CHRISTMAS IN BRACEBRIDGE -

DO CHILDREN STILL LISTEN FOR THE TRAIN HORN - LONG TO SEE THE ENGINE PASSING - ENJOY THE PEAK OF IMAGINATION - THE POLAR EXPRESS

I WOULD LIKE TO THINK, I REALLY WOULD,……THAT THERE ARE STILL YOUNGSTERS TODAY, WHO PAY ATTENTION TO THINGS IN THE URBAN-DIN, LIKE THE LOUD, RATTLING HORNS FROM PASSING TRAINS. I WOULD ALSO LIKE TO THINK THERE ARE YOUNG ADVENTURERS, WHO LET THEIR IMAGINATIONS GO, WHEN STARING AT A CROSSING PASSENGER TRAIN. WHERE IS IT GOING? WHERE HAS IT COME FROM? DOES IT CONNECT TO THE REST OF THE WORLD? WHO IS ON-BOARD?

LONG, LONG BEFORE THE CHRISMTAS-THEMED MOVIE, THE POLAR EXPRESS, I WAS THE CHARACTER-KID, DOUBTING THE EXISTENCE OF SANTA CLAUS BUT BEING WILLING TO TRUST A TRAIN CONDUCTOR, FOR AN OPPORTUNITY TO RIDE THE RAILS IN STYLE. WHEN I FIRST VIEWED THE MOVIE, I WONDERED HOW THEY GOT THE STORY-LINE, BECAUSE IT WAS THE WAY I GREW UP…….WITH AN IMAGINATION, A FASCINATION FOR WHAT SURROUNDED ME. TRAINS WERE OF PARTICULAR INTEREST. I IMAGINED ALL KINDS OF NEAT STUFF HAPPENING, IF I COULD ONLY AFFORD A TICKET TO SOMEWHERE…..NEAR OR FAR WOULD HAVE BEEN OKAY, BUT MY FAMILY DIDN'T HAVE THE MONEY FOR A TRAIN TICKET. IF WE WENT ANYWHERE IT WAS BY TAXI OR OUR OWN JALOPY, WHICH WAS NO GUARANTEE WE'D EVER ARRIVE AT OUR DESTINATION.

WHAT WAS FREE TO ME, AS A KID GROWING UP IN BRACEBRIDGE, WAS THE FRONT ROW SEAT THE OLD TRAIN STATION, BY THE ALBION HOTEL, AFFORDED ALL US WANDERLUST YOUNGSTERS, BACK IN MY VINTAGE OF THE MID-1960'S. THE STATION HAD A MANAGER, A MR. STACEY I BELIEVE, BUT THE ONLY TIME I EVER SAW HIM, WAS WHEN HE WOULD SET UP AN ARTIST'S EASLE ON THE PLATFORM, TO PAINT THE HOLLOW OF THE MUSKOKA RIVER, AND THE SILVER RAILS WHICH ARE ON THE HIGH SIDE OF THE TOPOGRAPHY. WE COULD GO INTO THE STATION, AND SIT ON THE LOUNGE CHAIRS FOR HOURS, AND NEVER SEE ANOTHER SOUL. BUT IT WAS A JOYOUS OCCASION TO SIT ON THAT RAISED FREIGHT PLATFORM, OF THE STORAGE COMPONENT OF THE STATION, THAT WAS MOST ALLURING TO THE HUNT'S HILL KIDS. YOU WERE WITHIN ONLY A FEW FEET OF THE TRAIN WHEN IT PULLED INTO THE STATION. THE FREIGHT TRAINS DIDN'T STOP VERY OFTEN, SO IT WAS MOSTLY THE PASSENGER RUN THAT MADE BRACEBRIDGE A SCHEDULED STOP.

Sometimes I'd wander down there by myself, if my mates were busy, or away for the holidays, and there was never a moment to be bored. I imagined all kinds of neat adventures, if only I was permitted to travel onboard my version of the Polar Express. It was long past the steam era, which I would have enjoyed even more, yet to me, a train was a train, and it didn't matter what fuel it used to meet me at the station. A few of us lads used to enjoy riding on the freight cart, and there were some perilous rides down the ramp, that was somewhat blocked to slow down any run-away situation. Those ridges nearly killed us, as we shot from the back to the front real fast. We'd run it up and down the platform, as if we were the station employees. It wasn't hard to imagine the old days, when this station would have been jammed with eager, anxious passengers, and the platform crowded with friends and family, coming to meet those arriving home again. We all saw the early pictures of the station, and I remember seeing one, of a train derailment right at the platform we used to play. It was a steam engine that toppled off the rails, and actually hit the station itself.

As a kid, from the Hunt's Hill neighborhood, I had to cross those tracks four times each day, to get to Bracebridge Public School. I used to come home for lunch. All of us could set our watches by the train horns and the passing freight and passenger arrivals. Even at school, in the winter, I could hear the bellow of those great train horns, above the teacher's voice, through the closed windows. Late at night, I'd be startled awake by another passing freight train, and lay there listening to the "click-clack" of the frozen rails, at this time of the year rolling year. I would lay there, dreamily pondering, what it would be like to jump aboard that train, like I'd seen in the westerns I watched on television. My mother never knew how close I'd come, back in those days, to trying to jump aboard in the same fashion. I just didn't have a substitute for the horse, the cowboys used to get up to train-speed before they made their leap of faith. Both my parents, knowing my fascination for the old station, warned me repeatedly about getting to close too the tracks. And should I have ever tried to get on one, they told me about children like me, having their legs cut right off, after falling beneath the iron wheels of passing trains. Still, I was fascinated by the legend of trains, and I read a great deal about them in books and magazines from the public and school libraries. I even did a school project on trains, and I remember Canadian National Railways, sending me a huge envelope of train brochures and company histories, for a Grade Eight project. This was one of my better projects in a rather lackluster school career.

It was in the winter-time that I paid most attention to the train horns. I'd be out on the hard packed snow of Alice Street, with a frozen puck, a sliver stick, and two lumps of snow for goal posts, and there would be silence…….in the dusting of snow, spiraling down so beautifully in the lamplight. Then all of a sudden…… a burst of thunder, against solitude, I'd hear the first of numerous train horns in the distance. I waited for each bellow, and I knew the exact intersection the train was then passing, simply by the measurement of horn blasts, the echo where I was situated, and the clarity of the horn over the frozen townscape. On frightfully cold nights, you could almost see that horn blast, it was so loud and intrusive on a sleepy old town. Each time it bellowed, I might have winced a tad, but it just stirred that Thule in my heart, to race to the station, jump aboard, and head for exotic places……anywhere but this place, was my strategy.

Don't get me wrong. I loved my hometown. Yet the allure of those glimmering ribbon rails, in the moonlight of a winter night, was a powerful generator of grand schemes and great escapes to find fame and fortune…..adventures and excitement beyond mortal measure. Like I said earlier in this column, The Polar Express was what I dreamed of…….a fascinating train ride to the North Pole. That would have suited me fine. I needed affirmation the old guy was still on the job.

Whether it was Christmas-time, spring, summer or fall, my life was very much influenced by the fact I had to pass that old train station four times each day, at least twice every Saturday and Sunday. For recreation, we spent hour upon hour on that station platform, or pretending to be conductors and passengers, preparing for travel in the station lounge where we could get our imaginary tickets. All of us then were fascinated by possibility and potential, and the only thing that dashed it all, was when we watched yet another train pass us by. We were a resilient lot, and simply planned to catch the next one, or the next one after that, until our childish innocence fell away, as dust in the wind. Our girlfriends didn't enjoy the same pleasure, sitting on that railway ramp…..which always afforded painful splinters to our backsides.

I can remember going to work one morning, when I was news editor of The Herald-Gazette, and coming over Hunt's Hill, to find, to my horror, a wrecking-crew knocking down the last few erect timbers of the Bracebridge Railway Station. By time I got to the site, it was pretty much demolished, except for the platform. I was disgusted, and that has shown up in my writing about the incident, ever since. The building was toppled with nary a mention to the local press, very much intentionally to avoid the history-huggers, who might have stood in the way of the wrecking ball. If they were trying to escape negative publicity about the demolition, they were about as off base, and disconnected with the public, as they could possibly divide between town hall and constituents. They were right about one thing, of course, and that is what they'd anticipated about the architectural crazies getting involved. We surely would have, but there wasn't anything left to save, except some broken window frames, glass and shingles.

I'm looking forward to watching The Polar Express, with Tom Hanks, again this Christmas, and I will relive those days again, when imagination was my glory…..my ecstasy. I couldn't afford a ticket on one of those trains but I rode them anyway……sort of, in my over-active, ever-stimulated imagination. The price? It was free! Pity the children today, who seldom use their imaginations, to travel the silver rails, they way we did…..way back when!

I continue to follow news about petitions to improve rail service here, and to one day re-construct the old station……of which I heartily approve.

IF YOU HAVE A SPARE MOMENT OR TWO, CHECK OUT SOME OF MY OTHER ONLINE SITES / BLOGS, INCLUDING GRAVENHURST, MUSKOKA AND ALGONQUIN GHOSTS, MY WALDEN POND, AND MUSKOKA COOKERY HERITAGE.

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM THE CURRIE FAMILY