Michael Den Tandt: This year, I'm grateful for a deck (and a lot more)
There was a moment when, on my knees in the drizzle and mud, scratching at rock with my fingernails, I questioned my life choices.
Every year at Christmas time, The Line runs a series of articles about things we should be thankful for — just like we’re thankful for you. Happy holidays from your friends at The Line.
By: Michael Den Tandt
Since I first read Trevanian’s thriller The Eiger Sanction as a teenager, I’ve wanted to live in a renovated church or barn. The novel features an elegant and deadly assassin, Dr. Jonathan Hemlock, who kills bad men for hire in order to feed his addiction to priceless works of art. Hemlock’s gorgeously appointed, remote hideout, it seemed to 15-year-old me, would be the perfect refuge for an itinerant poet, which is what I wanted to be at the time.
Later the fantasy evolved into a renovated Niagara Escarpment hay barn. It would feature, I decided in my early 20, a small indoor creek and fountain; a basketball net and court; a library of ancient, rare books; a palm tree; a collection of priceless Japanese swords; and an assortment of super cool gadgets, providing access to all the major international newswires, so I could stay connected to global events by the minute. This would allow me (bear in mind this was late 1980s, pre-internet) to earn my living as a newspaper writer, while taking long, brooding walks across the moors of Grey County with my pair of Irish wolfhounds.
That this fantasy was hugely idiotic did not dissuade me at all. It did recede a bit, however, with the coming of adulthood, the requirements of earning degrees and then actual newspapering, marriage, three children, divorce, career changes, co-parenting said kids for a dozen years and then, wholly unexpectedly, marriage again in 2022 to the woman who is now the North Star of my life, Aly Boltman. It’s been busy. I blame my failure to renovate a barn on this.
Little did I know, when I asked Aly out for lunch in April of 2019, that we’d fall in love and marry; or that we’d do so in our own little church in French River, in northern Ontario. Yet in June of 2022, we did just that. And in June of 2024, working alongside a good friend who is a gifted builder and teacher, I drove the last screw into the new sienna deck that now graces the north and east sides of our renovated chapel — the last piece of a two-year-long restoration project.
It began, as these things do, online. We’d been searching for a cottage on Manitoulin Island for some time, without success. Late one evening, Aly was scanning the real estate listings and up popped a little church, the former St. Thomas Anglican chapel of French River, deconsecrated and put up for sale by the diocese.
Next to it was a historic community cemetery. Aly, who has been engaged in historic building and cemetery preservation since her teens, was immediately intrigued. I was too, of course, albeit for different reasons: Could it be that Aly had somehow found the remote lair of my childhood fantasy? This was mid-COVID, during the real-estate mania. We placed our best offer, relying only on photographs and a video tour. To our enormous surprise, our bid was accepted.
There followed a time of sober re-assessment: Our first visit to the church was in late January. It was bitterly cold. Hymn books, pews, and pulpit stood as they had on the last day of services, pre-COVID. In the little hallway off the sanctuary stood a pail, partly filled with red antifreeze and festooned with the semi-frozen carcasses of a dozen mice. The hydro had been disconnected; the church had never had plumbing, a well, or kitchenette. In the ceiling and small bell tower, thrashing about and growling with extraordinary vigour, were what sounded like a dozen raccoons. “This is nice,” said Aly, hands on her hips.
There isn’t room in a single column to do justice to the extraordinary amount of planning, lifting, hauling, and sheer sweat that followed in the ensuing 24 months. With the benefit of hindsight, we now break it down into eight discreet phases.
Phase one was to get the raccoons out. After several misfires, that required a one-way critter door, lashed into the bell tower with steel mesh; and a network of live traps ringing the cottage like the watchtowers of Ithilien around Mount Doom.
Phase two was a desperate rush of cleaning, painting, and sprucing up for our wedding, on June 19, 2022.
Phase three was the new well and septic system; phase four, kitchen and bathroom; phase five, gutting, wiring, insulation, drywall and paint; phase six, the new floor; phase seven, the new steel roof; and phase eight, the period at the end of the paragraph, the back deck.
At every stage, Aly was a wizard at sourcing and planning, drawing on her years of experience as an auctioneer and antique dealer. We relied heavily on the kindness and generosity of our new neighbours, family, friends, and a few key helpers, one in particular, without whom the project could not have happened. I will concede that there was a moment when, on my knees in the drizzle and mud, scratching at rock with my fingernails to make a level path for a two-by-six, I questioned my life choices.
And it was a vision of a deck that kept me going through it all. As, double-masked, we dragged more than a hundred pounds of dried raccoon shit, dust and hair from the bell tower; as we hauled cupboards, wood, flooring, siding, countertop, fixtures, and furniture down Route 607A in all weather, month after month; as I clumsily popped my drill bit off the head of a drywall screw for what seemed like the thousandth time; as we discovered that replacing rectangular windows with arched windows is more complex than it sounds; and as our kids, family, and friends dangled from safety harnesses high above the forest floor, drilling down the roof, my thoughts went to the day on the deck.
Here is that thought: Aly and me on a blazing sunny Sunday afternoon, reclining in Muskoka chairs, enjoying the dappled green of the woods and breeze turning the leaves, blackflies and mosquitoes gone for another season; one or more kids, or one or more neighbours, drop in for a visit. And we lounge back there, whiling the afternoon away, sipping a cool drink or two. Later maybe we crack a book, or pick up a guitar. Later still, maybe we fall asleep and doze. And we realize, in that moment, that we made this happen by imagining we could.
Because that’s the crazy thing about dreams: They rarely turn out as you expect. But they do, sometimes, turn out. The secret lair of Dr. Jonathan Hemlock, art expert and assassin for hire? It’s nothing like it, nor will it ever be. It’s been so, so much better than any and all of that.
Michael Den Tandt and Aly Boltman are the owners of Belle Rive Church, in French River, Ontario.
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These are the kinds of stories people need to hear more of in Canada. I love reading about how people accomplish their dreams and goals.
Great fun to read ... who woulda guessed?!! Shared already to a guy who lives in an immaculately restored church here in the Crowsnest Pass!