Small Historical Churches In Muskoka and Other Lives

Bigger isn’t better!   Small historical churches throughout our District are slowly disappearing due to declining congregations and decisions that are being made by individuals in tall office towers.  The historical importance of these local churches is lost when these decisions are being reached strictly on a dollar basis.   The Holy Manager Church in Barkway under the care of St. James Anglican Church in Gravenhurst has stood the test of time and continues to keep it’s doors open for services twice a month. - Photo By Fred Schulz

 

NOTE: This Blog ran several years ago but it has its relevance today as well. I have spent much of the past three weeks writing  a local history for a recreational group, and I have found myself without time to create new blogs. As of tomorrow, the project will be completed and new blogs will once again appear on the site.



The Feeling I Lived Another Life -

  

The Haunted Writer.....Never A Dull Moment But Always Lots to Write About

     There have been hundreds of times in my life, thus far, when I'd be overwhelmed by some strange, unexpected circumstance of location, atmosphere, aroma and particular visitation, that made me feel temporarily heart-sick. Many of us will, at some time in our respective travels, have feelings that caress a sensitive, nostalgic chord on that heavenly harp. A moment in time and place that reminds us we've been here before; experienced the aroma and atmosphere, the street scene or architecture before......and we kid about it to others as being memories from a past life.......not really thinking about the implication of having lived an earlier life,... just as cliche, repeating a familiar line that fits the occasion. Is it possible you did live in this neighborhood before, and that arriving here now was providential......a place that by some divine intervention or otherwise you simply had to visit?

     I have experienced these strange ongoing pangs frequently since childhood. My first years of life living in Burlington, Ontario, may have been the most profound of all the years, as I spent much time feeling that what surrounded me on this urban landscape....and shoreline area of Lake Ontario, was way too familiar for my five to eight years of age. I can place myself now so clearly on the hillside of what was known as Torrance Avenue I believe, situated several lots before the intersection of Harris Crescent,..... where we lived in a modst three story brick-clad apartment abutting a valley where Ramble (or Rambo) Creek trickled all the live long day. On those hazy bright autumn days after most of the hardwood leaves had covered-over the lawns and lanes, I remember arriving at this halfway climb up the hillside, and stopping to watch my contemporaries playing in the piled leaves of an old Victorian era estate, wreathed by venerable old hardwoods on the left hand side of Torrance, yet never (on numerous occasions I saw the youngsters) taking even the smallest step forward to join them. I would just stand there as if I was watching the play of ghosts; like looking into a snow-globe; instead of flurries the colored leaves fluttered down in a sad yet remarkable reminder of not only a season's decline but our own seasons of life.

     It was as if I was in those leaves up to my neck, playing, tossing handfuls at my chums......yet I was on the outside looking in at those children that I knew but couldn't for the life of me repeat their names. Even four and a half decades later, I can not ascertain whether, on these occasions, I was watching something real take place, or that my imagination was being manipulated by the sheer history of this old nostalgia-haunted estate. When I did use to play in the thickly overgrown ravine behind the estate, there was always a point of travel when these feelings intensified. There was an old garden shelter of lattice-work situated halfway up the hill, that offered a bench to the weary who had climbed up the path from the basin. It was pretty ramshackle in my day (late 1950's early 1960's) but it was the point where the almost oppressive melancholy set in, and sitting on the one remaining bench, this voyeur could sense very clearly there were many others in the vicinity even though nobody other than my mates was visible. It was very much a haunted feeling at a time when I had no clue about what constituted the spirit-kind, and what being in the presence of an alleged ghost might feel like. Instead it was quite a sad feeling for an otherwise happy kid, that there was something strikingly unique about the property. I wasn't repelled by it at any time. I was however, abundantly aware that there was something here worth remembering because for these many years, I kept it conserved, as if pressed like flowers in an old book. Just as it was profound then, on reflection, it is just as clear and thought provoking now.

     When they tore the old mansion down to build an apartment tower, I remember feeling quite angry that this beautiful old building with its kids and keepers was to be sacrificed when there was so much other room to build, even on that street at that time. There was a huge market garden on the top end of the street that was better for building-on anyway than the treed crest of this hillside. But who was I to stand in the way of urban progress. As I have found out since, the scene I witnessed on that hillside, kids playing in the leaves, probably was more vivid imagination than fact, as the estate had stood childless for many years, with only a small number of occupants in the years leading up to its unceremonious destruction. Did I see ghosts at play? Or did I see myself in another life, actually residing on that storied property above Lake Ontario. Or as I have pondered many times, was it the germination of the seeds of a writer's life about to be?

     I don't want to give the impression that I have these deja-vu moments every day, and see ghosts by the dozens on my frequent travels. This is not the case. I do however, trust my sensory perception that something I'm experiencing may be over and above the normal human fare of chance encounters. I am most certainly the pesky, reporter-kind (by profession), ever-questioning, who wants to know as much about life and after-life as possible, while at the same time not being crowded into a religious box by obligation and blind faith. When I get this strange "I've been here before," feeling, I study as much as possible about the circumstance, wishing to know why the sensation has engulfed me at this curious time and place. I have few answers after all these years, even after reading many books on re-incarnation and information written by others who have similarly regular experiences with the paranormal. I don't resist these feelings no matter how sad or depressed they may be at the time......much as the old tale re-told after we get an unexpected shiver - that "someone (just then) must have walked over your grave (from a previous life)."

     I can be totally humbled by a piece of music, almost to tears, because it reminds me of this past life.....music that I've never heard before, making me feel a strange kinship to another time, another place.....possibly an exotic situation. Elizabethan period music can stagger me at times, making it clear in its own haunting orchestral way, that I was alive during this period.....and that I should....I must reckon with the connection. On reflection, if re-incarnation has played any role in this writer's life, the subtle and gentle reminders I receive, and have been influenced by since early childhood, have been quite undramatic (not the kind of material that would make a good thriller for Hollywood),....much as if a simple crumb trail to encourage me to quest onward.....to seek out the road least travelled to more deeply explore life's mysteries. A challenge possibly to locked-in contemporary thought that life is what it is and not one shred of anything beyond demise.

     While I confess at times to feeling quite unsettled by a few of these history-bound events of atomic deja-vu, I look forward to them now as clues about existence and beyond. I'm still questing for more answers but I am resigned to the fact I'll die long before I've discovered the true meaning of life.

There are many people, authors, movie script writers, novelists who portray the paranormal in a most grotesque manner, frightening us away from ever wanting to know more about spirit-kind because of the inherent risk to life and limb. While I would say that my life has been paranormally involved for many years, it hasn't been by choice, stubborn insistence, or any mental or physical intent to conger up those who have passed for personal gain. Embellishment has never come to mind and I've never made one dime as a writer feeding a readership fiction. I will never treat paranormal experience with anything but reverence and validation. My stories here and whenever they are published are done free of charge, with no real concern about anything more than the connection with others who have had similar life enhancing experiences, with what may or may not be paranormal by the scholars' definition.

      Maybe you are walking by a mom and pop corner store in some old neighborhood in Toronto, for example, and get this tug on a heart-string for no apparent reason.....a sense of familiarity that would initially suggest you had something to do with this building, this site, this neighborhood in the past yet no proof of having ever been here before. It could be a feeling of out-of-place nostalgia driving through the countryside just before sunset on some early winter's eve, and seeing an illuminated room of an old farmstead, and feeling drawn to its interior much as if you are long-absent kin finally returning home. One might even be able to feel the warm thrust of air from the cookstove, when entering the house in some other life.....the smell of freshly baked bread and a simmering stew....all mindfully playing without having to step one foot out of the car. Feeling the presence of a lost friend or family member at your side, during a stroll down a leaf-covered lane in late October, or hearing some familiar song when no musician has come forth to play. What a peaceful reminiscence to enjoy. I think my life would be very plain indeed without these playful, spirited reminders of something special just beyond our mortal reach.

     As you read through the following editorial pieces, please keep it in mind that this is not a blog-site devoted to validating paranormal realities, as a few of us see and experience them regularly. Rather they are honest stories about interesting encounters that have all been rewarding in one way or another, without ever being anything more than unsettling. Frightening? Never! Messages within? Possibly.

While a tad more energetic than the family history my wife has been working on for the past two years, my quest for information on past lives is a little harder to cut down to specifics but a lot of fun to participate in just the same. Enjoy these blog entries for what they are......a connection with a very strange and endearling nostalgia that may well be a little haunted around the edges. Have a safe and memorable journey. Many more blogs to come.