I love the smell of leather. Why? If you get me anywhere near fine leather, the scent transports me back to my Grandad’s harness-making shop.
Isaac Baker lived his whole life on a farm north of Toronto, bounded by Dufferin and Bathurst Streets on each side, and Langstaff Road to the south. Now, the only part of the farm not under house-filled subdivisions is the eighty acre sugar bush, still standing tall and proud at the corner of Hwy 407 and Bathurst, and Grandad’s shop and house, closer to Dufferin.
Although the sugar bush, managed by my great uncle, with its many maple trees and hundreds and hundreds of gallons of sap collected each spring, figured large in my mother’s childhood, it never did in mine. Instead, I remember the leather shop and the tall west windows casting light over the main workbench. It was there that he’d let us play. Continue reading “I Love Leather”