Marnie Hare Bickle worked for most of her career in music academia as Head of Circulation for the

Music Library at the Faculty of Music, University of Western Ontario; Ontario Regional Director

for the Canadian Music Centre; and Concert Manager for the Faculty of Music, University of

Toronto. She studied piano, voice, and because she was a teen in the 60s, learned guitar and

performed at coffee houses, folk concerts, church events, and community functions. Always a

writer at heart, she has written poetry, songs, short stories and articles. She combined her interest

in music and research to record part of U of T’s Opera School history (1972-1996) as well as

other articles to promote and showcase classical musicians.

She and her husband moved to Port Hope in1997 and she gave private piano, voice and guitar lessons until COVID brought about her retirement. In that family home she found a treasure chest of documents, written by her husband’s great uncle David Ford. After several years of research into Ford’s papers and background she produced her very successful book, Native Born Son: The Journals of David J Ford published by Blue Denim Press in 2018.

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This week we welcome Tom Cruikshank. With an abiding interest in local history and heritage architecture, these are subjects Tom has pursued in no fewer than five books. His work includes Old Ontario Houses, Old Toronto Houses and The Settler’s Dream. For the better part of 25 years, he worked in the Canadian magazine industry, first as editor of the locally produced Century Home and later, Harrowsmith Country Life. He is currently at work on an inventory of the older buildings of Hamilton Township. He sometimes uncovers strange stories! The incident is long forgotten, but in 1895, a mailman “went postal” and shot a prominent lawyer to death at his desk in his downtown Cobourg office. It was a bizarre and dramatic scene that plays out like a psycho-mystery movie.

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