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

Chris, thank you so much, you made me laugh. I remember staying at their Cordova home a few times.  Thanks again, and if you recall anything more, I'm here.

Patrick Hill, from email

 

snowy trail tails

Thursday 

This has been a horribly uneven winter, with climate change extremes making it impossible to settle into a consistent winter mode. Last Thursday and Friday were cold, with daily highs just under 10 degrees Celsius. But at least they were sunny days and the trails were snow covered. It's too bad the winter sled dog races had to be cancelled a few years ago, as  plentiful snowfall is no longer the norm. 

On Thursday I drove my faithful sube to the end of Milk Run Road and parked at the snow plow turnaround above a steep hill. No snowmobiles or ÅTVs had ventured down the incline, and it was easier than usual clambering down the hill with the fresh snow smoothing the deep ruts.

The swamp at the bottom of the trail is frozen solid, and there was no risk crossing the final 100 yards to the intersection with the trans-Canada Trail. The trail was created when the old railroad lines were torn out many years ago. From time to time I still find lonely iron spikes which secured them.

First I headed south several hundred yards to the "shaman bridge" and then another hundred yards to "sorrow falls". I always feel sad in this area, as I have so many memories of exploring here with my little dog Chase. After reminiscing at the frozen beauty of sorrow falls I returned north to the intersection with the old milkman's path. The trail rises in a long straight path on a rail bed built to clear the swamps. Thick cedars crowd both sides like a wilderness avenue.

As I paused to plan my hike, a distant brown shape paused at the start of the incline 400 yards ahead. I remained still, and after half a minute another brown shape followed. Deer usually travel in groups, and at cautious intervals, with military precision, another five deer traversed the path.

   


Dr. John's pic of sorrow falls - he named the icicles 'the shaman's whiskers'



strange lone stump
limbs still, no scent
no danger

Friday

Perfect outdoor conditions continued. I decided to hike the trail to the old railroad bridge on the spur line which leads to the hamlet of Cordova Mines. When I first settled here 30 years ago I lived  in Cordova in a drafty old farmhouse. Again I needed the sube to get to the trail, and I drove to Beaver Creek Road and then cut off onto Gulf Road. I haven't hiked this trail in several years, and because of its remoteness and the distance to the old bridge, it's a bit risky hiking this trail alone. But all my walking companions have grown old, or died like Chase, or are chained to bad jobs or their small screens and other addictions. As usual this would be a solo.  

The start of the trail was far more rutted than in the past. The ruts were too far apart and too deep to have been made by ATVs, so I realized someone had been driving a pickup on the trail. Even with the fresh snow I slipped and slid through the ruts and progress was slow. About 20 minutes along I was crossing a swamp when a small brown shape scurried from the brush. Unlike the deer, which had been too far away to wind or see me, this little guy panicked. I couldn't immediately recognize his shape. It seemed about the size of a tiny raccoon, but his scurrying looked unfamiliar, too wild and slithering. I don't often see raccoons on my walks, and my mental image is of the brazen, junk food stuffed denizens of Toronto. Toronto raccoons remind me of their major political denizen, Doug Ford. This critter had crossed just a hundred yards ahead, and when I reached his trail I followed his prints to see if I could find him scurrying through the brush. No, the prints led directly to a tree right beside the trail. I looked up to spy a small animal curled in a crotch of branches. Mystery solved - hanging down from the terrified animal was an unmistakably ringed tail.

This was my only encounter. It took a full hour to reach the abandoned rusty bridge. The wooden side rails on the north side, where a dozen years ago I'd carved my shaman sign, had fallen far below into the beaver pond.







Chris Faiers/cricket