A Gilford businesswoman is leading a double life.
Maria DaSilva, owner of Maria’s Creative Cuts in Gilford, is well on her way to becoming an accomplished author, along with pen mate Andrew Hind of Bradford West Gwillimbury.
Later this month, Dundurn Press will be shipping copies of their latest effort, “The Ghost Towns of Muskoka” to Chapters and Indigo and local bookstores.
The pair, perhaps not surprisingly, met at DaSilva’s hair salon a few years ago.
You see, Hind’s mother is a regular customer of DaSilva’s.
“One day, Andrew was desperate for a haircut,” DaSilva recalls. “He came in. He told me his passion was writing and that he was taking a sabbatical from his job at a nursery. That Christmas, he came in with an article he had written called, ‘The origin of the Christmas tree’ and asked me to proofread it. I changed the first paragraph. Andrew sent the story in and the editor replied, ‘Really good job!’ After that, I kept proofreading Andrew’s stuff.”
From this casual beginning, the pair eventually collaborated in 2005 on a book titled, “Strange Events of Ontario” that was published in 2006.
Since then, the pair has co-authored numerous magazine and newspaper articles. Hind even had a gardening article published in the Toronto Star. Hind also writes articles on local history for the Innisfil Journal.
The writing team’s latest effort has been a three-year job, DaSilva says.
“We started visiting ghost towns in Muskoka – the first one was Ballycroy,” she says. “We were just curious. When we researched it, we were like a couple of kids in the woods. We discovered some foundations and a general store.”
Next, they discovered the remnants of a small and almost forgotten community once called Swords.
“My father knew about it when he was a boy,” Hinds says.
“We found the general store and the church,” DaSilva recalls. “We were walking down the main road. We had heard there were some cabins in the woods. Andrew took off his sunglasses and there they were. We excavated through an old garbage pit and found a green jug (see photo). Just the neck was exposed. I brought it home. It was our souvenir of Swords.”
The 277-page illustrated book contains detailed histories of 11 communities of yesteryear, including several still found on the map such as Copper’s Falls, Millar Hill and Uffington.
“I spent lots and lots of hours in local libraries,” Hind says. “And we always seem to find at least one special person in a community. We call them our ‘Treasures’. All of these villages are at least 100 years old and have been gone for maybe 80 years, so anyone who’s lived there are at least in their eighties.”
One unexpected benefit of the interviewing process has been “everyone asks us to come back and visit them,” DaSilva says.
“Once we were meeting the people, we realized they were passing on a legacy,” Hind adds. “It made us feel very responsible.”
Being seen so much together means “a lot of people just think we’re married,” DaSilva laughs.
Hind rejoins, “We get along too well to be married!”
The partners already have a sequel in the planning stages and are considering branching out into offering history and ghost town walks.
“It’s through the families we interviewed, and hopefully good writing,” DaSilva says, “that these ghost towns can continue to live.”
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