Poet's first friends in rural Ontario

I recently received a request for memories of Bob and Joe Hill from a family member who is documenting Hill family history.  

 

It’s been almost 36 years since I hung out for a few months in the summer of 1989 with Joe and Bob Hill in Cordova Mines. I’m 76 now, which I believe is longer than Joe or Bob lived their hard lives in this area, so my memories are fading. It is enjoyable, though, to reminisce about their friendships.   

I bought the old (1905?) Cordova Mines house across the street from Joe and Onalee Sharpe. I believe I moved in on April 12, 1989, and there was a light snowstorm. This city boy didn’t know how to light the wood stove in the kitchen, so Joe came over and helped me stay warm that first night by showing me how. I slept on a cot in the kitchen by the woodstove for a week to keep warm!

Joe and Onalee were great neighbours. I might not have survived my first weeks and months in Cordova without their neighbourliness. Joe soon introduced me to Bob, and they had a brotherly rivalry over who could show me around their area. 

They’d take me fishing at Scott’s Dam, and I’d stuff a mickey of rum in my back pocket to impress them (and to dull the black fly and mosquito bites). I’ll never know which of their stories were about themselves, close friends and family, but told in the third person, and which were more mythical local anecdotes.

Case in point was Joe’s description of the Havelock bank robbery, which he seemed to know a lot about. Back then the roads in the area were more bush trails than roads, and there wasn’t a connecting trail across the lakes. The robbers stashed a canoe in advance of being chased by the cops down the back roads, left their (stolen?) getaway car, and paddled serenely across the lake to their second getaway car on the other side. The cops were left on the shore, scratching their helmets!   

A more minor anecdote about questionable local practices was Bob’s story of a fisherman who’d dump rusted bed springs in Scott’s Dam before bass season. All summer frustrated fishermen would snag on the springs and lose their expensive lures. In the fall the local guy would retrieve the springs with their haul of enough lures to fill his tackle box. 

Joe and Bob were about twenty+ years my senior at forty, and I soon became friends with other Cordovans closer in age, esp. Eric and Morley. Part of the local lingo were Eric’s bad puns - tackle box became tickle box ;  )-      

That first summer I’d sit with Joe and Onalee on battered lawn chairs in front of her house. I’d get a full biography of the passengers of every passing car. Eventually I realized that if Joe and Onalee didn’t know the driver, well, they’d just use their imaginations! Sitting there I learned that in rural Cordova, people mattered, even if you had to create their back story. In Toronto people were to be avoided - no eye contact on the streetcar or subway or you could be in trouble! 

Bob and I were both horse racing fans - standard breds, “the flats”, and we drove to Kawartha Downs several times. I could make small change betting at Greenwood Racetrack in Toronto, but in horse country Bob and I couldn’t outsmart the local horsemen. Not a chance ;  )- 

That’s enough scouring of my memory banks for this morning ;  )-

I moved to rural Ontario to be closer to nature. After all, I'm a haiku poet, and what the heck was I doing living in a world class city like Toronto ;  )-

Mark McCawley published a broadsheet of my haiku from that first spring and summer. Here are a few from Moon City, Greensleeve Publishing, 1989. 

on my birthday

swimming alone

big spiders

share the bathroom

cool

yellow raincoat

crazy eyes:

church recruitment

drinking rye

and writing book reviews

deep blue dusk