Carl Ahrens Berlin Ont.

September 28th, 2004

Today my cousin, Chris Keith, and I made the drive to Kitchener, Ontario, the boyhood home of our great-grandfather, Carl Ahrens. We took the 401 from Toronto, a trip that was over almost as soon as it began. I remembered it taking forever when I was a child, but I was only eight at the time, and my father does not have a lead foot like Chris.

We got a bit turned around on our way to the hotel. I had been warned about the confusing nature of the layout of Kitchener and Waterloo. Roads have a tendency to end, change names, and pick up again somewhere else entirely. To add to the confusion there are two Highway 8s that exit at about the same time from the 401 - a provincial and county one. I now know it is necessary to "follow the crown." There are also an odd number of exits for King Street, and we took one that inexplicably put us on Weber instead.

Eventually we found the hotel. It had two things going for it; it was cheap and located very close to a Tim Horton's, Canada's answer to Starbucks. It didn't really matter that our room smelled of disinfectant, the pillows were as flat as pancakes (except the last night, when they were replaced by ones as thick and comfy as logs), and the water temperature fluctuated enough to make bathing a memorable experience. We did not plan on spending much time there anyway.

Our first stop was the Kitchener Waterloo Art Gallery on Queen Street. We were running late, worried it would close before we got there, but we were expected and my contact, Lynnette, was waiting for us. She led us back to her office, where she handed me a pile of notes used by Jennifer Watson, the former curator of the gallery, when she wrote the Catalog Raisonne for their 1984 exhibition of Carl Ahrens' prints. I used this Catalog as a starting point for my own research and had been unable to find some of her sources from the United States.

Lynnette and a colleague led us down into the vault where we viewed eleven of Carl's works, including one painting called The Pool that had been part of the Mercer Collection, making it one of his most famous images. The colors were vibrant and my first impression was that he was happy when he painted it. Chris and I wondered aloud how anyone viewing the painting would classify Carl as a dark artist. We also agreed that our family has certainly not inherited his best work.

Once we were done, Chris took a photo of me by the Ahrens Street sign. The street was not named for Carl, but rather for his grandfather, Karl Heinrich Ahrens, who was the first county treasurer and a prominent businessman.

We had an early dinner at the Rum Runner, a pub in the basement of the Walper Hotel. Carl's great-grandfather, Frederick Gaukel, owned the original hotel that was on this site - called Gaukel's Inn. Two streets are named after him in town - Frederick and
Gaukel Streets.

Supposedly there is a ghost in the basement of the current hotel, and several servers have seen him. They all describe the same man in a top hat and said he is not threatening, so they just go on about their
business. It must not be Frederick keeping an eye on his business. Having seen a photo of him, I can't imagine people not being frightened by his ghost.

September 25th, 2004

It was a late night last night because my friends Mike and Wendy didn't arrive in town until about 10:00. It was my first time meeting them in person and we all hit it off, so we were up talking until after one in the morning.

The first thing on the agenda today was finding Big Trees, the house Carl and Madonna lived in from 1923-1935. My grandmother grew up in that house and always spoke of it fondly. I have seen many pictures of the place, and was actually there when I was eight years old. The owner at the time was quite old, and new housing developments were taking over the area even then; my father feared it would be torn down. Mike and Wendy drove down earlier in the year as a favor to me and found the house on their own. Not bad considering all I could tell them was that it was in the Galt District of Cambridge, and e-mail a couple of photos.

There was no mistaking that we had the right house, though it had been fixed up a lot since the last time I was there - in 1982. I don't remember there being a house to the east of it before. Thankfully there were cars in the driveway, and the beagle by the house did not appear about to attack, or even bark for that matter. We decided that Chris and I would introduce ourselves first, and Mike had the foresight to bring along some historical pictures to prove our connection to the house.

It was a surreal experience walking into the shade of an 80 foot tall Norway Spruce that had stood watch over the place since Carl was living there, to run my hand over the stones on the right side of the front doorway, knowing he had leaned against those same
stones for a photograph taken back in 1934. We rang the doorbell several times, but no one answered. As the dog had yet to announce our presence, we decided to check the garage out back.

We found one of the owners of the house. Norm was the only one home since his wife, Nancy, was on a business trip in Shanghai. By odd coincidence, my parents are living in Shanghai at the moment.

We showed Norm the pictures and explained who our great- grandfather was. We were careful to use the current Ontario pronunciation of the name (Air-ins)

instead of the one we had grown up using (Are-enz), knowing
he was more likely to recognize the name that way. He knew it immediately. Norm told us that when he and his wife bought the house over twenty years ago they were just looking for an old stone house. The realtor brought them to the house, saying that it was not technically for sale yet, but if the right buyer came along the owner likely would sell. They fell in love with the house, though they knew nothing about the history of it at the time. When they saw the catalog from the 1984 exhibition of Carl's prints, they saw a photo of Big Trees, looked at each other, and said, "That's our house!" Shortly after that they found one of Carl's prints and bought it, feeling it belonged in the house.

Norm invited all four of us into the house to see the print. The inside is very beautiful. The old carpeting I remembered from my last visit is gone, and the original pine floors are exposed. The
same floors my grandmother once skated over with rags tied to her feet. The owners are doing
a wonderful job restoring the place.

April 29, 2007

After the Carl Ahrens Day event, Norm and Nancy invited us back to the house. This time there were two grandchildren and three great-grandchildren making the trip. My Dad, Fred Downes, and Aunt Siegie are the youngest two children of Chloris (Ahrens) Downes, who was Carl and Madonna's youngest child. Chris Keith and Keila Baca are Siegie's children and I am the only child of Fred Downes. This time we toured the entire house, officially meeting the beagle watch-dog from our last visit, and were treated to some wonderful mandolin playing by Norm. I also got the opportunity to gaze out the window in the dining room at the Norway Spruce - this was Carl's window. He spent much of the last few years of his life stationed there in his Boston rocker.

September 27, 2004

This morning we drove to the Waterloo Pioneers Memorial Tower on the banks of the Grand River. The tower would have been a familiar sight to Carl, as it is located not far from Homer Watson's old house, and just across the river from Cressman's Woods (now Homer Watson Park), which was a frequent sketching location. We got decent pictures of both the tower and the river, though we had to be careful where we pointed the camera, as there is a sewage treatment plant right there.

After this little side trip we drove to Doon Heritage Crossroads, a historic park, and new location of several old houses from the area. It is a living history museum constantly in the year 1914. People walk around at will, talking to volunteers who give the history of the various buildings or trades. We visited several houses, a general store, a tailor, a post office, the blacksmith shop, and a church, eventually ending up in a clearing with many of Carl's favorite oak trees. I climbed one for the photo below.

The next stop was the Homer Watson House and Gallery, which is usually closed on Mondays, but we were expected. I met Alison, a very helpful contact of mine from the Gallery. She had a stack of material photocopied for me and had taken itupon herself to contact the daughter of Frank Page, a journalist who had written a book that includes a chapter about Carl and Homer. The daughter sent a bunch of photos for me and an original letter from Carl to Frank Page that is in fantastic shape.
What were the odds of such a thing being handed to me 70 years after being written?

September 27th, 2004 - Doon, Ontario

Our last stop of the day was Homer Watson Park, which was a frequent sketching destination for both Carl and Homer from very early on in their careers. We walked back quite a way and did not run into another person the whole way. Definitely one of those occasions where time seemed to stand still. If it weren't for the clicking of Chris' digital camera, it would have been easy to imagine coming upon Carl here. He would have been perched overlooking the river, his back against an oak, with a sketching easel in his lap...