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In the summer of 1964, Timothy Findley and his companion, William Whitehead, were romantics who believed that a tumbledown, vacant, nineteenth-century farmhouse on fifty acres of land just outside Cannington, Ontario could be turned into a home, workplace, and haven. With the considerable help of neighbours, the duo did manage to rescue the property from decay. Findley named it "Stone Orchard" as a tribute to his favourite writer, Chekhov, and because stones were its only true crop for a while. Of course, in local terms, the phrase means "graveyard", and many of Findley's dead pets lie buried there, along with the ashes of his brother and parents. But "Stone Orchard" became part of Ontario's literary map. Its luxuriant gardens, fields of rippling grass, and lush woods made a perfectly pastoral environment for the writer (who wrote many of his best novels there), and retreat for his guests. These guests, however, sometimes wrought mayhem, as on "the night the bed fell, exposing the occupants, who were making love, to the shouts and screams of the rest of us who were not making love; and the dinner party, when everyone went outside in the twilight, dressed like royalty, napkins and wineglasses in hand, to watch a herd of deer, with majestic stag, pass through the gardens, pausing to eat our grass."
From Stone Orchard: A Collection of Memories is an album of reminiscences in the form of brief anecdotal sketches and reflections which were all previously published in Harrowsmith. It has moments of fleeting excellence, as in the passage quoted above; however, the spirit of place was better suggested in Inside Memory (1990) where the reminiscences were less repetitive, thin, and sentimental. It does offer thumbnail personality sketches, rural recipes, woodcut drawings, and descriptions of country living. And, while From Stone Orchard is a minor work by a major writer who here often appears to be a male version of Catherine Parr Traill, it stands as a genuine homage to a private world to which Findley and Whitehead, now residing in Stratford, have bid farewell.
Keith Garebian, Books in Canada
From Stone Orchard, a collection of Findley’s Harrowsmith columns, along with new material, takes us into the private world of the author and his part. . . . The Stone Orchard memories span three decades of life in the country, with its novel, if somewhat turbulent experiences, which are tempered with the kindness of down-the-road farmers, such as Leonard Griffin, who introduced Findley and Whitehead to “the use of neighbour as a verb.” Findley and Whitehead were hopeless neophytes when they moved into their falling-down farmhouse. But they were dedicated to what the rural life stood for. “But for that ignorance, we would not have any of the joys of country living – including the laughter that is our daily companion.”
Farming mishaps abound, including dead rats in the drinking water cistern and an explosion of cats, which peaked at 36. The cat surge at Cannington is attributed to Volkswagen “drops on dark and stormy nights.”
History, nature, and friends enrich the lives of Findley and Whitehead. The visit of Margaret Laurence to Cannington is particularly memorable. So is the discovery of an original Susanna Moodie poem under a framed print bought at an auction.
Stone Orchard sets a different pace for Findley, one that is more relaxed and light-hearted. From it, we garner a deeper appreciation of him not only as a writer, but as a lover of animals, nature, and the process of life itself.
Excerpted from Quill & Quire review by Cece Scott (August 1998.)
Being with Whitehead and Findley – Bill and “Tiff” – is more play than work, more a wide-ranging three-way conversation than a straightforward interview. We talk about being self-educated – Findley dropped out of school in Grade 10 – avoiding the barriers research imposes on the imagination, erecting creative safety nets, and negotiating the secret trade-offs that are essential to long relationships.
Findley and Whitehead are as interwoven as a tapestry. Their devotion is built on a collaborative pattern of individual strengths and compelling needs that runs through their professional and personal lives. They met as actors here in Stratford; eventually both turned to writing, Whitehead as a documentary filmmaker and Findley as a novelist and playwright. Now Findley gardens and Whitehead cooks, Findley imagines and Whitehead drives, Findley makes money and Whitehead manages it.
But mainly Findley writes – a book a year – and Whitehead types the manuscripts, copy-editing as he goes, through what may amount to 20 drafts of a novel. “I had to take him off the computer,” Whitehead explains. “He never got past page one because the computer made it so easy for him to keep on revising.”
After their noted departure two years ago from Stone Orchard, the farm in Cannington, Ontario, near Lake Simcoe, that they had shared for decades with dozens of cats and a few dogs, Findley and Whitehead moved to a small house on the outskirts of a village called Cotignac in Provence, about halfway between Marseilles and Nice and an hour inland from the coast. The house is too small for all but the most determined visitors. Even so, Whitehead has turned the garage into a writing studio for Findley. Surrounded by his books and toys – a collection of stuffed animals that are mementos of places they have been and people they have known – Findley turns on the music in his headphones and escapes “into the other world” of the imagination.
Excerpted from Quill & Quire (August 1999)