It’s fall of 2000. I’m sitting at my desk inside a North York marketing company staring out the window at a cluster of pines adjacent to the building. My God, I’m actually daydreaming. Tiger Woods has just completed the most amazing season in golf history, the twin towers are still standing and my beloved uncle and my Dad are both healthy and happy. I’m thinking about the year coming to a close and what it has meant to my family and me. In the closing weeks of my fourth season of
self-employment, I reflect on the most productive and
fulfilling stretch of my professional career.

 

Now I’m thinking forward to the following year. I’m turning forty and that old bucket list starts to
rattle around in my head. The Book. Yes, near the top of this list, somewhere just under being the father of two amazing happy sons is that recurring dream of writing my novel. I recall that day vividly because my life hasn’t been the same since that moment. A week passes and I sit staring out at those pines and
my mind wanders as it often does to a place not far away, Muskoka, my childhood home; the place where I made my first impressions of this world, the place where I spent the first half of my life.

Like an avalanche the story starts coming at me. Is it the trees? Why is this coming to me here and now in the middle of this mundane urban setting? It must be the trees. It’s like a baseball pitcher is standing on the lawns in front of the office building hurling fastballs at me up through the third floor window, but instead of baseballs, they’re plot lines, characters, and details. My head is so full after an hour of thinking about it I feel like it’s going to explode. I’m consumed. I’m going to write my book. I really mean it.
I’m dead serious about this thing. I see it all in my mind’s eye right now. I have to get it out
and on to paper....

 

And so I begin.

 

So much has happened since I started writing. My uncle fell ill and died after a brief and intense illness. I was devastated, so much in fact that I stopped writing my daily quota for a while. At his funeral, people approached me and asked if I was a writer after hearing a short story I’d penned in his memory called the Fisherman. I start writing again through my grief as though my uncle himself is telling me not to quit, the words of encouragement by friends and family giving me focus.

 

It’s now September 11, 2001 and I watch in horror with the rest of the world as thousands of innocent lives are extinguished in front of our eyes. I sit down to write during this time and the words just don’t come, and when they do, I hate them. This whole thing feels so selfish and insignificant.

 

Time passes and I pick up the pace again, my goal is now official: To have this project complete by the end of my fortieth year. My fortieth birthday arrives and passes with little fanfare and I’m working furiously. Every waking moment I’m consumed with this story. Every night I go to bed thinking about what I’m to commit to type the following morning. So I write, through the doubt, the frustration, the exhilaration, I just write. Good or bad, I’m finishing this thing.

 

It’s the summer of 2002 and I complete the first draft while on a lunch break during a consultative assignment. I walk out at the end of the day feeling victorious, no one to share my excitement but me.

Writing is such a solitary endeavor. I come home and announce that I actually wrote the words I’d been waiting to write after almost two years. THE END.

 

My father is diagnosed with cancer and dies a few short months later. A huge part of me goes with
him. I have nothing inside but pain and anger. But I go on, the writing now an escape, a way to compartmentalize my grief. Sometimes I’m crying over my keyboard as I type the second draft, but
the thought of completing this is stronger than ever as though he and my uncle are pushing me to
the finish line.

 

It’s now 2014. I’ve tweaked, massaged, rewritten, polished, amended, edited, and redesigned my book cover to cover.... and now it’s really done. Finally. It’s the concept and story I envisioned and then some. Like a
third son, it has, and continues to be my labour of love. Now, like an overprotective parent, I’m finally ready to set it free. 

 

Along with characters inspired by actual individuals and set amidst the fictional hamlet of Cavanaugh Sound, I’ve used a lifetime of inspiration growing up in the Ontario wilderness to sculpt an imaginary world. During the summers of my childhood, my actual world consisted of a century old lodge built on the craggy granite shores of an island in the Muskoka Lakes. I rarely set foot on mainland soil; my playground limited only by the boundaries of the island shores, the sky and my vivid imagination.  The old lodge with its many suites, meandering halls and subterranean chambers filled with timeless relics, became my playhouse.  I grew to adulthood surrounded by the legacy of the grand Muskoka Lakes steamships and the ghosts of stately hotels from a bygone era. Winter months were spent  with my family in our mainland home a half-mile across the water in the rugged

and majestic Canadian Shield. Here I learned to hunt with a bow and a rifle, to fish, to trap muskrat,
to snowshoe and to exist in a harsh environment. It was as beautiful as any place on earth and an unforgettable time in my life; an existence far removed from the corporate, urban world in which
I presently reside.

 

Thank you to my parents for raising me there, because without that there would be no story. Thank you to all the characters of my youth for providing me with so much inspiration, without them there would be no story. Thank you to my two sons who fill my sails every day and give me more than mere words could ever describe, without you there would be no story. Thank you Rose, for your love and support and to all the friends who read early drafts and believed in this from the outset. Finally, I’d like to acknowledge that this work is a tribute to my father. Dad, I inherited your stubborn spirit, your imagination, your talent, and your love of nature and life. You walk beside me every moment of every day and I try to live in the example of integrity you set before me. You are to this day, the most original, uncompromising person I’ve ever known. I hope that this work somehow summarizes your spirit and your character. We are one and the same, our souls connected to that place we both love and called home. I hope that this work, though one of fiction, will cast a light on who you were and who I am so that your grandsons will understand us a little better; because after all and at the end of the day, I wrote this for them. 

 

 

For Tyler & Sean