The Subtle Hauntings of Home - A Sanctuary No Matter How Big or Small - How Extravagant or Simple - How Luxurious or Modest

 

     My parents, God Bless them, could not bring themselves to buy property, or a house on that property, and they never gave a reason why they preferred to be lifetime renters. I never asked them why, and they never offered an explanation for their dislike of property ownership, even after their only son and family bought and sold two houses to afford Birch Hollow in Gravenhurst. I wondered if it was the case my parents worried about unexpected costs of home ownership, and as my father was neither a carpenter or general handyman, he would have recognized the necessity of employing tradespeople, and with our modest two parent income probably wouldn't have accommodated any extra bills. They seemed to like the idea of landlords and respective property owners covering taxes and ongoing essential repairs and redecorating. I once tried to explain that landlords infuse taxes and repair costs into rent increases, but they weren't interested in the nitty gritty of tenant-hood.

     I spent most of my young life hopping from apartment to apartment, and at least three rental houses, some being quite nice and in convenient neighborhoods to where my parents worked and I went to school. We never lived in badly run rental properties but I know those who did, and I felt sorry for the fact that when it rained outside, a few minutes later in was also raining inside. But for us Currie home was where we hung our respective hats, ate dinner, watched Hockey Night in Canada, and communed with those residents who also liked to watch and debate hockey heritage, and play Bridge or Euchre, my parents favorite indoor pastimes. When we lived up on Bracebridge's Alice Street, in the former Weber apartments, in the late 1960's up to the autumn of 1974, it was the neatest reality of living, that almost all of the residents were comfortable enough with each other, to leave their doors open late into the night. It meant that there was regular apartment hopping and it was a little like a commune at times, and it did make us a lot more friends, I believe, that if we had kept doors shut as a rule of residency.

     I am particularly keen about housing, and my relationship to home and property for what may seem a selfish and even strange reason. I can't write a sentence today, if I am unsettled or otherwise uninspired by the setting. There was a time of course, when I was writing weekly for several local publications, including the Bracebridge Herald-Gazette, The Muskoka Advance, and the Muskoka Sun, of which I was an editor, when I had no choice but to write any where at any time day or night. I had to over-ride my need for sources of inspiration with the reality I needed a pay cheque. If I couldn't write then I wasn't go to be able to eat, and yes, drink a wee bit. So I made do with the digs I was living in at the time, some slightly more inspirational than others, even as far as the view from my work place. The McGibbon House in Bracebridge, formerly a home and medical office of Dr. Peter McGibbon, was a wonderful exception. It was a truly haunted estate that afforded me a panoramic view down onto Manitoba Street's Memorial Park. I wrote fifty percent of my weekly editorial copy from that charming early 1900's house, and even had enough time to author two small books with co-authors, and photographer Tim DuVurnet, and Suzanne's mother Harriet Stripp. It was a generously endowed house with a lot of ghostly activity that was always welcome and never fear-inspiring. It was too enchanted to be anything but enthralling, and often times the intrusions happened unexpectedly at the time I was working away at my clanking old Underwood manual. I didn't care about the suddenness of the intrusions, which happened mostly in the attic area of the three story building, or on the back staircase and its eerie low light and creaking, narrow character all the way to the basement. It was a writer's paradise.

      I've lived in several houses after this, with our young family, one on Bracebridge's lower section of Ontario Street, and another on Golden Beach Road where we could see the sparkling waters of Lake Muskoka. Both houses were seriously haunted, and the spirited hangers-on were not afraid of announcing themselves, by various disturbing interventions, such that what could have been a fruitful relationship for the writer in residence, was mired in between being inspirational and antagonistic. As if most of the time, the resident specters preferred us gone from the properties. While we didn't move from these places because of ghostly encounters, I really did have to live in a residence that challenged me in a more positive way. I often faced having to compose twenty to thirty editorial pieces a week, and I really needed to feel good about the process, as my boss needed to fill all the white space in between the ads of his highly successful Muskoka Sun. He didn't want to hear from me that I couldn't find my mojo that week, or that I wasn't feeling in the mood to do my job. It's hard to explain what inspirations I required to write such volume, other than to suggest it wasn't enough in these houses to keep me prosperously employed in the print industry. I had to move. It was that simple and Suzanne understood this, as we began looking around for a new place to lodge our young family.

     We have lived at Birch Hollow, in Gravenhurst, since the autumn of 1989, and there was only one six month stretch when I truly felt my writing career had enjoyed its last click and tack on the typewriter. It wasn't that the house stopped being of inspiration, but rather it came at a time when I had changed employers and found myself exhausted by demands. Working from home, in that first year of residency, I had to get up at three in the morning to type up the news stories I had been researching in the days leading up to press deadline. I often had to attend a local council meeting that might have ended at ten o'clock, and then after a few hours of shut-eye, rise to the task of turning rough, hard to read notes into publishable copy before nine a.m. which was my deadline on a Tuesday morning. After having a serious difference of opinion with the publisher, I quit the job and sat out the next six months, concentrating instead on getting our Bracebridge Antique shop turning a profit. As I've mentioned previously, one profession has always backed the other as an alternative, when for whatever reason, the going got bogged down and I needed a change of pace. For many years our business, Birch Hollow Antiques and Birch Hollow Writing Services operated out of the houses we were living in at the time, and it has only been in the past ten years that the enterprises have been separated; I write at Birch Hollow, the residence, and we work at Birch Hollow the antique shop in the former Muskoka Theatre building on Muskoka Road, opposite the Gravenhurst Opera House.

     Writing here in this most engaging sanctuary of home, at what we with affection know as Birch Hollow, built on a knob of land overlooking the wetland across the lane, we call the "Bog," it seems almost impossible to think of an occasion when I wouldn't be able to sit down wherever, in our haunting clutter of antiques and art, with a glorious view from here, and not be excited about the proposal of writing something or other for some purpose, or just for recreation. I've been a journeyman writer since I was twenty years of age, and seeing as I'm not approaching my sixty-sixth, still engaged in this partnership of house and creative enterprise, it is a most pleasing and profitable relationship in a most modest and frill-free accommodation; that has long protected and generated warm feelings for all of us Currie inmates, and those we have lodged, including oh so many stray pets over the decades needing a good home.

     We have received countless solicitations recently asking us to sell Birch Hollow, even in as-is condition, because the present market is apparently super-charged with cash buyers. Although we haven't had any of these real estate folks knock on our front door, to make an in-person appeal, for us to list our property, we have had a stream of gawkers and we assume house hunters, buyers and sundry other tourists, judging our neighborhood on gad-abouts, making us feel rather uncomfortable when sitting on our verandah enjoying the view from here. How much does one ask for a slice of paradise anyway? We don't have lakefront and we thankfully don't pay lakeshore tax rates. We haven't made improvements in our house beyond paint, wall paper and some interior doors, and our landscaping was done by enthusiastic home gardeners with plants and lilacs brought from our former family cottage in Windermere. Why then do we look like a piece of barbecue steak to these obviously hungry real estate voyeurs? I suppose it looks better from the outside, with a rustic Muskoka curb-appeal. We don't have a lot of physical attributes to pump up the asking price, and I don't suspect any of these house hunters and real estate agents on the prowl give a hoot about resident ghosts who dwell here, or think of them as significant enhancements or, in real estate terms, chattels.

     As the valuation of our house seems to increase each month in this crazy carnival of real estate buying, Suzanne and I simply can't get excited about the possibility of being cash rich for the first time in our lives. This is where our family has spent most time and invested most emotion through some very good yet trying times in the chronicle of getting older. Some of our dear house guests of the past, two well known historians in particular, have since passed on, and yet we feel as if they never really left us. And if it is indeed the case, that even my Mother and Father, kept it urns in our family room, feel in the contemporary sense, the spiritual comfort of indirect home ownership, gosh, we simply couldn't leave them behind. Some can for cash, likely because they don't believe in ghosts, or that they can fill the void in a house without taking up a lot of day to day living space. But it doesn't mean they're not there, and have attachments to the place that has just been put up for sale to the highest bidder.

     I couldn't really explain to a real estate speculator who important it is for a fellow like me, to have such an enchanted place like Birch Hollow, to facilitate my interest in writing daily. You sort of have to live the life of a writer to know just how important it is, to be inspired by the place, the space and the view that prevails in the portal of an office that cultivates creativity. I can't write in a place that doesn't generate the kind of special interest that this particular haunted abode provides in vast supply. If you have ever set down to write something, a letter or letter to the editor of the local press, and stared blankly at a computer screen or white paper in the typewriter carriage, and could not type out one complete word for a seeming eternity, then you might then appreciate how important it is to a career writer, to work in an environment that is fertile to creative enterprise, whether that be the handiwork of resident spirits, and the kind of good old stuff that fuels my passions, or just the soothing confidence of being embraced by sanctuary; encouraged by nothing in particular, but calmed by the generality and normalcy of a simple family home that has been a faithful companion for long and long. It is those soft illuminations through the windows late at night, when the weary traveller arrives home again, that softens the hard and jagged edges of yet another challenging, stressful day in these contemporary times.

     Suzanne and I do not wish to sell off our home here at Birch Hollow. It will be joyfully passed down in our family, where we hope it will survive as an inspirational place in which to dwell, for many decades yet to come. Home is for more than hanging a hat and casual residence. I have known many comforting homes in the past, whether a simply appointed third floor apartment, or the back rooms of a former doctors home, where I lodged warmly and comfortably for several years as a recently graduated student of history. I could write there as well, and heartily so, benefitting from the sense of a still occupied home, that carried its history subtly yet poignantly, especially in the final few minutes before I'd sail off to sleep, sensing that there was an unreserved peacefulness of past lives and passions still guarding the old place; and it gave me a feeling of security that also is difficult to explain to those who buy and sell homes with regularity, who never really have more than a place to hang their hats, before the next for sale sign is hammered into the ground.

     It doesn't matter where you live. It doesn't matter that it is a place where respite and restoration is generously offered, and that has nothing whatsoever to do with resident luxuries. Is it a "home," in the spirit of sanctuary. It is sanctuary that we need most, and that has been most dearly appreciated during the pandemic lockdown that has kept so many of us housebound.

   

Did My Alleged Angel Dream Make Me a Kinder, Gentler Human Being? I'm Told By Some That My Protestations Can Cause Ulcers!

 

The portrait of this crusty old writer / antique dealer / historian doesn't tell the whole story about the firebrand of once, that was said to be so aggressive and determined it could cause ulcers in those I made my adversaries. Mostly town councillors who once tried to sell off our beautiful lowland reserve of land here in the Calydor Subdivision, where Birch Hollow rests on the knob of land just across the lane. I would have had a dickens of a time trying to explain that I was once touched by an angel, in a sick bed dreamscape, because even those not schooled about this kind of divine intervention on the mortal soul, know that shared benevolence providentially speaking, does leave a forever essence. I was however, being thoroughly benevolent, believe me, to the creatures and natural splendor of The Bog that was preserved after a short, sharp action-packed protest at Town Hall. I'm sorry about the ulcer thing but if anything lingered from childhood, as regards to interventions from my Guardian Angel, it was the heartfelt necessity to speak honestly, and act sensibly to achieve an important objective. And there were many other citizens who were equally touched by goodwill toward the environment, because it was the number of involved citizens, and their sensible arguments to preserve the wetland, that ended the conflict prematurely. Before the lawyers and planners got involved. Each day I look out upon this most wonderful natural urban garden, I sense a little of that sanctuary aura with a touch of the angelic, but that's as much as I can explain about the continuing good feelings of having helped save this twenty acre green space.

     I might still have enough juice left in this gnarled old body to muster another fight, should the municipality ever decide to reopen a plan to subdivide The Bog.

     I have been involved in dozens of environmental and community development proposals since I moved back to Muskoka after a stint at university in Toronto. When Bet Smith, the significant other of my son Robert, sketched my portrait several years ago, I must have shown a softer, gentler, old guy side, and to be honest, I rather like the characterization more so than those adversarial folk, who might have thought it best to adorn my head with horns, and fangs protruding from my lips. I can forgive them for wishing to draw these features onto this portrait, but I can't ever apologize for following my passions and trying against all odds to fight town hall and the developers who have decided Muskoka should look more like the big city than an enchanted lakeland. The image Bet created seems almost cuddly in a comical way, and if I was to seek a seat on Gravenhurst Council in the next municipal election, it would probably be the wrong face to present to voters. I mean it doesn't appear as if I would fight the good fight to lower taxes, and beat the heck out of the lingering municipal deficit. I don't think voters would think this image of a councillor would inspire the kind of considerate meanness one must possess at times to stand up to bullies who want to challenge officialdom. But well, you never know what might inspire the electorate these days anyway in this coming post Pandemic world.

     We moved to Gravenhurst in the late 1980's from Bracebridge because we were not entirely appreciative of the urbanizing sprawl we were watching manifest in its early stages. We had a young family and Suzanne and I both enjoyed small town qualities and quantities. And yes, at that time, Gravenhurst was charmingly historic, entirely nostalgic, and the kind of quiet place we felt was perfect to spend the next decade or so. We have now been here for thirty two years, and both our sons are graduates of school here, and my wife is a retired teacher from Gravenhurst High School. We liked the town so much that we opened a main street business fifteen years ago, selling vintage musical instruments, records, new and old, and a general inventory of antiques and collectables. Our success has been overwhelming to us, and we have, what we believe, are many great plans for the future.

     But in this modestly appointed characterization of the writer-me, topping this page, brews a modicum of discontent about the massive infusion of urbanizing investment and hugely escalating real estate prices, that are quickly changing the small town we have enjoyed for so long. As a regional historian, in these same natty clothes illustrated above, I have never experienced anything as community altering, as I have witness in the past year, ironically, also the period of Covid lockdown. It is bewildering to say the least, and frightening in many ways, to watch urbanizing influences bulldozing through our forests and lowlands, remaking the hinterland into something most of us don't recognize of our hometown. It's not a case of my rebelling against progress, or casting a blanket critique upon town council for facilitating the urban invasion, but there must be a reckoning here, that what we have benefitted from in small town virtues, is about to be enhanced to something we may not recognize as in our best interests. If you accept the investment, you must live with the consequences whether they be positive or negative, and that puts a tremendous stress on local politicians to make sure that what they're approving and endorsing, is what will make us a better and more accommodating community. Expansion in the form of urban sprawl has made many changes to the appeal of cottage country, and there are critics who don't believe some developments accepted in the past have made us better or more progressive, yet this is what the proponents sold us on from the onset.

     The carnival that has developed in the real estate industry, in many rural areas of Ontario and Canada, has created a crisis that I'm told was unavoidable. Well, I don't believe this assessment, but the reality of record and sustaining low interest rates, and the desire of urbanites to move to the hinterland, is hurting a lot of local folks, especially renters, who are being displaced in large numbers, as property owners opt for the big pay-out of housing sales that often rise well beyond asking prices. A sort of gold rush era of real estate buying and selling, and gosh who wants to see an end to this kind of prosperity? I am told the house we live in here at Birch Hollow could fetch a half million dollars if we listed it right now. By the way, the house is only worth two hundred and fifty thousand at most, and the rest is froth in the form of cash purchasing power. "I want it, and I want it bad, and I'm willing to pay more and more and more to get it." We even get advertisements in the mail and in unwanted signage in our neighborhoods, telling us that "we will pay cash for your house as - is." Well isn't that special! For those of us who may have "car-dens" on our properties, this "as - is" aspect seems appealing.

     I am a believer in the free market system and I am truly a lover of democracy, and God forbid that I would critique anyone from paying too much for a house, or pocketing an obscene amount of money the result of a bidding war for that house you vowed to will to your kids. But I could never misrepresent my profound concern for the welfare of all the tenants and lodgers out there in our community, who have been and are soon to be made homeless by this same carnival of real estate madness. There are folks who crab about paying high prices for bread and eggs at the local supermarkets, who think nothing of dropping big bucks to acquire a slice of once small town topography. I want to remind them, these new citizens of our town, that they have in part contributed to the creation of a new urban jungle, reminiscent of what they left behind of city life. Not quite Green Acres any more. Take a drive around our town and check out the new subdivision work, and the survey stakes that indicate pretty clearly what is yet to come of someone else's idea of paradise in creation. I may be a fool for admitting this to my critics, but I rather enjoyed what we had, even though it was a little thread-bare in places due to some hard times of the past two decades.

     The town fathers and mothers must take stock of what they are heralding for the future of this town, and what they are bestowing on the unsuspecting citizenry. We don't have the newspaper coverage of once, and on numerous occasions residents have been unaware what transformations to the landscape were coming down the pike. Until that is, the chainsaws were fired up and the earth movers began creating the moonscape out of once thriving forests. Be careful what you wish for, my mother used to say, when I'd hope against hope that a planned Bracebridge development would improve my day to day existence. Sometimes the progress cheered by investors, was a let down to the citizenry, who didn't benefit from what had been promised of newfound and lasting prosperity. The bigger the town, the bigger the responsibilities and the consequences that some would rather bypass as inconvenient truths. If the town doesn't address homeless issue quickly mounting, and the plight of the economically challenged who need food banks and soup kitchens, we can never fully claim to being prosperous or progressive. As I have lectured councillors for years, the constituents they serve are not just property owners in this municipality and the wider District of Muskoka. All residents have a right to be heard and players in this often misunderstood and misrepresented local governance.

     I may look like uncle Fuddly in the above characterization, and I'm okay with that assessment of my more mature, well travelled, slightly humbled self in the present tense. But I am a better watcher of things, a comfortable voyeur, looking out upon the town neighborhood where we have lived comfortably for more than three decades. I might truly be more passive than twenty years ago, and less likely to chain myself to a tree in The Bog, to save it from being hacked down in the name of future progress,  yet within this retiring demeanor of a life reasonably well spent, I still, from time to time, feel the stir of anxiousness, that tells me all is not as safe and secure as once. I do know however, that Gravenhurst is undergoing the most profound change in its history, and for that milestone recognition, there does need to be a greater and more sincere reverence to what these influences of change will impose on the future well being in entirety, of what was once, a celebrated small gateway town in one of the most beautiful and alluring regions in all of Canada.

     I shall rest my weary spirit now, to enjoy the sunset glow on this enchanting acreage of tall pines, plump cedars, and venerable old oak trees that have been here for long and long. And I will never tire of the faint but cheerful wash of water through the tiny cataracts of the snaking creek that winds its way through The Bog; the urban green belt we saved from the developers who wanted to build over paradise in that insatiable mission to profit and then profit some more. Thank God for the kind souls who were ready, back then, to strap themselves to these same trees, to stop the chainsaw massacre that was being proposed. If we had lost the fight, we would have had no choice but to move. And it would have meant that our family business would have never opened on the main street. Yes, we are pretty fond of history and equally, of the nature that is such an integral part of the good graces of this region.

 

The Antique Dealer / Writer - or the Other Way Around - Depends on the Mood of the Moment

 

The illustration above, depicting the unapologetically strange Currie family, was sketched by son Robert's significant other, Bet Smith, as a Christmas present to all of us here at Birch Hollow, including the four cats and dogs that fill out the homestead. From left to right, that's me, Ted, (not the cat), son Andrew, Robert, and Suzanne. It wasn't the first time I was profiled in this way.  It was Canadian artist Frank Johnston, formerly of Gravenhurst, who sketched a head shot of me, for a regular column head, when I first began writing for Muskoka Today, back in the mid 1990's. But this latest  portrait is one of which we are particularly proud; so much so that it adorns our marquis at the front of our Muskoka Road Vintage Guitar and Antique business. It has also been on our Facebook page as a reminder to our followers and customers that we are truly the characters of fiction and then some. Bet has captured, first by camera, then by artist's intuition, our peculiar kind of normal here in the haunted halls of Birch Hollow.

     Maybe it was the lingering and compelling essence of my angel experience as a child. Or the stark and haunting fact I was saved from drowning in the deeper, turbulent water of Ramble Creek, after I suddenly crashed through the thin ice in late spring. Maybe it was the still-vivid memories of life and death episodes, the result of other crisis situations, in the past sixty years, that has made me think often about all the cumbersome truths regarding the mortal dance with fate; and how we think about it in casual contemplation after a near miss. I look at Bet's characterization of my family, and it honestly gives me a sudden chill, because the illustration clearly depicts survivors of fate; not those who succumbed.

     If I had drowned on that near fateful day, in the tumbling spring run-off powering the flow of Ramble Creek, there wouldn't have been any family for Bet Smith to profile. If you recall the theme from Frank Capra's story, "It's A Wonderful Life," which so hauntingly depicts the relevance, in a community like Bedford Falls, for example, of even one life not-lived, or fulfilled, that "should have been," what a tragic vacuum of influence it would create. Not that it would ever be recognized, because, that subject life never actually existed, did it?

   Well then, if fate had prevailed in the most negative of negative senses, meaning my actual drowning that day, the Currie family would never have existed. The premise I still reflect upon, occasionally, of never having existed, the matter imposed upon the subject character, George Bailey, (It's A Wonderful Life), to look upon the absent-from-living outcome, if that had been a reality. It enabled him, George, to appreciate the true worth of one life upon others, and the influences within the broader community not fully understood. "I wish I had never been born." Guardian Angels don't like that kind of talk. I can't help reminiscing about that near fateful day, and how I came within minutes of sliding below the ice, consumed by a powerful current presumably to my expected death. It is of course a well written, neat and tidy story, this tale of George Bailey, that made for a great and memorable Hollywood movie. Gosh, my fateful encounter wasn't fiction. But I have always believed, as with George Bailey's Guardian Angel, Clarence, that my rescue was of a parallel divine intervention. My rescue not simply explained. The super human strength of my small mother, to pull me free of waist high water. And me being weighed down by gallons of ice water in my boots and snow suit. I had a Guardian Angel but it definitely wasn't Clarence.

     I suppose in many ways, it has been a preoccupation with me for decades, without really knowing it was firmly lodged in the back of my mind. I didn't know what death was, but I had a really clear understanding how close I was to losing my grip on the edge of the ice, and how my footing was giving way at the same time, as the current eroded the creek bottom from the back of my boots, creating a depression in the sand that threatened my balance. I did know that if I was pulled under the ice, there was no way I could survive without an air space. I was just a kid but my Guardian Angel gave me a little preview of the trouble I was in, before, I believe, giving my mother the strength of Hercules, to then, on the brink of life and eternal slumber, pull me free of my exist from this world. It wasn't the first time I scuttled the grim reaper's plan, and it wasn't the first occasion I had experienced what I believe was a divine intervention. As I had survived a lengthy lung infection a year or so earlier, and had the first of several "angel dreams," I also managed to cheat death once more, thanks to circumstances and situations of my rescuers that I have never been made aware. My mother was working on adrenalin, and she put so much effort into the rescue that she lost the details of the rescue. Until her final days, she could never truly explained how she pulled me out of that frigid water. She didn't even want to talk about it, because it was so frightening at the time, and for many years after, when she also thought about life without little Teddy.

     There are many times in reflection of my life spent, thus far, that I regret not having fulfilled all the big plans I made as a young fellow looking to conquer the world. But borrowing from Frank Capra's theme in his story, "It's A Wonderful Life," I did more fully appreciate what my death would have meant to this family Chronicle "The Curries," and like the premise of character "George Bailey," of Bedford Falls, never having been born, I can become staggered to silent contemplation, looking then at the stack of family photo albums, and this friendly-infused sketch, by Bet Smith, to then, in a panic, embrace the reality of "fate" as if it is all of a sudden my best friend. And I should never ever dismiss the reality that it is this cutting edge "fate" that my Guardian Angel, has, for these many years, tried to keep from cutting me out of the family portrait.

     This portrait sketch of our family is an ongoing pleasant reminder to me, about the fragility of life, and the many times we neglect to give fate is due respect. I don't fear it as much as I revere its presence, and appreciate the complications it can cause to the chronicle of history. As a writer and antique dealer, or the other way around depending on the priorities of the moment, I can never really distance myself from the jagged edges of reality as I have known it for all these years. I have survived at least seven serious threats to my existence, and a few death threats as a journalist, and each one might have taken that final ugly turn, if not for some last minute intervention or unanticipated good fortune; such as the wrecked car with leaking gas tank not being engulfed by flames when we were trapped in the vehicle. Or that I revived just as I was depleted of oxygen, after being knocked-out by another swimmer, at Bracebridge's Kirby's Beach. I didn't, in the aftermath, think too much about the fact my demise might have been fateful to a yet to be achieved family, but I did come to understand how final death was, and just how close I had come to the end. I had several mates killed in a tunnel cave in back in the late 1960's, in Bracebridge, and I was supposed to be with them, except for the fact my mother refused to let me attend when she found out what had been planned in the side of a hill near Bass Rock in Bracebridge.

     It has all merged together in this senior situation, where I can with some wisdom acquired, look back upon the decades and feel modestly successful at having achieved a wonderful life despite the close calls. My family is thus thriving, safe and sound, because I survived. Is it overly fantastic and emotionally simplistic of me, to think, or rather believe, it was all the intervening work of an over-burdened Guardian Angel, who, with divine registry, had to protect the living from premature demise? The "it wasn't my time yet," reply, when someone tries to explain why they cheated death on a particular occasion.  It's just one of those things, isn't it, that depends entirely on interpretation of the survivor. And it has been a fixation for all of these years, that has entered virtually every enterprise I've involved myself, and yet, truthfully, it has never meant leading a spiritual life, or in any way, obsessing about a religion or a religious conviction. Yet when I am asked if I believe in Guardian Angels, with all the providential attributes that involves, I have no choice but to confess the strong belief, that fate could only have been altered for this wee lad, by something well beyond the ordinary; the extraordinary strength of a small rescuer, my mother, who never denied she had found strength during that rescue never to be repeated in life. I'm so glad that her fate and mine on that occasion coincided in space and time distancing, such that rescue was possibly in human terms. Divine intervention is just a fascination to me, and maybe wishful thinking, but benign in the grand scheme of every day life and living.

     The Bet Smith portrait is important to our whole family, but it is of particular interest to me, because when all is said and done, it shows the true depth of the Capra them, and indeed, it has been a "Wonderful Life".

Seven Calls on the Good Graces of a Guardian Angel to Keep My Good Health

 

The Statuette illustrated here was created by metal artisan Bet Smith, and her Persephone Forge, in Bracebridge, to companion an historical project Suzanne and I were working on, called the "Angel Project," in quest of Muskoka's cemetery angel statuettes. As I have experienced several "angel dreams", I asked Bet if she could create one that best suited my seemingly regular need for divine interventions. With hand to its face, the angel depicted seems a little frustrated with my seven known near misses when it comes to staying on the side of the living. That's right. I've had seven close calls, the first time, due to a childhood illness, was my first angel dream event, and it is as clear to me today sixty years later, as it was when I woke up that morning without fever, with my worried parents finally having reason to smile after weeks of illness. Please read on....

     When Ray Green and I, and his sister Holly, used to play along the watercourse of our neighborhood's section of Ramble Creek, in the Harris Crescent ravine, in Burlington, we did so with eyes wide open. It was a most wondrous place for kids to play, and for most of the rolling year there were few if any imminent dangers. We were kept back in the late spring when the run-off from this part of town was heaviest, and it was remarkable to watch from far back on the shore, as the little, gently flowing creek could represent such a torrent of fast and much deeper water to empty in to Lake Ontario. No parent in our neighborhood misunderstood how fast a child could be sucked under by the raging current, and for the years we lived in that Harris Crescent apartment, there was not a single near drowning or otherwise. Well, that isn't quite true. I had my second near death experience before I was eight years old. The first, as I mentioned was several years earlier when I had a sort of whooping cough type ailment that wouldn't pass, largely because I was allergic to the antibiotic that would have been most helpful. The Guardian Angel  I met in my fevered state, obviously on my way to recovery, on her assurance I had some time left in this mortal coil, I began a relationship of sorts that would involve a number of rescues that seemingly had some providential characteristic that I didn't always attribute to such guardianship. I think on five out of seven misadventures, that nearly proved fatal, I did, at the very least, thank God for my survival against the odds which I have been told since were rather hight. The Ramble Creek incident for one.

     My mate Ray and someone else I don't recall, had arrived at creekside just a few days before the ice break-up and the expected water surge we had witnessed in other spring seasons. You can probably visualize the scene. It was a sparkling mid spring afternoon, with sun glow sparkling down through the bare hardwood boughs, with a warmth reminiscent of the kinder weather to come. There were still pockets of ice over the deeper pools of the creek, and we found one soon after arriving in the bottom land of the ravine, and it didn't take much time for the three of us to have begun exploiting the sliding potential, and mock hockey game without sticks and puck. We began kicking a small piece of ice that had broken free, and set up a makeshift net, and Ray was the designated goaltender.

     We played for about fifteen minutes before we got tired of hockey, and became more intent, as youngsters are known to folly when bored, and resorted to actually trying to crack through the remaining ice sheet of unknown thickness. I'm not kidding. We all jumped up and down on that black shimmering patch of ice trying to get it to crack. But nature's creation had held-up well for the first five or so minutes of us trying to shatter what was then reflecting the sky as a photographic negative, and we could see our own faces being passed over by the clouds moving in with a threat of eventual rain.

     We had actually come to terms with the fact the ice was stronger and more resilient than we were capable of its destruction. Ray and his friend had gone back to the shore, leaving me to have one last go at the task of showing nature who was more powerful. I turned to look back at the pair on the creek bank, and was genuinely interested at that moment, in following their lead, and finding something else to do in the ravine, our favorite location to wile away the daylight hours. As I took one step toward them, I felt the ice give way, and heard the shattering of ice and the fluid sound of water coming over the surface, as the surface I was standing on tilted violently into the water forcing me to drop to the creek bed. When my boots hit the rocks on the bottom of the creek, and immediately filled with ice water, as did my snowsuit, I would have been up to my stomach in faster moving water that I could have imagined. It looked so safe when we went out on the ice and I didn't think it was quite as deep. And I had no idea what the current could do to me, wedged against the glass-like layer of ice that remained that held me tight with the pressure of the flow.

     In only seconds, I began to feel the tug of the current pulling me below the ice, and it took every bit of energy to wedge myself against the edge of the jagged surface, as I tried to stay upright on the slippery rocks on the creek bed. The weight of my snowsuit was incredible and there was no way I could get out on my own even if I had made that the priority. The ice kept breaking away except when I was being crushed against it by the strong current. I could only look up occasionally to see where my mates had got to, and if they were going to help me out of this dangerous situation. I only recall seeing Ray running up the hill toward our apartment, but I never recall him coming back down with my mother, who he had obviously gone to get when he left the scene. While our apartment was only a hundred yards away, it still would have taken a considerable amount of time for my mother Merle to get her boots and coat on, and come down from the third floor where we lived at 2138 Harris Crescent. Obviously, her fear that I was about to perish put wings on her feet that afternoon, and I do credit her with my rescue.

     There are some aspects to my rescue that I have recalled many times, that didn't quite add up. I don't really remember being pulled out of the icy water by my mother and I can not visualize the act of the rescue, other than the sensation of being lifted free of the water by a powerful embrace and pull of my shoulders. When I was safely on the bank, and I was able to reckon with my survival, I witnessed the silhouette of a rescuer, other than my mother then at my side, who seemed to vaporize along the pathway into the denser woodlot of the ravine. I could only hear my mother's voice, and the force of her hand on the "scruff of my neck," as she would say, hauling me to my feet, and yelling at me as I stumbled in water filled boots and snowsuit up the hillside toward home. Point is, there is no way my five foot six mother could have pulled me, by herself, from that four feet of fast flowing water. Ray and his friend were no where in sight, and he acknowledged this later when we met up. My mother was the only person who fished me out of a swollen Ramble Creek. Unless of course, it was my Guardian Angel, called upon for a second time in my young life.

     I have had near drowning events thwarted by a heavenly intervention on five other occasions, including a swimming misadventure at Bass Rock, on the Muskoka River; once during a canoe mishap with my partner Suzanne, in rapids on the South Branch of the same river system; after a body slam knocked me out, when another swimming mate dove from a dock, at Lake Muskoka's Kirby's Beach, onto my head; a car accident in my late teens, with three other youths on the Butter and Egg Road in Milford Bay; and just yesterday here in my backyard, when I came face to face with a real live frightened rogue moose raging through our neighbor's woodlot, fifteen feet or less from me, with nowhere to retreat. Suzanne fortunately had just come two minutes earlier to take Muffin the dog into the house. She would have been right in the path of the exiting moose and I would have been the after-thought. I've never been this close to a moose on the loose, and ironically, I was standing over the wee grave we made for our recently deceased cat Angus. In fact, the moose would have stumbled over the loose dirt of the grave, before blasting into the dog and I right in its path. With only a few feet and lesser seconds, the moose in full flight veered to its right, being my left, and went right through the home playground of our neighbors to the east. If the children had been playing there at the time, there would have been casualties. Guardian Angel? All I know is that I would have been injured and our pet seriously stomped if the moose had not been diverted by some unknown reckoning. But it's just one of those things, you know, that makes one ponder what made that situation change so quickly; just as I have no real recollection of how I was pulled from the frigid water of Ramble Creek by my small mother in the knick of time.

     My first encounter with what I believe was my Guardian Angel, was most profoundly, a life altering experience, but because of my age, I didn't really appreciate it as I came to in later years. It is said by those who know of such things as angel-dreams and visitations, that the recipient is never really the same afterwards, but in a good way of possessing deeper insight and I suppose enlightenment. I have had numerous similar encounters, each a beautiful sensation of calm and peaceful restitution from adverse circumstances. This angel encounter for me has been a part of my life and times ever since that early introduction, and it is impossible to ignore what characteristic of good will it imposed. Imagine any near death experience, when you arrive safely on the other side of near fatal circumstance, thanking heartily whatever and whoever offered that preservative intervention. I never have a problem paying thanks to God and my Guardian Angel, because I've got some pretty compelling evidence, by my survival against the odds, that there's a reason I'm still hanging around. I'm not a particularly religious our spiritual person but I pay thanks where I believe it is deserved, and my Guardian Angel has got a pretty fair work-out keeping me amongst the living. Maybe you'd agree. Have you had an angel encounter yourself? Cherish it as a most enlightening inspiration that will never fail in its glow of benevolence.

     The only ice I have played on since that near fateful day on Ramble Creek, has belonged to the local arenas, where there isn't fast water raging below.

 

The Place Where Fantasy Fed Imagination and Fairies, Ghosts, and Hobgoblins Played Most Kindly Hosts

     Long before you walked down the well trodden path to the open bit of urban landscape, where one could hear first, and shortly thereafter, see the golden meander of Ramble Creek, or at least, this is what we called it in our neighborhood days, the young adventurers could feel the rush of liberation from day to day regulated childhood.

     You have known a place like this in your life. An almost sacred wild place, of many acres or less, where the universe expanded all of a sudden, and life became so much more dynamic and full of endless potential. Beyond the typical play of youngsters with time on their hands, these places replaced parental authority with blue sky, engaging vegetation, tall grasses, wild flowers and possibly a rambling creek like the one I got to know in that Burlington neighborhood of the late 1950's, early 60's. Maybe your paradise on earth in childhood involved a lakeside situation, or a pond, or something else that set the heart and soul on great untethered adventures.

     I was about five years of age when my mother Merle allowed me to trundle down to the creekside, first in the winter months with a new pair of bob skates, decked out with multiple layers of sweaters, a coat, toque and scarf that was wrapped so many times around my neck, that I could hardly lower my head to look down at what I was skating over. In the spring of my fifth year, I was allowed, with my mates of Harris Crescent, to play down along the usually shallow creek that eventually drained into Lake Ontario. I was not allowed to cross under Lakeshore Road, as we knew it, as the water pooled deeper and the current became a little more precarious should we have fallen into the darker water under the roadway.

     For most of my days I have recalled this place of general wonderment from oh so many hours wandering alongs its treed banks, and frequently getting soakers, when making a misstep on one of the slippery flat stones we set out as makeshift bridges from side to side. I can't even estimate how many times, during some period of consternation or unexpected stress, even sitting in the doctor's waiting room, awaiting test results, that I've calmed myself by re-creating the Ramble Creek experience. I can so easily and clearly visualize myself, the voyeur, sitting on a fallen tree along the trickling old watercourse, and watching the most tranquilizing play of sunlight dazzling through the overhead leaf canopy of venerable hardwoods on the hillside, and watching down toward the lake as the scene was enchanted by the strange mists that mysteriously wafted down into the ravine giving such a ghostly aura to an otherwise predicable panorama.

     It may have been the gentle tinkling of golden hued creek water over the flat stones and wedged lengths of moss covered boughs damning the flow, or the fact that the birds were so active in that hollow of landscape, that made the setting seem as if a place where fantastic things could happen with no surprises to the watcher-in-the-woods. I can still re-imagine the scent of that woodland place, of so many creekside shrubs and wildflowers, and the water itself that had a strange allure I can't quite explain. But it was the solitude I harken back to most of all, in a half-hidden place on the urban landscape, that fed curiosity with a vigor and intensity, that stuck with me forever after. There was always a haunting musicality to the ravine where Ramble Creek drained down into the broader lake, and the crystal tinkling of the current against the irregular shore, has always been a most desirable recollection, when, for whatever reason, I have been forced to endure the jagged urban sounds of trucks, tractors and jackhammers.

     Although I was given liberty early in life, by being allowed to play unescorted in the hollow of Ramble Creek, by trusting parents who often trusted too much and broadly, I was never given much training in the field of imagination-development. My mother was a great believer in letting a "child be a child," in such wide open spaces, but I was never exposed to much in the way of fantasy, as we offered our boys when they were young. I was seldom if ever read story books and never inundated with toys to entice creative play, simply because my parents didn't have money to waste, as it was too important to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table. I think this is the simple reason that Merle more or less, used outdoor options to feed my play necessities. It was affordable and very available. On non-school days the door was opened right after breakfast, and I knew that meant I was being set free for a giant play day. I was expected back at lunch and dinner, and I was to never arrive on my mother's doorstep smelling like fish. That would have meant I had been close to the lakeshore, and possibly even beyond the tunnel under the roadway. Merle was had a keen sense of smell and most of the time she was right in her assessment that I had broken the rules. Yet I was seldom ever punished but warned with that severe look that no kid wanted to see from a parent. The belt may have been next but I was pretty successful in avoiding corporal punishment.

     Ramble Creek gave me an early opportunity to develop my imagination. I think a lot of modern age kids are denied this critically important starting point, having to grow up sooner they should, missing this delicious aspect of life discovery. In my own way I celebrated so many interactions with perceived ghosts, hobgoblins, trolls, and strangely humanized animals from the abutting forest, that partnered with me on these forays of discovery and unencumbered travel along the watercourse. I celebrated these days of freedom and endless adventure, most of the time with my friends Ray and Holly Green, but often all by myself in the comfort of an electrified imagination, to create the environs I wished to explore on that particular day. Might it be a quest for pirate treasure, or catching up to a local version of Tarzan swinging down on a vine from the tree tops, to scoop me up to the wavering shelter high above the meandering creek.

     It was in this hallowed place, for this always questing kid, that I began to commune seriously with what I would later appreciate as paranormal sensitivities, with a tireless devotion to learn more about the strange fictions and curious realities that grow heartily strong, from those situations we often encounter, that engage us in that veil of mystery, where we really don't know if we've seen a ghost or evasive hobgoblin, fairy or leprechaun, but refuse to surrender entirely to the potential, if was just a figment of an over active imagination. It was the place I would come to ponder all the possibilities, and allow the liberation of mind, to set down the fundamentals of what is real and what has been imagined; and whether or not, a footstep into the unexplained is a step too far. I never once felt that way but I have also always been careful when crossing on those wet mossy flat stones than can, if carelessly travelled, cause an unwanted spill into the brine; unsettling the very gentleness of solitude, that feeds the enlightened traveller, to never take for granted; but to also never be so sure as to disallow experience its full measure and capacity. As a writer who has spent a majority of his professional life dealing with non-fiction and historical fact finding, I've had to be careful with this foray into a more fantastic way of looking at those soul liberating scenes and situations of which I am so desirous.

     In my next offering in this biography, let me explain this a little further, about how adherence to fiction and childhood role-playing, nearly turned a Ramble Creek adventure into a tragic circumstance. It was one of seven occasions in my life, thus far, where I have had to impose upon my Guardian Angel for an intervention. Seeing as I'm writing this about myself, yes, I did survive a near drowning.

  

A Child's Imagination is a Precious Resource - And I'm Thankful I've Never Really Grown Up

 I spent my early years of life amidst the fragility of cold war relations, potential atomic bombs sent from enemies, and the very real struggles of blue collar working folks to keep pay cheques coming in; thus maintaining an acceptable lifestyle, which for my family meant a humble week to week existence living in a nicely kept apartment in Burlington, Ontario. My parents arrived there as poor city refugees, wishing to get out of late 1950's Toronto for the quieter life in what was then a relatively small lakeside community. I believe we moved to Burlington in about 1957 and remained on Harris Crescent, a block from Lake Ontario, until we re-located to upper Brant Street for two years, before heading north to build a new life in Bracebridge, in the heart of this amazing natural paradise in the District of Muskoka. No regrets with this move, but I really did enjoy all the natural comforts of our Harris Crescent neighborhood, that seemed so nostalgic even for a young gad-about kid who shouldn't have known anything about what is and isn't nostalgia. As my mother Merle continued to tell our neighbors back then, that I was an old soul in a kid's body, it was her attempt to explain why I was a spirited wanderer and adventurer, and yes, with a troubling penchant for searching through weekly garbage offerings, before the town trucks would arrive to empty the lid covered tin pails that lined my route to Lakeshore Public School one day each week. It was you see, the beginning of my foray into antiques and collectables, and the preamble staging for my writing interests that would bud into a career in less than fifteen years. I turned pro as a writer by the age of twenty. I was five years old when I started scavenging for salvageable stuff in these curious receptacles at roadside.

     It's an important biographical note, even if it's just for the information of my own lads, Andrew and Robert, that their father was a terrible student, who absolutely hated school, and so much so, that I'd escape my appointed classroom at my Burlington School, and if apprehended on my way out the door, feign illness as the reason for heading home. It got to be quite a problem but one that eventually subsided when I discovered a wee lass named Donna, who sat directly in front of me for a good chunk of school day. I even started going to Burlington United Church after I found out that was where she attended Sunday School Classes. I still hated school but it was far more palatable from this point on, as other girls inspired me to give the whole school-day a more insightful study.

     When I'd get my report card, which was a folded pink affair, with a lot of handwriting in allotted spaces for teacher overviews to blend with the given marks in adjacent columns. My mother hated my poor grades but what really aggravated her, was when my teacher that particular year, would make a comment about my inherent shyness, and the fact that I spent a goodly amount of time watching out the window, because outdoors is where I wanted to be instead. I can remember walking briskly with Merle, back to the school for a parent / teacher conference, about my lowly standing in classroom aptitude, and listening to her chastise the teacher for having the "gall" to suggest that "shyness" was a damning obstacle of child / student  development, or that being bored and staring out the classroom window was a sign of her son's unfortunate and imminent failure to achieve anything more than voyeur status, from some eventual park bench, watching the rest of the world pass and achievement in anything meaningful be denied the hapless "dreamer." I came to be very proud of my mother for this intervention on my behalf, and I think the advice she gave those teachers who critiqued her son, about his lack of attention to the work of the day, made some improvements in their respective teaching models. "Maybe," she said. "Your lessons are not engaging, interesting, or challenging enough, to keep Teddy's attention." You know, I could be getting the tar kicked out of me in a neighborhood fight, and she'd expect me to figure out how to best my opponent with street smarts, but when it came to anyone picking on her son for being a dreamer, or having a shy disposition, she'd burst blood vessels in rage to defend my personal characteristics. No, I wasn't a fighter and I learned this early on in life, making me opt for a more peace seeking relationship with my peers, bullies included.

     I spent about an hour late this afternoon, improving the tiny final resting spot of our cherished tom cat, Angus by any other name, who passed away yesterday. I finished clearing away some branch debris and a few dirt piles made by neighborhood moles that also reside in this small parcel of forest here at Birch Hollow. I sat on a fallen log nearby the graves of our other former furry friends, that have passed since we arrived here at this humble homestead, and been interred in this modest pet cemetery, and rather enjoyed the atmosphere then, that had been so distressing twenty-four hours earlier. The afternoon was much warmer, and the leaf canopy of our venerable maples and birches, have made it seem so much more lush and storied than earlier. The moments when I just wanted to get on with things, and establish a final resting place for a family fixture that died too soon. Which is nonsense, of course, because Angus was heading into his sixteenth year, and it is certainly a ripe old age in cat years. Point is, while I should have, as is my penchant to ponder, to remain for a while, regardless of the shovel-in-hand, and a tear in my eye, it just seemed so necessary to run away to a more uplifting locale of this treed property, where the scent of forest and lilacs seemed so muted this spring. I used to run away from events and circumstances that upset my sense of emotional balance, which is why I took off from school and headed home in those early school days. My mother always marched me back and offered an apology to my teacher, while winking at me in retreat, that she did however, understand why I didn't want to be stuck all day in a classroom. On this occasion, seeing Suzanne coming at me with a nicely appointed flower planter, to place at her cat's graveside, gave me reason to linger a while longer, despite an earlier desire to distance myself with an unpleasant reality. We consoled each other with a discussion of the pleasant surroundings, where our boys once loved to sled in the winter, and make forts in the summer; play with their toy cars on bright afternoons just like this, and ride their bikes around the paths we have only recently restored from a lagging sense of nostalgia.

     Sitting alone today, I heard the nature around me in the interlude of silence, when neighbors had ceased using lawnmowers and leaf blowers, saws and drills, and stopped revving their car engines and slamming doors. There was the most restorative sounds of a haunting spring wind with the lowland scents we recognize from out over the Bog, situated just across the lane; and I was transfixed by the sparkling sunlight breaking through the brilliantly green weave of overhead leaves, just as I still clearly remember from my days playing down in the Ramble Creek Ravine, in that Harris Crescent neighborhood, where my robust enthusiasm for exploration and an unfurling of imagination had its greatest influence on the child of nature. I was okay being spell bound and it is an experience I cherish on a daily basis, but no one who knows me has the disposition to defer my ambitions, especially when some good can come from it, and I remain out of their way, on missions and adventures that please them.

     I want to introduce you to the places in childhood, that had a most profound influence on the wanderer "me". A condition of life and times I choose not to address, especially the part about "growing up," and waxing realistic as any adult should. I shall instead, continue to fall back on my mother's safe advice, and allow my imagination the freedom it deserves as one of human-kinds greatest resource assets.

     Please join me soon for a trip into the fantasy and wonderment of my favorite haunt; the tangle of nature and sparkling waters of the very storied Ramble Creek.

 

 A Willingness to be Haunted by Old Friends, Pets of Once, and Folks Met by Happenstance

     I have had, thus far in life, over six decades of good, honest fun, a most incredible, entirely fascinating and profoundly inspiring relationship with what typically is known as the "paranormal". Suffice to say I've been haunted from childhood, although I don't think of it as having "seen dead people," or communed with the deceased in any particular organized forum or seance. I've been at best, a willing conduit and contact for those who have crossed over, and yet I'm by no means a psychic. But I'm also not a resistor to contact, and take interactions with the so-called "other side" in the spirit, you might say, of sincere goodwill.

     There have been several dozen paranormal encounters in a half dozen residences over the years, and I've been as susceptible to contact outdoors simply minding my own business on a countryside hike. Some of the encounters have usually been quite gentle and benign when it comes to the fear factor, and many have been explainable. Most I have known from the past and seem contented at one or two forays to re-introduce themselves, I suppose, but never to seek anything more than a friendship renewal.

     The paranormal experiences in my former residences, and including our house here at Birch Hollow, have been generally casual affairs, without infusing much in the way of fear and trembling on my part. There have been a few that seemed more aggressive than others, but these wayward and earthbound spirits were not those having belonged to friends and neighbors I once knew. They came with the apartment or house, and I guess they felt it was necessary to give me a little more shock so that I would take them seriously. I have always validated their presence, and even if there was only thin air to absorb my responses, it never seemed to much bother to cover all the bases anyway. I'd hate to think I missed any opportunity to connect with a potential ghost with a bit of useful information on what it's really like on the other side. If there is an "other" side, wouldn't you really like to know what it's like. I mean, what's the harm in that after all. If you don't ask questions? Well, that's what my mother used to tell me when I left each morning for public school. "You're never going to find the answers otherwise." Pretty standard advice but I did carry that onward in life, especially in the years I worked as a news and feature editor for the community press.

     My relationship with ghosts and paranormal "this and thats," has to be part of this biography because it has been a forever "thing" with me in most of my creative pursuits especially. As a writer connecting with the other side for inspiration has been a lifelong commonality, to the point I just ask for help and accept what comes down the spiritual pike. It's sort of like the reason the wouldn't tell a parent to get help for a child who thinks he or she is a chicken; simply because the parent is the benefactor of the fresh eggs. I'm not going to shut down a resource that just happens to work for me, and I have to tell you, it is a worthy obstacle remover when it comes to removing writer's block.  And in the antique business, of which has also occupied most of my adult life, I am constantly being juiced by serendipitous influences, possibly from former owners of special pieces, letting me know a little more about what I am intending to acquire out on the hustings. Sometimes there is a very clear message to put the subject piece down, or back on a shelf, and move on to other potentials. Yes, in some cases, those who have passed, still haven't entirely abandoned ownership of their lifetime's dearest possessions. I'm not the only antique dealer who has had strange interactions of the paranormal kind when it comes to settling estates, particularly from places the dearly departed haven't quite vacated as vaporous as that might be guarding their former digs. I will be writing about this aspect of living with ghosts and the spirit-kind in general, as it is a major intrusion on both my career choices, but by all means, welcome interventions most of the time.

     As I conclude this day's short entry, to what I hope in the long-run becomes an entertaining, albeit strange biography, when all the stories are harvested from a life embedded in two wildly interesting professions, and presented for your consideration......, I must regretfully retire to our parlor, with our family, where Angus the cat, beneath a warming blanket, has just now passed-on, in a gentle, peaceful decline from the grace of good living it seemed to enjoy here at Birch Hollow. One of our four adopted cats, we have had them as part of our household for the past fifteen years. As I mentioned in the first post, they were born, two females and one male, beneath a slightly upturned derelict lawnmower in our garden shed, by a wretchedly thin mother we named Beasley. The stray cat selected our shed to have her litter, but she had little milk to feed the offspring. We worked to free them from the shed and got them and mother in a laundry basket, where with warmth, and security, plus ample food for Beasley, the sisters and brother made it past the first critical days. Suzanne even fed them from her finger tips when they could handle more intake, and it wasn't long before the mother had put on some weight herself, and began providing more for the wee ones. It was a pretty neat experience because we'd only ever adopted older strays and really enjoyed the steps of saving four strays at once.

     But you know what happens with this kind of commitment over months and months. We could not bring ourselves to separate the family. And this has ended this hour, fifteen years after their unceremonious arrival on our doorstep so to speak. It of course makes us dreadfully sad because we wanted them to live forever. It was our status quo thing, where we prefer if things just stay the same.

     I am very much expecting that one day, one late evening possibly, Suzanne or I will suddenly feel the brush of wee Angus against our legs, as we trundle through this less occupied old house, and we will for a moment care not, about doubting the existence of ghosts, even of pets, and enjoy the moment as we did when we were all together at Birch Hollow. Angus, as with our many other pets who have left this earthly existence, have full rights and privileges to haunt this place, and those of us left to mourn their passing.

     Angus was a dear friend to all of us and we will miss his welcome intrusions, especially in the morning after our alarm has sounded, when he'd get his paw under the bedroom door, and rattle it violently, to make sure we didn't sleep through feeding time at our most endearing zoo. The wee critter, as with all our pets, past and present, have made this house a home, and yet, in a wonderfully haunting way, we will never doubt its lingering presence when at once, we feel as if we are being watched, ever so lovingly of course, by the large black and white cat that loomed large here at Birch Hollow; and how quiet and lonely it seems this moment, even amongst the surviving cats, including Beasley, the mother, who has been close to her baby for the past hour.

     I could not compose a biography without these references and inclusions, because they have all been the qualities and quantities of all that I consider essential to home recognition and comfort satisfaction.

     God bless you Angus Currie, for giving us the best of your life and times, for our betterment as pet stewards. You will be buried only a few feet from where you were born, in a sunny spot with wildflowers soon to bloom at your back and sides, in a place where we shall remain familiar, and think lovely thoughts as we pass and so gently reminisce about the good old days. Of course they were!

     

The Birch Hollow Antique Press

With Guest Appearances by the Ghosts, Hobgoblins and Resident Enchantments of Business, Pleasure and Residence

By Ted Currie

     Catherine is our haunted little Victorian lady, residing these many years at our Gravenhurst, Ontario, homestead, just across the lane from an equally haunting mist-laden wee bogland, a sort of enchanted moor, where it might be the case fairies and hobgoblins freely roam, silently weaving through the ferns, in the milky moonlight of such spring evenings with the vibrancy of re-birth of lowland life.

      The very spirited image of Catherine, long ago enhanced by a photographer's assistant with coloration, being  a somewhat impatient and moderately unhappy child, at sitting, has been very much a good luck adornment at Birch Hollow for reasons largely unknown. As challenging as she has been, to hang straight and even stay on her wall mount for the past thirty years, her ghostly appearance in the low light of late evening, in our parlour, has strangely yet invitingly, been more a source of inspiration than of trepidation to any degree of residential disharmony, in keeping with the goodwill of home sweet home. Although this is not the time to delve into the post life and times of our adopted child Catherine, purchased so many years ago at a Muskoka Lakes auction, she is the very striking image of my own "Alice" in my deliciously intriguing gentle fictions, that grow with prolific unabated enthusiasm; like a most magnificent, fantastic, magical garden here in the entirely humble modesty of our home at Birch Hollow. She, in my mind, is the true and unpretentious patron saint of this fountain of creativity, I enjoy each day residing amidst the pleasant antiquities that come from my own life long involvement in old things big and small, and the rich provenance and providential qualities they represent in the contemporary sense of living in the company of touchable history.

     I have been a true life-long collector of old stuff, this and that, pulled from refuse piles, secured from flea markets, church sales, neighborhood yard sales, estate offerings, and of course auction sales, which were always my venues of choice as a young and aspiring dealer. I very much benefitted from the socialization of these intimate sales, and communed many times with some of the most noted antique dealers and collectors in the our region of Ontario. It was my immersion into a very historic and storied profession dating back many centuries. I felt particularly privileged to be in their company, and it can be said with integrity, and generous thanks, that I had hundreds of teacher / mentors back in those fledgling days, emerging onto the highly competitive scene, with such raw enthusiasm through, and beyond, all the professional roadblocks, that routinely presented money and opportunity challenges. Pretty much and issue from the starting point of the mid 1970's, when I made my first foray into collecting. Initially with a small selection of late 1800's oil lamps which I truly adored for their simple appointments and slightly colored, highly flawed glass.

     Year after year I fell deeper and deeper into the enchantments of the hard realities of times past. I became a rather inadvertent historian by association. Yet it was never the allure of big profits fuelling enterprise, and I have spent most of my antique profession conflicted between the "collector" passions, and the dealer "for-profit" side, that affects most in our trade from time to time. It's what makes us hang onto certain interesting collectibles and discharging less compelling pieces, as a means of keeping up a cash reserve to carry-on our acquisition cycle. "Buy what you like," has always been my mainstay philosophy. I'm surrounded by this neat old stuff right now, and benefitting entirely from the infusion of character from times and places I can only reminisce about, and then, only from what I have read and understood of world history.

     This blog, one of many I have authored over the years, is pretty much a "paperless" biography, a sort of beginning and final chapter of my years in the antique trade here in Muskoka, highlighting the many adventures we've participated in, singularly, and as a family of collectors, up to and including the present; as owner operators of the more clearly defined Birch Hollow Antiques and Currie's Music, on a quaint but busy central stretch of Muskoka Road, opposite the Gravenhurst Opera House. It is also a beginning chapter as much as it is a concluding editorial, hopefully highlighting my most memorable and interesting years working as a Muskoka newspaper writer, editor and columnist for dozens of local publications; and authoring a few community histories and biographies of regional artists, my favorite, being the memorial text for my old book collector colleague, Miles David Brown, who taught me more about the printed word than anyone else in my orbit of ongoing education.

     I once exclaimed to a writing colleague, who just happened to, in general conversation, (and jest), ask how long I expected to sustain myself as a writer, in this awful mind bending profession;.......my response being in wry Currie fashion, that my expectation for the future was pretty clear. As visualized of course, through the clutter of past failures, and a few sundry accomplishments making a summary at least partially warranted. I wanted, in a sort of best case scenario, to pass peacefully from this mortal coil, God willing of course, after making the very last entry in my long kept journal, surrounded by my good old books, artifacts, art pieces, filling all the open spaces of wall here at Birch Hollow, and feeling the most pleasing heartbeat of a resident critter, be it dog or cat, residing restfully upon my feet; as they have for so many years here in this modest little cabin almost in the woods.

     I do not want my wife Suzanne or lads, Robert or Andrew, to feel this to be an inopportune event of demise, should it happen that I fall breathlessly into the carriage of this typewriter, as it could never be thusly a sad event, in the warm embrace of a homestead that has offered so much inspiration and kindness, of what only liberally "enchanted" wood, brick and plaster can provide the comfortable inmate. I would die a happy fellow if I was allowed to flicker away at my choice of occupations, more like pre-occupations, hopefully, as one might appreciate, the best words being saved for last. But kind friends, I do believe I have a few more chapters to pen, and a few more antiques to pursue, sales and intriguing venues yet to attend before attaining that status of true finale. Please join me for this re-visitation, of the past, hopefully still fresh and pleasant in its own strange and spirit-full way, and trust in advance, you will allow me to wander off occasionally, into the magical worlds of, at times, my own childhood recollection, aided by the comforts of those great authors, who so sweetly mentored me as a budding and always passionate reader; C.S. Lewis, J.M. Barrie, Lewis Carroll, Charles Dickens, Washington Irving and Kenneth Graham, and his most delicious tales from "Wind in the Willows." 

      The stories that are soon to follow, are not written on a daily or weekly schedule, as I have performed for readers in the past. I am a lot older now and sitting at this desk, tapping out stories for public consumption, is slightly but noticeably more taxing than it was twenty years ago, when I was working with a half dozen online and regional print publications, and had a much deeper well of energy than at present. The stories, borrowing a little fiction where otherwise a story might be a little dull and lifeless, will arrive on this site when it is physically and emotionally prudent, and possible, but by promise of the writer, they will always be progressive and proportional to this modest commitment to an interesting biography. My story won't ever be described as being either fantastic or having a boring preponderance of fact, when fact doesn't fit the requirement to entertain by anecdote. This is my story collection, but it will all be irrelevant to me, in retrospect, if I never come to feel it had provided something of interest to those who take the time to look it up regularly; and come to think of this blog site as worth its hype, of being, at the very least, an old fashioned profile of life and times enjoyed, without being overly maudlin as I have been accused of dwelling on old themes.

     This opening piece is dedicated to my feline companion for so many years, who has recently suffered from that unforgiving reality of old age. Angus has been with us with his mother and sister cats, for the past fifteen years at Birch Hollow. In fact, a pregnant cat we later named "Beasley," had a litter of three kittens, one male and two females, beneath an upturned lawn mower in our outside equipment shed. The other two kittens were named Chutney (Suzanne was making chutney sauce preserves at the time), and Zappa after the famous and revered musician Frank Zappa. Wee Angus is failing but he is still purring away here, ever so calming, as I compose this opening piece. But we are realistic about his future, and thus, we are enjoying every moment in the still of contemplation, he has here yet at Birch Hollow. I can't tell you how many hundreds of editorial pieces I've composed at this desk, hearing and feeling the purr of this little fellow against my feet; realizing of course, that his contribution of comfort and calm has as well, been infused into these same stories written for so many varied publications and media outlets.

     There is, you see, no shortage of inspirations here at Birch Hollow. I hope you will join me regularly this year, heralded of course by our business face book page, announcing when new stories are about to be, or have been published. I always like to hear from readers so please drop me a note, or send a message through our facebook page when the mood strikes.

     Expect the unexpected, and you and I will get along famously. Bye for now!