A theft 56 years ago, a crumbled castle on Blue Mountain, an iron dog dish and a painting of a shipwreck inspired four different stories that will be brought to life by Gaslight Community Theatre later this month.
A trip to the museum inspired this year's Gaslight playwrights to write scenes that tell Collingwood's history with a bit of embellishment.
Returning Gaslight writer Kathy Felice took the theme of "night at the museum" literally by setting her play, Soul Food, in the museum after the doors are locked and the lights go out.
Felice already had an idea running around in her head, one inspired by the story of Beautiful Joe, which is a Meaford story. Since Gaslight requires all plays to be about Collingwood's history, Felice crossed her fingers she could find something to link dogs to the Collingwood museum.
She and the other playwrights took a field trip to the museum as part of their writing workshop and Museum Supervisor Melissa Shaw, a former Gaslight playwright herself, gave them a tour of the artifacts and archives.
Felice found an iron water or food bowl for dogs in the museum's artifact collection bearing the inscription "Band of Mercy Collingwood. Humane trough for dogs. Report all cases of cruelty."
From that bowl overflowed Felice's latest play about spirits coming alive at night in the Collingwood Museum.
"The main character is a dog, Bonnie Girl, and her spirit comes through the dog trough," explained Felice. "She meets with a skeptic, the second main character, and he doesn't believe in spirits or talking dogs ... so they have this banter back and forth."
Two other mischievous spirits, puppies, add some playfulness to the scene and an announcer opens and closes the story. Cliff Dumas, an award winning broadcaster, lent his talents for the announcer.
Felice debuted a play last year with original music by Bob Woodcock, and she's including another original song in this year's play. She wrote the lyrics and Woodcock wrote the music. The song will be played at the end of the play, and Felice warns audience members to bring a tissue.
As a dog lover, Felice was drawn to the story of Beautiful Joe because of the park in Meaford. Her play, however, aims to go beyond a message of kindness to anmias.
"I want to make people think about cruelty in general, not just to animals, but cruelty to people, and about how it's up to us to make a difference," said Felice. "Each one of us can play a part."
Retired high school teacher and long-time Gaslight volunteer Janet Wilkinson has also set her play, The Story of a Ring, in the Collingwood Museum, building the scene around a theft in 1968 of a ring believed to have belonged to a Jesuit priest who lived in the area in the 1600s.
The theft, Wilkinson learned, was discovered in the summer of 1968, and it remains an unsolved mystery. Her play features characters based on three real people: Jay Blair, Madeline Boucher Harvie and Mary Mitchell, the student curator at the museum. The three of them work together to convince a Collingwood police officer of the seriousness of the theft.
In her research, Wilkinson became fascinated with Jay Blair a local self-taught archaeologist and historian. Blair was born in the 1890s and grew up in Duntroon where he studied the Petun people and villages established in the 1600s.
Blair became a pre-eminent expert on local Petun settlements, mentoring Charles Garrad, who later wrote hundreds of articles and publications on the Petun people in Blue Mountain. His work and study got him adopted by the Wyandotte Tribe of Oklahoma, the descendants of the Petun people who once lived in the local area.
The brass ring that started Wilkinson's story was inscribed with IHS and turned up in a farmer's field in the 1920s before it was donated to the Huron Institute.
Though it was kept in a glass "theft-proof" case, it went missing sometime over the summer in 1968.
"Nothing else went missing from that display case," said Wilkinson, who spent hours talking to everyone who remembered Jay Blair and to one of the former summer curators for the museum.
This is Wilkinson's sixth play for Gaslight, and she said it's been captivating.
"This is the one that's sort of captured my imagination the most," said Wilkinson. "It's not even so much the ring, but it's really about Jay Blair and how devoted he was to finding out about the history and the past of this area. He was such an amazing character."
One of her favourite Blair stories that didn't make the play was his custom-built mobile cabin that he took to the Duntroon family farm called "the bush place" for the winter.
"He would drag it out to the bush place with his Model T," said Wilkinson. "Just wild stuff. He was an inventor, a writer, a poet, he wrote music, and he was just an all-round really phenomenal person."
Anke Lex also found a phenomenal person to write about in Ernest "Ernie" Taylor, an artist who worked out of a studio he set up at the former Mountain View hotel and bar.
Taylor's story is known as a tragic tale, for he lost his wife and six children when their home in Craigleith burned down. But Lex, was inspired to tell more of Taylor's story after seeing his painting, the Wreck of the Waubuno, at the Collingwood Museum last year.
"He was drinking heavily throughout his life and that's why he painted at the Mountain View Hotel, he had a studio sort of in the corner, and the Wheeler family, who owned the hotel, were very supportive of him," said Lex. "They had a ton of his paintings, that's how he paid his bar tab."
This is how Lex envisioned her play, Ernie, the Goat and the Snake Pit, about Taylor.
"He doesn't get the respect an artist of his quality should get, and that's kind of what I wanted to bring out," said Lex.
She found evidence that Taylor knew Group of Seven artist Fred Varley, so she included a pick-me-up visit from Varley in her Gaslight play.
In the scene, Taylor is working on his painting called The Snake Pit, which is a depiction of several important people of the time. It's one he painted while working in his Mountain View corner studio.
As a fine artist herself, Lex leaned into Taylor's work to create a portrait of him on stage, gathering his personality from his paintings, particularly a self-portrait of him as a young man.
"After I saw that, I could envision his personality, the charisma, the wit was coming through the painting," said Lex, who also interviewed people who remembered Taylor. Taylor lived in Collingwood as a child in 1925 and ended up teaching art in North Bay in 1980, living until 1999.
"He was a fantastic artist," said Lex. "He also did political cartoons, they were very smart and funny, and good."
She hopes her play reminds people of the "fantastic painter" who worked out of the Mountain View Hotel and contributed to the arts and culture scene in Collingwood for decades.
The fourth play in this years Gaslight Tour also seeks to remind the audience of a Collingwood resident, though he's already pretty famous.
Jan Ferrigan took inspiration for her play, Best Laid Plans, from the legend of Osler Castle. Built in the 1890s for Britton Bath Osler, the castle's story has the feel of a sad fairy tale.
"He built it for his wife, Caroline, who was ill," said Ferrigan. "He thought that the fresh air would cure her."
Caroline visited just one time before she died.
Ferrigan's play takes place on the occasion of Caroline's visit with her husband Britton, and they're greeted by the property's caretakers Fred and Mary Ann Dawson.
Though not actually a castle, the estate at Osler Bluff was extravagant, complete with an opulent chandelier in the entrance hall. Osler was a prominent Canadian lawyer who worked with the famous inspector John Wilson Murray, who has inspired the TV series Murdoch Mysteries.
After Osler died, the castle was sold and left empty. At one point, it was taken by the municipality for unpaid taxes, and because it was left vacant and unwatched, it became a target for looters. In the 1960s, the estate was burned down by an arsonist.
"It's a fascinating story," said Ferrigan, who found a plethora of information on the castle's history, even if some of it conflicted.
She's hoping her play based on the Osler's story will captivate audiences like it captivated her.
"If I can evoke that emotion so the audience feels the romance and the tragedy of the story, that would be great," said Ferrigan. "And also the appreciation of the place. They really loved that place and had high hopes for it, like almost magical hopes for it... that it would cure her."
The Gaslight Tour runs at the Simcoe Street Theatre from Oct. 26 to Nov. 3. Each of the four plays runs under 20 minutes and they will be performed by Gaslight Community Theatre cast and crews each day.
The plays are written through a multi-week workshop and submitted to the board to choose each year. Casting is open for amateur performers and each of the plays is a single scene following the theme of the year. Rehearsals are currently underway.
There are still tickets available, though they are running out, online. Visit gaslighttheatreproductions.ca for more information.
