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- Jay
Telfer may have handed over the reigns of the Wayback Times to
Sandy and Peter Neilly, but he is still going to be visible in
the newspaper.
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- The
longtime resident of Prince Edward County will be writing Jay's
Blog, a column on his ongoing love of antiques and life in the
Quinte Bay area.
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- Jay's
Wayback Times, founded in 1995, published 1.7 million papers
in 11 years and more than 258,000 kms
- were
traveled for visits
- and
deliveries to antique
shows, stores and markets.
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- Jay
Telfer's final issue
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- Ad Rates / Articles
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- Jay's Wayback Blog
- About lives, then
and now
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- By Jay Telfer
- Well, from my last report in
my last editorial about how I might not be able to make it without
writing
- and taking multiple pictures
of treen, sideboards
- and Moorcroft, I did barely
make it.
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- I was gently eased into my life
of doing zip by having Sandy asking me daily about fonts, kerning,
and why won’t a photoshop picture enter the pages. I hope
I was pleasant in my answers - “Sigh, you don't know know
how to put a page into Export for Pre-Press??? Sigh...”
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- Sandy had quite the awesome
challenge, having used a steam driven PC most of her life and
now having the miracles and foibles of a new hippidy-hop Mac.
But, she (and her son, Aaron) learned very fast! Peter still
refuses to know where is the on button.
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- Cottage Time
So, now is cottage time. I heard on the CBC that cottage properties
were worth more than the darn expensive city homes - which every
week get more and more out of my range. I also read it in the
Toronto Star. Then I read it again in the Bellevile Intelligencer.
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- With two out of three I would
confirm as sources, I will tell you, my brother is one lucky
guy. He and his family sold his old cottage and bought himself
a larger cottage last year when there was no madness about purchasing
a one-up-manship property on the water. He is now on a spot called
Osbourne’s Point on Lake of Bays.
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- And while we do enjoy our new
vistas on the Bay of Quinte in our new/old 1840/2005 house, my
brother is family. So, I guess I must go up there and say “hi”
to his great family. Sigh.
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- While there last September,
Nancy, my brother’s wife, had found a book, written by Thomas
Osbourne, called “The Night The Mice Danced the Quadrille”
- a history/biography of his his five years in the Muskoka’s,
from 1875 to 1880, when he was a growing boy. I began reading
it in the cottage and fell asleep. Taking the book home, I waited
until the spring had sprung before I settled into the book again.
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- It is not a great book, not
an earth gripping tale, but it does describe the history and
the hell of squatters rights; taking over 100 acres of land with
a family and, hopefully, advancing their toil and their efforts
in order to get another 100 acres of land.
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- Thomas, age 15, and Arthur,
13, came up from Toronto to assist his father, William, in clearing
out the land, planting crops, building a proper log house and
waiting until his mother and three sisters and another brother
arrived in the spring of 1876. No problems for two kids. They
were a family of 10.
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- In arriving at the end of the
railroad, Port Severn, and a coach on to Gravenhurst, they were
stuck because the stage was full. So, the boys decided to walk
to Huntsville that day. Only 38 miles ...
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- Waterfront properties were the
best, since there were no proper roads from Huntsville to the
Point. It meant rowing a huge flat-bottomed boat 15 miles to
Huntsville and then a quick mile and a half walk with your goods:
3 1/2 hours with a tailwind, 5 1/2 when the waves were against
you.
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- It is basically a tale of eating,
sleeping and surviving the flies, the fleas, the porcupine thieves,
the frigid cold and the squirrel stew. They were eating flapjacks
made by Thomas when they arrived - “they were made without
soda or raising of any kind, just flour beaten up into dough
with salt and water only, and baked in a frying pan over a wood
fire.” Just like McDonald's! (without butter or syrup, or
anything I would eat.)
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- At age 15, his father had to
go to Toronto to get some money, see his wife and bring them
all back. He had Arthur, 13, to help him plant and harvest crops
and look after the house. The two teens were left alone for a
week and a half. Most parents I know of would perhaps leave their
15 year old alone for no more than four hours.
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- After injuring himself with
an adze to his instep on the second day, he put it in cold water,
used some Egyptian salve and some bandages, and was laid up for
three days. Leaving his younger brother to do most of the work
- harvesting the green corn, beans, peas turnips and carrots
- just as every 13-year-old would strive for ...
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- In hearing his eight-year-old
brother’s laugh, he knew the family had arrived. Only the
father was not with them. He was still in Bracebridge trying
to sort out the goods the family had brought with them. They
had a two-horse cart with two drivers and the family and it turned
over past Bracebridge, losing 20 of the 24 chickens they had
brought along.
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- So, the three girls and Sam
and his mother thought it would be a good walk - over corduroy
roads, unmarked trails, a distance of over 50 miles. It was the
same for all of their travels. William, the mid 50’s father,
had no money from the U.S. as he had planned, so he walked from
Toronto to the Point in three days.
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- No planning ahead
- For most people today, they
would need to plan ahead, do at least a quarter year of training
and then venture forth. And have their entire tale told in a
three-part piece in the Globe and Mail. “Golly, it was tough.
I had to change my $135 Nike shoes every day! I ran out of OFF
on the second day.”
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- These people had one suit of
clothes and that was it. After being a city-bred kid, he was
a dishevelled boy coming back to Huntsville. The wife of the
hotel owner said “What has your father done to you?”
Thomas wrote, “We were like two ragamuffins, swelled up
with fly bites, browned by the sun, the oil of tar (to keep the
flies away), long hair and our city clothes in tatters. I judge
we presented a wild picture.”
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- Hmmm. Nothing wrong there in
history. Except for the fly bites, I can only think of a gang
of teens with their long hair, droopy clothes in tatters at the
Scarborough Mall - or any other mall, park or take-out restaurant.
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- It tells of near death experiences
with other settlers, of finding a dead husband, unconscious wife
and baby in a new cabin because there was nothing else to eat.
It tells of the boys growing and getting stronger. Of Thomas’s
loading 50 bushels of potatoes in the flat bottomed boat and
the having to carry the 35 pound bags a mile and a half to the
Portage. Of meeting up with young Indians who they lived with
and liked. Their fore-parents had named the lake Trading Lake,
and wanted to know where their old hunting grounds were.
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- His wife, after a very tough
winter, took the four children and all moved back to Philadelphia
after the first year.
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- At age 19, Thomas, while Arthur
and his father were away for two days, shot a deer in the lake
and carried it into the canoe, hung it up and dressed it. It
weighed over 225 pounds. He also caught about 80 fish, all good
size and began dressing them. All in one day. Wow, Should I watch
a fishing show or a hunting show on my satellite TV?
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- On one occasion, he rowed the
big skiff with a barrel of fish to Huntsville.On arriving, the
postmaster wanted it weighed. So, Thomas rolled it up from the
dock and set it on the scales. It weighed 235 pounds.The boy
was strong! He learned so much of chopping trees, of building,
of carpentry, of burning brush, of fishing, of hunting, of gathering
berries, of carrying an 80-pound canoe and all their goods over
multiple portages.
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- Story of survival
- He was a woodsman. There was
nothing about love, nothing about lust, nothing about dreaming
of the “scrawny” hotel owner's daughter. It was only
survival. He never discussed why they were doing this for years
with his father, never another question about burying the potatoes
they harvested. They were told to do it and they did it.
At age 20, he decided to head back to Philadelphia and work in
his brother's textile business.
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- He wrote the book in 1934, at
age 75, as his “Truthful story of my actual experiences,
and without exaggeration.” It is a wonderful tale of fingers
really filthy survival.
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- As I plan on going up to Lake
of Bays in July (yes, family again, sigh), I know using Muskol
and leaving it on your fingers will have a cheap plastic glass
melt as you are drinking from it. That’s about the only
survival tale I could hand you.
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- We know the past couple of generations
worked harder than we have, but in reading this book I was exhausted
and needed a deep nap.
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