition, neighborly as a rule, vigorous in competition, and sensible in proportion. Being small in stature was no detriment to any of the above.
I can remember so clearly playing hide 'n seek in the early evening hours, hiding in the tall, dry field grasses on the upper slope of land behind the old Weber Apartments, on Alice Street, a working class neighborhood where in every house we had surrogate parents to keep us in line. While hunkered down awaiting detection, I'd sit there thinking about the true joy of this old ballywick here on Hunt's Hill, on Bracebridge's east side, and be quite heartsick realizing that these would be memories only in a few short years, as new development would carve out this hillside for another apartment block. Why was a kid playing hide 'n seek worrying about the fate of good memories in the midst of good fun. I was scared enough that my childhood haunts were going to be compromised, and this splendid old hillside carved away, that I instinctively began recording what had been so important that warranted this historical imprinting on the soul.
It was sitting in these tall grasses, looking down on the lights of the old apartment, in this lessening light of early autumn, being comforted by the wind's gentle caress of nearby evergreens on the slope, and the brushing together of the dry stalks, which colored so nostalgic, the personal vantage point of watching one fondly enjoyed season evolve into another. It was as if this September moodiness itself, was striking the chord of deep affection for all that I had experienced of small town life to that point, reminding me at the same time the leaves would soon be falling, the snow of a Muskoka winter not far beyond. It was the change of season then that seemed so powerful and profound, making sense to me all these decades later, when I re-visit the urban landscape that was once an open field with kids hiding here and there all through the live long day.
While some of my associates used to change spots frequently to avoid detection, I would sit there listening to my world manifest, and be intrigued by the soft steps of my mates passing nearby, the rustle of colored leaves in the upper branches from a stirring autumn breeze, and being sensory stimulated in such a delightful way, by the scent of old season growth, the aroma of a soon-to-be turned-under home garden, and the tantalizing smell of someone's tomato canning wafting out a kitchen window. I could sit there for hours drinking it all in, such that in my lifetime, I would never forget the wonderful nostalgia of growing up in a town that was content to be small.
With a large amount of personal contentment, and many fond hometown memories, I've written about these precious moments for about thirty years now. Indeed it seems to make it all seem relevant that I spent so much time studying a time in the town's own history, because I knew it was on the precarious verge of profound change. I still, after all these years, wander about on autumn nights, celebrating memories of old chums and older haunts, aware of the toll of time and progress, aware moreso that no revisionist will ever be able to haul down or destroy what had been so important about the most basic rights and privileges, afforded a young and impressionable mind. The sincere joy of simple things, a season's change, and mates who never tired of just one more adventure.




Ichabod Crane, Sleepy Hollow and Hallowe'en in Bracebridge
By Ted Currie
As the chill wind of late October rumbles and tumbles away the hardwood leaves, rustling them over the well trodden lanes, and the midnight moon shines ominously through the bare boughs of the old forest, it's quite easy to conger up the wee beasties and assorted ghosts and goblins that thrive in local legend.
Like most kids then and now, Hallowe'en was one of my most fondly anticipated special occasions. Most of my trick or treating exploits, on that haunted October evening, came on the tree-clad neighborhood streets of Bracebridge's Hunt's Hill. It could get quite spooky out there, for those with vivid, seasonally invigorated imaginations, hustling about in the dim lamplight of Front and Alice Streets, up the narrow lane of the Richard Street Hill. Onward along the murky Toronto Street sidewalk, we would arrive at a safe portal, with an unobstructed view down into the haunted valley, where the black, snaking course of the Muskoka River has cut deeply into the rocky landscape. Watching over the citizenry, from its brick tower, as the serpent river wound behind the old town's main street, were the four illuminated faces of the old town clock, casting an eerie glow upon the autumn night. They were like the eyes of Eckleberg made famous in the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel, "The Great Gatsby," letting us know with an almost parental aura, that it was time to head back home again. Enough haunting for one night.
Although it is not widely embraced as being particularly important in Bracebridge, Ontario, none the less it is the kind of historical-literary connection that should be more publicly recognized and celebrated. The town has every right to attach itself to many of the great literary accomplishments of American author Washington Irving. It was Irving's book, "Bracebridge Hall," published in 1822 that inspired Postal Authority William Dawson LeSueur, to borrow the name in 1864, as the legal title of a newly granted federal post office in the pioneer hamlet, in the South Muskoka region of present Ontario. LeSueur, a career civil servant with the federal government, was also a revered literary critic, author and Canadian historian, and when he selected the name "Bracebridge," he did so with the utmost respect for the future of the new town, as much as a recognizable credit to a man he considered was one of the finest writers in history. Irving had died in the late 1850's, and as many of his works were being republished in tribute, LeSueur believed that by borrowing the name from an internationally known book, he was bestowing a great honor in the name of the author, his work, and of course to the people who would make this ballywick their home town.
His shortfall was that he didn't leave a clear written statement which would have clarified why he believed this was a particularly important namesake, and why the good folks of the hamlet should have been pleased by the association. The sticking point after all these decades, I am told, is not simply the title he chose without consultation but the fact he shot down their choice, which by consensus of the few settlers at the time, was to be duly noted forever as "North Falls." LeSueur did not offer an apology for over-ruling the founding settlers' choice.
Now that we know more about Dr. LeSueur, a Canadian Man of Letters, and his positive outlook for a town with an instant literary connection, there has been a slow turn toward recognizing the attributes of the association, particularly at Christmas with local celebration of "Bracebridge Hall" dinners as fundraisers. The book is very much about the traditional fare of an old English Christmas at Squire Bracebridge's peacock-feather adorned "Great Hall." While it is true that a Canadian scholar, LeSueur, chose the name of an American author to secure a town name, the story of Bracebridge Hall itself is about honoring old and still relevant traditions celebrated in England. Most settlers in Bracebridge at that time, circa the 1860's, had only just arrived from England, Ireland and Scotland. Irving, writing in America, was worried the new independent nation was foolishly distancing itself in cultural and historical reckoning, from the "old country" where most Americans, War of Independence or not, had their ancestral roots. LeSueur must have believed roughly the same, as he chose as much to remind townsfolk here, of their blood connection to old England.
Irving's "Bracebridge Hall," was a continuation of the 1818 release of "The Sketch Book," that first mentioned the family of Squire Bracebridge, and the traditions surrounding the old estate and its curious, colorful inmates. In these same Sketch Book stories is of course many with reference to the Haunted Hudson River, Ghost Ships, Rip Van Winkle, and then of course Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman, the key components of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." This had been one of my favorite pre-Hallowe'en warm-up stories. Although I didn't know the connection, at the time, between my home town and the author of this famous piece of time-honored literature, I most certainly kept watch for the horseman and the flaming pumpkin he might toss at innocent bystanders. If, that is, he couldn't catch the fleet-footed Ichabod Crane. Of course the most recent movie by Tim Burton took some artistic license over the original Irving text but it did bring about a new focus on an old and dear legend of the Hudson River Valley.
Even as a kid, I thought of the Muskoka River Valley as our own version of the spooky Hudson, and on moonlit nights like this, with the autumn leaves rustling over the River Road and the water gurgling along the grassy shore, it was easy to let the mind wander into the realm of spirited possibility. In the dancing swirl of mist off the water, the wash of moonlight and sound of wind in the pines, the trembling voyeur might soon watch the ghost of Ichabod himself manifesting into full flight, with the headless horseman in hot pursuit. I could hear the cadence of hooves on the lane getting closer and closer, and swear I could see the form of horse and rider coming across the valley, defiant of the open water. We could scare ourselves into a gallop home with full linen bags of candy dragging over the ground. By time we made to home sanctuary, and settled to look back at what was coming behind, alas, the only cadence was the thumping of our hearts, the only trail that of candy spilled from holes worn through the pillow cases. But we had made the light of home. There was no way we were going back for that lost candy. We'd pick it up on the way to school.
You won't find much today in Bracebridge, that identifies this historical connection between one of the world's best known authors, and one of the most recognized stories ever told but let me assure you, as the historian who did write the book, it is all very true.....as for the Headless Horseman, beware on nights like this when the moon and mist play tricks on the unsuspecting Hallowe'en traveller.

Frank Miller was a needed friend to a weary reporter
The Muskoka news beat-
By Ted Currie
I didn’t bring this point up during the job interview, for the editor’s position of The Herald-Gazette, in Bracebridge, simply because it would have meant my quick, possibly forced expulsion from the publisher’s office. I have some rather blunt and strong opinions about local politics and the pomposity of some municipal councilors, then and now, and I can tell you honestly that on any priority list of stories I ever penned for my reporting staff, chasing after politicians for big scoops was usually no better than one up from the bottom. The folks I was working for lived and breathed politics, and to them, a four alarm fire was significantly below the breaking news of a local government funding announcement, or a ceremonial ground breaking for a new highway over-pass. I remember once asking one of my administrators why we dedicated so much editorial space to pump-up local government......at the expense of many great stories we couldn't get to because we had to chase politicians for grip and grin photographs. "Because it's important news....our readers want to know how our local government is working?" I wanted to say...."Well then, give me a month, two investigative reporters and four full pages for when the story breaks.....and I'll provide readers with the real story.....without so much as one glad handing photograph." I needed the job and the paycheck so I just gnashed my teeth and got on with what they thought was the big deal.
For as long as I was editor, which was a strife-filled, shadowy decade, I locked horns constantly with the management staff, and there was seldom a week that went by without a plethora of stressed facial expressions lining the hall outside my office like a modernist mural, and so many impromptu meetings, to discuss my latest behavior and contrary-to-policy editorial decisions. I was a pain in the arse on principle. My school teachers had complained to my mother for years that "Teddy doesn’t respect authority figures." The coal chute incident comes to mind. The soot on my jacket gave me up! I paid dearly for that indiscretion. The kid wanted to know what it would be like to fly down the chute from the school playground, so I stuffed him down there. Actuality. He had a lot of querries answered on that day. George told me it had been the ride of his life....just a little dirty when he hit bottom. I didn't have a problem with an authority figure who could teach me something.....information and experience I could drink up. My authority figures didn't have too much to offer in the areas I needed......so I just blew them off and got the job done anyway. There were a few exceptions as you will read about, when I did have enormous respects for my peers.
I assumed responsibilities as editor following a short but poignant stint in the field of Canadian history at York University, and as conservation activist in matters of local heritage here in the hinterland of Ontario. Before my mid-twenties I had already helped found the Bracebridge Historical Society, and the creation of a local museum known as Woodchester Villa. I had even worked on behalf of the Muskoka Board of Education to develop an audio archives of interviews with some of the region’s oldest and well known residents. I was then and always a grassroots historian and admittedly I was much more interested in the reminiscences of the local baker, police officer, farmer, trapper, dime store clerk and waitress, than the self promotion of local politicians looking to the press to build up their resumes with good news reporting. There’s always another election coming, you see, thus the need for a file folder of good ink.
I had unfortunately developed a seriously jaded opinion of politicians which began back in the mid 1970’s for reasons unknown. It just seemed to me that the press shamelessly pandered to their self-importance; why did they deserve front page coverage every time they showed up at a community function, cut a ribbon, or participated in the 10,000th or more grip and grin photo opportunities I was forced to cover during my tenure as editor. There was only one man, one politician ever in my 30 years contributing to the local press, who gave me reason to reconsider the notion that politics and vanity are inseparable realities of upward mobility in government.
When I began as a cub reporter working for the Georgian Bay-Muskoka Lakes Beacon, out of a small multi purpose office in the Village of MacTier (south of Parry Sound), it was a huge part of the job to latch on to political representation as if it was the key to finding the holy grail of front page news. I was led to believe that there was a Pulitzer with my name on it, if only I could get a local politician to give me the mother of all news scoops. My constant protests did little to convince the publisher that there was a better way to dig up relevant news, than to report on predictable, routine events. I sat for hours at local council meetings doodling and writing poetry about how awful it was to be stuck in the quagmire of bylaws and minor variances. I would so much rather have been in pursuit of fire and accident calls, major events and calamities, and most of my reporting chums felt the same. "Let me out of here for God’s sake!"
On weekends the publisher had a list of chores for the on-call reporter (me), and nine out of every ten involved something or other with a political, governmental, boring to tears "elected official" overtone. Every time a member of provincial or federal government dropped a pen, I was expected to get the photograph. Each time one of these big shots said something to someone, I was supposed to be on top of it, in case there was any breaking news potential. Gads, I hated having to cling onto their every word or motion and it made for such dreadful, uninteresting, and repetitive reading week after week. I needed the money. I needed the job. The Friday night beer purchase. Thank goodness I found a friend, a mentor, in the most unlikely position, from the one profession I truly despised.
On one occasion at a small diner in MacTier, where I was holed-up between weekend grip and grin photographs in the vicinity, the hand of fate landed on my shoulder. At that precise moment I had found enough change to buy a coffee and a muffin. I was starving to go along with being out of my mind with boredom. I remember standing at the counter sorting out the dimes from the pennies when I felt a hand on my shoulder from behind. I turned to see the furry eyebrows and huge ear to ear smile of Frank Miller, Muskoka’s M.P.P., and a soon to be Premier of Ontario. I’m not sure if he was Treasurer of Ontario at this time but what I can tell you is that he was hugely devoted to the citizens of our riding, whether you were among the party faithful or had never once checked his name on a ballot. Or you happened to be a reporter down on his luck, very much in need of mentoring.
Frank called me over to his table to join him for lunch and asked the lady behind the counter to get me a burger and fries. I was astonished and rather concerned that a lowly reporter-kind should even think of joining a celebrated member of parliament….without pen and pad at the ready just in case there was some sort of scoop for the desperate scribe. I wasn't sure if there was a conflict of interest happening here but considering I was otherwise broke, I was willing to take a chance. Reporters aren't supposed to accept free stuff from the folks they report on....but what the hell. Actually I had photographed Frank presenting a plaque only an hour earlier and I was scheduled to do a ribbon cutting after lunch, so this was a hiatus between gigs for both of us. I think Frank suggested we both drop the professional status of politician and reporter for a hot meal, which we did, and I can’t remember a more enjoyable conversation with any eventual news maker. Frank was like this and any one who had similar dealings knew he was a gentle and kind man, despite being a highly aggressive and determined public official in the ruthless game of Canadian politics.
I was a fledgling writer and he was a seasoned political pro, yet he treated me with the utmost respect, and in fact, from that first lunch meeting, Frank and I by mutual respect, continued to make each others lives out on the hustings, as easy and uncomplicated as possible. He would help me set up photographs if no one from the family or business offered, and he would even go as far as helping me get correct spellings of names and the positions participants stood in the photograph, which always made my press days so much easier. Even when Frank became Premier of Ontario for a short stint, he was the same low key, kindly soul who had invited the nervous, financially embarrassed reporter to dine with him back in the fall of 1979. Our meetings then were a tad more formal because of his entourage of staff but we still got along famously with a lasting mutual respect.
Frank Miller changed my opinion about politicians and government, and chasing him around the Muskoka region for news coverage wasn’t so bad. I can even remember Frank grabbing me a coffee at an anniversary event when nobody else offered. I still have some lingering mistrust for politicians but I can tell you these trepidations are not as sharp as they were when I started in this community press enterprise. It was the influence from Frank Miller that rounded down the rough edges, and made me see, from the other side, what it takes to be a responsive and worthy representative of the people.
Before I had written my first Herald-Gazette editorial, I was able to draw on my experiences with Frank Miller, and while I never admitted it at the time, my enlightenment meant overall that I judged the person first, the political characteristic second.
As a new editor there was a lot to learn and many mistakes yet to make!
The fascinations of childhood and a new editor in town
By Ted Currie
My first error as newly appointed editor of the historic Bracebridge Herald-Gazette, here in South Muskoka, was being so up-tight about protocol and presentation that I forgot about the dynamic of, well,… heart and soul. I was so impressed to have finally made it to the editor’s desk, after a few really tough, scraping, biting seasons out on the news’ hustings, I had become starched to total stiffness. I was humorless, an efficiency freak, and an unflinching task-master. I was Lou Grant sort of, except I was working at a weekly not a daily. Gads, I was a mirror reflection of the administrators I didn't like.
In the early months of the job I admit to feeling rather high and mighty, holed-up in that storied editorial office on Dominion Street, looking out onto the community I was now representing. I was responsible for approving every word of copy hitting that newsstand on the street below. I couldn’t see the grasping, clutching, covetous old sinner of the press I had become with these reigns of power tight in my hands. By the way, I borrowed the description above from Charles Dickens assessment of his famous character, "Scrooge." If Scrooge had been an editor, well, we would have had a lot in common. I was pleased with the image of success I saw in that reflection of pomposity, and it was obvious to one and all that I had been the right choice to fill this important community function. You’re right. I was delusional, and a really big arse to think my reporting staff would relent to "The Really Big Wind," which was their pet name for me at parties I wasn't invited.
About three weeks into the job all the illusions of this being the best job on earth shattered like so many other grandiose expectations, nothing having been based on the cogs of reality. Just fiction! My reporters took me out for a pint and a wee history lesson about the foibles of the last editor, and the consequences of ticking them off. Just as I was finally loosening some humanity and had even mustered a compliment about their news gathering efforts for the week, one of my best writers set his glass firmly down onto the table, glared with ferocious blackness, and asked me bluntly if I recalled the moral story of dear old Napoleon at his Waterloo. Another reporter piped up whether I’d ever seen the particularly famous novelty chamber pot (thunder mug) containing Napoleon’s ceramic bust rising from the bowl. It was created for public amusement, shortly after his removal from military privilege? I did know about that because, at the time, I dabbled as a part time antique dealer. The image, the irony of someone going potty on my head, wasn’t lost in translation I can tell you that much. I had awakened to the wants and needs of my colleagues.
In the days that followed, the starch was thoroughly washed out, and a few of my new reporter mates were impressed by my almost-blooming liberalities. In the middle of scolding a photographer for missing an important shot, well, I’d chortle something about "maybe you could draw a picture instead;" which by the way put a smile on my face if not his. I even joined their after hours "liars club," like the one Toronto columnist Paul Rimstead made famous during his time spent writing in Mexico. He used to hole-up with friends at a local club and talk about the issues most affecting them. Mostly they just lounged and consumed exotic beverages and spun amazing tales. He had one of the highest readership numbers of any columnist in Canada. He wrote honestly about human frailties and excesses. If someone called a reporter a "Rimstead," it was like being named rogue of the year......about the highest honor an underpaid and misunderstood reporter could expect to get working for a weekly.
Rimstead was our hero. He was a hometown boy who made it to the big leagues of authordom. He had spent much of his youth in Bracebridge, skipping school, hustling pool, chasing fire trucks with a "press" sign swinging off the handlebars of his bike, and being the best rapscallion he could be, without of course being the story beneath the headline. The fire department didn’t want Paul, who was a junior stringer for a newspaper in Orillia, at the time, following them on their calls. So they put misinformation on the chalk board as the last truck left the hall. He eventually caught on to their little prank, after several times riding miles out of town only to stare at a pasture and wildflowers blowing in the wind. Maybe it honed his sense of the absurd and yet good humor.
Thanks to some Rimstead life and work lessons, and maybe a few pints hoisted in his honor before closing time, I finally figured out that there was a lot more to this editorship of the local newspaper, than being stuffed behind a desk to answer questions and bark commands. In time I became gentle and kindly, and a few times a little tipsy when the reporters were looking for concessions and space for their editorial projects….and I was open to a bribe. I awoke from being an editor "cut-out" pasted to my desk, to feeling editorially liberated. The readers weren’t quite prepared for all this openness but eventually we found a good working relationship. We started to increase circulation and the ad department thought they had died and gone to heaven. We were getting big ads and as a reward we got a few more coins in our pay packets.
I started to think back to what made me want to live in Bracebridge in the first place, tucked up here in the Ontario hinterland. It was the town I spent my own rapscallion youth. My own history was imprinted here. A lot of scrapes and bruises let me tell you. This is what I was seeing in my new editor’s role. Representation of the good town that grew here, a title by the way of a well known history written by my mentor historian, and former Herald-Gazette Editor, Robert Boyer. The Boyer family built this publication up over the decades and it was very much a place on Dominion Street, where folks felt comfortable coming in to talk to the editor and staff. That’s the kind of editor I needed to become. The new protocol was to reflect the community not my hot-shot self. There were lives and events to capture for posterity and some good friends to make along the way.
I loved being at the helm of the paper but not for the reasons some of my peers and adversaries believed. The fact I seemed to be having too much fun when I should have been burdened and ulcer-bound, obviously pointed out my carefree directorship. In fact it was my ceremonious release from my fetters that allowed me to enjoy the job, such that every morning I looked forward to my short walk along Manitoba Street and then Dominion, to the unmistakable white Herald-Gazette building….the one with the raised black iron letters elegantly fashioned above the front door. I admit to sometimes feeling as if I was a character in an elaborate production of the stage play, "Our Town." I pinched myself a lot in those days because for the most part it was too good to be true.
It was from the editor's desk that I also found a darker side to a lot of stories.....while the surface glistened, the stuff beneath wasn't quite as dazzling. And over the years I had many folks remind me that I should stay away from some stories for the good of my health. Threats generally didn't put me off a story but when one sinister warning came directly to my home, with a pregnant wife on the receiving end, I confess my ambition to get scoops diminished somewhat......I wasn't getting paid enough to put up with the risk. I've always had a "Shane-like" retaliatory attitude and have never missed an opportunity to stand up to a bully, in this case death threats were above and beyond the few numbers in my weekly pay check. I loved the work but the longer I stayed on the job the more enemies I made apparently. As an historian today I make a predictable amount of low-key enemies each year but I can live with this.......the most I get from these folks is a clear "shunning," which isn't all that painful considering I shun them first.
More to come from my hometown.

A Modern Perspective About Those Who Preceded Us
There are a lot of folks out there who don’t care much about history at all, except possibly the recognition of family photographs on the livingroom wall, or when it comes to reminiscing with family and friends at some seasonal get-together......just for the sake of conservation and a wee folly of nostalgia which we all love in some proportion. I respect this and understand that for a lot of people these days, it’s living in the "NOW" that counts. Especially in this economic downturn it’s certainly understandable that one needs to be acutely aware of what’s happening in front without the weight of the past hanging overhead. The same for antique collecting. I know lots of friends who can’t stand anything older than ten years and wouldn’t put a rare Victorian side-chair in their home if they were given it as a gift. They don’t understand me and I can’t understand their purposeful distancing from the beautiful past. No one’s right and no one’s wrong. I’m pleased to be in close proximity to history. Some need to be contemporary and futuristic to get through a day. We agree to disagree.
Every once and awhile, Suzanne and I will take a little stroll through one of the beautiful little cemeteries we pass, while on a motor trip through Muskoka. My favorites are the cemetery in Ufford where Suzanne’s relatives are buried, and the United Church Cemetery abutting Annie Williams Memorial Park, in Bracebridge, where many of my friends and acquaintances rest in peace. I confess to having been at the Anglican Church cemetery only once, but happily finding many former friends and neighbors..... but I have never been to the Catholic Cemetery or to the Municipal site on District Road 4. I hope to correct this shortfall of experience in the very near future.
Even if I didn’t have a shred of passion for material history, and had no particular interest in regional heritage, a trip through a cemetery would always be a humbling experience. As you look about the tombstones, some so covered by lichen and mosses that they can’t be read, it’s impossible not to ponder the contribution these folks made to the communities of 2009 from their lives spent 100 years, 50 years, 20 years ago.....by the building and sculpting work they did in their respective time periods. As a cocky historian with a lot to say about a lot of things, caustic to a fault, stepping from plot to plot makes me feel remarkably shallow and unworthy. These were the brave front-runners in a small struggling community in the Canadian hinterland, some from the 1800's, other from only several years ago, yet it is the amalgamated spirit here that truly defines, for me at least, what it means to be a hometowner.....a Muskokan. I’ve researched and written about many of Muskoka’s pioneers. When I stand on their graves I do feel the connection and I am in awe each time, particularly when I think about what they’ve all accomplished in their respective roles as the part of yesterday’s citizenry. Whether they were politicians, lawyers, doctors, farmers, trappers, home-makers, dress-makers, or clerks from the local dry goods shop, they helped build these roads, these old neighborhoods, the main streets, the local hospital and parks, all that are still fully occupied and expanding this new century. All of them here, beneath the modest flowers and tiny shrubs, the freshly cut grass, on this windblown terrace above the sprawling lawns of Annie Williams Memorial Park, are biographies of people we need to know.
There are times when I inadvertently step on the grave of someone I knew very well in life, and feel as if I have been pulled that way by some spirit-to-mind connection. And I will acknowledge them with a sincere "hello," and identify how I enjoyed our time together. There are other occasions when I will stumble upon a particular plot that beckons like no other, as if for recognition of the almost erased inscription. Possibly the grave of a child beckons, or the half crumbled stone on an overgrown plot that requests the kindness of a few moments acknowledgment. While I don’t believe souls dwell in cemeteries, accept sundry ghosts who are frequently sighted in strange moonlit revels, I have always found these hallowed grounds so spiritually restorative to the living. When I get frustrated or angry about the progress of some historical project I’m working on, I will frequently travel to a cemetery to refresh my context of heritage.....and there is no better place to seek consultation than the inspiration one can find row by row in the evergreen-wreathed acreages so symbolic of Muskoka. These people were the history makers. They were the ones who carved this habitation out of the thick and inhospitable regional woodlands. They built the bridges, roads, and first shelters on the embankment of the Muskoka River, overlooking the cataract of the Bracebridge Falls. They are the names imprinted today on neighborhood streets, and you can reference many of them while casually reading through one of numerous local histories, as business owners, builders, government officials, feed-store operators, blacksmiths and coopers. I want to take tours through these cemeteries because of the true history it all represents.
While it’s true that an overwhelming majority of residents today have little if no interest in local history.....although it pains historians to know this, it doesn’t make it any less true. We can write about history, and sell a modest volume of books on the subject of local heritage but sales are never truly what we might suppose is an acceptable, profitable circulation. The "live-for-today," celebrate "the moment" contemporary, "run everywhere-do everything" lifestyle, must for the sake of efficiency deal with the rigors of actuality. Worrying about the well-being of historical record doesn’t really come up all that often, except if the matter is raised by some half-crazed historian running up and down the street with a placard touting the importance of preserving this park, this old house, this dilapidated old building etc. etc. etc. As you’re swerving out of the way, to avoid taking-out the historical zealot, possibly you might give a moment’s thought to the issue of heritage conservation. Maybe not. Truth is, historians generally don’t attract crowds of eager onlookers.....unless we’re naked and speaking in tongues.....which would of course only be a ruse to get your attention. We’re a cunning bunch you know. We have to be promoting something pretty incredible to fill a hundred seats at a local venue. But tell me, did you look forward to history class in school? Did you ever fall asleep mid text, mid lecture, and wake yourself up by whacking your nose down onto the desk? Hell, don’t feel bad, so did I! There’s no shame in that. When I told a former history teacher that I had gone on to seek a degree in Canadian history, as I watched him, his chin really did hit his chest. "No way....you....why, oh why would you ever want to take history in university?" Well that’s the puzzler. After I graduated high school in Bracebridge, I unexpectedly turned on, at about the same time, to estate auction sales and bottle digging at old homesteads across the region. When I started it didn’t feel much like history...... just relic hunting. I had a huge enthusiasm then for vintage glass which I still maintain as a collecting interest today. What being involved in the antique enterprise taught me, was a new and significant respect for history generally. I narrowly got past the course of instruction as curriculum set down in school, only to opt for a backdoor approach later that allowed me to see history in a much more useful and practical light. Speaking of a practical light, ironically I collect and utilize antique oil lamps, one of my all time favorites illuminating this keyboard now, wafting the scent of spent coal oil that I absolutely adore.
I find myself very grounded, as a matter of some irony, when I wander the peaceful surroundings of a community cemetery. I feel the calm and solitude of a work force at final rest. There is an aura of satisfaction here, that what has been created actually has worked and progressed since their time. Many of their offspring still live in the community and are part of the modern day enterprise of building a more diversified and dynamic economy. And while I don’t expect my invitation to you to visit a local cemetery will overcrowd the grounds any time soon, I do feel it is the one place,.... a confluence of lives and lives once....., where non-historical types and lovers of history can casually agree about the significant influences of old upon new.....and that one day we will be pushing up the daisies ourselves, trustfully also resting in peace, observing from the afterlife I’m sure, that we had also made a lasting contribution to the qualities and quantities of our enduring hometown.
As a parting note, in my many strolls through area cemeteries from one end of the region to the other, I frequently generate interest from neighbors and self appointed protectors. At the United Church Cemetery, in Bracebridge, I had been making my usual copious notes from tombstone inscriptions to accompany some feature story I was writing for the local press. While I was immersed in my copying, I didn’t hear anything coming from behind, and when I felt a hand on my shoulder I very nearly collapsed with shock. Now imagine what you’d think under similar circumstances. I looked behind to find an elderly woman to my right, who seemed to be staring right through me......and just when I started to think that I had come across a pretty good example of a graveyard ghost, she said, "Mr. Currie, what’s that bird over there?" Of course she was looking right past me.....at a bird she hadn’t seen around the town for years, had apparently come to roost on a nearby stone. With the heart rate now of a marathoner having just crossed the finish line, she said "I didn’t mean to startle you....I was just coming over to see what you were doing in here....making those notes.....working on a story I guess." I did know the woman in question, once I was able to focus outside the grip of fear and panic, and as it was we had a nice visit amidst the graves....admiring the bird I couldn’t identify, and chatting about so many of our old chums buried beneath.
Don’t be afraid to visit a local cemetery, any cemetery. You’ll be amongst the names of our founders.....good friends of history.

My Rink Rat Days at the Bracebridge Arena
My mother Merle used to tell friends that I spent more time at the arena than I did at home. Of course she was answering the question, "So where’s that son of yours?" From the winter of 1966, I was a full-fledged Rink Rat in Bracebridge. I had been a rookie Rink Rat at the Burlington Arena before that (my old hometown) and both rinks had many similarities.....the most important common-ice so to speak, was that the managers in charge of both had a kind heart for us kids having little else to do. We loved skating, we adored hockey, and we looked up to the senior leagues as if they were National Hockey Leaguers.
At both rinks, I’d show up for minor hockey, or public skating which was the best quarter investment a kid could make, and utilize every moment allotted..... and then I would sneak up into the bleachers for the afternoon hockey games. Most of us didn’t have the money to pay an admission to the games so the only choice we felt comfortable with....was, well hiding down below the seats until the paying patrons began to arrive. It worked pretty well in Burlington but the manager in Bracebridge was far more astute when it came to corralling wayward Rink Rats. It was as if he could read our minds because he knew exactly when and where to look if he needed help for any arena project. Geez, we thought we had hidden ourselves rather well.
Doug Smith was the arena manager when we arrived in Bracebridge. Doug was crusty but in a fatherly way. He would yell at you just as robustly as would your own pop, if you were doing something stupid or dangerous. At the time he was manager, the position was an all-or-nothing proposition, and one minute he’d be sharpening skates, the next taking tickets, serving up hot dogs from the snack bar, looking after some problem patrons, making sure the ice was properly cleaned, and dealing with backed-up toilets over-flowing. He had custodial staff but not really enough to keep up on all the inherent chores with running a big, big arena.
Doug knew instinctively that we were going to hide-out in the under-seat passage-ways that used to afford us a most amazing adventure, darting between dressing rooms and into the referee’s inner sanctum. Doug counted us on the way in and out, and he understood fully that those who hadn’t left at the end of minor hockey, or public skating, were in essence his available workforce. Back in those days the Rink Rats were recruited to clean off the ice in between periods and user groups, with long bladed snow shovels in preparation for the hand pushed water barrel on wheels; that used to spread a somewhat even coating of hot water on the ice surface. The rule.....we couldn’t leave any snow-clumps by sloppy shovel-work, that could be inadvertently watered by Bing with the barrel. He used to yell at us a lot to take another run with the shovel, if it looked like we cut corners. A frozen snow-ridge might have killed some unsuspecting forward on a breakaway, or have taken out a referee not expecting a frozen mound of snow to be under skate.
At intermissions, when we saw Fred "Bing" Crosby head down to the barrel on wheels, the Rink Rats dashed like mad to grab up one of the shovels to be part of the cleaning gang. I was lucky about every third dash because there were a lot of kids desirous of the honor to clean the ice.....especially at the intermission of an important, well-attended game. We thought the girls in our classes at school were watching us out there smoothing the ice. We were wrong of course but we didn’t find that out until years later. The girls were only interested in the players not the shovel brigade.
The reward for shoveling was a hot dog and the pop of choice at the snackbar. I was okay with that.....but it’s also known I would have done it without any more reward than being allowed to stay in that magnificent building a little longer. I could quite literally spend an entire day and part of the evening in that building without leaving for home. Saturdays during the winter were dedicated to arena occupation. I’d of course have to clear it with my parents but they always felt I was in good hands with an overseer like Doug Smith. Fred Crosby was also a tough guy to get around but he was still "Bing" and that meant dependable friend no matter what the circumstance. He could be yelling at you one moment to get down out of the rafters and flipping you fifty cents for some grub at the snackbar the next. Bing did not have the money to give away, and while I’m sure he was pleased to extend it as charity, he was not so well paid that it didn’t hurt his bottom line. Everybody it seemed hit-up Bing for phone money, a drink of pop, and when quite hungry, one of those wonderful arena franks.......that we topped up with an inch of ketchup and relish as vegetables of the day. The aura of the arena back then was inviting, exciting, and inspiring. We loved the whole aura of winter-time sport even as spectators.
As a young player, a goaltender to be specific, stepping out onto that ice pad, and hearing the small but noisy crowd react, was a dream come true. It was our own Maple Leaf Gardens, and whether we were playing or part of the audience, just being in that building put us into the heart of hockey history in Canada. I can still sit out there in an empty arena and sense the return of every one of those important Rink Rat moments. Heck I was so impressed with my own years haunting this place, that when a fellow newspaper reporter (The Herald-Gazette) and I formed a senior hockey team, we called it with some distinction The Rink Rats circa 1981. I understand the team is still going strong after all these years. I had to quit hockey because my body parts were failing and the rental hour was simply too late at night.....recovery in the morning didn’t occur until two days later. I was okay with retirement.
While Bing and Doug were just employees of the Bracebridge arena to some.....that’s only because they didn’t know just how far staff was expected to go, above and beyond, their job description, to run the site properly. They had no choice whatsoever, in adopting kids like us because frankly they couldn’t get rid of us that easily. Out one door and in the other. They just learned how to utilize our energies and we were just glad to be able to work out a deal, to allow us a place to stay, play and learn for a lot of wonderful years.
When I write about the human side of history in my hometown, these are the first two of many hundreds of names I recall quickly, as being unsung heroes, and the true architects, whether they knew it or not, of a good quality of living for so many of us. They gave us reasons to be protectors of local heritage, and in their company, we became the most fierce defenders of the Bracebridge Memorial Community Centre......and God help the vandal who defaced our home away from home. They made us proud of what we possessed as hometowners such that it would have been impossible for us to take anything for granted......and that’s why during the whole tenure of Doug Smith, I never once heard any youngster turn down his offer of temporary employment shoveling ice. It was an honor and a sign of mutual respect to be asked. I thank you Doug and Bing for so many fond memories.

What This Writer Liked About Bracebridge - And Hated About Politics
When I began editorial responsibilities with the local press back January of 1979, part of my duties included covering local municipal councils. I hated every moment of it.....every meeting, every minute I had to sit their and listen to the pompous old windbags bestow their wisdom on the captive audience. You can probably still see my claw-marks on the window ledge where I’d occasionally attempt an escape. There was nothing I could do about it because the folks I worked for lived and breathed the political side of community existence. I felt from the moment I began coverage of these multi-layered, unbelievably boring meetings that I was badly, badly out of my element. I can’t tell you how many times in ten odd years, I wanted (but convinced myself otherwise) to stand up and scream at the top of my voice, "I’m mad as Hell and I’m not going to take it any more," which by the way is from the movie "Network." My publishers would have filled the whole damn paper with council tidbits if I hadn’t insisted on doing other stories and features on just about anything else with a modicum of human interest.
When I read the newspapers today it’s pretty much the same as I left it......a really good chunk of ink every week is devoted to municipal government coverage. Even the smallest of concerns, the most rudimentary applications for rezoning or minor variances are given prominent space and a meaty headline.....as if this will truly encourage ninety-eight percent of unimpressed readers to give a crap. And so my disinterest in local politics continues well into this new century. While I have to get involved every now and again because the meatheads go and do something quite mad, in their power drunk desire to pave over paradise, I generally live and let live as the record of my involvements will show. I mean there’s so much more to Muskoka and our communities than what the local elected officials ruminate when they think a reporter is within earshot. I’ve spent a lot of years looking past their posturing and glad handing all over the place, and found some inner strength to examine other aspects of hometown life that doesn’t involve them. I’m sure this bothers them because they like to be central to anything and everything they believe is inherently theirs to comment on and well..... "ribbon-cut.". I don’t like them and they sure as hell don’t like me, so we, at the very least, have an enduring tradition of ignoring one another unless unavoidable. The last time I covered a Bracebridge council meeting as a reporter, a colleague got me laughing so hard in the press box I pissed my pants. Christ for the whole meeting this turd kept up the off-hand commentary and I just narrowly missed being the first reporter in history to be ejected from a council meeting for behaving badly and having wet pants.
When we moved to Bracebridge from Burlington, Ontario, I was a little nervous about what all the trees and open spaces might do to an urban kid used to wall to wall buildings, a smelly waterscape and tall, tall buildings everywhere. Up in the wilds I suspected the wolves and bears would probably be interested in a naive kid who didn’t know how to fend against the adverse elements. I had a lot of misconceptions that in total lasted about two weeks. I found out pretty fast this was the kind of hometown I could grow into......I was active in hockey and loved baseball but most of all my real interest was in the great and expansive outdoors, all in abundance in this community straddling the 45th parallel of latitude. I was in a sort of kid paradise.
I suppose what bothers me today most about the way Bracebridge has expanded its urban boundary, particularly in the past fifteen years, is that it has very much removed much of what I found so critically important as a kid. Bracebridge in the mid to late 1960's was a fascinating small town that oozed neighborliness, and always a goodly amount of room to stretch your arms and twist about to nobody else’s discomfort. It wasn’t unhappy with itself generally...... and we all got along with the pace. Nobody was in a hurry really, except maybe the hockey coach getting to the arena ahead of his players....the ambulance attendants on the way to the hospital with a patient about to give birth, the customer trying to get to the bank before closing.....and similar. It was a lot like Mayberry and that was fine. As far as I was concerned, it was the community I would maintain a lifetime link with, a pretty strong determination for a youngster. It was good to me, affording many great outdoor adventures, a resilient, solid, friendly neighborhood, and many kind folk who helped kick my arse to get me moving along for all those years. Even the old illuminated clock tower on the former federal building, at Thomas Street and Manitoba, was a beacon for me every single day. Its welcome bell rang throughout my childhood, and those big friendly clock faces could be seen from all my different haunts, so that it was almost impossible to forget what time it was......and when I was told to be home for dinner. It was pretty hard to make any claim about "Geez mom, I didn’t know what time it was." It’s true it went through a few days and months of disrepair but not many.
When I daydream about those carefree days I can’t really avoid a musical accompaniment, kind of a sentimental piano piece in the background making me feel glad to have had the association but a tad melancholy because I still very much miss my old mates and daily travels.....stops on the way from school, downtown to get my haircut, up to the arena for an evening hockey practice, down to the ball park for a night game with the bantam squad. It’s a music that doesn’t intrude upon a recollection but it does invigorate the senses.....much as if it’s meant to lead me to some sort of discovery about my own loyalties to the past, and if I could ever truly ignore or get mad at a community that always seemed as comfortable as a pleasant dream, and gentle as waking up to recognize you’re still safely at home and in otherwise good stead.
When I would escape chores on a hot summer afternoon, and retreat to a shady portal in Bamford’s Woods, across the road from the Weber Apartments, up on Alice Street, I pondered, wandered a little bit....studied, counter-pointed, ruminated, and dissected intently just what it all meant to be a hometowner......my whole life in perspective and whether this was a pleasing environment, or actually the most uneventful place on earth. I wasn’t sure early on but it didn’t take long before these woods, and this street were part of my life as if ingrained from birth.....which afterall was impossible seeing as I moved to this burg in my late childhood. The sense of belonging was reinforced continually, in those first years, by the kindness of my new friends, and of course the people who lived in the apartment, which was always more of a commune than a complex. Most residents only closed their hallside doors when they went to bed. For most of the day people came and went, and it wasn’t unusual to have three or four card parties going on in the evening, partners changing venues every hour or so. This was the community within the community that was intimate.....and that may have made for some interesting liaisons but who cared.....not me. It was just neat that’s all.
The escape into Bamford’s Woods was a sanctuary I couldn’t have done without. I could sit and think and concoct and plan and well......just kick back and enjoy the nature of this marvelous little oasis of hardwoods and evergreens, towering over Fred Bamford’s small vacation cottages that fronted on Toronto Street. It was the same down at Bass Rock, on the Muskoka River, although a little busier. You could lay on the rocks for hours on end, enjoying the sun and the warmth that generated up from the heated surface half covered in soft lichen. I celebrated such small details I’m sure others neglected. I couldn’t wait to get downtown on Saturday mornings with my allowance jiggling in my pants, and what wasn’t used up buying dinky toys and models was spent on cent candy up at Black’s Variety then Lil and Cec’s. I don’t think there were many Saturday afternoons in those years that I didn’t have a small paper bag full of cent candy in tow. While this is not to suggest there wasn’t lots of other exciting things going on in town, these gentle times with friends and cent candy were pretty much all I needed to adore the place I lived. I could complicate just about any day I wanted, and getting into trouble was pretty easy.....it was just apparent to me early in life that it was far more life-enhancing to stop and smell the open air freedom of being a kid. Sure I played "Nicky-Nicky-Nine-Doors," to my neighbors’ chagrin, and I loved to toss green apples at my enemies, and they sounded pretty dramatic when we tossed them onto some of the tin rooves on the street,...... and trespass, yes we did....just about every day we’d find some other way to intrude on our neighbors’ good natures. Still it was a long way from skullduggery and though I heard one elderly lady refer to me as a "young rapscallion," it took another decade to find out what that meant. By the time I had a rebuttal she was deceased.
When I wander about the streets of the town today I see a lot of familiar things that poignantly remind me a lot of those earlier days and ways. Most of the open space we knew as kids is long gone, as is Bamford’s Woods, which was a huge loss for the whole neighborhood. I can feel that precarious shift of change that will take away many more vestiges of the past, because of this new round of urban dynamic bursting at the seams. At times writing about these places and circumstances is my own way of coping with change....some of it is for the good, other developments seem as if they are truly breaking-down, once and for all, the town I knew. And I feel there hasn’t been enough attention given to the way these changes, this adaptation to the new reality, will affect the character of the town that grew here. If there is truly reverence to the character of the town, its patina garnered since the first log shanties crowded around the Bracebridge Falls, we should think about the way it is being diluted by expansion. I know that some folks, long time citizens who have watched the assault on their community, have become increasingly wary of all this expansion, profoundly concerned about the watering down of a character that was genuinely unique.....that was very much guarded by those unblinking eyes of Eckleburg, as if F. Scott Fitzgerald himself had been inspired by our clock tower before writing the "Great Gatsby". Those eyes....those eyes followed us everywhere. Funny thing. It was the first prominent piece of local architecture I noticed on my first day of school at Bracebridge Public, the companion that I looked for each morning, and bid farewell to on the way home each afternoon; it was the clock face I would remember when lost in love, dumped and set adrift by a former girlfriend; it was the guiding light when I had consumed too much alcohol at the local tavern, the beacon over my shoulder when I asked Suzanne to marry me, the landmark I turned to in order to check the time, upon leaving the hospital after watching both sons born, and the friendly face of time and memorial I glanced at inadvertently while passing below, the day my mother Merle passed away........after so many years herself using that illuminated tower as a marker of time and task, and how long she had to get home before the inmates were demanding their dinner. It may to some be a petty and insignificant reality of local architecture, from a bygone era but it was so much more significant to this writer. I couldn’t write one historical piece about Bracebridge that didn’t include some subtle reference to its unwavering importance to the way we are as hometowners.
When I sit down to pen some thoughts about my memories of Bracebridge, as I first knew it, I can get a little soppy and misty-eyed. My writing career began on Alice Street....my first short stories composed for my grade six teacher at Bracebridge Public School, were concocted in that modest apartment overlooking the snowy Bamfords’ Woods. Over the years whenever I written a hockey themed feature story, I can not bypass the memories of road hockey games held on so many bitter winter nights, under the lamp-light of upper Alice Street.....when we all took turns being Gordie Howe, Terry Sawchuck, Bobby Orr, Dave Keon, and Jean Beliveau, and of course commentator Foster Hewitt providing the play by play. But it’s all just nostalgia. Water under the bridge I suppose. While it’s inevitable man-made landmarks will have to be restored, possibly removed and replaced with modern structures one day, what’s the rule with fading memories? Not all history is cut and dried or factual. Our greatest loss I believe, will be the reminiscences of those neighbors who kept the history of our times better than any historian ever could.....but who have decided their fading stories must be irrelevant today in the wake of so much dedication to progress and being progressive. The character of Bracebridge was very much about neighborhoods....strong bastions of kinship, sanctuaries for the weary, restorative enclaves for new initiatives. The tenant list of the former Weber Apartments......that modest three story near-commune, attested to this.......the names of those who once called it home is a literal who’s who of community leadership. And then there was this humble scribe who got his start in history and authordom, very much appreciating the friendship and compassion of small places in the grand scheme of a much larger life.
Possibly one day a municipal councillor, feeling a wee pang of nostalgia, might think back upon the revolution of change and ponder if, in exchange for the promise of prosperity, it was worth the expense of character and identity.... once held above all else.... even progress, as the comfortable, secure way of meeting the future with an open palm.

The Patina of Home - The Amalgamation of Emotions and Fact
I like to retrace my youth spent in Bracebridge step by step. Literally. Physically. The art of the hike. The mindful jaunt in places familiar. I've taken many long strolls through my former neighborhoods, over the four seasons, just to see if by slim but hopeful chance, there's a ghost or two still wandering about from that era of the 1960's and 70's, when the town was on the cusp of what I feel has become a profound urbanizing change. I don't see them but I can feel their presence and it's not a bad or frightening thing to be in their company. I also write a ghost blog so the more the merrier!
There was a lot of history that wasn't recorded. It's not really the fault of historians past but the fact that most history of small towns in Ontario, for example, was tallied by newspaper reporters/editors, who purposely distanced fact from the "emotional facts......actuality of the event that took place." The borrowed news reports re-published in modern histories do not evoke much in the way of sentiment....because of course they were meant for the news pages where there is a strict format and protocol for presentation; a budget of words and a reduction of sentiment for sentiment's sake. It does however, leave a void of understanding. What was it like to watch a fallen soldier's body return home to the Bracebridge train station in a rough box......what was it like to stand on that platform with family who had some time earlier waved at their son as he headed out in defence of his country? Let the reader fill in the blanks. On re-write however, for the reader today, the old news reports have a corpse-like dryness about them, because they are hollow for the most part, of actuality.....like when the news commentator in the United States stated, in utter shock and horror.... "Oh, the humanity," when the great Zepellin caught fire and passengers dove, in flames, to their deaths. Events and personal tragedies that may have made the front pages of the weekly press, and into the hearts and souls of neighborhood folks then, are jammed into historical accounts now without accompanying explanation of what it all meant in human terms....not just in some writer's appreciation of the bare facts. Today these twists of fate are pretty much neglected unless conversation between hometowners enters that domain.
Events such as the death of two of my chums in a tunnel cave-in on Anne Street, just up the hill from the train tracks near Bass Rock, come to mind. No matter how many times it may re-appear in sundry mention in a feature article or book, unless there's some infilling, it becomes a news story only.....when in fact it was a community-shaping tragedy that affected the way we perceived our hometown fragility and our ability to save our children from a similar fate. When it was learned the boys had been trapped in the tunnel, neighbors and folks from all over, appeared on site with shovels, showing on their faces the very great fear of the unknown......that there may have been many others in that smothering hole in the side of the hill. Some who ran to that cave-in suspected their sons might be in there as well. Former Hospital Administrator Frank Henry, on hearing the news while at work, ran from the nearby medical facility with a shovel, he found in the maintenance department, to help dig the lads free. It was a Saturday and parents were frantic to connect with their youngsters situated at play all over town. My father phoned my mother Merle from the lumber yard where he worked, to find out if I was at home. I was. But I might not have been if not for a warning that came down the pike the night before, when several young lads asked their parents about helping our mates from school dig their army tunnel network the next day. When I announced my intention to trundle over to the same hillside, my mother stood in the doorway and said, "You're not going to be digging a tunnel today or ever.....and I don't care what you're friends think is a good idea....it's not....you can die if there's a cave-in." That was the statement made the night before. It's the reason I'm penning these thoughts now....because of any project I do get involved, I'm usually in the middle of everything going, including a tunnel dig. Just as I would have been on that rainy autumn day. I thought she might have changed her mind, or that possibly I could sneak past the sentry and wander over to Anne Street without my mother being any the wiser. By morning it was raining heavy and throughout most of the day it was a misty, cold ugliness. As it turned out, this was at least part of the problem that helped loosen a large portion of hillside, sliding down on top of the boys.
I will never forget the sombre mood of that town for weeks after. Students jammed the funeral home rooms to bid farewell to their chums and for many of us it was the first serious introduction to mortality. It happened on numerous other occasions, where accidents and general misadventures led to the death of friends......hockey playing mates, baseball colleagues, kids from the neighborhood who drowned or were involved in traffic mishaps. Sickness claimed quite a few others and most of us admittedly didn't understand why the young and resiliant were succumbing. For every community milestone, every accomplishment from a provincial sports honor to celebration of the Cavalcade of Color, there was no escaping the reality there was a patina of town life that was a precarious mix of good and bad, happiness and misery, new life being born to the citizenry and others taken away.....sometimes suddenly.
I can remember hearing about a traffic accident, as a kid, that happened on old Highway II at the intersection near The Pines Home for the Aged......a grisly tale that has stuck with me to this day because of what rescuers had to deal with at the scene. The word went around that summer afternoon that a head-on collision near the intersection had resulted in many serious injuries to mulitiple occupants of both vehicles. There were sirens coming from all over. We knew it was bad just by the responding vehicles..... , fire, ambulance and the police. From where we lived on Alice Street, much of the action passed down nearby Toronto Street on the way to the hospital. When the fire department arrived they knew at least one of the vehicles was going to require ripping apart to free the occupants. Before they could finish extracation of the injured, flames broke out in the wreckage, and in seconds what was left of the car was engulfed in flames. They had no chance to do anything for those people inside, who began screaming in pain from the encroaching fire. It was told to us kids, sitting at the time with adults at our apartment on Alice Street, that the firemen felt like screaming along with the victims, because their agony was as great....having to live with the fact they were forced to watch people die knowing their rescue efforts could not be successfully mounted in time. I could not, would not ever forget those words, and it was as if I had been a witness myself....it became that real for me. I knew some of the firemen. What a terrible experience for them to live with for the balance of their lives.....and they had seen many more gruesome situations; yet I am reminded that they had experienced thousands of other calls when they were able to make successful rescues and save lives.....save buildings from burning and ward of total catastrophe by their expert efforts. It was that bitter sweet patina of everyday life.
There were many times in my childhood, in Bracebridge, when like everyone else who appreciates the dynamic of life, when shock and sadness entered into one's heart and soul, and affected the interpretation of everything else for weeks and months. It was a community like all the rest. There were serious accounts of misadventures we listened intently to at dinner-time; reports, hearsay, gossip of unfortunate family circumstances, tales of business failures, marriage break-ups, a few affairs of the heart, crime, assaults and some less serious news about school mates (some from prominent families) caught for shoplifting or public drunkeness. As I got a little older there were numerous stories about those same chums getting caught with drugs and related items, smoking down at Bass Rock where we used to swim..... and where we'd get a real kick talking to hippies and draft dodgers, Americans trying to avoid the horrors of the Vietnam War by hinding out in the hinterland of Ontario.
The Hunt's Hill lads used to hang-out near the railway station on hot sumer afternoons, awaiting the coveted Toronto run, pondering whether this would be the day to jump a boxcar and head to the city for some fun. They came and went over those many years and we never jumped on rolling stock. We did however, get on boxcars in the rail yard and we met up with more than a few hobos heading down to the Jungle they kept in rotating locations just up the overgrown embankment from the Muskoka River.....where yes they did occasionally enjoy an invigorating bath in the moonlight.
If you sat by the rails for long enough you were sure to see some interesting stuff going on at the adjacent Albion Hotel that I think had a better history earlier in the century than it was gaining in the 1960's, by way of the patrons it kept. It wasn't uncommon at all to see a bouncer run a drunk patron's head into the door on the way out onto the tarmac.....which obviously spoke volumes about the misconduct inside. The guy would crawl around for a few moments, dust himself off, comb his hair, and shadow-box a little while giving a lecture to the bouncer, then long gone, about "just who do you think you are buddy, throwing me out like that......I'll show you a thing or two." Five minutes of composure-gathering later, he'd try to get back in that bar again......and we loved every moment of it. Sure as we bet, he'd coming flying out a little further the second time with the bouncer's arm on his shoulder and wasteband of the pants, and down he'd go in a lump of humanity. I've watched as many as three patrons bounced the same way minutes apart. It may not be the part of history that is seen worthy of ink these days (or even then) but by golly it happened, it was funny as hell, and I witnessed this social, cultural heritage close enough to smell the booze and hear their heads hitting the door on the way out.
Public drunkeness wasn't a rarity even in the earliest days of our community. We had a lot of logging types in this town before the turn of the century, as did Gravenhurst, and it imprinted pretty harshly on the local constables. The loggers coming from the camps were a force to be reckoned with, and being rowdy was just part of the rugged lifestyle garnered from an industry known for its dangers, demands for the utmost courage, and reckless abandon. Being trapped for long periods in the camp made the escape so much more desirable, and misadventure was normal course....and the lock-up showed the wear and tear on its hinges. As well, homesteaders here had no choice but to be a tough, unyielding, stubborn lot because failure here could mean a slow agonizing death due to starvation out on the homestead. Even if you lived in town you were unmistakably a pioneer in the north woods regardless of urban situation. To say we were hewn from a rough and tumble first citizenry, well, you'd be right. From the late 1850's Muskokans who wanted to remain here made sacrifices. There were disadvantages on top of disadvantages and many didn't make the cut....left the region for some other locale, or perished with dreams of a prosperous homestead still in their hearts. Some of my wife's family, during this pioneer period, were known as the Three Mile Lake Wolves, for their temperment, and with Irish glee they would join arms at one end of the main street, stretch across the width of the rough lane, and with as many as four hardy brawlers, beckon anyone tough enough to stand in their way as they marched toward the town falls. Legend? Nope! Fact!
In the following blogs, some that were formerly published in Curious; The Tourist Guide, I have provided an honest appraisal of what it meant to me, to be considered a local yocal......how it felt after many years of being transplanted from the city, and attached to this new hometown. As I had been a keen observer throughout my childhood, of what constituted the tally of daily life and times of any worthy hometown.....I didn't proceed as a writer/historian with any misconception or lack of appreciation for what history had etched in its wake......like the glacier grinding over the Canadian Shield. What I had seen and experienced......it was a critical background reference that gave me an exceptional insight. As a fledgling editor, having arrived back to my hometown, hoping to make a name for myself as an adult citizen, I knew in advance of my first published piece that it was going to be a precarious balance to represent fairly all the trials, tribulations, joys and sorrows, losses and victories.....and avoid at all cost, making it ever seem as if the local citizenry couldn't cope with any situation it was to face. Afterall it had survived the wickedly difficult pioneer economy, two wars, a Great Depression and a myriad of successes in businesses that went bust as did so many dreams. It has worn its discontent bravely and survived despite adversity....just like thousands of other good hometowns that realize that the definition of prosperity means being able to turn misfortune into advantage......picking up where one task was left off and finishing the job.
My own critics argue that I am too open with my opinions, and to glaring with the facts I present. In response I carry on with blatant disregard and contempt.......because I have never as a citizen, a newspaper editor, or historian come upon anything in the past or present, no matter what the weight of its negative revelation, that couldn't be handled by citizens at large and time. And afterall that's what makes a hometown.....well.....a "home", being able to move on despite. We are not immune to the dastardly circumstances......of crime, corruption, and malice....why would we be? It's all part of our history like it or not. As the earth continues to turn, resolution and restitution will occur just as it always has, and we will recover and rejoice all over again......but it is imprudent to forget how we got from there to here in 150 odd years. I'd like to believe we've learned something about our capabilities to survive against what is often considered insurmountable.
Here are some editorial pieces about my hometown I've composed in the past 12 months. You don't have to know much about Bracebridge, or anything at all about its past, to relate to the stories.....which for all intents and purposes could have been generated from your own hamlet, village, town or city. Please enjoy! The first one has a Christmas backdrop!
Respecting the spirits of Christmas past
My contemporaries in the community press sought out the editorship of The Herald-Gazette, in Bracebridge, because it seemed from an underling perspective, like a politically powerful and socially influential position. They had visions of world domination, I think, not simply the fair and unbiased representation of community life and events.
It afforded the chosen-one the very great and time-honored privilege, to occupy the creaking old chair behind the oak desk, the one with a deep patina of sweat and ink imprinted into the grain, attained honestly from the actuality of many milestones of local history. To be editor one had to be cognizant of all things past and present, yet be insightfully inspired, no less courageous, to willingly venture into the abyss of uncertainty down a dark and winding trail. Well, that’s a tad dramatic!
How many of those long adrenalin, emotion driven editorial races to deadline, were pounded into that oak desktop? Fist thumps onto its surface. "Let’s put this paper to bed!"
It was situated in the second biggest office in the century old building on Dominion Street, and it afforded the occupier thusly, the right to select or compose the lead editorials for the weekly edition. Not to mention having the responsibility to bark out orders to reporters and lay-out staff, about what was going to make the front page, and what copy would fill up the white space further back amongst the food store ads.
I wasn’t the youngest editor of The Herald-Gazette but possibly the youngest non-family member to take the helm of this established publication. It wasn’t the only paper serving the community, and in fact, when I was appointed to the editorship in the early 198 0’s, there was a fierce battle being waged between competing publishers to win over advertisers and attain the highest weekly readership.
I had apprenticed with a sister publication, The Beacon, in the Township of Georgian Bay, and felt a little out of my league when the publisher first offered me the editor’s job, in Bracebridge, when the former head honcho was transferred to another community newspaper. While scared out of my wits to take the helm of one of the District of Muskoka’s best known publications, I had achieved exactly what I had intended after returning home from studies at York University in Toronto. I wanted to be an editor with Muskoka Publications. It simply came about five years sooner than I had planned.
I didn’t care about the political weight of editorship and I had no intention of changing one molecule of the tradition established by George Boyer and family, who had built the newspaper’s foundation brick by brick decades before I’d even seen the first light of new life.
I used to work many late nights hunched over that gouged, pen-imprinted, gnarled old desktop during the first year of my multi-year tenure, feeling a huge sense of pride being able to maintain the HG’s print tradition, carrying on a legacy of fine writers, and powerful editorialists. I felt in awe to be truly ingrained then in the history of my community. At times I still felt like a punk kid running amuck in the neighborhood, like my rapscallion days growing up on Bracebridge’s east side as part of the Hunts Hill gang, a notoriously pacifist bunch of lads who were distinctly better hockeyists than pugilists. Here I was dictating the editorial content for a much closer, in-person history, and I was astounded by the faith of the publisher, Hugh Mackenzie, who allowed me the greatest of freedom to represent the good and bad of community life and times.
I can so clearly recall one rather poignant news-desk vigil, on a blustery night on the cusp of that year’s Christmas vacation. I had been at the helm about a half year and we’d just finished the special holiday edition of the paper that afternoon, and heartily consumed a few cartons of eggnog in celebration. There may have been a trace of rum stirred in as well. What a keenly wonderful moment it was that night, in the solace of an empty newsroom amidst the splendid haunts of this historic building, to feel that sense of connectedness to all the heritage of this Ontario community. All I had to do was walk two flights of stairs to the basement to connect with the physical archives representing well over a hundred years. The history of Bracebridge was right there in huge and bulky compilations overflowing shelves and tables. I was in awe to stand there and consume the legacy of which I was now a part.
While my staff colleagues had their opinion about my leadership, and my zeal for political power, they might have been quite confounded by the fact I actually was quite humbled by the position. I felt more unworthy than cocky, and there wasn’t a day that went by, when I didn’t think about my shortfalls and inexperience captaining such an important community asset. Yet there were moments, such as that particular pre-Christmas vigil, when I allowed myself the benefit of doubt, and thoroughly enjoyed the sensation of being editor of The Herald-Gazette….despite the misgivings that I was unworthy of the responsibilities bestowed.
When I walked away from the news building that evening, and looked back through the wind-driven snow, it was as if a manufactured, nostalgic old movie scene wrenched from the archives. It needed a sentimental last-word, a line Bogart might have uttered about time and place, event and remembrance, life of old, life anew, the end of one chapter, the beginning of a fresh new perspective. I may have even looked a little like Bogie, at that precise moment, my turned-up coat collar and askew hat adorned with snow, staring back at the history of only moments ago, yet pondering what the future might hold…..Christmas yet to be. And in that illumination of snow against nighfall, there was that sense of peace we dream of when all the world seems to make perfect sense, and we trundle joyfully through the winter night with great expectation. It was as if, at that moment, I was walking the same path as an editor from the 1920’s, or one winter’s eve during the Great Depression, or during the Second World War, our footfall being the same. All the years, all the events, all the memorable moments were imprinted here, and I was only too pleased to embrace it all….that year and for every year since, that I have been contently employed writing about my hometown and home region of Ontario.
In the coming year in Curious, The Tourist Guide, I would like to re-visit those roving reporter, editor’s desk days, and share some light-hearted, unusual, outrightly strange events that occurred during my years working for the local press here in the heart of Muskoka. I will introduce you to many colorful characters who made my many years in the print business so memorable and exciting.