The road was new to me, as roads always are going back.  ~Sarah Orne Jewett, The Country Road of Pointed Firs, 1896

October 9, 2012 What a week it has been. We've gone back to the source..me for the first time, but for Mali Klein, the road going back did look familiar.. Mali, over the course of nearly two decades' worth of writing and researching the history of Rene Caisse and Essiac,  has witnessed Rene's legacy in this place pass from its youth into the 21st century. Mali's writing partner Sheila Snow lived her whole life here.  Sheila worked with Rene Caisse directly during the last years of her life.  She wrote one of the first Essiac books, The Essence of Essiac,  as well as an article for the Canadian Homemaker magazine entitled "Could Essiac Halt Cancer?" which played a major role in putting Bracebridge on the map in the 1970s.  Sixteen years ago she showed Mali the sites to see for the first time, just as Mali shows me today. How can I express the impression its made? Like the autumn colors, there's a lot to contemplate and it comes in many shades, covering many emotions. Its been an evolution and I am left with a feeling of more roads to take back..

Day 1 - Monday, October 1, 2012
Uh-oh!!! Flight left early and without me! Hoping this week only gets to rolling smoother..Instead of arriving at Toronto in the late afternoon, I wound up there in the late evening. Bracebridge or bust, tomorrow!!

Day 2 - Tuesday, October 2, 2012
What a beautiful place Muskoka is this first week of October. The Canadian Thanksgiving is next Monday, and everyone makes this trip north to Bracebridge, and 'cottage country' to enjoy the last vestiges of mild days and the beauty of the maple and other trees that are turning all shades of yellow, gold, orange and red. Mali and I were going to rent a car and drive to Bracebridge, but I am delighted to be on the bus instead, able to gawk all I want, and visit without having to be thinking about operating a motor vehicle in a foreign country! We arrive at our lodging on lovely Lake Muskoka and the weather is just a little overcast but basically ideal early fall weather and just a few minutes south of Bracebridge, where the real adventure awaits.

Day 3 - Wednesday, October 3, 2012
We begin the day on the road to Bracebridge. I am being the typical tourist, taking pictures of the fall colors, and highway signs with the word 'Bracebridge' on them! Mali patiently endures the stardrops in the eyes of this one who is seeing these sites for the first time. Then suddenly, there are the Bracebridge falls, and just beyond there, Rene Caisse's statue!!

After visiting Rene Caisse's statue and Bracebridge Falls, we took a stroll up the main drag, Manitoba Street, where Rene's Father had his Barbershop.  Manitoba Street, then and now:

Just out of the above photo, up the street to the right, is the Bracebridge Public Library. They have five boxes of Rene Caisse info.  But, it was a little anti-climatic..the contents were manilla folders, most of them with one sheet of paper in them.  So, the actual total amount of papers wasn't very much. The librarian made me promise not to publish any pictures or video showing the librarians...not sure why but there you go.  I promised.  Someday I will go back and look at everything and take longer.  I snapped a few pictures from the papers:  

And then up the street another block or so, to Rene Caisse Lane! Hmm..well its only a block long, but I am really glad they have named a street after her, anyway.

Then, one block off Manito clinic:  It was an eerie feeling trying the door of the clinic and finding it locked.  Numerous times during the 1930s Rene had to close the doors due to politics. And, right across the street from the clinic, the Courthouse!  Rene is quoted as saying "...I was always one jump ahead of a policeman.  We were right across from the town jail, and the keeper used to joke that he was saving a cell for me." 

Bless Rene's heart, she never did get shipped off to jail, but it really is too bad that she had to feel so threatened.  The medical establishment was not a little perturbed that so many of her patients had been given up on by them, and were able to benefit from Rene's treatments.

Coming next: Rene's grave and the Rene M. Caisse Theatre as the leaves begin to fall... and the tragedy of the Woodchester Villa, where the Rene Caisse museum display used to be...

"Change is a measure of time and, in the autumn, time seems speeded up.  What was is not and never again will be; what is is change." - Edwin Way Teale

As the Bracebridge tour winds down, I sense how the passage of time can erode the memory of something once very special.

Our next stop on the tour is a visit to Rene's grave.  She is buried next to her mother and father, and there is sheep sorrel growing all over the place.  Its nice to see that someone has put flowers at her grave.

Then we make a trip to the Rene M. Caisse Memorial Theatre.  It's in a large building that appears to be a school.  All the doors are locked, and I don't see any sign of a display for Rene - just her name on the side of the building.

And then for the last stop of the tour - Woodbridge Villa, also known as the Octagon House, where the Rene Caisse Museum was located.  It's seen better days, and not so long ago, either.  Mali took a picture in 1997, when it had been freshly renovated. Now it looks abandoned and is permanently closed.

When I went to the Woodbridge Villa website, here is what they had to say about the Rene Caisse display: "In 1995, the Bracebridge Historical Society opened the Rene M. Caisse Memorial Room. Most of the artifacts are now on permanent display at the Rene M. Caisse Theatre in Bracebridge."

This doesn't bode well...I went to the Rene Caisse Theatre website, and there is absolutely no mention of who Rene Caisse even is.

In summary, pretty much all that's left of Rene's memory in Bracebridge is a statue, a gravestone, a few papers, a name on a street sign and a theatre that's named after her. There's nothing to commemorate her lifelong passion for herbal remedies in any other tangible form.  A physic garden growing the Essiac herbs would have been a more fitting memorial to her life and her work.

I am so grateful to Sheila Snow for saving all the Essiac history in her archive collection.  I realize that what this one person has done for Rene and Essiac amounts to more than her home town has managed.  Rene's words, "Perhaps some other country will have the courage to find and bring help to suffering humanity, though I had hoped it would be my own beloved Canada, or our neighbour, the United States of America."  have deeper than ever meaning for me....stay tuned for The Rene Caisse Room online, at ReneCaisseTea.com 😉