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.

Muskoka was what it was.....my home district and nothing else mattered
I've been a regional historian in these hinterland parts too long now to accept unfounded, poorly researched generalizations. There are times when I read some self-serving historical tome, and what the author presents as my home region of Ontario, is as foreign to me as if I had resided, for all those years, in any other district but this.....my own years of dedicated research, and actually living here for most of my life, apparently nothing more than a flutter of back-to-back silly and misleading dreams. There is a strange new arrogance settling-in, and I sense a profound distancing from the citizens' history of once, to the newly developing chronicles of the region's social, business and financial elite. While that has its place, the best of the best being depicted on a mural somewhere (I’ve only seen it once), I'm not sure the labours and good citizenry of the baker, train station clerk, bank teller, school teacher or waitress, amongst so many unsung heroes, will ever get the ink, even in overview, they surely deserve for contributing to the community's many accomplishments. It's not to deny the hustle and goodwill of the movers and shakers, who by their proficiency and leadership made things happen through political and economic fortitude.... but it will never, for this historian, be enough to dismiss, or minimize the components of the small but mighty engine that made community life and times, run so consistently through all the precarious ups and downs over these many decades.
One thing's for sure,.... I'm not going to lose my own reminiscences about the Muskoka I adore, and my hometown of Bracebridge, ......that offered me a splendid environs for an exciting young young life..... duly occupied as a wide-eyed kid drinking-in all that the 1960's and 70's had to offer....because I've preserved those memories in many, many penned vignettes, some that I will share in the course of these newly released blog submissions; but today despite an ongoing love for my former hometown, I no longer find the consistent, related and enduring parallels between the old days I studied, and the changing emphasis today on what is worthy of an historian's ink......I am a fierce defender of preserving, with the same sense of importance and priority, the humble celebrity-free reminiscences of the everyday folk, who raised families here, worked after hours with clubs and charitable organizations, coached, tied-up skates and drove players to out of town games always at their own expense.......and well made our neighborhoods memorable and strong..... and added so much to the local economy, and its diversification for so long. These lesser historical details, and hardworking citizens, without a shred of glitz or even one bold headline attached to their names, are no less important than tales of Mayor and Council's exploits and political milestones. These human attributes are important to me because it's exactly what I want my kids and grandkids to know about the unpretentious, unselfish, "one-for-The-Gipper" town where it all began. What I read about Bracebridge today makes me wonder what happened to the old one.....and what was so wrong with its century plus patina that its image needed to be replaced by an overkill of blatant new-century bolstering of ego-burdened "leader worship". Very little of what I read today about Bracebridge, seems to relate at all to the kind of hometown it was then in actuality.....and all the emphasis has been placed on the most prominent citizens, the political big wheels and the largest of large investors who apparently raised a town all on their own......and if ever there was an identifiable elite recognition peak in Bracebridge..... it is now. It seems to be a generalizing arrogance that has made clear distinctions that government is vastly more significant in every aspect of community life.....and that there really isn't any need to discuss anything else of a lesser prominence as being worthy social and cultural contributors. As I don't care for the way the community is being portrayed today, well, I'd like to share a few stories about the town I knew.....and it did have holes in its underwear so to speak but nobody really cared about shortfalls.....every rural town had deficiencies associated with hinterland living.....but from our perspective as former urban dwellers in Southern Ontario, our family was infinitely more concerned about enjoying the natural enhancements living in this beautiful district of Muskoka. We left the city because it was a city. And Bracebridge was a good and safe place to nurture and be nurtured.
As a preamble to this small collection of hometown chronicles, I must note that the above passage is a credible overview of my opinion of what my hometown has become in the past ten years. I was reminded of this when my mother Merle died in May 2008, and I spent a lot of time that spring thinking back about the town we moved to in the winter of 1966, the community we grew to adore, because of its general acceptance of commonplace and well being without any need for image pumping.....and what I perceive has changed about the neighborhoods we lived, played in, enjoyed road hockey games upon, and participated in oh so many adventures all the live long day. What I found has happened from then to now, is a clear and purposeful distortion of history to suit a purpose, accomplish some unspecified gain.......how Bracebridge actually advanced since the 1860's contrasts starkly the touched-up image promoted today in print, with chest-thumping boastfulness,.... an awkward distancing from the factual accounting of the bumps, bulges and worts we sported for a hell of a long time in this town, without ever being self conscious as a community. It's almost as if some are embarassed by certain aspects of our heritage and wish to conceal it.....and recognize only the most successful and proud moments of the past. It's not the historian's job to sanitize the facts but to present them in perspective...... the critical parts that make up the whole. I know the difference between the propaganda and image liberties taken, and what actually still exists of the old town and district ways and means....still modestly ticking-along beneath the sickly sweet icing the sculptors insist on applying for good looks etc., to meet all potential photo ops and media scrutiny. You know what happens to facades over time......they just decay away as they should.
What you won't find in local history cause...... well, it's not the history some like to promote!
Bracebridge has had a pretty normal run of luck. Same as all hamlets, villages and towns in the world! Some good, some bad. And it really hasn’t had any choice but to deal with it and move on, as they say. It has had its share of everyday nuisances and problems, a few substantial misadventures, impediments and disasters throughout its modest 150 years of settlement......., some record keepers arguing that it's infinitely better to let this contrary heritage bury in the sediment raised in the wake of accomplishment and advancement. Its unwritten record includes run-of-the mill jousting with problem prostitutes, die-hard boot-leggers, young and old drunkards, murderers, sundry other felons and frauds, and an assortment of bad neighbors who liked to whomp each other to settle property and family disputes. We even had an in-town neighborhood known by the perpetually derogatory title of "Nigger Hollow," allegedly named after the dark skinned employees who worked in the local tanneries and lived in the small homes on the south side of town .....still known today as "The Hollow." While it is absolute history that this name was used up to and including the 1960's by some folks, it has been avoided by most historians who should know better than to attempt to revise the past because of their own discomfort. What about those folks, the citizens who lived in that Hollow, and had to face that reference daily?
While there are many mentions of town disasters and set-backs faced by the community, there has been considerable sanitizing of history such that one might be shocked to know houses of ill-repute were a fact of life in this little town straddling the 45th parallel of latitude. The loggers knew about them and so did the tannery workers..... and so did the wives apparently, and the local constables did their best to remove them from the business community.....but they kept re-locating based on demand. Now while the purists are curling their lips in anger and outrage, and the hackles are raising, rest assured I know my stuff and I wouldn't offer you even the slightest mistruth to boost readership. But as I have argued with local historians for years, ignoring historical details because they're not particularly complimentary to the image desired of the "old hometown," doesn't make them go away....rather they're left for another day when some ambitious and dogged reporter-historical type decides to dig in an area where no other shovels have been imbedded. What then? Denial? Refusal to acknowledge the less than desirable aspects of historical record? Most towns have a unexplored heritage... stories about a goodly number of criminal types who some say "gave the town a black eye," because of their actions......and don’t warrant any kind of recognition. In my opinion the true dynamic of a history worth wearing, is that it does exhibit worts and blisters.....and that there is no way a hometown or city can truly come to terms with its past without taking into full account all the problems and obstacles overcome. Call it a worthiness to be anyone's home town, that it carries all its history, good or bad, an asset or a burden with the clear resolve....... that it has survived despite adversity and disadvantage, prejudice and bigotry onward to repair and restitution. When you read some of the "good times were had by all" histories from a lot of towns in our country, it's obvious there was an inherent and justifiable fear of bad reputation and its potential to hurt business.
Today however, we've come a long way in being able to consider faults and assets as a patina of community life, like it or not.....of course we haven't always done everything right for all these years. But would any one expect to advance 150 odd years without blemishes, failures, misadventures and catastrophes? Is it possible we can live in a town all these decades and be crime free? And while the truth about a lot of community news was censored and sanitized for a host of reasons, there wasn't a citizen old enough to vote who couldn't find the message between the lines, of any of these stories, or the ones curiously omitted, and know exactly the proportion and weight of editorial control over the public's right to know. It's still done today and we always know there's more to the story than what we're permitted to access. Some of this we accept. Then come the historians who don't particularly care if they step on toes, and what was buried is newly exhumed. Maybe we're shocked. Possibly not! Unfortunately much of this will take a lot longer to chip away because some overseers still believe any deviation away from accepted historical accounting will hurt a community. With honesty? Or the fact it was covered up for so many decades by people over-riding the public's right to know? But I had so much to learn. So much sensitivity to develop. So here I was a hometown kid, a keener historian looking to cut his teeth on some good local stuff, and an apprentice editor of the local press........that I may or may not have believed contributed to telling stories rounded at the edges. Boy was I in for discovery by immersion. I couldn't have been more advantaged, truth be known!
So here is a wee contradiction of sorts that I discovered from a self-imposed deep immersion......the wish to find out more about my hometown because at last I had a vested interest, the need to relate stories, and a desire to do so with accuracy to earn readers’ respect. I didn't understand any of this when I began as a newspaper editor back in the late 1970's, and on through the 1980's. I took over the task of editorship at a time when I was working feverishly as an historian, driven to find the truth and set it free.....to hell with the consequences. So what I am about to relate in a series of blogs is as much my own confessional......what I discovered about my community and what made me understand some of the protectionism, some of the reluctance to be entirely forthright because of anticipated dangers and consequences to largely unsuspecting families, who didn’t know quite everything about the activities of their ancestors. I suppose that makes me a part of a conspiracy to cover-up history. Thus the contradiction. Yes, there were many discoveries made pawing through local archives, news clippings, and documents, that would have startled the bejesus out of those who fear these kind of undertow revelations. I never turned away from even one of these accidental but important discoveries. And each one did influence my approach and my understanding of local heritage to this day. Serendipity is the way we historians advance our story-lines. One discovery leading to three other leads.
These blogs in preparation, will be sincere recollections about events, folks I knew, activities I got up to, and things I saw that were never, never meant for the public eye. Yet when they are all complete, and I feel that Bracebridge has been adequately overviewed and recalled from my own experiences, I think you'll find on the other side, a very real, honest and cherished portrayal of "Our Town,".......an amalgamation of so many characters, so many ambitions, happiness, sorrow, optimism, realism, content and discontent, all adding to the hue of patina I see when I cross the Silver Bridge on a misty spring morning, and look with affection upon the same main street as once, bustling as it always has, one full and busy day to the next. But there are no denying the ghosts of the past. I think immediately of the soldiers of the 122nd Muskoka Battalion marching down this street in preparation for overseas deployment in the First World War. The funeral processions that wound through these same streets with the victims of the great influenza outbreak after the war, and the day witnesses watched on this same street as an iron lung passed up Manitoba Street.....sending a ripple of mounting fear throughout the citizenry that there was a polio outbreak in Bracebridge. The parades. So many Santa Claus parades marched along this same corridor to the thunderous cheers of young and old. And it was the street my mother Merle used to love strolling, in modern history, taking my wee sons for their daily walk, to get their treat at the five to a dime store while I tended shop up the street. It was the mainstreet I used to hang around on Saturday mornings because it was an interesting place to people-watch.
As an apprentice historian/ editor, my mentor newspaper giant, Robert J. Boyer, led me to the downstairs archives in the former Herald-Gazette building, on Bracebridge's Dominion Street, where thousands of old newspapers were bound and stacked.....and he said.....while chomping down on his gnarled old cigar....."If you're interested in history....this should keep you busy for a few years."
In all my years working in his company Bob never once discouraged me from seeking out the facts of local history, or discussing something I wasn't sure about, or didn't quite appreciate the inherent sensitivity. While I was ruthless to begin with, and wanted to expose everything there was to exploit, Bob allowed me in on a few realities about what is known, what is truthful, and what is responsible representation and presentation of history. What he taught me was to learn and learn more, and never stop looking for the hinge to all else, while at the same time using that knowledge as a base of power;.... not just as a source for senseless and selfish exploitation. While I had been tutored by many well versed and accomplished historians during my university years in Toronto, Bob was by far the mentor who forced me to qualify and justify my facts like no other, and sculpt responsible opinions that could be steadfastly defended. I think Bob decided to make me a project and I'm glad he did. While we didn't always see eye to eye on all editorial conundrums, we generally found the way to compromise such that we both left a debate feeling respectfully successful. His was the wisdom garnered from decades of involvement in a newspaper industry, totally imbedded in all aspects of the community. Mine was the enthusiasm to consume as much of that knowledge as Bob was willing to lend, because I needed those critical insights and advisories to do my job properly. We did clash on occasion when I brought too much aggression and recklessness to the job;..... reflective of that cumbersome over-confidence of youth and inexperience. Yet he was the one gentleman I eagerly listened to because he was always honest and fair, and willing to infill what I was missing about the protocols of responsible journalism, and vulnerabilities of small town life and times. Bob never told me how to write or what to write about but he wasn’t shy pointing out important counterpoints....this from a man who had lived the history he wrote about. His sage advisories could never have been misconstrued as meddling or any attempt to censor what was clear fact. I only wish I'd told him of my sincere appreciation for his tutoring before we moved on with our lives and projects.
The recollections are all based in one way or another on the platform of history....rigorously exposed but not exploited to gain a readership. It was my resolve to know as much about local history as possible....all the details, all the suspicions investigated, all the muck kicked around and stepped through;.... not simply on the impetus and self-serving interests of a good story for a pay cheque but to genuinely possess a dimensional, all-sides considered foundation of undisputed knowledge. A base from which to build responsibly, with precision, as an historian devoted to public education. I'd rather know than not know.....and I've never censored out fact because it was an inconvenient truth. So the foundation of each story is solidly anchored on a wide and deep knowledge of all the events and milestones in my old hometown......but don't expect scandalous revelations for the sake of an audience. It doesn't mean I haven't been influenced by their occurrence at some point;....... just as I've been affected by so many other incredibly uplifting and inspirational events, and characters, I've been happily associated with over the decades. Hope you enjoy the small offering of hometown life as I knew it growing up in Bracebridge, Ontario, Canada, and as a former editor of Bracebridge's revered publication, The Herald-Gazette.
So what comes immediately to mind when I think back to those first years living up in the Weber apartments, up on Alice Street? Well, the cutting, rattling, invasive but always welcome train horn! Many times a day. The clickety-clack of trains pounding along the silver rails at 40 below and the unsettling, almost eerie stab of horn through the January night. I never really understood why we could hear it so clearly being situated quite a distance beyond and above the river-basin train station, just below the town's main street. I remember the wicked wind we had to endure crossing the Hunt's Hill bridge and the promises made to God to let us cross over without dieing.....in return for Christian behavior at home and school. When one of our mates fell for the allure of frosted-over ironworks, placing his tongue on the railing, what the hell else were we supposed to do but kick his arse and drop his pants?
I got beat up by local thugs, a family of miserable bastards and equally nasty cohorts, for stepping between the villains and my friend......who when freed ran home, leaving me to get whomped.... but good.... for my intrusive good nature. For this act of open defiance I was granted about two weeks of punch-outs, which damaged my jaw for life, and when school administration failed to act.....I pulled a "Shane" out of my hat, and hoofed the head thug in the nuts, rapping knuckles of both hands into the squishy, miserable faces of my pursuers. And bloody hell, I got hauled into the principal's office for fighting in the school yard. By golly, I took them with me and that felt real good. So I know what you're thinking.....this good fella is the same one who dropped a poor lad's pants, who had his tongue stuck to the railing of the bridge over the coldest river in the world. A balance of justice I suppose.
I loved school and enjoyed football games with Father Heffernan who used to organize lunch and recess matches on the sideyard of Bracebridge Public School.....our very own Father O'Malley (Bing Crosby - Going My Way and Bells of St. Mary’s). I loved to play road hockey up on Alice Street and over on Liddard and Aubrey Streets with school mates, and we played a thousand games of baseball and shinny on Frank and Ivy Henry's property behind the Hospital; and of course we biked a trillion miles around this district to swim and chase adventure.
I traversed the snowbound ribbon rails on winter nights, after walking my girlfriend Linda home, and I must have skated a thousand miles at the Bracebridge arena, holding her hand and dreaming of a future together. I sat on the bank at Bass Rock, our swimming hole on the Muskoka River, watching the hippies smoke dope, and nearly drowned in the bay when I tried to swim across with a friend....while holding my clothes in one hand above. I scraped my arse clean of skin when our soap box racer lost its wheels on Flynn's hill on Richard Street, and I got stomach aches that would pop your eyes, eating the little green apples we swiped off the trees that lined the neighborhood.
I can get sentimental to tears thinking back to Bamford's Corner Store and Black's Variety on Toronto Street, where I spent tens of thousands of cents buying black balls and pop, comics and Lucky Elephant Popcorn, and where most of my childhood was imprinted....the bum imprints we all left on the wooden stoop of Lil and Cec's (when Black's store was sold) on so many lengthy philsophical sojourns long into summer nights, when it was a meeting-spot for hot-rodders and neighborhood tough-guys. We loved them all because they were too cool to take their pop bottles back for the refund....and gladly dumped on us kids. I didn't have even one tiny image-issue cashing in someone else's pop bottle.
I played baseball at Jubilee Park, on the hottest summer afternoon's in history. Got stuck in left field but hit a few dingers in my day. Played a lot of hockey up at the James Street arena, and as a goaltender, never got equipment that actually protected my body parts......until that era's arena manager Tom Robinson helped me order my own equipment from a sporting goods catalogue they sent to his office. Got a decent reputation as an up and coming goalie until I tried out for the Junior C Bears and took one too many slapshots to the groin.....and when coach Danny Poland asked whether or not I was puck shy.....all I could do was nod 'cause I sure as hell couldn't speak due to the lower body pain.
I loved the Alice Street apartment where we lived because it was like a commune. Nobody shut their doors unless it was time to go to bed and it was a great sub-community in a kindly working-class neighborhood where everybody cared.......and one person's kid belonged to the street which was both good and bad depending on what kind of kid you happened to be! Residents on the street didn't show any reserve at all about phoning my mother to let her know of my latest, greatest exploit....which may have been the unlawful removal of ripe tomatoes from Gord Black's beautiful garden, or the swiping of a cooling pie from a window ledge that looked as if it had been made for me. I sort of remember removing the wheels from Seth Hillman's lawnmower so Al, Rick and I could get wheels for our hot rod.
I loved my mates and I never would have imagined a time or circumstance that would have pulled us apart. I could not have fathomed any circumstances except death to divide us.....when they would move away or marry outside the circle of friends we had been for decades. It was my own Peter Pan passion for the good times of childhood we all enjoyed growing up in Bracebridge, despite the knocks, bruises and misadventures. No, I didn't want to grow up. I didn't want to move away from Alice Street. And it's true that one day I would like to move back for the sake of so many ghosts with no one to organize them into a road hockey playoff. I didn't know anything about politics and I had no interest in social standing, and couldn't have cared-less about having any more money than it cost for a cold pop, a bag of chips to share with my mates, and maybe a small sack of black balls to get me through to the next dinner-time. I was naive, just as I am today, about preserving these precious memories......protecting the truths, the intimate details of what it truly meant belonging to a "hometown"......particularly what it meant to a transplanted city kid. Here are some of my fondest recollections of my early days in Bracebridge. They are all retold with the reverence I have for social history and hopefully provide a different perspective to other penned histories.....some I can relate to, others I can not.....many that I find flawless, others I find pretentious, pompous and misguided. They are honest and heartfelt attempts to tell it the way it was.....without any intent to alter, embellish or redefine history as it has all played out.
I’ve led an historian’s life. I live in a house jammed with histories of the world, work of great writers and profound philosophies penned by the most noted visionaries. I am comfortable with history. Glad I remained faithful to my profession despite setbacks....some anticipated, others quite unexpected yet understood. Sometimes I’ve had regrets. I’ve been shunned for what I know and the opinions I have expressed in the past. I’ve suffered retribution and it has at times been a lonely pre-occupation. Yet I cling to the belief that when I’m judged finally on the merit of content and responsible handling of history, I think what I have brought forth will be deemed balanced, honest and insightful to all who have a sincere interest in the promotion of heritage generally. As for pleasing all......I shall not lose any sleep if my adversaries continue to sharpen their claws for retaliation. I’m always prepared for a good and lengthy debate. Thank you for taking the time to read this introductory blog.....and please join me for more histories to come.