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| Birch Hollow Photo by Suzanne Currie |
Keep in mind that Santa Claus has never been totally disproven, or even the Easter Bunny, or for that matter, who has ever fully documented the undeniable fiction of the tooth fairy? Ah, I see. Well then, let's move on to the existence of ghosts, hobgoblins, leprechauns, fairies, banchees, gnomes, trolls, Big Foot, transplanted wizards and dragons from the old country, brought presumably by early settlers heading out to the free land grants in the Muskoka District of the 1860's. I could go on and on, and I'm sure you wish I wouldn't, as it is a subject I dwell on most frequently. It is, for quite a few reasons, and some of them worthy, that these curious and generally accepted fictions of childhood, fascinated a few of us folk story loyalists, who like author Washington Irving, saw great value in legend, lore and folk stories woven over centuries into a country's cultural legacy. I don't believe that any one, scientist, botanist, physicist or rogue genius, will ever be able to positively guarantee mankind, that the existence of Santa Claus, or the ghosts of Christmas Past are silly old stories to amuse the untutored, and fascinate those who need to be fascinated from time to time. Suzanne and I are content by this reality, that for many centuries yet to come, these most delicious fantasies and pre-occupations of the vivid imagination, will exist for us to examine and reveal in whatever way we might choose. If we decide to pursue the things that go bump in the night, phantom steamships on our waterways, a horseman who rides headless, or that dang Easter Bunny that leaves us those lovely seasonal treats hidden about the gardens here at Birch Hollow. With the heavy realities we mortals face day after day, year after year, challenge on top of challenge, please excuse what you might consider our excesses, but we rather adore the opportunity to believe that if we clap real hard, and you do as well, we can save Tinker Bell from the poison that Captain Hook dropped into Peter Pan's medicine.
Suzanne and I have a lot in common, but we didn't really find that out for the first thirty years of marriage. Gradually we began to compare stories of our respective childhoods, her growing up in the Village of Windermere, on the shore of beautiful Lake Rosseau, and me finding my anchor of fantasy in the most engaging Muskoka woodlands in our Bracebridge neighborhood. The more involved I became in the re-telling of old folk tales from Muskoka's pioneer past, the more fascinated I became with two books written by Suzanne's uncle, Bert Shea, involving the histories of Watt Township and the settlement around the shore of Three Mile Lake, in the present Township of Muskoka Lakes. These folk tales as captured by by her uncle were fabulous reminders what the early homesteaders had to contend with, as far as isolation in a fairly inhospitable wilderness. The hardships they were forced to deal with, contrary to what they had experienced in their home countries across the Atlantic, devastated many under-prepared settlers, many succumbing physically to the unceasingly difficult work making their farms productive, and thousands abandoned half finished homesteads to seek better farming situations elsewhere in the province and the still young nation. The need for income over the winter months, forced the men of the families to engage the logging / lumbering industry, known for being brutally hard on its workers, leaving wives and children to cope with the severity of the winter season alone in this often frightening hinterland; when the wind howled and the blizzards moved over their poorly made log shanties, where the drifts came through the logs of the walls, and the stove fires didn't always survive the bluster outside, that came blasting inside. It was the early seeding of folklore and folk tales, as the character of Muskoka began to color over the black and white of day to day realities. There was a budding cultural mosaic of spun stories of hardship yet survival, with music, dance, fetes and worship; as most cabins would have had a dog eared Bible and Hymn book close at hand, for when faith was challenged by the harshness of the seasons on those emigrants who had, not so long before, lived in the urban clime of European cities.
When Suzanne began editing more of my folk story re-visitations, researched and rekindled with my contemporary audiences, for various publications, she started chatting more about her own curious encounters as a youngster who spent a lot of time at the family cottage, which had originally been built by her grandfather Sam Stripp as an early 1900's residence. It was acquired by her father and mother, Norm and Harriet Stripp, and they used it as a family cottage up until the dawn of this new century. She recalls many stories of the resident enchantments of the forested hillside, including the times she would here the most mysterious music on the hillside of the property, bordering the farm fields in the distance. As if the fairies were in the midst of an afternoon revel under the direction of their Queen Mab. It was a beautiful and peaceful music, somewhat unearthly as we mortals might appreciate, and it was discovered quite by accident, as she hiked through the light and shadows of the Muskoka forest. She reminds me just now of the story of the dancing walking stick, that appeared out of the blue, one day, as witnessed by a Windermere neighbor, who described it in that precious folksy way. What was moving that stick in such a spirited way, at that particular moment. A ghost of the person who had once ambled down that laneway, full of life, dancing like Fred Astair with a stick used as a fashionable cane? As well, Suzanne was routinely spellbound by other lakeside curiosities found early in the morning, as the mist lifted off the lake, as she paddled her canoe along the rocky shoreline; in the late afternoon, when she looked out onto the channel that separates the mainland from nearby Wellsley Island, as the color of the water changed momentarily, as if by an artist's brush, adding drama to calm, tranquility, to a predictor of a coming storm, and then a rainbow reflected on its surface by the time the setting sun blazed downward over the lake before nightfall. She had every expectation and fascination that this cottage place was haunted, but not in the malevolent way one might think. It was as magical a place as there exists anywhere in the world, and there was no need for a forensic audit of the spirits having a hand in the grand mystery of it all. It was for the observer to challenge, and imagination to engage, and folk stories to build to tell her children off in the future.
Suzanne and I have been examining regional folk stories and folklore for quite a few years now, and we have shared dozens of stories about ghosts we have witnessed, and phenomenon encountered, in various places we have dwelled apart, and together, here in the comforting and soulful haunt of Birch Hollow, in Gravenhurst. As Suzanne has been face to face with visible specters, at a number of our past residences, including her several visits with a ghost we called "Herbie," a child that used to visit our small ranch bungalow on Golden Beach Road when our boys were quite young. Herbie we believe was the ghost of a child hit and killed by a car somewhere in the vicinity of our house, and was most likely looking for his own mother; but found Suzanne instead. In our first digs in a Victorian house on upper Ontario Street, in Bracebridge, we both heard wind chimes every night where there were none, and awoke in the middle of the night to find many lights switched on, and drawers and cupboard doors open, There had been many deaths in the house over its existence, and the haunting was a gentle one. We were awoken suddenly one night by a noise we could never explain, that put us both nervously out of bed, before we heard the knock on a secondary door, that lead to the owner-neighbor's part of the house, trying to get us out of the house as fire had broken out in a connecting fuel line to the furnace. But it was not the odor of the fire or the knock that got us out of bed. It was, we believe, the handiwork of the resident spirit, who apparently was looking out for our health and welfare.
As a married couple, and a twosome that have shared many paranormal but fun interactions with entities unknown, we are excited about this ongoing project that is about to blossom forth in several new directions, involving the folksy but under-stated influences of the old stories, and what we passionately believe have a significant relevance in this present tense of Muskoka in transition. They are not, in our collective opinion, old and musty stories with little appeal in the modern context of bold new subdivisions, condos here and there, strip malls and box stores, and the haunting memory of forests and scenic meadows that once greeted the traveller's eye.....but no more. We see ourselves as contemporaries of the folk scene, and historians as only the backdrop of what was old that is now new. We want to jointly celebrate what we still recognize as the Muskoka enchantments, that can never really be paved over, or bulldozed under by those who have decided themselves to be the new stewards of our region. And as we began this day's post, we can not be thwarted or our beliefs denied, until that is, the expert in the related field, can definitely disprove the existence of all those wonderful and exotic creations of the imagination we embrace; and their relevances, one and all, to the storied future we will never abandon or even doubt; as we benefit greedily from all the indulgences of imaginative interplay with the realities of the day. Ones we soften and compose into folk stories as well, with a devoted sense of humor to deal with what has to be dealt with, smile upon our faces, defiant of the doomsayers who chose to bypass joy where it can be found, to meander a pathless future for lack of inspiration. Please join us for more folk stories to fit modern times.
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