In 1960, my father moved his young family from Peterborough to Gravenhurst, the little northern Ontario community where he was born. He bought a plot of land in the bush outside town, and a road was cut through the trees, and there he and his two brothers built us a home. The road went to our house and nowhere else and for a couple of years we had no neighbours at all. Those are the first times I remember as a child – living at the end of a dead-end dirt road, in a house all alone in the middle of the forest.

There was a lot of snow in those days and my dad rigged a hand-built wooden snow plough to the front of his old Chevy, put chains on the tires and cleared the road to our house himself. Needless to say, we were sometimes snowed in.

We had a well and for the first year a hand pump right in the kitchen. Later he hooked up an electric pump so we had flowing water but no hot water except on Saturday nights when Dad fired up a cast iron wood-burning water heater in the basement so we could all have baths in preparation for church the next day. I loved those Saturday nights in the basement, shoving kindling through a little door into the roaring fire while Bill Hewitt and Brian McFarlane called the Leafs game on CBC radio.

“I wrote it and read it at bedtime to Daniel and Helena. But nothing else happened with it at the time.

That was 1992.”

It was an exciting place to live for a six-year-old boy. One afternoon, a bear reared up on its hind legs right in front of our house, and one morning we discovered moose tracks cut into the snow through our backyard. We watched a horned owl sitting in a tree outside our kitchen window, and would later find partridge feathers at the base of the tree. On moonlit nights in spring, we heard wolves howling somewhere deep in the forest.

After a couple of years of solitude, workers came to continue the road. A man brought a big workhorse named Pearl to drag out logs cut from the newly felled trees, and I still recall how the steam rose from the horse and the heavy pail of water we kids hauled out for her to drink.

It turned out that Pearl’s owner was the father of my soon-to-be best friend, Doug Chamberlain. Chamberlain’s sawmill was on the other side of the bush behind our house and soon we had worn a path through the trees to get there. In the middle of that bush was a gully surrounded by hemlock trees, and sometimes during spring thaw a pond would form in the gully which would freeze solid when the weather turned cold again. My sister Karen, my brother Doug, my friends Doug and Ed White would clear the ice and skate on it and pass around a puck.

Down the newly extended road from our house, there was an open field that had once belonged to a farmer named Palmer. Palmer’s Field was on a hill, which must have made it a tricky place for poor Mr. Palmer to plough but it sure made a great place to toboggan. One particularly magic night, my friend Ed, my sister and brother, and my sister’s friend Pauline Barnes and I bundled up in long johns, wool toques, scarves and big winter boots and walked down the ploughed road pulling wooden toboggans. At Palmer’s Field we left the road and waded through the knee-deep snow, crunching and cracking, breaking the thick icy surface with every step. It was hard going, but the light of the full moon, reflecting off the gleaming snow, made the night nearly as bright as day. We heard voices and saw Doug Chamberlain and his brother Bob waiting at the top of the hill, an oil lamp burning brightly at their side.

Then the fun began! We jumped onto the toboggans, two or three together, and off we went down the hill – slow at first but once we had picked up even a little speed, the toboggan stayed on top of the ice and then – oh my! – how we flew! It was scary and exciting, especially when we had to leap from the flying sleds to keep from smashing into the juniper bushes at the bottom.

1960’s Skidoo (Picture from Wikimedia Commons)

A couple of years later, my father purchased a little yellow Skidoo and a sled that hooked to the back of it and he would take the entire family for rides – one person behind him and two or three in the sled. One Christmas Eve we headed out down the snowy road, up over a high snow bank like a roller coaster, across Palmer’s Field, through Chamberlain’s yard, down their long road, off onto a logging trail, through the forest and up a high ridge. We built a fire up there and toasted sandwiches and drank hot chocolate and tea from thermoses and looked down on the moonlit panorama of forest all around us, wondering if we might spot Santa and his sleigh flying by in that big starry sky.

And there was hockey, always hockey. We played street hockey on the road in front of our house – with two little metal goalie nets from Canadian Tire (where else?). We would smash and bash and body check each other into snow banks, and sometimes a kid who was catching his breath or who had a hurt leg would stand up on the snow bank and shout out the play-by-play.

“Frank Mahovolich to Dave Keon! Now back to Tim Horton! Horton passes to George Armstrong! He shoots! He scores!”

Sometimes it would rain and freeze and the road would be sheathed in shiny ice, and we would strap on our skates and try to play hockey even though the tire ruts would make it very hard to pass the puck straight. And some years, my dad would tamp down snow in our backyard and get out the garden hose and some old pine planks and make us our very own rink! That was the best, especially when he hooked up floodlights so we could play at night.

L to R: Frank Mahovolich, Dave Keon, Tim Horton, George Armstrong (Pictures from Wikimedia Commons)

Even when the temperature dipped way down we insisted on playing. Some nights it was so cold there was a ring around the moon. At those times, our mother would cover our faces with our scarves and tell us to take it easy but who could take it easy in the heat of the game? Scarves would drop and the sweat would freeze on our eyebrows and eyelashes and we would come in coughing from the cold to our worried mother.

1992

The years passed. I grew up and married Isabel, a beautiful woman from Barcelona, a sunny Mediterranean city that never sees snow at all. I was busy with studying and working and fixing up our first house and got away from hockey, though Leafs games were always on the TV on Saturday nights. We had two beautiful children, Daniel and then Helena. We signed Daniel up for hockey when he was seven – yeah, I know, kind of late, sorry Daniel! – and suddenly pucks and sticks were back in my life. I even joined an adult league myself.

About that time, I started to write. I submitted an early story Hunting With His Dad to the Toronto Star Short Story contest and it was selected a Judge’s Choice and appeared in the paper. I was hooked!

1988 Toronto Star Short Story Writing Contest (Picture from Paul Harbridge)

One winter weekend we were all up in Gravenhurst and my father, who is a big storyteller, told us how he and his friends used to skate and play hockey on a beaver pond near his childhood home.
That got the wheels turning.

I thought of the beaver pond behind Brunton’s farm on the Jones Road outside Gravenhurst where our scout troop used to camp in the summer.

Of the pond in the bush where we used to skate.

Of the magical moonlit night we tobogganed.

I thought of that snowy Christmas Eve, toasting sandwiches over a fire high on a hill looking down over the moonlit forest.

Of the backyard rinks and the street hockey and passing pucks on Gull Lake in town.

It all came together as When the Moon Comes.

I wrote it and read it at bedtime to Daniel and Helena. But nothing else happened with it at the time.

That was 1992.

2002

Ten years passed. One day my cousin Donna Longhurst, the daughter of my father’s oldest sister Evelyn, emailed me about a family tree she was putting together. We began corresponding and she mentioned Muskoka Magazine was holding a short story contest and suggested I enter. So I sent in When the Moon Comes.

I didn’t hear anything from the magazine for a long time. Finally, I sent an email asking who had won the contest and received the simple reply, “You did!” I was thrilled.

I got a lot of compliments from people in Gravenhurst when it was published in Muskoka Magazine that August but then I forgot about it.

2006

But my son Daniel didn’t. Daniel is a quiet person but a deep thinker and I guess I just didn’t realize how much he liked the story. In 2006, he entered the Film and Television Production program at Humber College and for one of his projects turned When the Moon Comes into a screenplay for an animated film. The film wasn’t chosen to be produced, but the fact that he had remembered the story was very cool! Then I forgot about it again.

2014

In 2014, the NHL was promoting its Winter Classic and outdoor hockey games, and Commissioner Gary Bettman was talking a lot about pond hockey. Daniel got the wild and crazy and brilliant idea that my hockey story might tie in with all that.

2014 NHL Winter Classic Shootout: Toronto Maple Leafs vs. Detroit Red Wings at Michigan Stadium (Picture from Wikimedia Commons)

Without telling me, Daniel sent When the Moon Comes to a gentleman at the NHL office in Toronto who in turn suggested he a contact a woman in marketing at the NHL office in New York City. She and Daniel talked by phone and she loved the story but explained that they the NHL didn’t involve itself in projects that didn’t contain NHL logos. However, Daniel followed up soon after the call by email, and she very kindly suggested that Daniel contact Jordan Fenn who was at Penguin Random House Canada at the time.

Well, it turns out that Jordan had spent his childhood summers in Muskoka, liked the story and passed it along to children’s book publisher Tundra Books. As luck would have it, Amy Tomkins of the Transatlantic Literary Agency had recently agreed to be my agent for another book, Beaver Pond. Amy stepped right in and negotiated the sale and the terms of the contract.

Editor Samantha Swenson took on the book, and Sam brilliantly and fortuitously paired me with the inimitable Matt James as the illustrator. I must say that NO ONE could have done a better job than Matt. One of my favourite children’s books is Madeleine and Matt’s artwork in its mastery and freedom reminds me of Ludwig Bemelmans’ classic work. Only better.

25 Years Worth of People to Thank

When the Moon Comes Cover (Picture from Matt James Illustration on Facebook)

I want to thank everybody who helped bring this book to life: Dad, Mom, Karen, Doug H., Doug C., Ed, Bob, Pauline, Donna, Isabel, Helena, Stephanie, Rickey, Jennifer, Jordan, Amy, Sam and Matt. Thanks to Muskoka Magazine, Humber College, the NHL in Toronto and New York, and Tundra Books.

And most of all, thank you to my dear son Daniel for inspiring and remembering and pitching When the Moon Comes. (And designing this fabulous website along with his wife, Stephanie.)

And that brings us to the present. When the Moon Comes will be in stores in one week and is now available for pre-order online.

For now the toboggan is flying on top of the ice! Let’s see what the future will bring!

The post A 25 Year Journey: Publishing When The Moon Comes appeared first on Paul Harbridge.

They’d been hunting on the big island all week, just the two of them, making runs as best they could, but without any luck. When the buck showed itself at the edge of the field, Tom knew it was too late in the day to shoot, with the long walk back to the boat and the storm coming on, but it looked like a clean shot, so he took it. By the time he and his dad downed the deer and cleaned it out, it was dark and the wind was blowing an icy snow hard off the lake.

They decided that Tom would drag the deer to a sheltered cove a few hundred yards away. His father headed out along the trail that ran the length of the island back to where they had left their boat, to bring it up to the shoreline to meet him. In daylight, it would have been a 20-minute walk.

The route Tom took was flat and lightly wooded, but in the blackness he found himself tripped up by anything that lay in his path. Low-hanging branches whipped his face and the dead deer caught on rocks and wedged itself between trees. It took him almost two hours to reach the lake. He threw himself down on a moss-covered hill, exhausted, wet through with sweat and as thirsty as he’d ever been in his life.

He looked out over the cold, black expanse of water. Where was his dad? Four-foot waves were smashing up over the rocky shore. He could see a few points of light, diffused through the steady snow, on the mainland almost a mile away, but no lights from a boat. With the howl of the wind, he could not have heard the boat’s motor even if it were there.

Still, he couldn’t bring himself to believe that his father might be in trouble. His dad had hunted and been on the lakes all his life. He remembered when they had hunted together, back when Tom was in his teens. His dad had never carried a compass, always knowing where he was in the bush and the exact direction to take to get out. And he’d seen him handle a smaller boat in worse conditions than these.

Then he realized that the man he was remembering was his father of 20 years ago, the last time they’d hunted together. It had seemed strange to be hunting with him again, after so many years apart. His dad, getting on in years, had wanted to hunt with his son again a few last times while he was still able. Tom had children of his own now, and his dad was . . . what was it? Sixty-three? It was hard to believe.

Tom left the deer and followed his tracks back where he’d come. By the time he got to where he’d killed the deer, the tracks were covered with fresh snow. He started along his father’s route – across the field through the young pines, over a maple ridge and around the edge of a big alder swamp. From there the trail was less well-defined, going up a hill, along a ridge to a hydro cut. Twice he took a wrong turn and had to get out his small pocket light until he was back on the main path. He called out to his father as he walked, but in the howling wind, his voice wouldn’t have carried more than a hundred feet.

At last he made it back to the boat tied up at the dock of an empty cottage. There was no sign of his father.

He hasn’t even made it this far, he thought. He must have gotten lost or fallen and broken a leg. Or worse still, he might have had a heart attack.

Tom was scared now. He got the big heavy electric lantern from under one of the seats of the boat and headed once more through the trail – along the hydro cut, ridge and swamp, through the maples and to the field – looking into every bush and hole, expecting each time to see his father’s body. But he found nothing.

Earlier, he had seen a light in a cottage not far from where he had left the deer. Now he headed for it, running and stumbling through the rough, wooded terrain. He went straight to the lighted kitchen and banged hard on the door. He heard noises inside, but no one came. He banged again, harder and with more urgency. A bearded face appeared at the window.

“What do you want?”

“It’s my father. He’s hurt. Have you got a phone?”

The man hesitated. “Just a minute.”

The door opened and Tom entered. The man motioned to a corner.

The operator connected Tom to the provincial police and he told them his story. They said they’d be there as soon as they could find a boat big enough to make it through the storm.

Tom hung up and looked at the floor, trying to collect his thoughts. After a minute, he raised his head and looked about the interior of the little house. The table, two chairs and kitchen counter were piled high with oily rags, old work gloves, dirty dishes and beer bottles. The ceiling was smoky yellow, badly cracked and water-stained. One wall was partly drywalled, with fibreglass insulation showing out between the bare studs. The grime on them showed that the repair job had been abandoned for some months now. In the living room there was a partly disassembled snowmobile.

The man came down some narrow wooden stairs carrying a bottle of whisky. Only now did Tom take a good look at him. The man appeared to be somewhere between 40 and 60 years old. His wiry beard was a dirty, gray-brown color and his long hair was tied back behind his back. He wore slippers and an old, oil-stained snowmobile suit. He picked up a cup, wiped it out with an old shirt that was hanging on a peg on the wall, poured in some of the whisky and handed it to Tom.

Tom took it and drank it back. He thanked him; then he said, “The police told me I should fire three shots into the air. He might hear it.”

THE man shuffled off into a corner and returned with an old bolt- action rifle with the heaviest barrel Tom had ever seen.

“Use this one,” he said. “If he’s still alive, he’ll hear it.”

Tom went out and up a hill and fired three thunderous explosions. The first shot nearly knocked him flat.

When he got back, there was a bowl of hot stew and more whisky on the table. The man was working on the snowmobile. Tom tried to thank him, but the man made it clear he didn’t want to talk.

He ate the stew in silence, now and then sipping on the good whisky. It warmed him through and he found himself thinking of years ago when he was a boy and of his dad, as he had been back then.

He remembered his father coming home worn out every day from the store, and their mother telling them to give their dad some peace. A lot of nights he’d come in and head straight to his room, and their mom would say how bad things were going at the store, and that dad’s ulcer was acting up again, and they’d all sit down to eat without him, everyone feeling uneasy and helpless. Then the store was gone and his father’s nerves were bad, and things were worse than before.

His father started to see everything negatively and he hardly talked to them any more and, when he did, it was to say that the world was in a mess and things weren’t going to get any better, and he criticized everybody and everything until Tom didn’t think he could stand it any more. As he got older, he fought a lot with his dad, and he was happy when it was time to go off to college in the city.

He took another slow sip of the whisky and, as it went down, warm and strong, he thought of the time he had the mumps and sat on the sofa with his dad’s arm around him and they’d watched The Adventures Of Robin Hood, starring Errol Flynn. At the end of the movie, he, only seven or eight at the time, said they don’t make movies like that any more, and his dad had laughed and messed up his hair.

He remembered the time, when he was 10, when they’d gone out hunting on Christmas Day and his dad had left him standing too long, while he had gone to dog out some rabbits and, when he got back, Tom was crying because his feet were frozen, and how bad his father had felt, and back at the truck, he’d taken Tom’s boots off and warmed each of Tom’s feet in his big, strong hands.

He thought of those wonderful camping trips at Algonquin, lying next to his dad in the tent at night, feeling safe, before his father changed jobs and couldn’t get holidays in the summer any more. And of the fine speech his dad had given at his wedding and how proud he’d felt of his father that day.

From the direction of the lake, he heard the deep sound of a powerful motor. He opened the door and saw a large boat down at the dock, rocking heavily with the waves. Two police officers were coming up the hill. He turned to say goodbye to the man. He wasn’t there. He called out to him, but no one answered.

“You won’t see him again,” said one of the constables. “Not as long as we’re here, anyway.”

On the way to the boat, they told him what they knew of the man. His engineering firm in Toronto had failed and the same year his wife left him. He’d come north and lived alone on this island ever since.

Once everyone was aboard, the big inboard fired up, its powerful engine throaty and gurgling in reverse. Then they headed slowly around the island, staying in as close to shore as they dared. Beyond the light of the cottage the lake was black. The boat was going into the wind. Its nose rose slow, riding up one side of a wave, and then falling hard down the other. The two policemen sat at the back and shone the beam of their powerful spotlight on the shore, searching along the rocks and up into any openings in the trees.

Tom stayed up front with the driver of the boat. He stood with his head above the windshield and the icy snow blew hard into his face and stung, but after the two mugs of whisky, it felt good and he breathed in the cold air and watched the beam of light pass along the rocks and between the trees.

The boat worked its way laboriously up the leeward side of the island, the light here and there eerily illuminating the eyes of deer lying sheltered out of the wind, but there was no sign of his father. They came to the end of the island and passed through a channel and suddenly they were in the open lake. The wind was stronger here and, going down the other side of the island, they had the wind at their backs and it was harder to keep a slow searching speed.

It now seemed to Tom that they were not going to find his father along the shore anywhere, and he went back and told the officers that they had to mount a search party on the island. They said it was impossible at night, in such bad weather. Tom got mad and said that he’d go it alone, but they said one lost hunter was enough. Tomorrow they could get dogs and more men, and do it right. But Tom knew that if his dad were lying unconscious somewhere, tomorrow would be too late.

WHEN he thought that his father really might die, his chest got tight and he thought of his mother living in that big house alone. He thought of how she’d cry and how hard it would be on all of them. He remembered his dad’s brother’s funeral and how all his children had cried and held each other, and he wondered if it would be like that, and if he’d cry. He thought somehow that he wouldn’t – even if they found his father dead that night, he’d go all quiet inside, but he wouldn’t cry. He remembered his dad saying that, when his own mother had died, he hadn’t cried, even when they buried her, and it had taken six weeks before he realized that she was really gone.

One of the policemen shouted. He looked up and saw the searchlight was on a man waving on the shore.

“It’s the old man from the cottage,” the driver yelled. “He’s found something.”

They put ashore at a dock about fifty yards further along. The man was waiting. He talked to one of the policemen and pointed up the hill.

“He’s okay,” the policeman called back. “Lost and tired, but all right.”

They followed the man, single file, up a rocky incline and into the trees. After a couple of hundred yards, they smelled smoke and saw the light from a fire reflected on a tall bunch of hemlocks at the foot of the hill. And then, there was his father, sitting by a big fire in a sheltered little gully. Beside him was a large pile of branches, enough to last the night.

When they got near the fire, one of the policemen put his hand on Tom’s shoulder and said, “Go on, give your old dad a hug.” Tom stretched out his arms to his father, and all he could manage was “Hi, dad,” before the tears came.

Paul Harbridge, of Toronto, was born in Peterborough, but grew up just outside of Gravenhurst. He is an economics graduate from the University of Toronto and is married, with two small children. He teaches English as a second language.

The post August 21, 1988: Hunting With His Dad appeared first on Paul Harbridge.