Snooping in my own backyard

For many 'hysterical' historians, the search for our latest muse is sometimes found in our own backyard.....

For the past few years, my husband and I have been museum hopping as frequently as most North Americans visit the local Wal-Mart. Admittedly, many of our visits have been work related (I am the director of a museum in Northern Ontario). My dear hubby and I have worked out a deal that seems to please both of us. He is an avid amateur photographer, and I love to visit historical and cultural landscapes. (Yes, we do have a few of these in Northern Ontario). While I ooooh and ahhhh over the remnants of an old rail bed, my hubby's shutter whirs. It is a very peaceful coexistence.

Our history hikes took a short hiatus this year after the purchase of our second home. The type of home we purchased is, as you may have already guessed, old. Lovely, and old. As any older home owner can tell you, there is almost always a hidden price tag attached to the heritage home. We have been lucky, the basement is dry, the wood rot has been kept at bay. The gleaming hardwood and high baseboards please me in ways that no laminate ever could. Despite our luck in finding a older home that had been well built and cared for through the years there will always be 'projects' that pop up. The first of which was to build a fence for my aging, yet ferociously stubborn mutt.

I should mention, that I made it my mission after moving into our new home to learn more about the history of property. I spoke to a long time resident of the area. He indicated that the lot on which our home was built was once the Bull family homestead. Further research led me to the discovery that Gerald Bull (1928-1990), the famously brilliant, and infamously assassinated, Canadian long range artillery engineer grew up on the very plot of land where my house now stands.

It hurt my heart to fence a yard which had once been the childhood playground of Gerald Bull, infamous or not. I learned that after the deaths of Bull's parents the original home had been demolished, just as the great depression was loosening its grip in Northern Ontario.

As the fence planning led to post digging, interesting tid-bits rose to the surface. I fancied myself an archeologist in an Egyptian tomb! Shards of china (wow!), bottles with no evidence of modern machine forms (stop the press!) and a strange little corked vial were separated from the mounds of dirt. My husband, exasperated by the halting progress, indulged me by letting me hand sift every shovel of dirt. Unfortunately for him, our early neighbours buried a lot of good stuff.

This mysterious stuff very likely could have come to rest in our yard with a load of fill during the last 75 years. Who will ever know who it really belonged to. In my warped view of all things historical, the vial contained a prescribed tincture, an intended remedy for the ailing Gerald's mother who succumbed to the rigors of childbirth.

With this I leave my message; Beware, when someone sees fit to use the words 'tincture' and 'rigors' in the same sentence, you have probably identified a hysterical historian. Proceed with caution, especially when it comes to yard work.