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l“ m F0112 HALLS - am) 110! 1! ALL BEGAN by Pamela Fly There has been a touch of magic about this experience. It started innocently enough, with my being asked to edit a book. It has ended with changing my life. ; But I should introduce myself. I came ‘ to Canada from England as a child. Once grown up, I lived back and forth between the two countries. But I always lived in cities, because of my work. Yet I continued to dream of one day finding some small, kindly place, where I could see skies instead of skyscrapers ... breathe sweet unpolluted air ... Then one day in Toronto my phone rang. It was Dave McGill, an old friend from McClelland and Stewart Publishing Company, where I had also worked. Would I be interested in editing a book on heritage houses in the Township of Bastard and South Burgess? Indeed j I would! For one thing, I had edited Ruth McKenzie's Leeds and Grenville: : Their First Two Hundred years. For i another, I had often travelled through the county and been enchanted by its beauty. Thus the adventure began. First came the manuscript - all 800 pages of it! Much too long, and much too expensive to produce. It was imperative that I meet the author and her associates as soon as possible. So one golden September weekend, Dave drove me down to meet Diane Haskins, Anna Greenhorn, and Shirley Bryden. We sat in Chantry Municipal Building and talked and talked. The next day, Diane gave me a conducted tour of the eight villages. My last night was spent at Gallagher House. I watched the gold and turquoise sunset on Big Rideau Lake that evening, and awakened ‘ next morning to the sun-sparkles across ; its waters. I knew I would have to come u back. i But "meanwhile there Was work to do. , Back to Toronto, and the first attack on the book began. We had all agreed i that its main problem was repetition because the stories of the villages, the houses, and their occupants continuously interlocked and overlapped. But if you combined two or three of these tales, using cross-references when the same people or places turned up again, you lost great chunks of material. And thus we proceeded. My only prayer is that those crossâ€"references are correct! Slowly but surely the manuscript began to take shape. Diane and the others were wonderful to work with; we were all happy with what was happening. But now we needed a designer. Then came a second piece of magic. At a party, I noticed an attractive young man discussing design with a couple of other people. Ignoring good manners, I interrupted their conversation. Was Open Mon.-Fri. 7 - 5 Watever you need, call . . . he, by any chance, a book designer? Yes, he was, his name was Michael Solomon, and he was immediately interested in our project because he himself came from a small Ontario town. Wonderful! The next day, Dave phoned him - and that was that. Finding the book's title was another piece of luck. We all wanted something warm and friendly - something that would express the emigrant's pride in achieving "his own four walls." After much digging around I came across an obscure volume of loveâ€"letters and poems written by Thomas Carlyle to the beautiful girl he eventually married. You will find the verse from which the title was taken at the beginning of the book. Another vital person in our Toronto saga was my good friend, Ann Black. Now, although the material, written and re-written, edited and re-edited, was, flying back and forth between Toronto and Portland, and was being thoroughly checked by Diane, Anna and myself - we desperately neededa new pair of eyes. Someone quite unfamiliar with the material who could pick up on such alarming details as the story of the man who apparently married Emily in one part of the book - and Patricia somewhere else. On the same day! Disaster! Irushed to phone Diane; she rushed to check the township records. No bigamy! The gentleman had married only one lady, named, of course, Emily Patricia. Michael and I also had our moments. Trying to shorten a picture caption we found that it now read: "Four ladies, standing among the logs, ready to be made into cheese-boxes." Not very complimentary to the ladies. ». During the last few weeks, Michael, Ann and I found ourselves working an average of ten to twelve hours a day, with Diane bravely rushing up to Toronto for lastâ€"minute rescue operations. Hoped-for deadlines flew by like jet planes. Then, at last - we could hardly believe it the book was ready to go to press. Now, as probably just about everybody knows, the Grand Launching will take place on Friday, June 14, at the Harmony Masonic Temple in Philipsville at 1:30 p.m. I look forward to meeting many of you there - especially now that I have become an honest-toâ€"God, full-time resident of Portland. In my next column I hope to report on the bookâ€"launching ceremonies, which promise to be both impressive and fun. I would also like to tell you about my final stroke of luck - the discovery of my delightful little apartment. I'm not quite sure whether I found Portland â€" or Portland found me. It was probably a bit of both - but I'm awfully glad it happened. 0 Concrete gravel 0 Road stone 0 Tile bed stone 0 Bank gravel O Mortar sand 0 Sandy till 0 Crushed gravel Stone Ltd. Junction of Hwy 15 & 32 Saturday Until NOON NORTH LEEDS LANTERN page 27 All Pool . _. 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