JUST LISTENING TO THE FALLING RAIN…..AND LETTING NATURE BE MY GUIDE

It has been an active winter of writing. I don't think I've composed more copy over a winter season, than I have this past seven months. My winter season writing jag begins after Thanksgiving, and carries on until spring chores force me outside again. The problem for me today, is that my body isn't what it used to be. I find myself hunching over this keyboard and practicing the poorest posture…..certainly contributing to a stiff back, stiff knees and a neck so rigid it feels as if I'm wearing a brace. I enjoy the work and I'm just glad to be interested in writing after all these years in the profession. It's obvious pain isn't going to keep me away from this keyboard.

This morning, it is wonderful to be sitting my cluttered, book-strewn office, coffee in hand, staring at a keyboard…..and feeling contented it has had a good winter-season work out. It is raining heavily outside, and the sound hitting the verandah roof, makes it seem so cottage-like and relaxing. I've always been lulled into subtle philosophy by such weather, and this morning, it is the perfect occasion to feel genuinely satisfied that the work over the past months has been successful. No I didn't write a best seller. Or even a modest seller. I don't want to travel around the world on a promotion tour, to sell such a book, if I had pumped one out! I like what I'm doing, with regional publications and my blog-sites which I adore. (I have five sites on different subjects). I don't have to jump on planes, and there are no real inconveniences at all….except for when I get too calm, and complacent, at this time of the year, when my body is beginning to heal itself from the work stresses. I could sit here for hours today, which is a professional danger, and not type one word on this beckoning keyboard. The rain is so wonderfully peace-inducing, that even the loon-shrill of a few moments ago, becomes startling and unsettling. I suppose most of all, I'm just pleased to have weathered another winter, and survived a touch of cabin fever….never missing much time at all, creating copy of all kinds for all uses. It's what any writer needs to feel. My summer season is the period I use to build interest in the next writing season….researching new projects and traveling all over the region as an antique dealer…..finding inspiration all over the place. It's an equally busy time of year in my professional pursuits, just not in writing.

This morning has been interrupted by work around the homestead. Domestic chores don't stop on account of rain. My daydreaming has ceased suddenly, when my son, just now, handed me a piece of paper that had fallen on the floor. It was a suggestion list left by my charming bride……with some expectations for the writer-on-hiatus.

And here I thought I could just sit here and listen to the rain.

SPRING PLANTING AND ALL THE PROPHETIC ATTACHMENTS OF STARTING ALL OVER

Suzanne and I have been working outdoors, here at Birch Hollow, planting new shrubs and annuals, amidst the natural ferns and wildflowers that arrive in bloom here each June. The lilacs were late blooming this year but as always, it's worth the wait. The old urban homestead looks so out of place, here in the suburbs of our town. We are very much rustic thinkers and if it wasn't for all the attachments of business, we would never have settled on the urban landscape. We surrendered to convenience.

We decided that, as much as possible, we would make the property work for us……as if it didn't inspire us, then it would serve little other purpose than a place to hang our hats and basic shelter. Since 1989 we have done our own thing, much to the neighbor's chagrin. We don't have a subdivision ruler, to show us when the grass is too long. We don't hire weed control folks to batter the landscape with chemicals, and we don't own a power mower, blower, or whacker. I have a push mower and a kind of scythe downsized for a small lawn and shorter grass. The dandelion police look at us with disdain, and we give them the "thumb" up sign, to let them know their objection has been registered.

Now don't think for a moment we don't care about our property. We just don't over-maintain out of boredom. We want enough grass to catch and reflect the morning dew. We want enough diversification of plants and shrubs, to reflect the nature of our region. We have raspberries and lilacs from many different locations in Muskoka, primarily Windermere, on Lake Rosseau, where we once had a family homestead and a Lake Rosseau cottage. Suzanne can see plants that her mother used to nurture, and see the lilac arch that she knew of her aunt's home in Ufford…..part of the original Shea homestead from the late 1800's. There are hundreds of plants and shrubs that were brought to our Birch Hollow property, because they reminded both of us, of what we experienced and enjoyed of those ancestral gardens…..Suzanne in Windermere, and myself in Bracebridge. We won't win any gardening awards because it is a hodgepodge of quirks and whims and fancies. I'm sure the local gardening experts pass our place and wish we'd simply surrender to decorative stone, versus trying to grow anything ourselves.

Suzanne and I are both historians. We have an historic property. Not because it is an old place…….but because it is a composite property possessing many of the landscape values we adore, vestiges of places we once lived, and memories we are reverent of, for what they give us each day…..when we poke our heads out the door, and see and smell the magnificent lilac blooms, and see the contrasts of flowers and leafy canopy, holding the silvery morning dew. Suzanne, a knitter of considerable accomplishment, will sit out on the deck, overlooking what we call "Fern Hollow," and create her hats, mitts, gloves and the occasional sweater. I will sit in my office, with window open, absorbing this splendid view, enjoying the cool air penetrating this inner sanctum. We will both enjoy this place for what it doesn't have. And celebrate it rigorously for what it does have…..and while it is always confusing to our neighbors here, I think they're getting used to the artsy-fartsy old hippies living next door.

We never stop the mission to add more local plants and wildflowers, specifically, to the mix here at Birch Hollow. We might find an interesting flower at roadside, or on a countryside stroll, that simply must come home with us. We will undoubtedly attend a church or farmside sale, one day soon, that will offer up some plants with a little provenance attached. We like those the most. Being able to quilt together a plant culture, from family gardens all over our district. Getting plants from an old homestead, long over-grown, is still our greatest passion. They mean something to us, as historians, and we are grateful and respectful of all these yearly additions. It does make us feel better to live here, amongst the plenty of the hinterland. Suzanne is inspired to knit because of the surroundings, and I am never at a loss for words, looking out on to this small but thriving garden property.

We don't conform. Never have. At least not when it comes to planting according to Hoyle, or the horsepower we are required to have in lawn maintenance equipment. We just shake our heads back at those who shake their heads at us. Live and let live, we say.

MUSKOKA AT ITS MOST HAUNTED - IN THE MISTY MORNING

It was one of those chilly spring mornings; a day with promise.....the rain has finally ceased for now..... there is great potential for a comfortable, nurturing warmth, with a long stretch of sunshine forecast.....encouraging the buds on the old lilacs to emerge toward that eventual burst of bright color, and alluring sweet fragrance. This morning has a sliding veil of mist that passes over The Bog, enchanting the landscape, stretching out to the tall pines and leaning birches, ghost regiment mustered on the far side of the basin. It is a poetic scene, that any bard would find worthy of a verse or two, an artist with easel, a vibrant, storied paint board, depicting the poignant but gentle ease from morning to evening. It is a wonderful experience, to watch this white mist tumble across the Muskoka moor, and over time, see the powerful beams of light tunnel through the canopy, revealing the heavy dew on the fuzzy fern heads, poking through the past autumn’s leaf cover......the cover that still crunches under foot.

Most folks never see this haunted, tranquil vista, as by the hour they rise from slumber, most of the spring mist will have drifted off into the sill leafless woodlands. They will miss this significant transition of the moment, this hour, the season, and will read an account, such as this, and wonder about all the fuss. It’s just a lowland with a fringe of forest on the upper side. In my vintage, you see, we still held some respect for mystery and magic, enchantments and legend. I don’t believe this to be a legendary place, but this morning had the kind of gyrating shroud, one might expect would, in the morning breeze, writhe like a dragon, through the trees and ferns of Robin Hood’s Sherwood Forest, or bathe the sullen, venerable hardwoods, along the embankment of the Hudson River Valley. This is the kind of morning that reminds voyeurs that reality and the supernatural intertwine; part of the fantastic merge between observation and expectation. It is for the imagination, this morning, to celebrate the nuances of cool spring mornings; sense with an open mind, the sound of those myriad, tiny, silver cataracts of water, running lower and lower through the bogland, toward the lake.......and the golden sun of May, that make this such a wonderfully fictional place.....at the same time, as the written page......taken from reality; I live each day here at Birch Hollow.

THE MUSKOKA SEASONS - EXPLORATION AND ADVENTURE - A GREAT WEALTH

Washington Irving is by far, my favorite author. His stories of the Haunted Hudson River Valley, the fictitious Sleepy Hollow, and the legendary Headless Horseman, and so many other memorable characters and situations, have always inspired me, and encouraged a revisiting of our own region.....that I also consider a very enchanted and mysterious place on earth. In case you didn’t know this, the name Bracebridge, was taken from the book of short stories written by Irving. Postal Authority, William Dawson LeSueur, thought so highly of Irving’s work, that he borrowed the name when an application was presented from the citizens of North Falls (now Bracebridge). Not liking the name, he awarded the title “Bracebridge” instead, connecting the town to a huge amount of literary heritage.....without making much of a fuss at all. Irving had only just recently passed on, by the year 1864, when LeSueur named the new post office, and it was meant to be an honor to the pioneer community. It just missed the mark unfortunately, and has never really become the tribute it should have been.....if the historian / literary critic / postal authority LeSueur, had bothered to submit a little attached history.

In future blogs this coming year, I would like to explore reasons I believe Muskoka has a lot in common with the Historic Hudson, not just by name and writer alone. Please join me for some interesting adventures, and expeditions, in-and-about our very haunted and enchanted district of Muskoka.

W. COSLAND HAS PROVIDED A GLIMPSE OF HISTORY - LIVING NOW FOR ME

I have posted images of two, large, mid to late 1800's oil paintings, on stretched canvas, I recently purchased from a charming little antique shop in the City of Orillia. They were both painted by a British artist by the name of “W. Cosford.” We know he was an accomplished artist, as we have found several auction houses that have sold his work in recent years, but when, what year and season, he came to Canada, are the clues for one of those historic mystery-capers we love here at Birch Hollow. He was painting in the 1870's, in England but whether he journeyed here earlier, or later, is a bit of a mystery. The paintings and framing give the appearance of the 1860's to 1880's. There appears to be a birch bark canoe in traverse, in this landscape depiction. We’re not at all sure of the location.

It’s at this time of the rolling year that I have to escape the office environs, at the old homestead, and run amuck through antique shops, auctions, flea markets, church bazaars, and yard sales. Since eighteen years of age, I’ve been an antique “nutter.” For our honeymoon, Suzanne and I travelled to Colonial Williamsburg, in Virginia, and I was nearly divorced on the spot, when I refused to leave the vintage print shop. As a book collector / dealer, this little cranny of history was a literal paradise of paper, ink and printing press. I’d warned Suzanne, before we got married, that life with an antique collector / writer, would be challenging....the household always cluttered with history of one kind or another. Today she does credit me for being honest, at least,...... as we had to move ten or so art works, just to mount the two giant Cosford paintings. Actually, Suzanne loves art as much as I do, and these two images are mood setting pieces for sure. Considering that her family were amongst the earliest pioneers in Muskoka, and my family were United Empire Loyalists, being surrounded by Canadiana is never a hardship. Only when we have to sell-off some pieces, to afford exciting new acquisitions, does regret enter the experience. The “I want it all,” passion is hard to deal with. No, I’m not a hoarder. I’m neater!

Sitting with these two compelling landscapes, in the old glow of a flickering oil lamp, listening to the wind howling across The Bog, this past weekend, made these scenes seem very real indeed.....to the pioneer period we both study and adore. I could hear the wind sweeping across the lakelands depicted by Cosford.....and feel the chill of the April stormscape, and sense the loneliness to the settler, looking out of that cabin door at such a vast wilderness, ......and its unforgiving climate. It is indeed pleasant then, to sit here, by the hearth, and celebrate the comforts of this modern homestead.

You can view the other W. Cosford painting by clicking onto my “Gravenhurst” blogsite. I will be out on the antique hustings more frequently now that the yard and flea market season has rolled around. Seeing as I’ve worn down my fangs anyway, over the past six months of local government watching, it’s time to rejuvenate the heart and soul of the antique hunter. I get stronger and more determined with each find. So far, the pickings are great! I’ll let you know in future blogs.....which will be a little less aggressive and prolific for the next six months, just how we’re doing out there......and what constitutes a truly “big find.” I’m writing an antique hunting column for a new publication, known as The Arrow, published in the Almaguin Region, if you’re up that way this summer.

IN THE WAKE OF DISASTER, HOW ARE WE SUPPOSED TO FEEL?

It’s hard to sit here at Birch Hollow, these days, without fidgeting all over the place, reaching for the remote for the television, or the control knob of the radio, to get the latest news updates on world tragedies unfolding. It is almost impossible to enjoy this wonderful scene, unfolding in my yard, and across the lane, where spring is settling so warmly and brightly upon the landscape.....without thinking about the nuclear disaster in Japan, and the radiation that might soon touch over these boglands, and contaminate our seasonal flowers in the gardens we built last spring. I have never been one to succumb to doom and gloom, and as a die-hard realist, it’s always prevailed upon me to live with truth, and cast off all the fiction that attaches itself to interpretations.

With this manic need to divest myself of embellishment, and void my thought process of the wonders of fairy dust, and magic beans, to cure what ails us, I have most definitely invited the universe to weigh heavily upon my soul. So that despite the naysayers and assorted vested-interest experts, who assure me that radiation won’t intrude upon the nature of the land......I will sit here calmly, but tuned-in, appreciating the realities I expect......and the need to break free of the falsehoods coming from those who wish only to minimize and de-stress what is known of actuality.

I am a happy and contented writer. I am an eternal optimist. I have been all my life. In fact, I come from a long line of optimists. Of this I am pleased at my lot in life. There is however, a time, in even the optimist’s life, when anticipation and worry can’t be quelled or removed by honesty or the purity of actuality. Sometimes fiction does seem to be the best choice for what ails me. I can’t imagine writing much at all, of an upbeat nature, if I was told bluntly, by an informed source, that the hinterland of our beautiful country, had been contaminated by one of the most deadly forms of man-made pollution.

What can one write about then......other than to adjust to the new normal.....and that we might all be consumed with reality with no buffer or privilege of fiction......no matter how badly we long for escape. We will be forced to deal with that inconvenient truth.....from a half a world away.

A PERFECT TIME FOR THE LIBERATION OF WRITER IN RESIDENCE

There’s an election coming. I think. Time to escape. Out into the great hinterland of Muskoka......out into the still snowy woods I’ve been admiring for months from my office window.

I can’t stand elections. I hate rhetoric and self-serving spin, and seeing as this makes up most of the content of advertising and speeches, working around the property for the next five weeks seems a good idea. Not to avoid my civic responsibility or anything. Just to sidestep the b.s. I know how I’ll be voting and it won’t be the result of an attack ad, or a story spinner working in the back room as a speech-writer. I think I’ll go and cut some wood before I get mad thinking about the way democracy facilitates fiction.......because surely we know what spin means? A tasteful and strategic manipulation of truth for gain.

Last fall I took down about twenty trees on our property, and each cut hurt like hell. All these trees were planted by me, back when we first arrived at Birch Hollow, and we had nothing but a sandy brown lawn, a few boulders for decoration, and a tiny scraggly woodlot in the side yard. I wanted trees. Lots of trees. I just forgot about things like “roots wrapping around sewer and gas lines,” and “vegetation from those trees growing on my shingles,” and “no light getting through for my partner’s flower gardens.” So I had to cull what I had sown, and it was a miserable harvest. I could almost hear them cry when I had to axe them to the ground. While I felt terrible removing those wonderful little maples, some brought from the Village of Windermere, where we had a family cottage, it did create more light for gardens this year, remove the threat of sewer line strangulation, and potentially save us from a gas line rupture. Roots can do that kind of thing. I just didn’t know it when I planted them in clusters, not far from gas line arteries.

This spring I’ve got a monstrous job cutting up the trees I cast onto a large pile in the sideyard last November. It will take about a month I’m sure, to tidy up. It hopefully will take the whole period of the federal election campaign. When I come in, I’ll be too tired to pay any attention to their barrage of advertisements, and I won’t even make it to the late evening news, before passing out from exhaustion. I’ve got those trees to trim, you see, and gardens to brighten this spring, and can blame all this handyman stuff, for not paying attention to the folly of political candidates......and unless they want to come and lend a hand here at Birch Hollow, I’ll just vote based on knowledge, not on the quality of spin foisted upon the masses.

I’m actually glad I set myself up for all this yard work. It will be so much more pleasant than watching candidates climbing all over themselves to get their message out. I’m staying out, and it’ll be great! Sure, there will be a few pesky candidates wandering through the neighborhood but they’ll probably stay clear of the axeman, rigorously chopping away in this own dimension of real and honest work.

No spin required. No spin wanted!

SITTING BY THE WINDOW, WATCHING, ENJOYING, BUT WRITING LITTLE

I have just enjoyed a wonderful week’s vacation at home. While many of my contemporaries were hustling all over the planet for the March Break holiday, Suzanne and I stayed home. Well, it’s not as boring as it may read initially. Afterall, we live in Ontario’s beautiful lakeland, and there are thousands of people every year, who endure long drives and heavy traffic to get here.....and well, we don’t have to travel far to enjoy the hinterland benefits.

The only things that got in the way of a thoroughly relaxing week, was world news of earthquakes, tsunamis, radiation leaks, unrest in the Middle East and rumours of a pending federal election here in Canada. Suzanne has always been somewhat burdened by my “need to know” stuff. Not that she’s void of interest in world events, or in upgrading her knowledge, but being married to an old reporter who still thinks he’s working the front-lines, means a constant din and clutter of news related sounds and publications here at the otherwise calm Birch Hollow.

It has been quite difficult to come up with blog entries recently, because the news has been so tragic and depressing. Even watching out over The Bog, our neighborhood wetland, has been less invigorating some days. Calming yes. Just not the kind of motivation this place provides the hungry writer. I have found myself sitting at this desk, for more than an hour at a time, just watching the birds and squirrels around the feeder on the deck, and studying the traffic down our lane. The world events, the devastation in Japan, particularly the escalation of radiation issues, have certainly made me appreciate more astutely, how precarious our survival is, much of it due to our own handiwork.

I love this view from here, and I know that in short order, I will find more to be optimistic about, and feel more compelled to write these blogs. In the meantime, I will just follow the news and hope for the best. And sit with the cats and old dog here at Birch Hollow, looking out at a fascinating lakeland, in the spectacular early days of spring.

GROWING UP POOR MADE US RESOURCEFUL - SMALL IMPROVEMENTS WERE ENORMOUS IN MY EYES - A GOLD BIKE, A CHEAP BALL GLOVE AND A MULTI-COLORED COAT FOR HALF PRICE

I knew our family was poor. All my chums were from families of modest income, most of them a little better off than us. We were a family of three, living in a two bedroom apartment, up on Alice Street, in Bracebridge, back in the 1960's, and my associates all lived in their own homes. They never held this as a social / economic thing because when it came right down to it, while their families owned homes, they didn’t have oodles of money either, or live extravagantly. These blokes had holes in their runners like me, and got wardrobe changes every August before school started. Maybe socks and underwear at Christmas. For hockey sticks we used ones found at the arena, that were usually broken, and we scavenged baseball bats from the garbage bin at Jubilee Park. I bought a new baseball glove from Bamfords’ Variety Store, up on Toronto Street, as a birthday gift from money given to me, and all my chums had hand-me-down gear that had belonged to older brothers and sisters. No one had much money, other than for corner store treats, and we got those funds from hunting down pop bottle empties and cashing them in for black balls and chewing gum.

My parents, Merle and Ed were good providers but their wages weren’t enough to escape the renter’s way of life. We had to settle for paying off someone else’s mortgage, someone else’s trip to Texas every winter. We just couldn’t seem to get ahead. We weren’t any different then than millions of other folks, who by circumstance, just couldn’t elevate much beyond cheque to cheque living. But I was good with what we had, and even at Christmas, I was contented with a new hockey stick, a couple of pucks, some mitts and a game board. Merle always apologized for not being able to afford more things for me, but I seldom if ever asked. I contented myself by playing outdoors, and used every resource available, for day to day entertainment.

I know that the social stigma of being broke bothered my parents way more than it did me. I remember in high school, being able to afford a neat multi-colored, mod-style fabric coat. I think it was twenty bucks. We used the order office of both Eatons and Sears a lot. I imagined myself looking very dapper in this new coat. Funny how I didn’t notice others wearing the same style of coat before I sent in the order. It was like we all belonged to some club, and should have had an emblem or patch on the front that identified us as “The Boys of Knute” or something like that. It seems a lot of folks were bargain hunting that spring, and it showed. When I told my wife this story, she smiled and said, “you mean the coat of so many colors?” “Are you telling me you remember that coat after all these years? We weren’t even dating then?” I asked. “When we came on the bus, we’d often pass you walking to school.....and there was no mistaking your nearly florescent jacket. Everybody on the bus knew it was you.” Great. Nothing like history to improve your lagging self image.

My mother was very proud and didn’t like to admit we were always a hair’s breadth away from financial disaster, at just about every moment. It affected her health and she suffered from high blood pressure from her early forties. Ed was a difficult guy to live with, and he liked to imbibe, and although a million miles from the story of Angela’s Ashes, he had, in his youth, lived very much a tragic life with an alcoholic Irish father, who abandoned four kids and a wife. Ed would quit his job in a heartbeat, if a manager got too cocky, but he always bounced back, and usually made it to a managerial position within several months. With a good knowledge of the lumber industry, he’d quickly show his prowess with customers, on the respective sales desks of a number of regional lumber companies. He was excellent at this job. But the wages were still low and even with both my parents working, it just wasn’t enough to....let’s say, put down enough to get a mortgage, let alone a cottage, which Ed’s bosses all had. We all had inner struggles with jealousy. It would be stupid to deny this. For example, I was jealous of my friends who all had neat bikes. I went for a long time without, and when they decided to go biking, I stood and watched their silhouettes disappear over the horizon. When one of the lads got a new bike for his birthday, he offered me his old one for five dollars. I had enough to swing the deal but it took breaking into my Christmas fund for a selfish, self-serving purpose. So I bought the most rickety, spokeless, wobbly, rusted piece of junk you’d ever seen. When my dad saw it he was moved to action. He took me immediately to the hardware store for spray paint.....no kid of his was going to be seen on a bike that looked so bad. I picked out gold paint and let me tell you, it didn’t do anything to improve the looks of the two wheeler. In fact, like my multi colored coat I told you about, the old bike just stood out more, and even seemed to glow when nightfall arrived. At least I got to keep up with my chums. Well, not keep up as much as tag along, which was fine. It was better to wobble in last place than remain behind.

Eventually my dad couldn’t stand to see this golden wreck beneath his proud son. So he gave Merle ten bucks to invest, on my behalf, as a downpayment on a nifty green bike, with a banana seat, from Ecclestones Hardware, on Manitoba Street. The bike was thirty-five dollars, and Butch Ecclestone, a dear man if ever there was one, let me take it home then and there, as long as I promised to come in every week with a small payment. It was a bumper season that year for lawn mowing, up at the Alice Street apartment, so the bike was paid off before the end of that summer. It was a metallic green and a joy to ride. I could not only keep up with my buddies but pass them. The only problem was, and it always seemed to be a color related issue with me, but during our neighborhood devilry, all the neighbors could identify me.....to my parents or the fuzz, as “you know, the kid with that snot-green bike!” I bet the shipping tag on that new bike didn’t identify it as being “snot green.” I wouldn’t have bought it then. So I apparently have always been identifiable by the color I attach to myself.

I loved living up at the Alice Street apartments because we were all in the same boat financially, and I’m pretty sure it was discussed, during those summer evening vigils out on the lawn, escaping the terrible humidity trapped in the apartments. But no one seemed to feel downtrodden,..... just living day to day without abundant resources. If you bought a new lawn chair you were living on the wild side. Two lawn chairs and you were getting ready to move on from Alice Street. There was a comradery in that apartment complex, and a sharing of what resources were most bountiful. Food and condiment sharing was a vigorous trade, and you seldom got through a dinner without someone poking their head in the kitchen door, begging a cup of milk, flour, sugar or a container of mustard. We gave what we had. We knew that whoever we loaned the items to, would be there for us, when we needed groceries but were cash restrained. I didn’t see anything wrong with this kind of financial modesty. We helped one another. When one car didn’t start in the morning, there was always a partnering in the very next vehicle that did start. I had a dozen parents in that building. Merle and Ed could ask neighbors if they’d seen me recently, and although the questions might have had to ricochet around the complex, someone as sure as pumpkin makes pie, knew where to find me ninety percent of the time. And yes it helped having a glow in the dark, gold bike, then a snot-green one, and later, a multi-colored coat......the only one in our neighborhood.

By all definition we were poor then. I knew it but for some reason, I found strength in being resourceful as a result of being poor. I had more patches on my pants and shoes than original fabric. The souls of my shoes used to flap in a strange, almost musical cadence, that simply eliminated having dry feet on wet days, or sneaking up on my friends....or enemies. When they couldn’t be held any longer by glue or tape, and I’d be suffering obvious skinned knees from the frequent falls, Merle would insist on getting me a new pair. Not PF Flyers but whatever shoe was on sale at Stedmans or the Economy Store. It didn’t matter to me. I held no stock in flashy shoes but I certainly liked ones that kept my feet dry. I used to run a lot so the not-tripping thing was pretty good as well.

I can remember at baseball, some of the kids, and even the coach, laughing at my cheap ball glove. I knew it was cheaply made every time I caught a ball. It had thin layer of leather and some felt I think under that, and a fabric covering. But basically it was my skin and bones stopping the fastball. The fastball was smaller than the softball most of the younger teams played with. Some of our players could really move that ball along, and all I could do was grimace and turn the frown upside down. As the coach would have liked me to admit, even the pop-ups into the outfield, hurt like hell, if I didn’t catch them in the small webbing of the tiny mitt. It was all I had and my parents couldn’t afford anything better. I think I did feel disadvantaged about this situation, yet I made some incredible catches with that corner store purchase. I got so used to it, that even when I got extra money, I felt it would be unlucky to abandon an old and very worn-out accessory. I probably used that glove into my late teens, and everybody took a shot at making fun of it. Then I’d make a diving catch and they’d be absolutely spellbound how I could have hung onto the ball with such a poor quality glove.

I did the same in hockey, with woefully inadequate equipment. I couldn’t afford goalie skates until my Midget years. Truth is, until it was ruled illegal, I used my baseball glove, with a special protective sleeve taped on, for a couple of seasons. The league didn’t have a lot of surplus equipment to loan out, and I had to settle for what no one else wanted. The pads for my legs were terribly thin and for years I played without arm pads. Until that is, I came home after one game with huge bruises on my arms from slapshots I’d stopped. I didn’t get a lot of rebounds off flesh and bone, I’ll tell you....just a searing pain and tears in the eye. I wanted to play so badly that I was glad to compromise. After nearly breaking my toes, on each foot, the coach finally insisted that I had to have proper goalie skates for insurance purposes. In my pre-juvenile year I was able to buy all new goalie equipment from money I’d made at a summer job.

It’s funny now when I think back on those days. It’s not that we’re wealthy today but infinitely better off than Merle and Ed were in the 1960's, living up there on Alice Street. As young parents ourselves, Suzanne and I did have some painfully lean years trying to afford a new house, a broken car, debt to the eyeballs, and raising two young lads. And we raised the boys with a keen understanding of what being resourceful is all about. Suzanne, who originally trained as a home economics teacher, which later became “family studies,” could make up a soup or stew from just about anything, and kept us well fed through some pretty tough economic times. The boys are still pretty resourceful running their vintage music business, here in Gravenhurst. I can’t tell you how many old guitars, they got cheaply, were fixed up and passed onto young folks and old, who wanted “something affordable.” I know where they were coming from. Settling for less isn’t so bad, even if it’s a wobbly gold bike, a ball glove with a capable hand within, and a multi-colored bargain coat that kept me warm and dry regardless.

I may have been poor but it never stopped me from enjoying each and every day.

JUST ONE MORE BURDEN TO HAUL DOWN LIFE’S HIGHWAY

The headline in today’s weekly newspaper, seared like a branding iron on my chest. Our town council has pared down this year’s tax hike to 8.9 percent. I’m pretty sure most readers of this headline, would have reacted the same as I did.......reading the article twice to make sure it wasn’t a typo, before screaming out loud, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this any more.”

It wasn’t a typo. It was the new reality of a new council. And I had such high hopes!

My disconnect with them, is that they undoubtedly think they did a terrific job, slashing the initial “committee grab” for money, by a whopping five percent. Five percent isn’t whopping by the way. I was being sarcastic. I’m thinking otherwise, that they did a crappy job. And it’s not over yet either. It might be higher. There’s still some begging going on, so I’m expecting more searing news from town hall in the near future..

The problem is a simple one. The previous council, while warned by ratepayers, went on a spending spree that involved opening a new town hall, giving the old hall to the local fire department, taking federal money to build a new pool / recreation complex, (but having to do it on short notice, or risk losing out), with the belief that we would be, on the bankable side, gaining all kinds of new development that would increase the tax base. Well, that hasn’t quite happened just yet, because there was this recession that blew in from the south.

The problem is that our town is going through some major economic changes, and the main street has suffered from the development of new commercial pods.....and from those inevitable changes of fortune every main street, in North America, has faced in recent history. But complicating this is the fact we spent too much, as a municipality, for too long, and now we’re having to face, on one hand, departmental cutbacks, and on the other, an 8.9 percent, or higher tax increase. Those on fixed incomes are facing a tough road ahead, and I’m not satisfied town council appreciates just how this, and the layering-on of other fiscal pressures, are creating some serious social /economic problems in our midst. Much of this collateral damage of the citizenry, is going to be heaped onto social services and to the local Food Bank, so generously operated by the Salvation Army. While some folks debate the value of a trolley, to connect the commercial pods with the mainstreet, I’m pretty sure that if it requires an increase in the tax rate for 2011, we’ll have our own home-grown rebellion foisted upon town hall.

What is offensive, is that council is not stating the obvious......that the debt and spending activities that got us into the 8.9 percent tax number, is the handiwork of a past council. While I do expect the present, new and hopefully improved council, is trying to deal with crisis-financing, to please committee chairs, they need to explain clearly to the citizens, who will have to haul this tax burden into the future, just how poor the previous governance was on towing the line.

In the case of our brand new pool / recreation complex, the money came from a federal source?, and was hinged on a hurry-up plan that demanded adherence to strict time-lines. What it did was create a panic to get gears in motion. Important stuff, like a high water table, apparently didn’t adhere to the strict time protocol. How dare it be there....in the way of progress! Nothing at all should have been fast-tracked just to snag the offering of instant cash. What have we all been told about temptation, and reasons we should be wary of anything too good to be true? While to many in this community, and I am in the minority, not accepting the money offer, for a long dreamed-of pool, would have been a blasphemous act. Downright “anti-hometown!” Yet if I’m not mistaken, the Lake of Bays turned down money to construct a large warehouse-type facility, to be erected in the municipality, for some use by the G-8, that was graciously declined by council. I think it might have become a central Muskoka archives, although I stand to be corrected. At the time, councillors could not support acquiring a new building, and then being responsible for its maintenance and operation evermore. Turning down money seemed a terrible thing to do. But not really. They knew what they could afford in the future, based on their ability to fairly tax constituents. We could have survived several more years without a new pool, and found or raised funds required to build exactly what we wanted, when we could absolutely afford it. With new site operating costs, and a tight budgets for the foreseeable future, I hope the new centre will fall tidily within a restrained budget. I think Parks and Recreation folks are in for an eye-opening experience, when the invoices start rolling in, during those first years of trial and error operation.

We find ourselves in a bad situation because of so many other substantial cost increases from fuel and food, to water, sewers and hydro. The tax burden is becoming a serious concern and one likely to carry on for years. When budgets are cut, and projects shelved, they return with a fury. With huge and unfair increases in property assessment values, in addition, this isn’t going to be a one year tax event. For a lot of folks just barely surviving, all increases are threatening and hurtful. And what I want to see from council, is an appreciation that justifying the increase in their own minds, doesn’t make it acceptable in ours.

I would love to see town councillors dawdle a while, over at the main street Food Bank, possibly asking a few questions of volunteers......and learning by blunt immersion, that what they perceive to be a prosperous, progressive town, is actually one that is suffering, the result of blatant indifference.

MARCH BREAK IN MUSKOKA - I’M JUST GLAD TO BE HERE

In over thirty years writing in, and about the District of Muskoka, I’ve never been asked.....not once, to write a promotional piece, specifically to attract visitors to our area of the province. I guess, in some ways it does bother me, especially, when over the years, outside writers and promotional services from places elsewhere, have been kept busy promoting life and recreation here. I’m sure the attitude has been, that local writers just can’t handle such an enormous project. Well, I’ve spent many years trying to figure out that ridiculous attitude. The best understanding of the social, cultural, historic patina of our region, is from those who’ve spent vast amounts of time here. Every year however, they’ll be some silly, generalized, obtuse promotion about our region, generated from an office or boardroom a hundred miles or more, from the subject hinterland.

Although I’ve never been asked to promote and highlight Muskoka, I’ve been doing it on my own since my first major writing gig in 1978, with the Bracebridge Examiner, and then onward to Muskoka Publications and the seasonal feature papers, The Muskoka Sun, and The Muskokan. In just about everything I write, whether it is a column on antiques and collectibles, or on golf, history, current events, or politics, Muskoka is always the background drawn from.....and I like to think that rather than being known as a Gravenhurst writer, I’m a Muskoka author. I’ve wanted to be known as a Muskokan from the spring of 1966, when my family thankfully relocated here, from Burlington, Ontario. It was my making, let me tell you. It’s as if my parents did it just for me. I felt pent-up in the cityscape. There was too much, when I was happy with a less grandiose and busy home region.

When I graduated university in Toronto, back in the spring of 1977, I couldn’t wait to get home to Bracebridge. Despite the fact our family was very much a part of the building history of Toronto.....my grandfather, Stan Jackson, has a Toronto street named after him, getting back to Muskoka was the end-all. I won’t say that it alone, meant the end of my relationship to a long-time girlfriend but it certainly was a contributing factor. Also from Bracebridge, she saw so many more opportunities in the city than I did. Her liberation was the urban landscape. Mine was the rural clime of Muskoka. It hurt for a long time after ending our years together but never once have I had a single regret that my decision to remain here in Muskoka, hurt my opportunities for a good and prosperous life. And it is certainly why over three decades, I have without reservation, promoted a Muskoka lifestyle at every turn, the intimate patina for thousands of written pieces, that hopefully, in some way, have reminded readers how fond I am of this rural existence......and why they should visit more often.

I will still get furious when I read about some distant public relations firm, being awarded a lucrative contract to promote Muskoka to the rest of the world. Nonsense. It can never be as heartfelt and believable, as from someone who has been nurtured and inspired by the environs since 1966. When my dad told us he had accepted a lumber company offer, from an old friend up in Bracebridge, in the vacation paradise of Muskoka, I was speechless.....but ready then to load up the car and leave the city for good. That moment! I never was very patient. As a preamble to this job offer, was a summer-time trip up to beautiful Bruce Lake, near Minett (Lake Rosseau area), to meet with Ed’s future employer. It was a three day adventure that hooked me from the first bear we saw, to the great fishing we enjoyed. Having the chance to live in this natural paradise year-round, was literally off the charts. It was very much a dream come true for an uninspired city kid.

Living rurally has its challenges. We’ve been told that by city-folks for several centuries, and that Muskoka is only worth visiting in the summer months. Well, I’ve been quite contented to let them know otherwise, since my first published columns back in 1978. Yet no matter how often and effective these pieces have been, creating a modest buzz about our district, I can predict in advance, I will never be approached by any local governance or tourism agency, to produce Muskoka themed editorial material. I’m good with this because my passion for Muskoka has never had a cash value attached, and for most of the editorial and feature inclusions, I’ve never been paid a dime. But promoting Muskoka is just a naturally flowing interest, and as it has been perpetually nurturing to me, and certainly my family, it’s the least I can do.......to represent it, enthusiastically, as the welcoming, hospitable, invigorating region it is.....and has been since the late 1800's.

My wife and I look forward to spending our March Break at home......in Gravenhurst, Muskoka. We’ll day-travel from morning to nightfall, and celebrate every square inch of this picturesque Ontario lakeland. We’ll come home to our modest little homestead, at Birch Hollow, and warm by the hearth, feeling quite contented we have had a good and memorable vacation.....again!

I’ve haven’t been paid to do this.......but I’m doing it anyway. Visit Muskoka. What a hauntingly special place on earth. I know it for fact! By immersion!

THE OIL LAMP GLOW OF MARCH - THE MERGING OF OLD AND NEW REALITIES

A former girlfriend’s father introduced me to vintage oil lamps. I was nineteen, at the time, and I was enthralled by Gord Smith’s (Algor Cottages / Lake Muskoka) diverse interest in antiques. He was a terrific furniture restorer, and a perfectionist in every way. The only time he got mad at me in five years, dating his daughter, was when I pointed out a brush hair left in the varnish, on an otherwise magnificently refinished oak table-top. It wasn’t my fault it was there,.... just my fault for upsetting his complete satisfaction for the piece. He knew it would leave of terrible mark in the surface if he dug it out. The last I remember, he had decided to leave it as provenance of modern era restoration. I’d told him that it wasn’t uncommon, and actually quite desirable, to find a brush hair on a fine work of art.....left by say A.Y. Jackson or Tom Thomson.

He would take a beaten-up dining room table with chairs, that you’d swear had no future whatsoever, and Gord would dismantle the pieces, strip them of the old paint, and rebuild them as they had been originally crafted. You wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference between the new piece, when it arrived, via a horse-drawn delivery wagon in the 1890's, and its restored condition circa the late 1970's. He was that good. The furniture came out of his workshop ready for another hundred year haul. I do believe it was Gord who inspired me most, to start refinishing pieces myself, and while I don’t restore with the same vigor and volume of my youth, I still love to find a challenging piece to work on. I never quite attained Gord’s skill.

Gord had a particular fascination for vintage oil lamps. He never really explained why, but it was a real treat when he fired up the dozen or so he had positioned on a Victorian table in the livingroom. There were some fancy, colored lamps, with elaborate shades but most were examples of farm and utility oil lamps that I think must have reminded him of his own days on a homestead near Bracebridge. The smell of those ignited oil lamps did something to me, and when they were aglow, I was in a writer’s paradise. When Gail would be helping her mother in the kitchen, after dinner, I’d sit there and make copious notes about all kinds of things. One of the notes must have read something like, “Must start my own old lamp collection.” I did.

My first acquisition was a finger lamp.....a tiny wee thing with a wire collar that created a finger loop, that allowed it to be carried from room to room. I purchased it from a landlady in Toronto, and for the balance of that school year, I ignited the lamp every evening. When Gail and I went to an estate auction, in Bracebridge, I was able to buy a large clear glass farm lamp....that’s what Gord called it, and for years it was kept on my writing desk. As I worked on my vintage Underwood, clacking away the night, the illumination was the soft glow from these two wonderful oil lamps. Possibly not so pleasant for some folks, but I adored the scent of burning lamp oil. It was my modest form of historical actuality, and how fitting it was to be working on some history project, tapping away at an early century manual typewriter, with the assistance of such historic lighting.

The Smith family introduced me, to not only the amazing ambience of historic lighting but the joy of collecting antiques generally. Gail and I attended many auctions and hundreds of antique shops looking for interesting pieces. I opened my first antique business, as a family partnership in the fall of 1977, only months after graduating York University. Yes, with a degree in Canadian history. I moved on from that business, leaving it to my parents, and opened a new antique enterprise in the late 1980's, with my wife Suzanne, today known as Birch Hollow Antiques. Suzanne has been a huge motivating force in the business, with her interest in vintage fabrics, particularly wool blankets from Hudson’s Bay to locally produced Bird’s Woollen Mill bedding. She is an expert knitter and uses vintage wool, we find out on the hustings, and from estates, to produce great winter socks and mitts. She sells them at our sons’ music store on Muskoka Road, here in Gravenhurst. And yes, while she’s knitting away, there’ll be an oil lamp glowing beside.

Every fall I stock up on lamp oil for the winter season, just in case there’s a power shortage. Until I recently acquired a large camp stove for emergency heat, I could employ about thirty old oil lamps to heat Birch Hollow for about a week. In March, with lesser concern about power outages, and to keep a fresh stock of oil in reserve, I use-up the oldest of the coal oil, to burn in a half dozen lamps on the harvest table. The heat that builds up shuts off the baseboard heaters for most of the night. As coal oil prices have risen, the cost savings isn’t huge but the ambience of the golden light is worth a lot more. I think about Gord and the Smith family when I ignite these attractive glass lamps, and I certainly benefit from the inspiration they provide. I can sit here long into the evening making notes in my journal, feeling so much closer to the history I’m usually writing about. There’s nothing like a flame glow to enhance the patina of old pine and cranberry glass around them. It’s my night at the museum you might say.

To hear Suzanne clicking and clacking those knitting needles, and see her silhouette in the lamplight, is to feel honestly and pleasantly connected to the history of Muskoka. It’s what her grandmother and great grandmothers used to do at their Ufford farmstead, from the 1860's onward. She’s carrying on a Shea, Veitch and Stripp family tradition.

Whenever I come upon a neat old oil lamp, at an auction or yard sale, at a second hand shop or church fundraiser, I can’t resist adding it to my collection. The rule is, I must restore it immediately, get a new burner if needed, a new shade, or wick and provide a good cleaning of the font and exterior. Suzanne hates dirty lamps. I will get it topped up with oil, and for the next two weeks or so, it is our main working lamp. If I really like it, well, there’s a good chance it could get a year’s run in the annual lamp rotation. I’ve got about forty lamps now. I have sold a few off over the years to collectors. I’m not enthralled by fancy or colored glass lamps, as I very much prefer the utility lamps that were used in pioneer cabins and farmhouses. I often sell off the better quality lamps instead of my old standbys that can provide light and heat in the brightness and volume I need. Nothing fancy about it!

Using vintage oil lamps requires great attention and maintenance. I never leave the room when they are ignited. I have had flare-ups occasionally, from an air space developing between the wick and the tin sleeve of the burner, allowing the flame too much available fuel from the font. It will break the chimney glass, so you need to be on top of it as quickly as possible, to prevent a serious fire. A lot of pioneer dwellings were lost as a result of lighting misadventures.

To welcome in the spring, I will ignite several oil lamps this evening. It’s a March tradition here at Birch Hollow. Suzanne will complain initially about the smell, move a litter further from the harvest table because of it, and the heat it produces, and warn me throughout the evening to watch the flames. Just as I’m sure husband and wife interacted about the same issues, in those Muskoka homestead cabins of yore. I love my oil lamps. I love my wife.

Thanks Gord for giving me my start with antiques and historic lighting.

ALL OUR OLD NEIGHBORHOODS -

WHAT TO DO WITH THE MEMORIES?

I’M LEAVING THAT UP TO MY SONS AND GRANDKIDS!

In a notebook I keep by my livingroom chair, I occasionally jot down story ideas. Not invented stories but ones that I believe my biography should contain. Reminiscences I want my grandkids to know about. I’m pretty sure my grown sons, know how important my childhood recollections are......because I’ve been droning on and on for years, about stuff I’m sure they couldn’t care less about. It has relevance in the grand scheme but on the short haul, it doesn’t make much difference if I tossed green apples at roof tops, or played “nicky-nicky nine doors” till the cows came home. It is what it is. Important to me. Annoying chatter to them, when they’ve got more important things to do,....... than reminisce about something and someplace they never visited.

I don’t know how you feel about your own childhood neighborhood. Some were better than others, admittedly, and some may wish to forget about certain unfortunate, unhappy events and circumstances. Maybe you’d rather forget about childhood generally because of bad memories. I’ve always had a mid-zone approach. There’s lots of periods I’d rather forget but I know I can’t. Like when my parents argued and argued and argued. My dad had a free-flowing Irish arrogance, often drank too much, was jealous to a fault, and could be a social problem if given all the right conditions. My mother was determined and feisty, and soldiered-on despite the grief my father could raise from the most innocent of perceived offences.

Ed didn’t have the best childhood either, and spent a lot of time, with his brothers, wards of the province. Having come from the tough Cabbagetown neighborhood, in Toronto, he was raised to be tough, and relentlessly hardened by reality. Fatherless, responsible for the family welfare most of the time, he’d learned that being gentle meant being vulnerable. He never gave the appearance of being a push-over that’s for sure. It made my mother’s life tough, and I often stepped between them, willing to risk my own neck to keep the cruiser away from the door. My peace of course, is that they patched their marriage up, Ed changed into a much kinder human being, and my mother was pleased to have calmer waters in the final decades of their life together. While I still prefer to dwell on happier times, I’m still abundantly aware, after many years, that it’s necessary to confront the adversity of personal history. It’s also true that there were many more good times than bad, in our family, and my love for the old neighborhood, in Bracebridge, Ontario will never dwindle.

The note I made last evening, was really for my lads, Andrew and Robert, who will inherit this journal and all my years of story-inscribing in these blogs......and in the stacks of publications I’ve, at one time or another, contributed columns. The note was about a game of road hockey I want them to play, some snowy Christmas Eve (after I’ve departed this mortal coil), up on that block of Alice Street where I played a thousands games during my years on the hill......Hunt’s Hill, that is! I want them to link the tradition of those years with their present, in celebration of good times in old places dear to our hearts. I want them to just show up, with sticks, ball and toques, chip off four big chunks of snow for goal-posts (as we did because we couldn’t afford nets), and with their buddies and family members, set up for a three period memorial game in my honor. How vain is this? Well, it doesn’t have to be a memorial. Just a “for fun” gathering that rekindles an activity us Hunt’s Hill / Alice Street kids enjoyed every day of the cold winter in Muskoka. We continued games on asphalt when the snow cover melted away but we played, and played. It didn’t matter that we were short changed a neighborhood park or even a big parking lot we could set up a makeshift arena. The road, as bumpy as it was, served our interests just fine.

It might seem a tad morbid to be planning your own tribute hockey game, but my boys will know just how passionate I have been in life, about preserving family legacies.....and keeping important traditions alive. I want them, in their lives, to know that good and memorable times have very little to do with money, and the privilege that can buy. We were a modest neighborhood and very few of us had money to spare. We lived from pay cheque to pay cheque like everyone else, and those on fixed incomes had gardens in their backyards, and they canned fruit and vegetables every fall, after the modest harvest. We had to be frugal. We didn’t care, or even think about hardship......we were too busy being thankful for our own blessings, our own daily rewards. We were too busy living to worry about what we didn’t have, or what others did. When we commenced the ball hockey game of the day, or under the lamplight for evening games, all differences were forgotten and we listened instead, to the lucky bloke selected to be Foster Hewitt, who would joyfully provide the game’s play by play. If you’d asked any one of us at that moment, what it was like to be poor, we wouldn’t have known how to respond. I knew my family couldn’t afford new boots because my feet were always wet, and most of us were playing with broken sticks we found at the arena, with short shafts and half blades, because we couldn’t buy new ones. Poor? We were resourceful more than we were poor. Rich kids called us that when they saw the soles of our shoes flapping and slapping noisely at recess, or when we had to wear the same clothes day after day....but it wasn’t the kind of slur we found hard to live with.

I’m fond of my old neighborhood for what it didn’t have. The was no need to offer an apology when a shared dinner was meatloaf, and “everything-in-it stew,” or cheese-dusted macaroni. Many of my mates enjoyed peanut butter and jam sandwiches my mother made for intermissions....washed down with cold glasses of water to tide us over for another period of rigorous play.

The pay-off of all this modesty, was finishing dinner, and getting the chance to have yet another game of road hockey.....or in the spring, a pick-up game of baseball....the fall, a game of football on the modest grid-iron of our small front lawn. It was a safe and caring neighborhood, and for all that it didn’t have, it was blessed with an unpretentious honor, we upheld, wherever and whenever a show of prowess was required. We had many sporting encounters with other neighborhoods, and I would say Hunt’s Hill was always a top contender.

I want my boys to take their kids up to that sort stretch of old asphalt, to play just one more game, and to think, not just about their old dad, but about all the aspiring athletes, who had such great fun making the best out of every day in a worthy hometown. Maybe they’ll hear the echo of cheers and voices from legend, and the faint play by play of Randy Carswell, an import to the neighborhood, who always volunteered to be Foster Hewitt......and simply wouldn’t take no for an answer. I don’t want the boys, or family, to get misty eyed about my request, or get caught up in a perpetual mood of sympathy and mourning. I’ve had a damn fine life, with no regrets about choices I’ve made. I’d like to think they would find a connection with me, they’ve never really had in our time together,..... as team-mates (in spirit) not just the tedium of the father / sons relationship. Because I’d be there, on that snowy Christmas Eve, in my ghost-wear, just as I played every Christmas Eve for my entire tenure at the Alice Street apartments. During a truly enjoyable time of my life.....when kids spent most of their days outdoors, and even more time wondering what it would be like if this stretch of frozen roadway, was actually Maple Leaf Gardens, the lamplight, the beam over centre ice, the limelight of the official face-off.

I suppose you and I do have some warm memories of the places we used to live.......afterall!

I TRADED STRESS FOR THE OPEN ROAD - I FOUND ANTIQUES ALONG THE WAY

Even as a kid I was hopelessly nostalgic. I kept everything I was ever given, and I would have kept the packaging as well, if my mother Merle, hadn’t made a habit of morning forays into my room to “tidy up.” She was happy doing this, and I didn’t half mind. It wasn’t until she gave my classic toys away one day, including my table-top hockey game that I got a tad mad. Until she told me about the poor grandmother around the corner, who had taken-in her two grandchildren, and had nary a toy for them. I knew those two kids. They needed those toys more than I did. As long as I still had my ball glove, hockey net and stick, and my bike, well, I was good.

As I’ve mentioned previously, in this blog collection, working in the newspaper industry was far too stressful for a guy like me. I’ve always worked long and hard to bypass stress. It didn’t matter how long, or how much copy I’d written in advance, the aura of a newspaper office was contaminated with unnecessary stresses. I was always organized and prepared for eventualities. I anticipated poop hitting the fan, and always had plan “B” and “C” ready to roll, to make things right. It wasn’t enough. We had too many bosses, too many folks to please, beyond the readers, and it was necessary, in order to remain on the payroll, to channel job tension into newfound energy. The gathered motivation to pursue other interests. Long before I walked out that newsroom door for the last time, I was already into my third year in the antique business, building it to a level of profitability, so that when I finally quit the old day job, the turn around would be immediate.

I can’t tell you how exciting it was, for this worn-out editor, to hit the road on Saturday mornings, without a camera and notepad, to enjoy a day of antique picking around our beautiful region. What a joy to witness a spring / summer / autumn morning in one of the most alluring hinterlands on earth. No matter how many times I passed a lakeland scene, or through a cathedral of overhanging maples, I would notice something I’d never seen before. It was on those early career antique-hunts, that I developed my greatest, most insightful appreciation of Muskoka. Suzanne and I, and frequently our two boys, would take along some breakfast fixings, and enjoy the sights and sounds of Muskoka in season. We saw every kind of wildlife known to this region of Canada. We took notice of all the life around us. It was as important as hunting for treasure. It would have most certainly been much less fulfilling, if we had only been concerned about racing from yard sale, flea market and antique shop to auction. These were, to borrow a famous line, the days of our lives. With the boys grown up, and running their own collectible music shop today, here in Gravenhurst, I do miss our countryside trips in quest of neat stuff. Suzanne and I move a little slower now, and stop frequently between venues, to admire the view, have a wee picnic, maybe a stroll, and even get a little nostalgic about the way it all began......these adventures, to calm the nerves of young parents, reduce the workday stress of writer and teacher,...... and experience life and culture thriving in our midst.

Some of my contemporaries in the business, have very little use for our antique hunting philosophy. I’ve never tried to convert them. They take their enterprise more seriously, and will race from venue to venue as if their lives depended on it. I know, with our more relaxed approach, we do miss big finds and great buys, and it undoubtedly does cost us making a larger profit. And yet, no matter how many times I acknowledge our less-stressful approach, and how nice it would be to make a bit more money at our trade, I could no sooner change to their break-neck regimen.....than find reason to accelerate through a mist-laden pasture of a Muskoka farmstead. I dawdle as a rule. I’d sooner quit antiquing altogether, than impose stress upon what has long been so darn much fun.

I still believe, although my competitors argue I’m delusional, that a more patient, determined hunt, is often more productive and profitable, than hustling from sale to sale......and adhering to a rigid schedule. We will stay and chat with vendors, and family, who are hosting estate sales, often being invited into storage areas others have not been exposed. It shouldn’t surprise any one that kindly conversation makes friends, and can build a significant, immediate trust between buyer and seller. While my competitors can show a list of 20 sales visited, they’d laugh at the fact we’d only visited a third of the venues in the same amount of time. Well, we don’t brag and never hold “show and tells,” to prove our trip was just as fruitful.

Years ago we got recruited to open a storefront antique business. I joined with a fellow staff member in the news business, to open a small collectible shop, in a unfinished basement of a mainstreet building in Bracebridge. In about a year the partnership was a disaster.....because we had teamed up with rookies in the business......who believed the money would be flying through the front door from opening to closing each day. Having had an earlier business, further down the street, in the late 1970's, I’d already recognized business would be slow in the winter, more vigorous in the summer......as is Muskoka’s long tradition in the tourist industry. The departure of one partner welcomed another, and then another after that, until I’d simply had enough. Our family was still young, and the stress of business was paralleling the newspaper years. We moved the business home in the mid 1990's, and we began selling our wares online. I work as a writer when I want, and we travel for the antique trade every weekend. In the summer, with Suzanne on a break from teaching, we are on the road every day. And it’s glorious. But it’s at our speed. We stop to smell the flowers and make no apology.

The antique business was opened in the late 1980's as a future retirement business. We knew it would take us ages to master a very complex and demanding trade. We have had no choice but to remain patient. So far so good. We have blips like every business but the annual sales figures are looking better, and we’re definitely feeling contented we started retirement planning so early in life.

As we both very much like old stuff, from nostalgia to the primitive, we are always interested in the road from here to there, and the great potential that exists each day we take off for another countryside adventure. It is always interesting, at the end of each trip, to sit on the back bumper of the family truckster, looking at the day’s finds. Talk about eclectic. We wrote the book. But it is the togetherness we felt with the young lads, and the companionship we feel these days, with just the two of us, that is most fulfilling of this antique hunt. We get to experience and celebrate this magnificent lakeland region, the nice folks we meet along the way, and enjoy each other’s company in a wide variety of circumstances. To us, it’s our own “Zen and the art of Antique Hunting,” and we wouldn’t change a thing. Certainly not for profit alone.

PATIENCE FOR COLLECTING I NEVER HAD AS A WRITER

It has long driven my good wife nuts, how I can dawdle in a flea market or antique mall, and seemingly forgetting our wedding vows.....or something like my blind obedience. Suzanne is very good at ignoring what she’s not interested in, whereas I am always looking for the “sleeper” piece, no matter what that might represent. She has never offered an apology for having a narrow gaze, when it comes to antiques and collectibles that interest her. I’ve tried over many years to prove that being a generalist dealer, means we have to make our money from flipping whatever items we can acquire which are under-valued. Admittedly in the antique profession, we all have our quirks and methodology. I like making money just as much as securing big finds to add, instead, to our permanent collection. But I’m not adverse to trying anything once or twice, if it affords our business a little profit. I know from experience that if you stay in your lane, and refuse a good buy when you meet it at the crossroads, you’ll miss out on making a regular profit......but you’ll have museum collection to show your friends.

I started out in the profession broke and it’s fair to say we’ve operated frugally ever since. While I stood with associates at auction sales, who’d think nothing of dropping several grand per sale.....just for run of the mill collectibles, if we spent a couple of hundred dollars, we were living the high life. I might have felt disadvantaged at times, being amongst those who had fat wallets but I didn’t let it stop me from making good buys on higher profit antiques. I did a lot of refinishing myself, and by and large, my colleagues preferred store-ready inventory. I’d get a car load of “in the rough” pieces, eager to put in the work myself, and get a wage for doing the finishing. Sometimes it worked and frequently it didn’t, and I’d lose a few bucks. I’m slow at the restoration side of the business.

I developed a discipline about expenditures. I adopted the “frugal antique hunter,” as my business theme, and since the mid 1970's, it’s worked pretty well. There have been a lot of set-backs. I’ve often had to change my buying habits because the “fat wallet gang” would start moving in on my territory. There’s nothing worse at a small town auction, than “bidder shadowing.” I wasn’t a great strategist but I knew there was no choice but to play along. I continually misled my competitors and stuck them on many occasions, with boxes of books I knew were “dogs” (no-chance-of-profit books), or gatherings of quilts in poor, stained and rotting condition. I’d let them follow me on bids, and appear anxious to win at all costs. I’ve put in many theatrical performances on the auction stage. Then, at a peak, I’d simply disappear for a coffee, leaving their’s as the highest bid. Oh boy was there a lot of grumbling then. Over time, they got the message, that to follow me takes the will of Indiana Jones. Every bid against me was a gamble. Those items I really wanted, I usually got because my shadows got spooked early in the bidding. I’d jump a bid by twenty to fifty dollars, from a normal five dollar increment, and like a missed heartbeat, they’d go back to drinking their coffee, leaving me to my treasure. They preferred bragging about their antique investments, to their cronies anyway. I had to do what it took, to make a few dollars stretch a little further. I’ve never been to an auction yet that mind-games weren’t in full production.....and theatrics a means to an end.

Over the decades I’ve learned how to be patient, frugal and profitable out of necessity. I loved the industry so much, and admired (like a racoon with a shiny object) all kinds of wonderful antiques, from art and old glass, historic lighting, vintage fabric, crocks, to old bottles and the list has no end. To get in, and stay in, I had to learn how to scrounge. It was that simple. And I had to watch a lot of great pieces walk away with someone else, because we were on a tight budget. Yet to any young antique enthusiast, I would always say the same thing,....... as I’ve had as my own mantra......a good antique hunter doesn’t need a fat wallet.....but does require a massive interest in self-education about old stuff in general. You will perish in the business if you are under-informed. I’ve watched the destruction of many antique hopefuls because they thought they knew it all......but obviously didn’t.

The antique profession is still a ruthless, no holds barred, cut-throat enterprise, even at the modest shop level. It’s like Charles Dickens himself penned our respective characters. Even the most modest, unassuming ma and pa operations, can fool the unsuspecting shopper or seller. While this is not to suggest anything about being unsavory or dishonest.......it is very much to affirm that there are many sharks in the antique dealer / collector’s pool.......and just because a shop and shopkeeps look unassuming, don’t think you’re going to beat them for a Group of Seven sketch for a hundred bucks. If you’re on the selling side, looking to make a quick profit, off a Group of Seven knock-off, think again before you commit yourself to their scrutiny. Some of the smartest and most cunning antique dealers I’ve met, over thirty years, are ones holed-up in these small, unassuming, collectible nooks and modest crannies. They’re good business people. They buy antiques like the late, great, Will Rogers. They know how to horse trade and get the better deal. There’s nothing wrong with this. They’ve earned their stripes in the business by daily dealings with thousands of other cut-throat, no-holds barred antiquers, to get where they are.

On my own travels these days, I’m looking for interesting art pieces more than anything else. I will buy primitives, especially Canadiana, and old interesting wooden trunks I can restore for re-sale. Son Andrew took his mother aside, one day, while I had my head stuck in a musty old steamer trunk, and said, “You know, I’ve never seen dad happier, than when he’s got something to refinish.” He wasn’t speculating on this. They’ve all witnessed me knotted up and frustrated at the typewriter, working on some manuscript or column, and recognize the differences between hand crafting and mind bending. I might get frustrated when an insect lands on my freshly varnished pine harvest table but it’s nothing compared to the cussing and foot stomping at the computer, when a proof-read through a feature story, turns into a war between a split personality......the writer and the other guy who taps at the keys for hours on end......both the same person but you’d never know it. One is always accusing the other of being an arse.

As a writer, I show as much patience as any one else in the profession. That’s not saying much of course. I drank heavily because I was a writer. I’d go to the local watering hole after work, and get into a fisticuff with another writer I may have called an arse or something mildly worse. I never drank once in my life, as a frustrated antique dealer. I’m so much more an antique hunter / dealer today than a writer. I love writing but there’s nothing I’d rather do, any day of the week, than find myself hopping from estate sale to flea market, antique mall to auction sale. As my writing career was a damnation to Suzanne, well, suffice to say antiquing isn’t much better, poor soul. She loves her Fenton glass collection, so I bait her before each trip......that somewhere before we hit the noon hour, we’ll have found a bit of cranberry or milk glass from the revered Ohio company. Suzanne will find a nice quilt or sewing antiquity, and eventually forget all about the Fenton, until I bring it up again......the very next time we head out on the open road.

I’m not cheap and if I had a million bucks to blow, I most surely would. Probably within a week. The difference with me however, is I would definitely get my money’s worth in antiques. If I was really proficient in acquisition, I might even be able to make a fifty percent profit or more. Many antique dealers aren’t satisfied unless their profit hits at least a hundred percent......upwards. But it’s nobody’s business what you pay for a find. Most of us are pretty good at getting quality pieces for rock bottom prices. So our mark-up is not based on fair play, it’s based on what we would like to achieve as a profit. Yes, we do win, and then again, we also lose occasionally. Some of us are greedier than others, and a few are too generous for their own good. I’ve met them all. I fall into the mid-zone. I’m not ruthless but I’m a hanger-on, and persistent where and when it counts. I’m patient because it suits my capital position. If you don’t have a big budget to flail about, then you have to be patient.....as the fisher in the meadow brook. Sooner or later it will pay off.

I’ve known some grand characters in the antique profession, who have taught me a lot about survival and improving my acquisition skills. I wasn’t a quick learner either. I guess those early teachers of mine were right all along, when they said “Teddy is interested in some things (girls) but mostly distracted.” It was the skirts, I’m telling you. I had a crush every fifteen minutes. As an antique hunter I had the same problem. I was always easily distracted. So after a few dozen bad buys, like bidding on glass and pottery that turned out to be either chipped or replicas, I learned how to focus, no matter how many auction chicks happened to be in close proximity.

When you’re bidding at auctions you must never be distracted.....by conversation or a pretty face. I’ve pulled right away from crowds and friends, when I’m particularly interested in winning an auction bid. I want to hear clearly and know who I’m bidding against. How bad do they want the piece. I have to judge their faces. It’s my business to know this and know it well. Suzanne swears I develop horns when I’m bidding. I can’t feel them but I’m sure she’s right. It’s real important to develop that immediate relationship with the auctioneer, such that he or she doesn’t miss a critical bid, before hitting the gavel down. I win about fifty percent of what I’m going after. Keep in mind, the folks I’m bidding against are sharp as tacks, and are using the same strategy as I am, to scare the back bidders off. It’s like chess but meaner. From what I’ve read about auctions from the old days, in Europe, the local sales’ tactics and competition are mere child’s play. But seeing as I don’t go to many auctions in England these days, I stick to honing my skills with what the region offers-up during the sale season.

I hate losing at auctions, even the silent ones run by local thrift and charity shops. Knowing when to stop bidding, just as playing the slots at the casino, is of critical importance. Many antique dealers and collectors have exceeded their budgets on one piece, because they got caught-up in the personality of the bid......meaning the bidding became a grudge match between patrons, and the “I’ve got more money than you,” sort of showdown. When the winning bidder, having spent 50 percent more than he should have,finally gets the prize.....geez, it’s always so entertaining to watch for the confident look we call, “Of course I knew what I was doing.” They also throw back their shoulders and exist the sale, looking pinched and about to wet themselves.

I used to write a column years ago, called the “Auction Block,” and it was great fun let me tell you. The auctioneers despised me for giving away business secrets. While it’s true I had a much more difficult time getting any bargains, especially having pissed them off, in oh so many ways by what I wrote, it was still worth every drop of ink expended. The biggest fight I had was with an auctioneer from Huntsville, who wanted me fired, for writing a column about the dangers of buying used mattresses, and upholstered furniture from auctions. I didn’t write that folks shouldn’t buy them, but rather, be awfully careful that what you think is a good buy, and a nice piece of furniture, isn’t also a residence for bed bugs. I was right but he figured that because he advertised in our paper, he had a God given right to a retraction.....refuting the bed bug claim. He said I was costing him business because folks weren’t buying the mattresses any more. Even my boss asked, “Do you mean all of these people are reading Currie’s column? Heck we should give him a raise for increasing our readership.” Well, I survived the advertiser’s challenge, continued to write cautionary columns from time to time, and expected I wouldn’t be welcome at his sales from that point onward.

I want to reminisce a bit more about the antique and auction circuit, in the near future, some gems of information, taken from those early columns......a period where I spent half my life standing at these sales waiting, for my items of choice, to arrive on the auction block. There were many humourous moments, believe me. I had no problem whatsoever, coming up with new column material weekly that’s for sure.

More antique stuff to come.

Just one more point. The reason I’m authoring these blogs about antiques and collectibles, and dredging up my glory days as a published columnist......is that, in a fit of impatience and frustration, I threw out all my old newspaper files from the 1970's to about 2005. It was the writer winning out.....temporarily, over the antique hunter. Having my new material on blog-sites, is archival, as much as it is for present consumption. I’m not likely to throw any of this stuff away because I’m not computer savvy enough to know how. Son Robert looks after all my computer needs. I just type at this keyboard and grumble. He gets the editorials on-line. In return, I’ve appointed him the keeper of all this intellectual property, should the old man vaporize one day, while having one of his tantrums. I’ve always felt spontaneous combustion would be a fitting way for me to go.....you know?

Robert just shakes his head at my mockumentry demise, and agrees to profit from my writing.

He’s a nice kid.

ANTIQUES AND COLLECTIBLES NOT FOR THE FAINT HEARTED

I don’t socialize with other writers, for fear our inflated egos will cause some sort of nasty character implosion. Except for a select few columnists in the daily press, and some former writers I would have taken a bullet for, I don’t wish to know them beyond their daily offerings. I’m sure if they knew me, it would be mutual. My experience with writers in general, when sober, has always seemed to me like a test of willpower and endurance.....like how many beers it takes to loosen lips. We used to do this constantly, in the old news gathering days, to free up information from competing reporters. We got more scoops from the competition than out on the hustings. It cost us. Lots of big bar bills. There was a lot of poop hitting the fan when both our papers hit the newstands, showing we replicated and expanded on all their front-page scoops.

I don’t make friends of those who might wish to take the bacon off my plate, when I’m not looking. I don’t join literary societies and I refuse to be rescued by those who believe there is safety in numbers. Most writers I know around here, wouldn’t want a big mouth like me in their mutual admiration sessions anyway. I don’t believe there’s any strength in numbers, when it comes to hungry writers, looking for new gigs. Just more creative intrusions to leap-frog ahead.

My experience with associate writers, like my contemporaries in the antique profession, is that it is perfectly acceptable practice to climb on one another’s back to gain the advantage. The very idea of helping one another is laughable, because it’s a real game of Survivor out on the hustings....... with very few paying jobs. Lots of writer-kind and too few job opportunities. Everybody is looking for a “rare” opportunity to work in the industry. Those who have jobs won’t be giving them up voluntarily. For every working writer there are probably a dozen waiting in the wings, or hovering somewhere close by.......and it’s a publisher’s bonanza......there is no shortage of “willing to work for less” writers.

I don’t wait in the wings, and I couldn’t hover for more than a couple of minutes but I’m always interested in a writing gig......especially the rare kind that exchanges work for folding money. As with thousands of other writers, also wishing liberation from the publisher’s political protocol, and the regimen of writing to sell papers, I opted out of the paid ranks back in the spring of 1990. I’d had my last fight with a publisher about money. When I was asked what was most important.......being an employee of the firm, or being an antique dealer (which I had commenced three years earlier), I replied with a determined snarl, “That would be an antique dealer.” We parted company soon after. I never looked back.

I loved newspaper work and adored most of my colleagues, and at the end, my production of editorial copy was most often double what they demanded “by list” each week. I was a copy producing machine. I worked from home, frequently got up at 3 a.m. to write-up council news stories, and had them into the office for a final edit by 9 a.m. Included in this bulk of copy were other news stories I’d been assigned, and numerous other features I offered basically free of charge. Working at home, where I look after our two lads as a Mr. Mom, allowed me tremendous flexibility to work when I could; after they had begun a nap, or at bedtime. For two publishers, over about three years of working from my home office, they were making money off my productivity. I was working way more than if I’d been stuck in an uninspiring office all day. I was able to conduct as many phone interviews, and in person meetings, as I would have in a formal office. The “away from the office” format was new, just as it was having a feature writer who admitted he wasn’t going to put all the proverbial eggs in one basket. I was saving them money by not using office resources, and with the copy being produced, likely eliminated the need for at least another part time employee. But the fact they couldn’t actually see me working was bothersome. They must have imagined all kinds of stuff going on......but never actually took the time to weigh the benefits of a highly productive writer, happy to work alone.

So when we parted, it was generally assumed “I would never work in this town again!” That’s pretty much true. I’ve been writing copy for free ever since. The trade-off is usually a print advertisement in the publication I’m contributing. Since 1990 I have had two disagreements with publishers about editorial content. In both cases, without feeling any inclination to debate the issue, I simply pulled out, satisfied I’d enjoyed a good run, and that there would be two more publishers out there somewhere, looking for editorial generosity. I’m far more interested in writing for an appreciative publisher, and audience, these days, than making strides within the newspaper profession as a staffer. After many years at the grind, I know my writing suffered. I wasn’t happy and it showed in my work. I was far more of a writing purist than I knew back then. It was only when I started to work from home that I realized what I had been sacrificing, stuffed into a too-small office with too many hung-over and self-absorbed reporters. I loved them though!

Funny thing, I took creative writing and history at York University, back in the mid 1970's. I started out as a poet / historian who would later become a writer / historian / antique dealer. I wrote my first book of poems by the spring of 1975, had thrown it in the garbage by the winter of 1976, launched plans for an antique shop in the spring of 1977, graduated university, opened Old Mill Antiques in the fall of that year, in uptown Bracebridge, and got a chance to write a column about collecting for the local press. Working on the business with my parents was a disaster, my girlfriend dumped me for a guy who fixed her car once, I started in the news business, gave up on antiques, set about to write forever as a profession, found out that wouldn’t work, got married, had kids, opened Birch Hollow Antiques, kept writing, opened an antique shop also on upper Manitoba Street in Bracebridge, fought with publisher, quit, re-hired by another publication, ran shop, quit writing, and lived happily as a Mr. Mom / Antique Dealer / Freelance Writer from the 1990's to the present. A “mish-mash” you say? I always had something to fall back on when one or the other professions fell through. The difference today is that we will never surrender our antique enterprise, as it is the profession Suzanne and I have geared up, over all these crazy years, for retirement income. I expect to be a “free” lance writer until I can write no longer.

When I had a bad week at the newspaper, the weekends were for antiquing. Auction-going. What I began in 1974 was my safety-net through the tumultuous love-hate years as an editor. Even on weekends now, Suzanne and I free-wheel as collectors, hitting all kinds of interesting venues, estate sales, antique shops and malls, church sales, thrift shops, flea markets, and any yard or lawn sales within an easy commute. I have never found any pre-occupation as stress-relieving as the antique profession. Now, of course, if you are going to auction sales, or scrumming at estate sales with competitors, it can admittedly get a tad heated. Not as bad as a newsroom at deadline but close. Generally speaking, I’ve never had an antique hunting moment, or competition for a piece(s), that was greater than the frustration of dealing with a publisher at deadline, whining about something or other, I didn’t give a rat’s arse about. There’s a lot to be said for the freedom of being your own boss, that’s for sure. Out on the hustings, well, we’re the bosses and if we choose to snooze while our competitors pick all the good stuff......that’s our misfortune and failure as dealers. As I felt working from home, without the boss looking over my shoulder, I have always been hard on myself when it comes to output and outcome. So when I might have slacked off because opportunity prevailed, such as working from home, I felt too inspired to just sit around watching television. It’s the same when we’re hunting treasure. It’s too much fun to be considered work. So you might say, we play even harder.

When I started in the news business, I realized my patience was limited to about a decade. Bang on! Every year it became more difficult to refrain from storming out of the office, and tossing my typewriter down the road. I had always been a reliable employee and only took off a few days in ten years, as a result of illness. There were too many people to please in the industry but the only ones I cared about were the readers. My bosses didn’t like my indifference to them. My argument was always the same. If the circulation is going up, we’re getting new ads all the time, and the consensus of the readership is that we are publishing a good, and responsible newspaper, what the hell does it matter that we don’t see eye to eye on every issue. I always stepped aside, if the publisher at the time, wanted to write an editorial. I always refused to be told what to write, as an editorial, or from what perspective I should adopt. I simply stood up from my typewriter, or keyboard, and welcomed them to sit and knock themselves out. This befuddled them into a stupor, because they were used to getting their way. Most did what they were asked because they couldn’t afford to be fired. I understood this, and felt sorry they were in this position.

It bugged management that I wouldn’t conform just to get a wee cheque......and it was most definitely a small cheque......so I just decided to quit while the going was good, as my antique business was humming along. It was the right decision. I began to hate writing. That wasn’t right.

There are times when I’ll notice an opening at one of the local papers, or regional magazines, for a reporter / writer, and occasionally I’ll respond just to see if old barriers are still in place......and they are. I never get the chance to meet a publisher or editor in person........suffice to say they all know about the belligerent former editor who said, when asked, “so, do you want to be a writer or an antique dealer.” My response has never been different, and I have no intention of changing my stalwart attitude for another wee cheque. I’d like to be respected as both a writer and a profitable antique dealer. My wife says I’m a good writer and, as she keeps the books for the business, also applauds our financial prowess. I know, I know. Where’s her objectivity?

It must drive that old management of yore nuts, that I didn’t wither-up and blow away after parting company. Outside of a short hiatus of well less than a year, while I was working on business upgrades, I have never been without published work in one form, one venue or another up to the present......and I’m comfortably booked well into the future. And I’ve never been more contented with either discipline.

A writer associate of mine had lost a paying gig a while back, just before the recession but had turned his focus to writing a second book. When I asked why he hadn’t re-introduced his column in barter, for something like an advertisement, he looked at me and said with his eyes; “I don’t work without pay.” I suggested that a byline is always payment. It keeps you in the game. In his case, I pointed out, that a column in exchange for an advertisement for his new book, would make perfect sense to future sales and income. Everyone gets a taste of the action. They get a column from a respected writer, and the author gets the bragging right about being “published.”

There are thousands of bloggers of highly read and regarded sites, considered some of the best writers in the world, contributing their work without a dime of remuneration. That’s freedom. I wonder how many of them are antique dealers as well.

What’s so special about the antique business? Where and how shall I begin? More blogs coming soon.

SERENITY NOW - OUT TO THE SUGAR BUSH

I can place myself in this painting quite easily. (A bald, portly guy, likely coming out of the sugar shack licking his fingers). One of my favorite March feature news assignments, was to visit a number of Muskoka’s sugar bushes, to watch the gathering and the boiling of the sap. This painting, an oil on masonite, by Dan Titman, we believe, holds a special place for me, because I have never found a more serene place anywhere on earth......than a grove of maples bathed in spring sunlight. The sugar bush has always been my writer’s sanctuary. A woodland paradise that is as invigorating as it is relaxing. This is “serenity now,” as far as I’m concerned.

I purchased this little gem of Canadian art, on Friday, at a wonderful antique and collectable shop, which has only recently opened, on Mississauga Street E., in Orillia, known as Carousel Collectables. I’m an impulse buyer and this one was an impulse purchase. I have always been interested in historic themes, which shouldn’t surprise any one, and most recently I have acquired a wonderful watercolor depiction of a steamship (paddle-wheeler) from the early 1800's known as the Royal William. This is still being researched with the assistance of a Maritime Museum on the East Coast. Another attractive watercolor, purchased recently, is a waterscape of “Fairy Point,” and numerous boat houses, but we’re not sure whether this location is on one of Muskoka’s lakes or not. We’re thinking it might be Lake Joseph where there is a Fairy Island. Or a point of land on Huntsville’s Fairy Lake. We think it has too many structures to be Fairy Point in Algoma. Research is ongoing, as with many of my paintings collected for over thirty years. I’ll be running a picture of this in the near future.

But of all the art pieces overflowing the realm of sensible proportion, here at Birch Hollow, I adore this sugar bush painting the most. It profiles a parallel woodland setting, to what I have experienced many times before, here in the hinterland of beautiful Muskoka. My wife’s relative is Bill Veitch, who has been a legend in maple syrup making in the Ufford, Three Mile Lake, Windermere area for decades. I love venturing out to his sugar bush for the annual two day Pancake festival in April. A walk in the woods there, and like a sweeping time warp, you’re back in pioneer times. And it’s great if you’re a history junkie like me.

I greatly enjoyed accompanying my son Robert on a trip to the V.K. Greer Public School, in Port Sydney, a few years back, where they have a small but scenic operation. The tour was given at that time by John Duncan, a former outdoor education co-ordinator, and George Anderson, well known and respected amongst outdoor education students in our region.

My most fascinating sugar bush adventure, with son Andrew, was courtesy Jim Hillman and his son-in-law Brian Milne, who took us back to the maple grove off Golden Beach Road, not far from the former Bangor Lodge on Lake Muskoka. It was just a few miles from Bracebridge. I could have spent the rest of my life in and around that magnificent sugar bush, so hauntingly beautiful in the March sunlight. I sat on a stump and wrote an entire feature article for the Muskoka Sun, and the Muskoka Advance, two publications I penned features for, back in the 1990's. Jim was a grand old chap who adored any opportunity to get outdoors, and this was an absolute haven for anyone needing inspiration....... and who quite enjoys the spirit of co-operation. Operating the sugar bush, as they did, without the plastic lines running from tree to tree, was the way Jim and crew liked it......hard work but rewarding in so many ways. Watching the gathering of the sap, and then the sugaring-off, was right out of the pages of Canadian history.....right before my eyes. I was witnessing a cultural folk-art and it tasted pretty good as well. There’s something powerful about the smell of woodsmoke, the scent of thickening maple syrup, and the spring melt, that brought out the Thoreau in me......and what a Walden Pond it was. I sat there watching the steam billowing out of the shack and looking up into the dark web of overhead boughs, watching the sunlight blotching down onto the old decaying snow, melting away into the forest soil. If heaven could be half as nice!

Jim was happy to show me all the old tools and artifacts he had collected, and conserved over the decades, from when he first began tapping the maple grove. He had numerous wooden spiles and treenware, molds all over the place, for shaping the syrup into sugar candies. He had a marvellous little museum out there in the Muskoka woodlands, and I’m so glad I had this opportunity to visit. Jim passed away shortly after my visit, and I have often wondered whether his buddies still venture out to the property, and fire-up the pit below the large tin trays. I think it has probably ceased operation but I’m very much honored that Jim would have thought to invite me out to his paradise. I had an up-close and personal opportunity to record history, and capture this folk art at its purist, while Jim was still in his heyday. He loved that place. It was a precious sanctuary that’s for sure. His generosity made us Currie lads pretty happy that day. Andrew still talks about it. He got to ride an ATV while I walked to the sugar shack.

This little painting reminds me of my numerous outings to regional sugar bushes. It incorporates a little from each that I’ve visited. I have it illuminated on a stand now, and in the recent blustery evenings here at Birch Hollow, it has been so wonderfully relaxing, just to sit back, with a buffalo robe (we have two) over my legs, and admire the history of maple syrup making in Canada.

We haven’t been able to situate the painting or the artist, as of yet, but we believe it is the work of a regional artist from Quebec. If you know anything more about the painting or know the work of the artist, please let me know.

I wander from antique shop to antique mall, thrift shop to yard sale, auction to estate sale, looking for art pieces that inspire. I got lucky this past week. I visited the right antique shop at the right time. I had a few dollars tucked away, just in case I found something for the permanent collection. What perfect timing for a sugar bush celebration.