Alan Skeoch

Year: 2020

  • Fwd: EPISODE 56 EYWOOD PARST TWO: THE IMMIGRANT YEARS OF FREEMAN FAMILY 1905 TO 1914



    Begin forwarded message:


    From: ALAN SKEOCH <alan.skeoch@rogers.com>
    Subject: EPISODE 56 EYWOOD PARST TWO: THE IMMIGRANT YEARS OF FREEMAN FAMILY 1905 TO 1914
    Date: May 30, 2020 at 11:42:02 PM EDT
    To: Alan Skeoch <alan.skeoch@rogers.com>



    EPISODE  56    EYWOOD, PART TWO


    Louisa (Bufton) Freeman with daughter Elsie on her one and son Frank by her side.
    Photo may have been taken in the Head Gardener’s house at Eywood Estate.



    In 1972, I asked mom to explain life as immigrants in Canada from 1905 to 1914


    This is  Granddad and is gardeners…ten men and boys and two horses

    alan skeoch
    May  2020

    There was always something strange about the Freeman farm house.  Something different
    from other houses as I remember.  And the difference, I now realize, was the picture frames
    and the photos fitted therein.  The frames  were hand carved by Granddad out of slabs of 
    hardwood.  Then intricately carved.   As below.
     
    “How long did it  take you to carve these, Grandpa?”
    “Did one ever winter for a few years?”
    “Who is in the frame?”
    “That’s  to cook from Eywood…your mother’s godmother?”
    “I thought you hated Eywood?”
    “Too strong a word, Alan.”
    “but you said you hated tipping your hat to Mr. Gwyer, the owner of Eywood.”
    “Hate is  too strong a word…let’s say disliked.”
    “If you disliked Eywood, then why spend your winter’s  doing something
    that reminds you  of Eywood.”
    “Alan, there is the world of difference between a system I might dislike
    and the people working within the system.”
    “I don’t get it.”
    “Some of those people in service at Eywood became as  close to 
    your grandmother and me as our family.   They became family really.”



    Winer’s work beside the wood stove in Erin Township,  Wellington County 1930’s.



    Elsie Freeman…hand made frame by Edward Freeman

    The old Freeman farm house had reminders of Eywood on each  wall of the only room
    in the house that was permanently lived in.  The room with the big wood stove. The rest
    of the house in winter time was so cold that icicles formed in the rooms.   Just to got
    to bed upstairs we had to take a hot brick wrapped in paper.  The brick was heated in
    the wood stove oven.  

    This was not the home of rich persons.  Yet the walls  were reminders that there was
    a place somewhere in England where rich people lived and  were served by servants.
    It was all  very confusing.

    I thought Grandma and Grandpa came to a better place..Canada.  But the reminders
    on the walls told a different story.

    Always in the back of my mind were these reminders  of Eywood.  A mystical place
    that I thought I would never see.  Time and  circumstances changed things for me.
    Remember this point.  I was born in 1938. I was  a teen ager in the 1950’s.  I was
    an adult in the 1960’s.  I was to become part of the luckiest generation of humans
    this world has ever seen.   I did not know it though.   Nor did  I know that in a few years
    I would find myself on the Eywood estate.  Not once, but several times.  I would
    arrive there just six years after the grand house was demolished by impoverished
    Brits.   I would  arrive just six years after the grand estate home was blown to
    kingdom come.  



    What of  granddad?

    “Will you ever go back to Eywood “
    “No.  We will never return…burned  our bridges.”

    They left Eywood in 1905.  Sailed  to St. John, New Brunswick. Then train to Toronto.
    where  Granddad expected  his wife Louisa to stay  for a few weeks while he checked  out farming
    in Manitoba.  That was a non starter.

    “You expect us to take Frank and Elsie to a remote wilderness  where there are no schools nearby?”
    “For a while that will be so.”
    “And no hospitals.”
    “Not close.”
    “Well…that is  not going to happen…we are not going to Manitoba.”

    So grandpa bought a small garden farm in Etobicoke (exactly where Highway 427 sweeps  north
    today and crosses Burnhamthorpe  Road.).  He tried to grow vegetable then haul them to Toronto
    for sale.  Tough.  Poverty was getting close.

    “We will sell the garden farm, Lou.”
    “And  do  what?”
    “I have a  job as carpenter with the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway.  Big things
    happening in Northern Ontario.   We will have a  cabin in Krugerdorf…a village near Englehart.
    Start all  over again.”


    Around 1985 we drove north to find krugerdorf.  We found it.  All that is left of the
    railway village is this  sign.  As  I looked  at the sign, a black bear crossed the railway track
    some distant away.


    This is the log cabin of Harry Horsman, a friend of the family in Krugerdorf.  His cabin is primitive as was
    the cabin belonging to Ted and Lou Freeman.  Theirs caught fire an burned to the ground in 1913 or 1914.  Fires
    raged all across Northern Ontario in those years.


    Contrast the log cabin above with the majesty of Eywood Estate main  house.


    The cabin turned out to be a rudimentary log cabin.  In the summers massive wildfires swept across
    Northern Ontario.  Granddad had to ride through at least one such massive blaze sitting on a flat car
    with forests burning on each side.   It was tough.  Then their own log cabin caught fire and burned
    to rubble.  They managed to save their one t treasure…a small pump organ.  Music was a big 
    part of their social life.  But they were burned  out.  So they moved…fled… south.
    Grandma wanted something stable.  Not flashy.  For their money was  limited, very limited.

    In 1914 Edward and Louisa  Freeman bought a small farm in southern Ontario.  Very small indeed.
    The 25 acre farm on the Fifth line of Erin Township, Wellington County, Ontario could hardly
    be considered a farm.  Jus to 20% of the land was swamp.  And the fields were oct strewn.
    rocks left behind  when the glacial ice retreated thousands  of years ago.  Rocks on the surface.
    Rocks below the surface.  But there was a brick house.  Well  really a brick faced house…one brick  
    thick.   Really the house was  built like a barn.  Timbers rescued here and there from other buildings
    some of them scorched by fire.  No running water.  No indoor toilet than thunder jugs beneath the beds.

    There was  a barn.  The builders must have thought  the site for a barn was ideal.  Between two
    swamps with ager inning through the stable.  No need to haul water.  Of course the idea was faulty.
    In  winter the water froze.  When water freezes it expands with force enough to crack and push cement
    foundations out of place.  The barn would not last the century but it would last the remaining lifespans
    of Ted and Louisa Freeman.  Room enough for a chicken coop and stabling for a few cows and a horse
    to two.  Small.   Self sufficient.  Survivable.

    The Freemans set down roots.  Roots that took some time to get established because
    the Freemans were Welsh-English.  And Erin Township’s Fifth Line was  overwhelmingly Scottish.
    There was no love lost between the English and the Scots.  Tensions dating back and beyond
    Robert the True and William Wallace were very real in this small  backwater piece of  rural Ontario.



    Photo of the Freeman farm in  the 1930’s as seen from the air.


    “We were not liked  at first.”

    (Most locals could  not understand  why anyone would try to eke out a living on 2r acres.  An
    English family forced by  poverty to buy the small rock/swamp parcel.)
    “They won’t stay long..”
    “What is  worst is  that they are English.  Odd  they did not get better land.”
    “Must be a reason.”
    “Wait and see what happens.”

    Across the dirt road was the farm of Jean Macdonald, nest to her farm on south side
    were Jean and Janet McLean…south of the Freeman farm were the Macecherns, then
    the Kerrs.  To the north was a  great wedge of forested swamp that had once been part of
    the new Freeman farm.  The land had been sold  to raise enough money to build the 
    brick house.  Once the new Freeman house had been built the former owners found
    they no longer had a farm.  All of this  did  not bode well.

    Did the Freeman’s feel they had made a massive mistake leaving a reasonable comfortable
    life in the Gardeners House on the Eywood Estate for the near poverty of life in Canada?
    They must have but I never heard a word  of complaint as a boy spending many  free hours
    with my grandparents.

    “It did not take lone for us to fit in.  A little tension at first.”
    “But everyone was poor.  We made our own entertainment
    using the one room school for musical evenings.”
    “I played the violin along with Frank.”
    “Your grandmother played  the pump organ and she
    had a lovely singing voice.”
    “In not time at all, we were part of the community.  Did not matter that
    we were English.”

    The Great War began in the same year the Freeman’s bought the farm.  To pay
    for it, Edward  Freeman  took a job making eplosives in Toronto.  Elsie, Frank
    and his wife Louisa were left to do the farming.  With the money earned the
    mortgage was  soon paid in full.  I am guessing when I say the farm cost $6,000
    perhaps less than that.

    From 1906 until their deaths in the 1950’s,  Grandma and Granddad kept in close touch
    with the resident of Eywood.  No complaints.  Granddad even successfully encouraged 
    two of his brothers and his sister to come to Canada.  They did not feel poor although they
    were poor.   But there was a  richness of  spirit in them.  A great joy of living on their own land.
    Security of tenure.

    All the same it was wonderful to hear about the happenings on the Eywood Estate. The gossip
    of those still ‘in service’.   The letters from the Griffiths were a  kind of  touchstone.

    Mercifujlly, both Grandma and Grandpa died  before the terrible news reached us.
    The Eywood Estate was gone…the great house had sold everything right down to’
    the floor boards and doors and windows.  All gone.  And the final catastrophe was
    the demolition…with the help of explosives I was told…the final demolition of the 
    great estate house.


    IN 1955, this wasalll that remained of Eywood mansion  house.


    Odd fact though.  The rest of the estate…the barns, the servants quarters, the dovecote,
    the park, the lake, the walled  gardens…and the head gardeners red brick house…all of these
    remain.  Mom..Elsie Freeman…was born in that red brick house in 1901.

    NEXT STORY:  PART THREE OF THE EYWOOD STORHY


    BACK  THEN…THE 1940’S

    (MY BROTHER ERIC AND  I DRESSED  AS WE DID BACK THEN…ON THE FREEMAN FARM)


    TODAY…YEAR 2020

    So here we are in the year 2020…and the 25  acre Freeman farm has survived while thousands of
    other family farms have been gobbled up into larger and larger farms with fewer and fewer farmers.
    The average size of a farm today is over 500 acres.

    We call our farm a farm but is  really not a farm.   Our income from the farm is
    miniscule.  So  small that we do not pay farm taxes.  We pay the much larger
    property tax of non farming rural residents.  No matter.  The farm has survived.


    A wooden horse like this would likely have been present in Eywood.



    NEXT STORY…PART THREE OF EYWOOD. …AS FOUND IN 1960

    alan skeoch
    may 2020


  • EPISODE 56 EYWOOD PARST TWO: THE IMMIGRANT YEARS OF FREEMAN FAMILY 1905 TO 1914


    EPISODE  56    EYWOOD, PART TWO


    Louisa (Bufton) Freeman with daughter Elsie on her one and son Frank by her side.
    Photo may have been taken in the Head Gardener’s house at Eywood Estate.



    In 1972, I asked mom to explain life as immigrants in Canada from 1905 to 1914


    This is  Granddad and is gardeners…ten men and boys and two horses

    alan skeoch
    May  2020

    There was always something strange about the Freeman farm house.  Something different
    from other houses as I remember.  And the difference, I now realize, was the picture frames
    and the photos fitted therein.  The frames  were hand carved by Granddad out of slabs of 
    hardwood.  Then intricately carved.   As below.
     
    “How long did it  take you to carve these, Grandpa?”
    “Did one ever winter for a few years?”
    “Who is in the frame?”
    “That’s  to cook from Eywood…your mother’s godmother?”
    “I thought you hated Eywood?”
    “Too strong a word, Alan.”
    “but you said you hated tipping your hat to Mr. Gwyer, the owner of Eywood.”
    “Hate is  too strong a word…let’s say disliked.”
    “If you disliked Eywood, then why spend your winter’s  doing something
    that reminds you  of Eywood.”
    “Alan, there is the world of difference between a system I might dislike
    and the people working within the system.”
    “I don’t get it.”
    “Some of those people in service at Eywood became as  close to 
    your grandmother and me as our family.   They became family really.”



    Winer’s work beside the wood stove in Erin Township,  Wellington County 1930’s.



    Elsie Freeman…hand made frame by Edward Freeman

    The old Freeman farm house had reminders of Eywood on each  wall of the only room
    in the house that was permanently lived in.  The room with the big wood stove. The rest
    of the house in winter time was so cold that icicles formed in the rooms.   Just to got
    to bed upstairs we had to take a hot brick wrapped in paper.  The brick was heated in
    the wood stove oven.  

    This was not the home of rich persons.  Yet the walls  were reminders that there was
    a place somewhere in England where rich people lived and  were served by servants.
    It was all  very confusing.

    I thought Grandma and Grandpa came to a better place..Canada.  But the reminders
    on the walls told a different story.

    Always in the back of my mind were these reminders  of Eywood.  A mystical place
    that I thought I would never see.  Time and  circumstances changed things for me.
    Remember this point.  I was born in 1938. I was  a teen ager in the 1950’s.  I was
    an adult in the 1960’s.  I was to become part of the luckiest generation of humans
    this world has ever seen.   I did not know it though.   Nor did  I know that in a few years
    I would find myself on the Eywood estate.  Not once, but several times.  I would
    arrive there just six years after the grand house was demolished by impoverished
    Brits.   I would  arrive just six years after the grand estate home was blown to
    kingdom come.  



    What of  granddad?

    “Will you ever go back to Eywood “
    “No.  We will never return…burned  our bridges.”

    They left Eywood in 1905.  Sailed  to St. John, New Brunswick. Then train to Toronto.
    where  Granddad expected  his wife Louisa to stay  for a few weeks while he checked  out farming
    in Manitoba.  That was a non starter.

    “You expect us to take Frank and Elsie to a remote wilderness  where there are no schools nearby?”
    “For a while that will be so.”
    “And no hospitals.”
    “Not close.”
    “Well…that is  not going to happen…we are not going to Manitoba.”

    So grandpa bought a small garden farm in Etobicoke (exactly where Highway 427 sweeps  north
    today and crosses Burnhamthorpe  Road.).  He tried to grow vegetable then haul them to Toronto
    for sale.  Tough.  Poverty was getting close.

    “We will sell the garden farm, Lou.”
    “And  do  what?”
    “I have a  job as carpenter with the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway.  Big things
    happening in Northern Ontario.   We will have a  cabin in Krugerdorf…a village near Englehart.
    Start all  over again.”


    Around 1985 we drove north to find krugerdorf.  We found it.  All that is left of the
    railway village is this  sign.  As  I looked  at the sign, a black bear crossed the railway track
    some distant away.


    This is the log cabin of Harry Horsman, a friend of the family in Krugerdorf.  His cabin is primitive as was
    the cabin belonging to Ted and Lou Freeman.  Theirs caught fire an burned to the ground in 1913 or 1914.  Fires
    raged all across Northern Ontario in those years.


    Contrast the log cabin above with the majesty of Eywood Estate main  house.


    The cabin turned out to be a rudimentary log cabin.  In the summers massive wildfires swept across
    Northern Ontario.  Granddad had to ride through at least one such massive blaze sitting on a flat car
    with forests burning on each side.   It was tough.  Then their own log cabin caught fire and burned
    to rubble.  They managed to save their one t treasure…a small pump organ.  Music was a big 
    part of their social life.  But they were burned  out.  So they moved…fled… south.
    Grandma wanted something stable.  Not flashy.  For their money was  limited, very limited.

    In 1914 Edward and Louisa  Freeman bought a small farm in southern Ontario.  Very small indeed.
    The 25 acre farm on the Fifth line of Erin Township, Wellington County, Ontario could hardly
    be considered a farm.  Jus to 20% of the land was swamp.  And the fields were oct strewn.
    rocks left behind  when the glacial ice retreated thousands  of years ago.  Rocks on the surface.
    Rocks below the surface.  But there was a brick house.  Well  really a brick faced house…one brick  
    thick.   Really the house was  built like a barn.  Timbers rescued here and there from other buildings
    some of them scorched by fire.  No running water.  No indoor toilet than thunder jugs beneath the beds.

    There was  a barn.  The builders must have thought  the site for a barn was ideal.  Between two
    swamps with ager inning through the stable.  No need to haul water.  Of course the idea was faulty.
    In  winter the water froze.  When water freezes it expands with force enough to crack and push cement
    foundations out of place.  The barn would not last the century but it would last the remaining lifespans
    of Ted and Louisa Freeman.  Room enough for a chicken coop and stabling for a few cows and a horse
    to two.  Small.   Self sufficient.  Survivable.

    The Freemans set down roots.  Roots that took some time to get established because
    the Freemans were Welsh-English.  And Erin Township’s Fifth Line was  overwhelmingly Scottish.
    There was no love lost between the English and the Scots.  Tensions dating back and beyond
    Robert the True and William Wallace were very real in this small  backwater piece of  rural Ontario.



    Photo of the Freeman farm in  the 1930’s as seen from the air.


    “We were not liked  at first.”

    (Most locals could  not understand  why anyone would try to eke out a living on 2r acres.  An
    English family forced by  poverty to buy the small rock/swamp parcel.)
    “They won’t stay long..”
    “What is  worst is  that they are English.  Odd  they did not get better land.”
    “Must be a reason.”
    “Wait and see what happens.”

    Across the dirt road was the farm of Jean Macdonald, nest to her farm on south side
    were Jean and Janet McLean…south of the Freeman farm were the Macecherns, then
    the Kerrs.  To the north was a  great wedge of forested swamp that had once been part of
    the new Freeman farm.  The land had been sold  to raise enough money to build the 
    brick house.  Once the new Freeman house had been built the former owners found
    they no longer had a farm.  All of this  did  not bode well.

    Did the Freeman’s feel they had made a massive mistake leaving a reasonable comfortable
    life in the Gardeners House on the Eywood Estate for the near poverty of life in Canada?
    They must have but I never heard a word  of complaint as a boy spending many  free hours
    with my grandparents.

    “It did not take lone for us to fit in.  A little tension at first.”
    “But everyone was poor.  We made our own entertainment
    using the one room school for musical evenings.”
    “I played the violin along with Frank.”
    “Your grandmother played  the pump organ and she
    had a lovely singing voice.”
    “In not time at all, we were part of the community.  Did not matter that
    we were English.”

    The Great War began in the same year the Freeman’s bought the farm.  To pay
    for it, Edward  Freeman  took a job making eplosives in Toronto.  Elsie, Frank
    and his wife Louisa were left to do the farming.  With the money earned the
    mortgage was  soon paid in full.  I am guessing when I say the farm cost $6,000
    perhaps less than that.

    From 1906 until their deaths in the 1950’s,  Grandma and Granddad kept in close touch
    with the resident of Eywood.  No complaints.  Granddad even successfully encouraged 
    two of his brothers and his sister to come to Canada.  They did not feel poor although they
    were poor.   But there was a  richness of  spirit in them.  A great joy of living on their own land.
    Security of tenure.

    All the same it was wonderful to hear about the happenings on the Eywood Estate. The gossip
    of those still ‘in service’.   The letters from the Griffiths were a  kind of  touchstone.

    Mercifujlly, both Grandma and Grandpa died  before the terrible news reached us.
    The Eywood Estate was gone…the great house had sold everything right down to’
    the floor boards and doors and windows.  All gone.  And the final catastrophe was
    the demolition…with the help of explosives I was told…the final demolition of the 
    great estate house.


    IN 1955, this wasalll that remained of Eywood mansion  house.


    Odd fact though.  The rest of the estate…the barns, the servants quarters, the dovecote,
    the park, the lake, the walled  gardens…and the head gardeners red brick house…all of these
    remain.  Mom..Elsie Freeman…was born in that red brick house in 1901.

    NEXT STORY:  PART THREE OF THE EYWOOD STORHY


    BACK  THEN…THE 1940’S

    (MY BROTHER ERIC AND  I DRESSED  AS WE DID BACK THEN…ON THE FREEMAN FARM)


    TODAY…YEAR 2020

    So here we are in the year 2020…and the 25  acre Freeman farm has survived while thousands of
    other family farms have been gobbled up into larger and larger farms with fewer and fewer farmers.
    The average size of a farm today is over 500 acres.

    We call our farm a farm but is  really not a farm.   Our income from the farm is
    miniscule.  So  small that we do not pay farm taxes.  We pay the much larger
    property tax of non farming rural residents.  No matter.  The farm has survived.


    A wooden horse like this would likely have been present in Eywood.



    NEXT STORY…PART THREE OF EYWOOD. …AS FOUND IN 1960

    alan skeoch
    may 2020

  • EPISODE 55 THE BLACK BEAR THAT GOT TOO FRIENDLY


    EPISODE 55     THE BLACK BEAR THAT JUST GOT TOO FRIENDLY:  MARATHON 1963

    alan skeoch
    May 2020

    We  set up our  base camp southeast of the paper mill at Marathon on the north shore  of Lake Superior.  Five  of us doing a
    geophysical survey searching for magnetic anomalies  that just might be turned  into a mine some day.  Summer of  1963.
    John Lloyd, Roger Nichols, David Murphy, Bill Gilbey and myself.  By 1963 I had done  this  kind of work for several  yuears
    so our boss, Dr. Norman Paterson gave me the
    responsibility for the camp.  

    And  that became a problem.

    No sooner did  we get the  tents up and the food supply in place than we discovered there was a black bear who seemed
    to want to join our crew.   This began as  a  novelty for the bear was more interested in stealing our food than  gnawing at
    our bodies.    

    This was dangerous business however.   One night I got up to take a leak at our latrine only to return and  find  John Lloyd 
    standing with axe upraised  thinking I was the bear entering our tent.   John Lloyd was a Welsh geophyicist with no bear
    experience.    On another occasion the bear got one of our salamis hanging  from a  hook in our cook tent.   I think the bear
    took a  mouthful of tent canvas with it.  Otherwise the bear just walked…waddled…into the cook tent and  made a 
    selection.  

    The bear was getting too friendly.  Dangerously so.  Action had to be taken … desperate  action.  But first we tried
    another ploy.  Let’s call it the  ‘Garbage Can Lid and Nielsen’s Jesey Milk chlorate bar caper.”

    “Hey Al, why don’t we try to shock the bear.”
    “How?””
    “We could wire up the garbage can lid?”
    (We  had buried a  big galvanized garbage can deep in the ground to act as  a refrigerator and also
    a protection of our food from red squirrels>)
    “Suppose we hook the lid to our motor generator…wait for the bear to lie the lid…and then WHAM…give
    him or her a shot of electricity.”
    “And the bait?”
    “Let’s use the chocolate bars…Jersey Milk.  The bear has already got some so we know it likes Jersey Milk  Bars.
    (So  , like a bunch of kids, we set our trap.}
    “Drive the truck so it faces the garbage can…start the generator…and then we will wait.”
    (All five of us crammed into the company truck..and waited…I don’t remember who held
    the on / off switch.   Might have been me.  Might have been Gilbey as I think the plan was his  
    idea.)
    “Getting dark.”
    “Here comes the bear.  Get ready.”
    “Has  the bear got the lid?”
    “Yes…NOW!  NOW!  Throw the switch.”
    “Too late … that is  one fast bear.”
    “He got the whole box of Jersey Milk bars faster that we could throw the switch.”

    “Did  he or she know we were in the truck?”
    “Probably…seemed to consider us  food suppliers…as  if  we were grocery employees.”


    We failed.  Now for the sad part.
    We could  not leave the bear free to wander in and out of the tents.  Someone could  get mauled for sure.

    Sp we called in the Lands  and Forest Ranger.  He came with a long gun.   Guns were never allowed in
    our bush  camps.  That principle was established  long ago.  “If  we had guns in camp, we would likely shoot each other,”
    Floyd Faulkner told me way back in 1957 when I first got into the business.  He was  like correct.  When people live
    in close proximity to each other sometimes tension develop.  so …No  Guns.   That was one of the differences between
    Canadian and American bush crews. A good difference.

    “We  have a bear in camp.” I told the Ranger.
    “How often?”
    “Every day…scared  it might come into a tent at night.”
    “Sounds  like a  Garbage Bear.”
    “Garbage Bear?”
    “People make garbage too available…bears find  steady meals…and problems happen like you face.”
    “What can  be done?”
    “Could a  big bear trap be brought in?”
    “No!  This bear is just too tame….It will be a problem wherever it goes.”

    “Does it have to be shot?”
    “Yes, we’ll do it now.  You say the bear is  nearby?”
    “Yes, broad  daylight it wanders in around us.  Never attacks though.”
    “We’ll just wait then…Keep behind me.”
    “Then the bear appeared…see the photograph.” (PHOTOGRAPH)
    “Wait until I get a  clear  shot…one bullet.”
    “There, the bear is smelling the air…got clear shot.”
    “BAM!!”

    ONE of the saddest things in my life.  The poor bear was shot…dying.  And it cried  like
    a baby.  We all cried.   I do  not remember if we buried it…think we did.  Then again the Ranger
    may have taken it away.   We were all very quiet that night.  No joy!

    Just so I do not end this story on such a sad note, let me  tell an anecdote about Bill Gilbey.  He was
    a Brit sent over to get experience in the wilderness.  His family owned the Gilbey’s Gin company in
    England.   They were part of the minor nobility.  His father or grandfather had been nighted for some
    achievement in business…probably gin making.   Bill was a great guy.  Tough, funny, enthusiastic.

    He came to camp with a big copy of Eaton’s Catalogue and each night he would
    peruse the Women’s underwear  section and draw various items to our attention.
    “Sad  state of affairs, lads,”…”When we have to rely on this catalogue for our pornography.”
    And then he would point to some young lady modelling skimpy underclothes.

    I felt readers might need this comment so they would  stop crying about the bear.

    Bush work involved both bears and Mail Order Catalogues.

    alan skeoch
    May 2020


  • DAY 14 COVID 19 PANDEMIC MARCH 26, 2020

    DAY 14 COVID 19 PANDEMIC   MARCH 26, 2020  


    ALAN SKEOCH


    I think it is time for a little background information.  Self-centred I admit.
     NO one has asked me to continue the Niagara Falls

    caper which is  just as well since the other two incidents make me look stupid but not as stupid
    as the Navy Island breakfast incident.  Instead I thought a little background
    might be useful.  Those of you offended by the F word should take note and
    press delete.




    1)  My NICKNAME WAS ONCE ‘FUCKING AL’…A COMPLIMENT I THINK


     WELL the 13th day of isolation has ended and 14th begins.  Today I did not get up at 8 but just read a book
    for a bit.  Then dressed…same stuff as yesterday…had a coffee…picked up the Star delivered
    to our front door and looked first for the political cartoon.  A good one with that lump Trump surrounded
    by COVID 19 PURPLE PRICKLY BALLS with the heading ‘Virus Spreader In Chief’. Then I began typing
    my Niagara Caper that sure got a reaction from one reader who called an ‘f——g idiot’…I assume
    in jest.  Our near death over Niagara Falls seems to have amused many of you which casts me
    as an entertainer.   Got me a bit worried because my former boss on that job, Dr. Norman Paterson,
    gets this journal.   He did not know about that Sunday morning use of his little rented motor boat.  
    “Marjorie, if Norm calls tell him you had a good time that day.”  Funny thing, I did not edit the story
    because I  pushed the wrong bloody button and whoosh away went the story with at least one
    amusing error when I commented on Marjorie’s seductive brown ‘sleepless’ blouse.  I meant to say ‘sleeveless’
    but the word sleepless shows my evil intent.  Is that a Freudian slip?

    Writing this journal takes most hours of the day.  Self-centred article here but what the hell.
    So I hope it has some value.  One person said
    she doesn’t read my scribbling so I said ‘No problem, I’ll delete you.’ to which she responded ‘Oh, don’t do that’.
    Maybe the occasional use of SOB and other expletives was offensive.  If truth be told, my mining
    days featured the F word more often.  One of my most amusing associates  could put the F word
    ahead of every word in a sentence.  He called me ‘Fucking Al’ and meant it as a compliment. Floyd F.
    was the hardest working man I have ever met. A diamond.  At my age he had been a cage man
    in a Kirkland Lake mine.  Quit when the cage failed…dropped free down the shaft…turned his
    friend the other cage man into a pile of jelly with bones sticking out.  Floyd Decided to work on the surface.
     We  lived together for three months in
    the most god forsaken spot on the Groundhog River. Flown in and forgotten.  Wormy meat was 
    a treasure.  Raw oatmeal a standard.  A chocolate bar was something to dream about.

    various jobs in various places around he world.  Mayo Landing, Yukon, Chibougamau Quebec, Southern Ireland

    My good friends Jim Romaniuk and Russ Vanstone signed me up to an American lonely hearts club.
    A huge bundle of lavender smelling letters arrived at our first food drop by a Beaver float plane flying out of
    South Porcupine.  “Hey, Fucking Al, who sent you all those fucking letters?”  “I have no fucking idea.”
    (I picked up the use of the word from Floyd that summer.)  “They stink…perfume’  And so we suddenly
    had entertainment.  Girls offering to come and live with us if we sent $100.  Some wanting marriage. Others
    just wanting to talk to a man.  Sad letters.  But fun.  “Marjorie asked me what happened to the letters?”
    “As soon as the Air Canada plane set down in Toronto, Jim Romaniuk and Russ Vanstone were there
    to greet me.   “Did you bring the letters, Al,” said Jim and we never saw the letters again.  Not sure
    if he shared them with Russ.  Jim has passed on but Russ reads this journal. 



    For those of you who find this note a little too salty let me offer an excuse.  Sort of excuse.
    That lonely hearts summer I was in Grade 12 at Humberside Collegiate.  Just a normal 17 year
    old kid.  I did not smoke…thought that was stupid and lost two good friends over the issue. Tell you how.
    We smoked on the way to school.  I swiped (stole) three Craven A cancer sticks from Fran’s
    package on the pharmacy counter at Hertell’s Drug Story where I was a 35 cent an hour delivery boy 
    and later a naive store clerk.  Naive?  You bet.  I remember a man sliding up to the counter
    and whispering. “Do you have any ——mumble—mumble?”  “Sorry, did not hear you.??”
    “Do you have any — mumble —mumble”?  “Could you speak a little louder?”  “Do you have
    any vaginal jelly?”  I had never heard of the stuff so yelled to Fran.  “Fran, this man wants
    vaginal jelly, do we have any?”  At this point the man slid lower down the counter and almost hid.
    Fran got the jelly and said “Alan, do not do that again.”  I did not understand why.  What the 
    hell is  vaginal jelly anyway?  Back to the story. So I swiped three cigarettes from Fran. Figured I would start smoking
    with Bill R. and Bob T. like other smart ass teen agers.  I lit the Craven A…looked around…and
    said to myself, ‘Why the hell am I doing this?”  Gave the other two stolen weeds to Bill and
    Bob.  Lost them as friends.  They actually got to hate me for some reason.  Broke into my
    locker and wrote Fuck You over my school books  Scared me really.  “Found a note one day
    that said “Grant D. whats to fight you over at Western Tech.  Be there after school.”
    They must have thought I was fucking insane.  Why would I go over there to get the shit knocked
    out of me? 

     Never smoked again except for the odd White Owl Cigar to prove
    my manhood.  Dad smoked White Owl Invincibles but had to do so with his head out the kitchen 
    window and keep his stash in a little pouch on the clothes line.  Not worth the effort I figured.
    Mom was quite tolerant except for ‘those dirty old cigars’.  She was a better mentor I figured.
    If Dad had known about the fight threat he would have met the boys at Western Tech
    and knocked the shit out of all of them.  He was tough, a tire builder at Dunlop’s.  I never
    told him.

    Dad with his White Owl Invincible — he taught our children how to smoke them when they 7 and 9.  Family picture…we
    were a very happy family. Never realized we were poor.

    Mom wanted to join the parents group at our high school.  We did not want her there. I mean why
    would anyone want their mom or dad sucking around the teachers.  As a student I preferred
    as much anonymity as possible.  We got mom out of the school when Eric had Mr. Tancock
    as a home form teacher to which mom was assigned on parents night.  We knew that would
    lead to trouble when mom asked “How do you pronounce his name boys?”  We gave
    her a variety of variations.   She used one of the variations when she met poor Mr Tancock.
    That got her out of the school.   I Tried to keep in the middle of the pack.  In the long run I
    failed in that task for the school gave me the Head boy award in Grade 13.  I figured I got it
    because I joined every club…science, photography, drama, etc….and every sports team…football,
    basketball, tennis, swimming, track and field.   That did not mean I was any good.  My tennis 
    career was one game.  What a stupid  sport  that is.  Love this and love that…stupid.  Track and field team
    was another failure.  Dunc Green the coach put me in the hop, step and jump…another
    stupid sport.   Swim team?  Fred Burford finally made me the manager because i never
    learned to breathe doing the crawl.  I could do fairly well for one length but then I was done, near dead.
    Football?  Fred Burford was a great coach. Showed me how to knock people down.  I got
    really good at it and eventually made both city All Star teams.  His training did it.  I only played
    sports to attract the girls.  Later in life I realized the girls did not give a sweet goddamn about
    football.  They never saw that great shoestring tackle I made on an enemy halfback while playing 
    with my broken hand in a cast that had become all mud.  I had my finger wired up…had to because
    a son of a bitch on the other team drove his spiked shoes in my hand as I was throwing a great
    cross body block.  Or maybe it was our own halfback who buggered up my hand as he swept by.
    My brother got it worse.  Banana Nose from Riverdale spiked his leg in a mud game.  Drove
    spikes in deep.  filled with mud.  Continued to play.  I remember looking at his leg and felt weak.
    That night Dr. Greenaway said to me.  “Take this needle and if your brother starts to foam at the mouth
    (take a fit) ram this into his leg and push the plunger.   Thankfully Eric recovered.  Football was
    a real man’s game.  I wish the girls knew that.

    Yukon job.  When I got home Marjorie and mom pinned me down beside the pump at the farm
    and cut off my reddish beard.  


    Just a little background for you to understand why Floyd Faulkner called me Fucking Al and why
    Dr. Paterson hired me for 8 summers of bush life.  Why did he hire me?  Because I would do
    just about anything.  I loved life. Revelled in experiences.  Was I a F———g idiot?  Of course.
    So were all my friends.  That summer on the Groundhog River made me into a man.  We sliced
    a piece of the sowbelly every morning to get the blow fly grubs out, then cooked the bacon.  We
    ate wieners  that were beaded in some god forsaken chemical that oozed out.  I remember we could
    pick up a wiener with one finger.  The ooze was like glue.  I remember throwing a temper tantrum
    when I discovered my boy scout belt had pulled the compass needle and buggered up our day’s
    work trying to reach a forgotten lake using an aerial photograph as a guide.  We had packed
    everything on our backs…loads so heavy that the pack frames bent into hoops.  In my temper 
    tantrum I hit my blazing axe against every tree I could reach.  And Floyd laughed until tears ran
     down his fucking face.  Every 17 year old high school boy should spend a summer in the bush
    with a guy like Floyd Faulkner.  Once I asked Floyd 

    “Why doesn’t Dr. Paterson give us a gun
    in the bush…bears around all the time.? 
     “He has a good reason.” 
     “What is it?” 
    “If we had a gun,
    we would shoot each other…right?” 
    “Fucking right.”

    alan skeoch
    March 26, 2020


    2)  A NOTE FROM THE OWNER OF STONEHOOKER BREWERY IN PORT CREDIT
    (Give the beer a try…now selling at drive through at the brewery)

    Jeez Al, you’re my kinda guy.
     
    This sounds like one of my stories, but I have to admit yours is better.
     
    OK – here’s mine. Brave & Dumb. Like the time I forgot to completely tighten the bolts on an outboard motor in an 11ft boat, and of course didn’t attach the safety chain or cable either. After all, we were only going for a wee spin on a flat lake in March, and there was still ice on the lake. We had just been idling, taking a look at a cottage (my girl & I), then I thought it best to clear out the motor before we headed for the dock, so I took it up on plane and we crossed our own wake, then PROBLEM! The motor jump off the transom and I found myself on-handing a 15hp motor full out as it skipped from side to side ready to jump into the boat with petrified girlfriend. Ahhh!
    I managed to throttle back the motor before it bounced into the boat and cut us to ribbons, and it stalled as it sank into the lake suspended now only by… the gas line. My hand was off the throttle by now (out of self-preservation). Out of desperation now considering that the motor was sinking fast, I pulled it up by the gas line and (with strength I didn’t know I had) somehow lifted the outboard back into the boat without tipping us over…. Saved the motor but it was drowned indeed. No falls to be swept over, but we still had to figure out how to get back to the dock (no paddles on board, of course)
    Exciting stuff.
     
    Fun fact: When you had your incident Al & Marjorie on the Niagara River, it was the same year I was born, 1961. I guess I would have been a few months old at best. 
    Now we’re too old guys.
    I’ll be 59 on Tuesday. Not sure how that happened. Means I’ve been 19 for forty years.
    Looking forward to the sequel, and hoping Stonehooker doesn’t go over the falls. We’re circling around Navy Island, hoping we don’t caught in the weeds….
    Drink beer. It’s safer than water.
     
    Ross
     
    Ross Noel
    Stonehooker Brewing Co.
    ross@stonehooker.com
    416-669-7975
     
    2)  INVENTIVE USE OF TAPE

    COURTESY OF SAM M.

  • Day 8 COVID 19 PANDEMIC MARCH 20, 202


    DAY 8,  COVID 19 PANDEMIC   MARCH 20, 2020

    alan skeoch

    (running journal…running until I run out of steam)

    UNITED STATES DAY 7     13,000 CASES  193 DEATHS
    ITALY                                  41,000 CASES   3,405 DEATHS
    CANADA                                 873 CASES       12 DEATHS
    (80% OF DEATHS ARE TRAVEL RELATED)



    CODIV 19…CORUNAVIRUS…Artists depictions makes them look life floating explosives in World War II.  Good idea, but remember they are so small only an electron microscope
    can set them.  

    1) Gabriela (daughter in law living in London, England)  sent email saying she has  placed a food delivery order with Longo’s for April 1, delivery to our house between 9 and11. 
    “slot was open so I grabbed it and sent a list of food”.   Nice of her.   Makes us more aware of  the crisis and to begin thinking of
    non perishable food….milk powder, evaporated  milk, dried fruit, any fresh vegetables available, etc.
    “What do we need, Alan?”  I said potato chips and chocolate bars and raisins.   Marjorie was not amused.

    2) Julie (daughter in law living in Port Credit, Ontario) sent email saying she will get us what we need in terms of short term food.   “Stores in Port Credit appear to have light traffic” (9 a.m.)
    Needs?  fresh milk, etc.   We are being cared for…at a distance and close up…but no one invading our personal space.  Sounds like science  fiction novel, does it not?
     
    “ALAN,  what food do we need? Julie will get it.”
    “potato chips,  raisins,  Coffee Crisp chocolate bars”
    “Stupid..be serious.”
    “I am serious…suddenly I miss those tihings.”
    “Well,  Julie will not be getting them. We still have peanut butter cups from Halloween.”
    “God…where are they?”
    “Under the tea towels.”
    “No wonder I couldn’t find them.”
    “Be serious…what do we need?”
    “chocolate pudding mix, Jello and both powdered and  evaporated milk”
    “Slightly better….”
    “How about pork and beans, oat meal and Kraft dinner?”
    “I thought you told me that when you were a prospectior you had to order supplies  for 3 weeks and a month even.”
    “True, I did…  sowbelly, salami and canned  spam.” (we called it Clap)
    “Hardly a balanced menu…how did that affect you?”
    “Well, I was thinner then.  Forgot to mention t he prunes…ordered lots of  dried prunes.”
    “Why?”
    “You figure it out…put prunes on the list…canned and dried…kept us regular after we built the latrine (which was just 
    a log nailed between  two poplars)

    (Tomorrow I will give you two lists…Marjorie’s and Gabriela’s…today Julie got us a whole 
    truckload of  stuff for  $70 … including a sleeve of Oh Henry nut bars. (pssst. This  time
    Marjorie put them under her sewing basket…saw her do it.)

    ONE COMMENT THAT SCARED ME

    “Lots of people out and about today, Alan. “
    Now that observation made me very nervous. I hope we will
    not be as dumb as the beach babes and  bucks down in Daytona.
    This is a serious comment…brings on the War Measures Act maybe.


    3)  DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS, by JOHN WYNDHAM

    As soon as i heard about this  CODIV 19 VIRUS, I immediately thought of John Wyndham.  If you read this story
    you will want to read the book.  Providing you are not too terrified.  



    I remember Day of  the Triffids by John Wyndham so graphically.  Burned into my brain long ago when I taught both English and History.  The book is considered  one of the great books of our time…even today.
    The story line is very simple but frightening in the extreme.   A plant, a triffid, begins to take over the earth. at least as I remember.  Not inconceivable.  The wisteria on our front porch
    is capable of slowly crushing things…of winding its way to the sky and crowding out other living things…slow  but sure.

    SOME QUOTES…THAT FROM JOHN WYNDHAM…AMAZNG HOW THEY FIT OUR SITUATION TODAY

    “When a day the you happen to know is  Wednesday starts off by sounding
    like Sunday, There is something wrong somewhere.”

    “It must be, I thought, one of the race’s most persistent and comforting
    hallucinations to trust that it cannot happen here’ — that one’s  own 
    time is beyond cataclysm.”

    “And we danced , on the brink of an unknown future, to an echo
    from a vanished past.”’

    “unit then I thought of loneliness as something negative—an absence of company
    and, of course, something temporary….That day  I  had learned it was much  more
    It was something that could press and oppress, could distort the ordinary and
    play tricks with the mind.”

    “Anybody who has always had a great treasure has always led a precarious existence.”

    “It’s humiliating to be dependent.”

    “To deprive a  gregarious creature of companionship is to maim it, “

    “The clock is the most acred thing in a  hospital.”

                                             John Wyndam, The Day of The Triffids

    So here we are, over half a century later, and John Wyndham’s frightful tale has come true.  GRANTED  his Triffids were huge plants with killing tendrils…big
    things, horrible things, crushing things, feeding things.   Our Triffids today are so tiny that we need an electron microscope to see them.  But when found
    the Coronavirus — CODIV 19 — is even more frightening.  It moves silently but with bewildering speed.  Jumps from an accidental cough to another
    person and does this unseen and  unknown until a few days later.  To expedite its movement it uses the human lung.  Your lung, my lung.  Can a  virus
    think?  If it does, its thoughts are different as were the Triffids. Hundreds of people have died.  CODIV  19 did  not want them to die.  It needed their lungs
    but did not need all the lungs it has infected.  A few LUNGS gone has not inhibited  the movement of the virus.  CODIV 19 can replicate itself with ease a thousand
    fold.  Viruses are common.  Perhaps the commonest piece of  living matter.  But it is a crippled  piece of living matter that needs to worm its way
    into living cells to stay alive.   Very scary.  I must stop.

    Why do I remember Day of the Triffids so graphically?  Because  I was a young teacher of English at Parkdale Collegiate back in 1963 when Wyndham’s
    book was assigned or maybe I just imposed it on the kids as a  good example of science fiction.  “Did you know that a good science fiction writer
    always uses real life situations as a starting point then lets his or her imagination roll?”  I would have said  something like that.  Gets student attention.
    I was only a day ahead  of the kids I taught.  Meaning I was just reading page 2  while they were discussing page  1.  With Wyndham however I was
    riveted. Could hardly wait to read Page 3…then 4…then the whole book…before school, lunch hour, park  bench  on Roncesvales Avenue on the way
    our apartment, during supper. A good book does that.

    “Alan, I see Day of The Triffids is playing at the Doric on Roncesvales.”
    (In those years, the 1960’s, movie theatres with single  screens still existed but just a few hanging on.)
    “You must be kidding.”
    “Why don’t we slip over…you can take at least one night off from preparing lessons.”
    (Teaching to me was a sacred trust…I felt duty bound to know a little about what I taught…a little.)
    “Sure.”
    “Rather run down in here…stuffing coming out of he seats.”
    “Smells seamy…body doors…”
    “Odd crowd … drifter types …mostly men.”
    “Did you hear bottles clinking?”
    “Comes with the territory.”
    THEN CAME THE PLAYING OF GOD SAME THE QUEEN
    (no kidding…in 1963 the Doric still played  God  Save the Queen)
    “Alan, stand  up…show  some respect.”
    “No-one else is standing.”
    “We are.”

    “And, Alan, get the rest of those lazy people to stand up.”
    (This I could  not do…no guts….I slipped a notch in Marjorie’s perception
    of me as a leader that night.)

    What followed was Wyndham’s story about the breakdown and  collapse of human
    civilization when something from outer space takes  hold.  The movie was frightening
    made moreso by the thoughtless…unthinking…crowd in the Doric theatre.  A
    crowd that would not stand up for God Save the Queen. Imagine that.
     We got what we deserved
    that night for we  were nearly devoured by Triffids.  Felt that way, anyway.


    alan skeoch

    3)  Did you know that twice as many men  die from COVID 19 than women.


    4) Last night CNN announced that whole state of California….40 million people…have been ordered to stay home.  Fear the virus will infect half the population…high death toll.
    Order to be enforced (somehow…national guard?).    This action caused  me to rethink plan to go out… even though there would be no human
    contact.  I am 82…healthy as Granddad’s old horse, Dick…but both Marjorie and  I belong to the most vulnerable group.   This has been reinforced by some
    nice caring phone  calls from friends both close and distant.  Very touching.  “How are you getting along?” “Need anything?”

    5) Something is really wrong below the border.  Governors of California and New  York State (Gov Cuomo) have declared states of
    Emergency themselves.   Where is the leadership of all of the United States?   Dithering…mumbling…using words like “tremendous”
    and rendering those words meaningless.   IF only Governor Cuomo was President of the United States.  A man who speaks with concern
    and  humanity and a determination to do what can be done and admit what cannot be done.

    6)  What is happening in Russia?  Strangely quiet.  the Chinese / Russian border was closed weeks ago.  Little seems to be leaking out.

    7)  Africa could become a meltdown.  Hope not.   



    8)  LOST IN PARADISE…THE  SAGA OF PATRICIA AND  DAVE…CAN THEY GET BACK HOME?



    SUNRISE IN SOUTH FLORIDA – AT MDINIGHT PATRICIA AND DAVE  DECIDED
    “TIME  FOR US TO TRY TO GET HOME”…YES, MIDNIGHT.  AT THE SAME
    TIME I SENT THEM MY FEELINGS THAT THEY SHOULD MAKE A RUN FOR
    THE CANADIAN BORDER.



    On Mar 20, 2020, at 12:08 AM, ALAN SKEOCH <alan.skeoch@rogers.com> wrote:

    A)   Hi

    I think you should try to get home soon…you
    will face quarantine of course but being in Canada
    feels so much better than being in the US.
    Our leaders know how to lead.

    Note that your other air carrier promises to help
    get Canadians home.  so maybe your tickets are
    still good.

    We can have fun with the ‘Lost in Paradise’ story
    but there is an urgent side to it as you know.

    alan




     B)   Funny you should be thinking that. Our thoughts exactly yesterday as we watched the situation explode down here. 

    Paradise Lost. 

    We are flying out Sunday the 22nd. 

    We booked the air tickets and headed to the boat at midnight. Luck was with us. It hadn’t been pulled.  Still tied up at a dock. The marina is ridiculously busy because all the Floridians off work are boating. Left a note on the steering wheel “Do not pull.”  Up at this ungodly hour (still dark) to go back and add stabilizer to the gas and run it through the motor.

    More later. 



       C)   Poor Dave aka “motorman” didn’t stand a chance last night on a conference call with our two daughters. It was like 
    She said …
    A second She said …
    And a third She said …
    Until he reluctantly agreed to try for earlier flights.  

    One daughter, a former flight attendant, SUGGESTED which flights would actually go and, by 10:30 last night, we were booked on a Sunday flight out of Sarasota. 

    Motorman thought we would have a better chance with a smaller airport and resulting smaller crowds.

    He’s probably right.

    So here we are up bright and early ready to get to the boat before 8 o’clock this morning when the Marina opens. Motorman has the stabilizer packed. We will be back from our ride by mid-morning and will request that the boat be put on its trailer before noon.  

    Then we load it with our gear, tarp it to withstand a hurricane and get on with the rest of the chores to be done before flight time. 

    View over the pond from our rental condo balcony.  Sunrise March 20, almost the first day of Spring!

    LOST IN PARADISE STORY IS NOT COMPLETE YET.  HOLD YOUR BREATH.