Secret Opera House window mystery

Local scene: Main floor of Mississaga Street heritage building is one storey up

By John Swartz Special to The Packet

Posted 13 hours ago

This week, it’s all about wonderment and amazement. On Monday, I went to have a look at the Opera House excavation that revealed windows below grade.

I’ll say. One is on the north side. It looks like there was another on the south turret and maybe a couple more (one spot looks like it might have been a doorway). The walls have the same type of stone work all the way to the footings you can see above grade.

Then there’s the barred window. Who would have thunk? All of it covered by mounds of dirt all these years.

I had my peek in the company of someone who has experienced construction work from a planning and design aspect and been involved in renovations. The discussion about what we were seeing revealed some things that I never would have thought of.

Like, for instance, it looks pretty clear to me the Opera House is sitting on stone slabs and those slabs are at the same level as Mississaga Street. One could conclude, OK, I did, that the south and north sides were exposed and used at one time, and then many truck loads of dirt were brought in to create the grassy hill we’ve all been walking on. I found one old picture online that shows the ground level on the south side to be lower than we have been accustomed to, but not as low as the slabs that I saw.

So, what the heck happened? How did the dirt get piled up on the site over something that clearly looks like it was not intended to be covered up?

Tunnels are not an explanation. There’s no way anyone would go to the trouble of building the Opera House that way if they were intending to put eight to 10 feet of dirt over top of it and have a main floor that was one storey up.

It seems to me that the Hysterical Society, oops, Orillia Museum of Art and History, should get on this. Somewhere in this community is a 90-year-old (or older) person who can shed some light on this. Maybe someone has old pictures that will reveal what was and what happened.

I don’t know that we will ever know exactly why the first floor is really the second floor and I hope someone is getting some good photographic evidence of what is there while it’s exposed.

I?wish I could do that

Last week’s Leacock Festival was enjoyable. Friday night was the humour authors reading program. Terry Fallis hosted (and read more of the exploits of Angus McLintock, but I heard him do that passage before). The others reading were this year’s Leacock Medal winner, Trevor Cole (who picked a funny passage from Practical Jean), Charles Wilkins and Steve Burgess.

Burgess stole the show with passages about his grandmother (and a great Scottish accent) his sister and his father from Who Killed Mom, his recently published book. The latter passage had a few good lines to laugh at, but was more touching than I was prepared to take.

Saturday, Burgess was back for Happy Hour and read a different passage from the same book. I had to bug out and missed Mark Kingwell (Happy Hour started late) but I heard he was very funny.

I left to get some tape of the Canadian Authors Association Literary Awards dinner. I met Dr. Stuart Houston and Canadian History category winner Shelagh Grant, and reacquainted myself with Tomson Highway (he’s funny, too).

The winner of the fiction category was Tom Rachman for The Imperfectionists, Julia McCarthy won the poetry prize and the Emerging Author award went to Titilope Sonuga.

So here’s the thing. I write. Sometimes I think it’s not bad. Sometimes I think I come up with a snappy line or two. Then I go to the Leacock Festival and just shake my head in amazement with all the cool, inventive and downright funny things the authors come up with. I wish I could do that.

What an experience

Last week, I forgot to mention I ended up in Bracebridge on a Friday afternoon. The day started out as a trip to Parry Sound for the Art in the Park event. Oh well, not up to my expectations by any means. The salvage of the day was to go to Bracebridge and try and see Travis Shilling’s exhibit.

I didn’t know which gallery it was in (I forgot the name of it), but I found it and they had just taken it down.

I still leafed through the paintings and what an experience. If I didn’t know they were Travis’s, I wouldn’t have guessed. They were all so different from what I’m familiar with as his work. Just amazing.

The bonus was there was some of Michael Scott’s stuff hanging and he’s taking a big leap forward. I last saw his stuff at Starry Night last year and noted his paintings were a lot better than I’d previously seen from him. The new stuff is about a light year forward.

Rants! Raves! Info? Write John at watchthisproductions@encode.com

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