Deep friendship, bygone lifestyle portrayed in The Face of Cliff

Paul Eprile has been reliving a formative relationship long preserved on silver emulsion.   

He has been studying photographs taken more than 30 years ago, in preparation for an exhibition, The Face of Cliff. Until recently, Eprile had not seen many of the 35 mm images any larger than they appeared on contact sheets but now, having had the negatives scanned, he is seeing them in detail for the first time.

The photos document the life of Clifford Lindsay, a long-time close friend of Eprile’s, despite a 50-year age difference.

Paul was living on a farm on Concession 10 Nottawasaga with his brother. It was 1974. He said although they were clueless about life in the country they relished everything about it.

“We were city boys, we didn’t know much about anything,” said Eprile.

He said they were fascinated by cedar rail fences and set out to build one. Clad in their expensive overcoats procured from rummage sales, they were out gathering cedar posts from the side of the road one day when a man pulled up in a purple Volkswagen Beetle. He was wearing a peaked hat, had a bushy beard and was smoking a corncob pipe, which Eprile would come to know as Cliff’s standards. Cliff also lived on the secluded road and the two of them would spend countless hours together in the years to come, especially during the long winters when they were the only two living in the neighbourhood.

The men would talk for hours, with Cliff happily sharing his knowledge about the area, how it had changed, and the elements, gently teaching Eprile about the earth and life in the country.

“We would sit, drink, smoke and ‘tell lies’,” said Eprile.

That first spring after coming to the country, Eprile said he wanted to make maple syrup but didn’t know where to start. Cliff taught them how.

“From that point on he was a mentor, sort of a father figure, no matter how unlikely. He taught me so much,” he said. 

Ten years into their friendship, Eprile, now 30, was studying photography and set about documenting the life of Cliff, now 81. The black-and-white images capture Cliff’s face, his cabin and its contents, all shot with available light. Some of the images show Cliff moving through the space as a ghostly blur and others capture every whisker of his beard and every wrinkle in crisp detail.

Cliff was minimalist in his movements and the way he expended energy. Eprile said he only ever used the same few dishes and rather than washing them in the sink, he just wiped them off. He was a lean man, subsisting on a steady diet of headcheese and store-bought pie, which he called soggy pie.

His cabin didn’t have indoor plumbing or running water so he fetched buckets of water from a spring and had a three-seater outhouse, possibly salvaged from the Madill school, where he had been a pupil. The outhouse walls, recalls Eprile, were patched with old licence plates and were decorated with pinup girl calendars. 

Eprile said when he first met Cliff he was a vodka drinker but he later switched to alcool, which he drank out of a small juice glass with a floral design. He would hold out the glass and say “up to the flowers” when it was time for a refill. 

“I learned to drink with Cliff. For him it was sort of like breathing, a steady feed into his system,” said Eprile. “He was a steady and enthusiastic drinker.”

Despite his simple ways, Eprile says Cliff was an extraordinary ordinary person.

“He was an enlightened person. He was extremely mindful. He seemed to have unbroken awareness,” said Eprile. “Time passed slowly with him so things were more solid.”

Although Cliff was loved and appreciated by people in the neighbourhood, not everyone adored him. He had troubled relationships with members of his family.

The exhibit, sponsored by Creemore Log Cabin and The Creemore Echo, will be accompanied by a number of poems Eprile wrote about Cliff. Poetry readings are scheduled for Oct. 1 and 2, at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. each day.

The show will be open each day from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. It will stay up for the following weekend, Oct. 8-9. Viewing hours will be from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. each day.