The following article appears in the Fall 2006 (Vol. 9/No.2) issue.

"I know, my dear Watson, that you share my love of all that is bizarre and outside the conventions and humdrum routine of everyday life."  

-- Holmes to Watson in "The Red Headed League."

The longing for escape from the conventions and humdrum routine of everyday life is universal. The world of Sherlock Holmes, created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, answers this longing. To exchange a world of electric lights for a world of shadows; to leave our crowded streets for streets of mystery lit by hushed and flickering gas-light; to swap the automobile for a rattling hansom cab; to go forth on adventures; to meet danger face to face; to encounter evil and defeat it: to do these things, if only in the imagination, is to enter the world of Sherlock Holmes.

With these words opens the small pamphlet, Sherlock Holmes is Alive and Well at the Metropolitan Toronto Library, prepared early in the history of the Collection to introduce the public to this treasure-trove, and to the characters we all love so well.

After 35 years, the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection continues to offer its visitors that escape into the many worlds created by Arthur Conan Doyle – from the gas-lit streets of London, to the chivalrous world of The White Company, to that of the irascible Professor Challenger – and to the very real-life histories of the tumultuous times at the close of Victoria's reign.

In preparation for this special issue celebrating the anniversary of the Collection, a number of Friends were asked to contribute TWO paragraphs that would describe their fond memories of the ACD Collection over its storied history. The response was most gratifying – both from those who stuck to the two paragraphs – and from those who could not resist the opportunity to say more.

(After great deliberation as to the order in which to present these – the editors fell back on the most obvious – alphabetical!)

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Jim Ballinger, MBt, was for several years "Lassus" of the Bootmakers of Toronto, entertaining at every meeting with original songs – composed for the occasion. He now resides in London, England, where he is a research Pharmacologist at Guy's Hospital, and member of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London.

I never saw the collection in its original location on College Street, though I was certainly aware of it from media stories about the Bootmakers. That was before I came out of the Sherlockian closet. However, after the move to Yonge Street I began to visit on Wednesday evenings or Saturday afternoons to collect Sherlockian music. Being a student at the time (and being a Ballinger still), I was too cheap to pay for photocopies, so I copied in longhand and still have those scribbles on file. It was one wintry Wednesday evening that I first showed the lyrics of "The Solitary Cyclist" to Cameron Hollyer and Bob Coghill, some weeks before its first performance at the January dinner in 1981.

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Peter Blau, MBt, BSI, a resident of Bethesda, MD, is a member of the leadership of the Baker Street Irregulars and an omnivorous collector of Sherlockiana. He sits at the centre of a web, collecting news and information he shares through his regular newsletter "Scuttlebits and Bytes."

My association with the collection began in December 1971 when at John Bennett Shaw's command, I came to Toronto for "A Weekend with Sherlock." We happily attended the various festivities, most of which seemed to be conducted by and for librarians, many of whom were amazed or bemused when John performed as the Saturday dinner speaker at the Walker House. It is also a delight to recall Don Redmond leading the group singing "A Song for Sub-Librarians", which I hope will be part of this year's commemorative schedule.

I vividly recall running the maze that led to the Collection in the old Library building, and it was a nice collection indeed, with some 2000 items acquired in 1969 and 1970, which does lead one to wonder why this event isn't ACD@37.. And it was a delight to see Tupper Bigelow again (we were in the "class of 1959" of the Baker Street Irregulars), and to meet many more Canadians. I also vividly recall returning to Washington on Sunday and awakening on Monday to discover that I had been burgled, but that, as they say, is another story.

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Peter Calamai, MBt, BSI, is the award-winning national science reporter for The Toronto Star, who uses every opportunity to inject Sherlockian references into his writing. He is a frequent contributor to Sherlockian and Doylean publications.

Entering the ACD Room is like discovering Aladdin's Cave, over and over again. Everywhere treasure beckons – the Canon in every permutation and combination imaginable (and some not so easily imagined), a proliferation of learned journals and scion newsletters, some venerable and some long vanished, plus artefacts, posters, merchandise, memorabilia, the vertical files, all cosseted in an atmosphere of old oak and well-worn leather.

And then the keeper of the Cave appears from a mysterious "cage" deep in the nether regions, bearing still rarer treasures: first editions, inscribed volumes, pages in Doyle's own hand. All is quiet, all is reverence, all is bliss.

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Wilfrid de Freitas, MBt, BSI, is a prominent Montreal antiquarian book dealer, specializing in Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes. He is a founder of The Bimetallic Question of Montreal and travels the world in his search for treasures to tempt us.

The first thought that entered my mind as I careened off highway 401 en route back from Toronto to Montreal that November evening in 1978 was "Omigawd, I hope the books don't get damaged".

I had been visiting my old (OK, long-time) friend Cameron Hollyer at the Metro Toronto Public Library, and drooling (figuratively, of course) over some of the treasures in its Conan Doyle collection with Cameron as my guide, and was now driving home to Montreal. At this distance in time I can't say for certain what caused me to lose my concentration; most likely it was the visions of ACD sugarplums dancing in my head, not to mention some of the delicious treasures which Cameron had helped me acquire, and which I had with me in the car. The next thing I knew, I had gone off the road at around seventy miles an hour, flipped over twice and come to rest in the grassy median, the right way up. Everything in my 1972 VW Beetle was all over the place, including my precious cargo. The car was a wreck but, fortunately, I was unharmed so I scrambled out and started gathering up the books. Inevitably, a few were damaged but most of them survived; in fact, now almost thirty years later, I find I still have one of those treasures Cameron found for me.

But to get back to Cameron - he was always Cameron, never Cam - my principal recollection of him is that he was a gentle man, who wore his vast knowledge of the ACD collection lightly. Many a time I would write him excitedly about a new (well, new to me anyway) bibliographical discovery, only to have him bring me back down to earth with an immediate but quiet "Ah yes, is it the issue with the publisher's catalogue dated October 1895, or January 1896? We have them both." He hardly ever said "I'll have to check and call you back", because he knew the collection so intimately. And he had a delightful self-deprecating sense of humour, which he would often use to deflect a compliment about his encyclopaedic knowledge of ACD. I remember a few occasions being at the same table with him and his wife Mary, when the Bootmakers had their annual awards dinner at The Old Mill restaurant in the 1980s. In those days there would be nearly a hundred and fifty guests, and at our table for eight (or was it ten?), Cameron would look on with quiet bemusement at the rest of us showing off our new-found knowledge about matters Sherlockian. Then, out of the blue, he would interject a simple question or remark about the matter under discussion, quite unintentionally bringing us all to heel. That was his way.

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Georgina Doyle is the widow of Brigadier John Doyle, Arthur Conan Doyle's nephew. She has devoted considerable time, resources and skill in researching Conan Doyle's family – in particular that of his first family, with Louise and their children Mary and Kingsley. The result of her research, Out of the Shadows, was published in 2004 by Calabash Press. Mrs Doyle resides in Devonshire.

The title of the booklet told me that Sherlock Holmes was alive and well at the Metropolitan Toronto Library: The Arthur Conan Doyle Collection.

The Arthur Conan Doyle Collection began in 1969, representing both the literary life of Arthur Conan Doyle and the Sherlock Holmes tradition. With this information in mind I made my first visit to the library in 1994. I was researching for my book then, so spent a useful time in the main reference library before being taken upstairs to the 5th floor to see the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection.

The above mentioned booklet had not adequately prepared me for this and I was delighted with the tour given me by the then Curator, Victoria Gill. At the same time I met others who subsequently became my "Friends", helping with the publication of Out of the Shadows, which could not have appeared without their help. I hope they will remain friends as well. My second visit was in 2003, when I was again able to appreciate the fact that the Collection seems able successfully to combine giving access to researchers, while at the same time providing necessary preservation and restoration. On this occasion I was fortunate in being able to meet many Bootmakers, and am proud to wear the pin presented to me.

Under its very able Chairman of the Friends of the Collection, Doug Wrigglesworth, and the new Curator, Peggy Perdue, I am sure the Collection will go from strength to strength. Of course, Conan Doyle material is scattered throughout the world, but researchers in Canada are indeed fortunate to have a splendid centre in Toronto in which to obtain valuable help.

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Doug Elliott, MBt, BSI, is a long-time Bootmaker and one of the founders of the Friends of the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection. He has written extensively on Arthur Conan Doyle and is currently working on an annotated edition of The White Company from his new home near Sydney, Australia.

Every entry into that tiny book-lined room on the fifth floor was a wow moment, like emerging from Toronto's Rogers Centre's dim concession area into the immense glare of the stadium, only in reverse. The contrast between the bright functional airiness of the Library's vast atrium and the soft cosiness of the ACD room always took my breath away – literally: I'd let out a long slow exhalation that released the day's tensions and replaced them with a snug stillness, settling Zen-like into my research in the hushed atmosphere of a simpler century.

During my earlier visits, more frequent in the 1980s than recently, the only object in motion other than me would be Cameron. He'd work away quietly at the librarian's desk until, in response to some esoteric query, he'd unwind his lanky frame and glide unerringly to the right shelf, easing out the right volume. No disrespect to later curators, the ACD room will always be Cameron's home for me, and it will always be 1985.

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Philip Elliott, MBt, is the current Meyers of the Bootmakers, and is the archivist for both the Bootmakers and the Friends. He has been a generous and energetic supporter of the Friends from early days.

Some of the fond memories I have of the Collection, revolve around its curators Cameron Hollyer, Victoria Gill and Peggy Perdue. Cameron was the Collection's first curator and was both eager and helpful to all who took an interest in Sherlock Holmes and the writings of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Upon Cameron's retirement Victoria Gill stepped in as second curator, also supplying support and expertise to those who wished to study the Master's life and methods. Upon Victoria's retirement she was succeeded by Peggy Perdue. Although she has only been with us a short time, her ideas and suggestions in helping people to understand and become interested in the Collection are already being effective.  Everyone who has had the opportunity to use the Collection, one of the great public collections of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes, has been touched by each of the curators as they continue to "keep the memory of the master green".

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Cliff Goldfarb, MBt, BSI, is a founder of the Friends and is its vice-chair.  He is also organising chair and guiding spirit of the forthcoming ACD@35 conference. As a collector and scholar, he specializes in the Conan Doyle Brigadier Gerard stories. His book, The Great Shadow, on the Napoleonic stories of ACD is considered the definitive work on the subject. Cliff practices law in Toronto.

I have so many happy recollections of time spent in the Collection, but it is not hard at all to choose just one. In the period from 1993-1996 I was engaged in writing a book about Arthur Conan Doyle's Napoleonic War stories, which eventually was published as The Great Shadow. At the time I was going through a difficult period at the office. Whenever I felt the pressures of practice becoming too oppressive, I would tell my secretary that I was taking a ‘PD day’ (sometimes just a 'PD afternoon') and escape to the Library. There I would spend the rest of the day, locked in the ACD Room with my notes and reading material and the gentle company of Cameron Hollyer or Victoria Gill, away from the harsh realities of the business world and inside the world of Arthur Conan Doyle, Brigadier Gerard and Napoleon. I can't say for sure that this escape hatch was solely responsible for helping me to get through my difficult time, but I am morally certain that it made a big difference. I doubt that most people's recollections or appreciation of the Collection include its cathartic or therapeutic qualities, but I will be forever grateful for the respite that it provided for me.

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David Kotin is Manager, Special Collections, Archives and Digital Collections for the Toronto Public Library, and as such has been involved in supporting, guiding and befriending the Friends as they work with Library staff. He has found the world of Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes more absorbing than he had first anticipated.

"Each fact is suggestive in itself. Together they have a cumulative force"
--The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans

In 1959 I was twelve and I read The Complete Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock became a friend to an unhappy, lonely kid. In an odd way he provided me solace, security, and safety (I didn't read The Catcher in the Rye until I was 19). Sherlock was a hero who had problems, but he had a best friend. When I read a story I felt better. Even the feel of the large Doubleday volume with its deckle edges and its lost dust jacket was comforting. I remember so well lying in bed with it on my chest. Then I discovered the Beatles and gradually Sherlock became a fond, distant memory.

In 1981, when I was working for another library system, I applied for the Head of the Literature Department of the Metropolitan Toronto Reference Library. Mary McMahon had just retired. I wanted to be with Sherlock again and in preparation for the interview I read Sherlock Holmes Is Alive and Well and Living in Toronto. I also researched the collection and was served by a strange Quixote-like man who smelled of tobacco. Katherine McCook got the job, but my friendship with Sherlock was renewed and my relationship with Cameron Hollyer was born.

To me, as for most, Cameron was the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection. When I did get a job at "Metro" in 1982, it was as Head of Canadian History, not Literature, but ACD and Cameron were only a floor away. His presence was felt whenever I visited the 5^th floor. Fourteen years or so later, the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection became part of the newly formed Special Collections Centre. By then Cameron had retired, but like all major figures his legacy was established and I learned in a direct and real way the extent of his influence and accomplishments. I still see the spot in the corner of the workroom where Cameron sat, legs crossed, surrounded by mountains of books. I still remember the harrowing ride home he gave me from a Friends' meeting when I discovered that driving was not one of his strengths.

Cameron was aptly invested as "The Three Students"-- no one person could replace his erudition. It took a whole organization to come close: The Friends. The last fact I'll share has to do with them. When the group was founded by Doug Wrigglesworth and Cliff Goldfarb about 10 years ago, I did not suspect the impact and importance it would have in the life of the Collection: conferences, publications, exhibitions, acquisitions, programs, donations, fundraising, marketing, not to mention personalities, lobbying, and gentle pressure-tactics—and always, the enthusiasm.

I visualize Doug Wrigglesworth in a phone booth outside Christie's in London on a May afternoon: "We got his travel journal! - and it has the first draft of The Athabaska Trail."

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Andrew Lycett is the award-winning biographer of Rudyard Kipling, Dylan Thomas, Ian Fleming and others. Currently he is at work on a definitive biography of Arthur Conan Doyle based on primary source material. He lives and works in London, England, when not scouring the world for such material.

My main recollection of the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection is not so much a memory as a feeling. I was struck by the extraordinary enthusiasm and dedication of the team that runs the show. I must admit my initial visit to Toronto was fleeting. But I was impressed by the wit and erudition of the group that gathered to meet me over dinner on the night I arrived. And I was delighted, when I was making my way through the material at the Public Library the following day, to find myself interrupted (in a pleasant manner) by David Kotin, popping in beyond the call of duty on a Saturday, Doug Wrigglesworth, cheerfully folding copies of The Magic Door and placing them in envelopes to be sent to Friends of the Collection, and Cliff Goldfarb, clutching the valuable copy of Sir Arthur's notebook about the Duke of Wellington which he personally had bought in the 2004 auction at Christie's and which he generously allowed me to read.

The Collection itself comprises a delightfully eclectic range. Though mainly Canadian orientated, it has accumulated papers which are essential to the biographer of Conan Doyle. The letters from Sir Arthur to Greenough Smith, his editor at The Strand Magazine, have been variously digested, but there is no substitute for perusing the autograph material oneself. Only that way can one make up one's own mind on, say, various imprecise matters of dating - one of the banes and the thrills of the biographical pursuit. And elsewhere there is a cornucopia of detail. The fact that Lady Jean spent £8.12s.6d on three frocks at Harvey Nichols in July 1926 may not be essential, but it adds to the overall picture of the Conan Doyle household.

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Dayna McCausland, MBt, ASH, is a long-time Bootmaker and has been a member of the Friends Board from the early days. She is a member of the Editorial Board for Magic Door, and a frequent contributor. Dayna is also the founder and chair of the Lewis Carroll Society of Canada.

There is a little room tucked away on the fifth floor of the Metro Toronto Reference Library. To go through the door is almost like being whisked back in time. The corner has the feel of 221B, with its mantle, chairs and faded carpet. All around you are Sherlockian touches: a gasogene, six Napoleons, a rock from Reichenbach Falls. The room certainly has a quirky charm that you don't expect in such a modern building.

Over the years I have visited the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection many times, mostly with research in mind. Whatever my subject, the Collection always has what I need. When I arrive I always head straight for the mantle to gaze longingly at the Paget illustration hanging above. Then I look over at the Collier's Magazine cover by Frederick Dore Steele (with the missing "m" in Holmes). I spread out my research materials around me at the long table and get down to work. On my way to the shelves to find another book I glance out the window and it always surprises me that I am up so high, gazing out at a bustling, modern city when time seems to have stopped in here. That, to me, is a perfect afternoon.

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Janice McNabb, MBt, was an assistant to Cameron Hollyer for several years and was an important resource for visitors as well as for the Curator. She was instrumental in introducing a number of visitors to the wonders of the Sherlockian World. Janiced currently lives in St. Catharines where she works at Brock University.

Always in my memory it is late afternoon in the ACD room – fragrant with the perfume of old paper, the amber warmth of western sunlight angling through the lancet window onto the gleaming oak worktable. Hours ebbed and flowed in that timeless cloister, interrupted only by other companionable scholars or the occasional coffee break. I may have been duty staff, and kept to my assigned schedule, but Cameron spent uncounted hours lost in study in the twilight of Holmes'recreated sitting room, under a spill of lamplight.

During my tenure with the Collection, a large percentage of my time was spent in maintaining and adding to the Bigelow Index, a card index originally compiled by Judge Tupper Bigelow to catalogue his definitive collection of correspondence, articles, newsletters, and monograph publications. Once this Index became a part of the ACD Collection, every book, journal, newsletter, newspaper clipping, and artefact added to the collection was also given its set of Index entries, averaging three or four each. A glowing oak cabinet was salvaged from the old College street library furnishings, and the Index was housed in this appropriately splendid edifice – where it still resides today. I worked on a lovely coral-coloured IBM Selectric and typed my way through hundreds of cards every year. How long ago the technology of the eighties seems now.

From Cameron I came to understand the necessity of examining an oblique approach to apparently sequential data, the need to embrace simultaneous contradictory arguments, and the creative absolute that the whole story is never entirely told. I learned that there is always one more reference to verify, one further interpretation to consider, one more path to explore before final edit. He was a rigorously objective scholar, and could smell out an unsubstantiated argument no matter how carefully camouflaged. The physical tingle that announces an intersection of separate facts, the almost audible click as serendipity too frequent for coincidence recurs, the turbulent urgency of all the other interconnected stories glittering so enticingly just out of reach – all this is his legacy to me. He opened the world of scholarship like the covers of a precious first edition, and my life has never been the same.

I came to know and love an extraordinary group of gentle, scholarly souls in that room, Sherlockians of every stripe, as they came to view and stayed to study in the nurturing silence of the Collection, drawn from across the world not only by a love of the Canon, but by shared values of scholarship and fancy, who have remained steadfast in the timeless niche of memory, where "it is always 1895".

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Hartley Nathan, MBt, BSI, is one of the original Bootmakers who has continued to provide witty and scholarly contributions to meetings.

Judge Tupper Bigelow was the pre-eminent Sherlockian legal scholar and collector. His Index to the Writings upon the Writings was compiled by him in 1974 for the Metro Toronto Central Library. He sold his collection to the Library after his retirement from the bench in 1976. I had met him on several occasions in the 1970s as described in The Baker Street Briefs, published by the Library in 1993, the year he died.

However, I had inadvertently killed him off years before. Upon my return from a holiday one winter, I visited the Sleuth of Baker Street to pick up a book or two. There were several with his name in them. The then proprietor told me she had bought them from his estate and I subsequently bought them from her. I immediately called John Linsenmeyer in New York State. A week later at an executive meeting at the Library, Eric Silk informed me he had played bridge with Tupper earlier that day. The reports of Tupper's death had been greatly exaggerated.

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Marilyn Penner is a library assistant in Special Collections who has for many years taken a special interest in the ACD Collection. Marilyn provides an important source of historic knowledge of the Collection and has demonstrated her literary wit with her popular "Canon Fodder" column in Magic Door.

The Arthur Conan Doyle Room, in my eyes, is the friendly wink of an otherwise sober, serious institution. Genealogy buffs search the library for their roots, philosophers for the meaning of life, but here, tucked into the top right hand corner, reposes the little magic room that keeps the place from becoming merely an information factory. We can show our whimsical side here. We can have fun manipulating facts to suit fiction.

The Room is a magic place. I sometimes ‘see’ the characters of Doyle's works, usually in shadow but sometimes clearly, when I shelve. They flit about like the fairies Sir Arthur believed in. Since I've been given the opportunity to write "Canon Fodder", I take a note pad with me to jot down the flashes.

I like showing off the Room. The local patrons usually say, “I’ve been in the library numerous times but I’ve never seen this before.” Out of town folk make a special trip to see it. It’s such a treat to show them Doyle’s handwriting or the first edition of A Study in Scarlet. I found it a treat to hear Victoria discourse on the Room, as it is to watch Peggy at it now. Mr. Hollyer was interesting too. Whenever he visited, I bombarded him with questions. I also like watching two Sherlockians exchange greetings as though in an English clubroom – and listening in on their Sherlockian talk.

Most visitors enjoy the ‘Victorian’ ambiance of the Room. The contrast between the two libraries separated by the glass ‘Magic Door’ visibly startles them. They talk in hushed tones, as if the Room were a museum. Several ask if the furniture was Conan Doyle’s or Sherlock Holmes’, or if the Room is a replica of Sir Arthur’s study or of Holmes’ sitting room.

To me, the Room visually represents the Toronto Public Library’s roots as much as Holmes’s. The Bigelow-Redmond card index reminds me of the handwritten cards I saw in the old union card catalogue – nearly a hundred years old when it was supplanted by the computer. The table and chairs recall for me the picture of the reading room of the old Central Library; the shelves of old books resemble those in the picture of the library’s first staff. Their legacy remains here and continues through all who have worked here. To me, the Room and the Library are the physical embodiment of what we’ve done, what Toronto Public Library has been and still is to Toronto.

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For many years, Trevor Raymond, MBt, BSI, has been editor of Canadian Holmes, the highly respected journal of the Bootmakers of Toronto. A voracious collector of books, films and political ephemera, there are few subjects for which Trevor cannot find an obscure newspaper clipping, or film review. Trevor and his collection live in Georgetown, Ontario, where he is a founding member of the Main Street Irregulars.

Tread softly when you enter this room, for there are spirits. Spirits of romance and chivalry are here and a spirit of adventure is almost palpable. Volumes of military history tell us that the spirit of Clio hovers nearby, and in every nook of the room lurk spirits of mystery and wonder.

But you know that. What is known only to the curators, who pass on to each other this arcanum, is that personifications of many of these spirits populate this room once a year on the anniversary of the birth of their creator. As each May 22^nd begins, a few are freed from the confines of the pages onto which they have been bound for so long and breathe again the air they once shared with the knight for whom the room is named. Let us invisibly observe.

A pensioned army surgeon and writer is browsing the shelves. At first he is immensely proud to find the many splendid editions of his work, and he loses count of the number of translations. He is pondering what royalties he might earn today when his pride turns to puzzlement as he ventures to other shelves. He does not remember writing any of the large number of chronicles he finds attributed to him. He tries to recall just how many manuscripts he secured in his dispatch box at Cox’s. A dozen? But he finds many more than a dozen dozen here.

In the corner, sitting by a fireplace mantel that appears to have no purpose but which he appreciates because, as always, the caring curator has left out on it some fine tobacco, is a tall thin man. He might not be noticed but for the occasional glow from his old and oily black pipe. He remembers from previous visits what is on the shelves and he has little interest in most of it. He wryly recalls criticizing his biographer for embellishing straightforward scientific exercises into romantic sensationalism, but not even in days of his Strand fame – and he is secretly pleased to see a complete run of issues of that journal on a nearby wall – did his biographer allege that he travelled through time or had encounters with supernatural Transylvanian counts. What ineffable twaddle. But he knows that he has only a few hours allotted him to stretch his long legs and enjoy his smoke, and any exasperation he might once have felt is subsumed by the pleasure of a pipe that has been denied him for 364 days.

Seated across from each other at the long wooden table are two military figures, one of them the only titled person present this night. He wears a thin but uncomfortable-looking coat of chain mail and has little to say to the French brigadier opposite but the night is too short for chat and the two men are hunched over the chessboard familiar to us regular visitors. The French officer has just moved his bishop and his opponent contemplates a reply; the Englishman is skilled, we know, at the strategic use of knights.

Nearby stands a man with a huge head and a florid face mostly covered by a dense black beard which ripples down over his chest. His usual gruff disposition is subdued since he has been confined so long in a nearby volume awaiting this brief night of life. At the moment, his thoughts have drifted to happier times in jungles never seen by modern man and to creatures the world thought long vanished, but soon he will take a seat at the table for he waits to challenge the winner of the chess match. And the games must be ended before even a hint of dawn appears, for this magical night is cruelly short, lasting only as long as the hours of darkness when the powers of imagination are exalted.

Next May 22^nd when the room is opened, perhaps you will detect just a trace of the pungent odour left by several pipes of shag. The curator will have worked hard in the morning to dispel it, of course, and if your olfactory sense is not sharp enough there are other signs to look for. Can you be quite certain that the chess pieces are precisely where they were yesterday? That each pawn, for instance, occupies the same square? If, sadly, you insist on scepticism, you have forgotten a young boy who once frequented his grandfather’s bookshop just a few blocks south on this very street, and who would one day grow up to remind us in an immortal sonnet, “Only those things the heart believes are true.” His spirit, too, is in this enchanted room.

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Chris Redmond, MBt, BSI, is a widely published author and editor. His books have provided scholarship and joy to both Sherlockians and Doyleans. He has also edited both Canadian Holmes and The Magic Door. Chris is also the webmaster for www.Sherlockian.net, considered the pre-eminent web site for Sherlockians. Chris lives and works in Waterloo, Ontario.

Over the years I have been able to use the ACD Collection in person much less than researchers who actually live in Toronto. I have, however, made up for that lack by frequent correspondence with the wonderful people who have served it, notably Cameron Hollyer (whose letters were a delight of highly original typography, wandering margins and literary allusions), the erudite and punctilious Janice McNabb, and Victoria Gill, a paragon of conscientious thoroughness. Particularly when I was doing the very demanding research for my book Welcome to America Mr. Sherlock Holmes, no question was too obscure or improbable to occupy Library time and expertise, and I was very much the beneficiary.

Of course I did also visit the Collection in person, often enough for it to seem like home -- Mr. Holmes's home, if not my own. What never seemed quite right was that Room 221B had been transplanted to the fifth floor of an award-winning example of modern architecture. It felt much more appropriate in its previous location, on the second floor of the old Central Library on College Street, where construction and furnishing alike seemed to date from the very heart of the later Victorian era. So, to my young eyes in the early 1970s, did Cameron Hollyer himself. On one occasion I visited him there to consult some tome or other, and we continued our conversation over a glass of beer. I must have bought the drinks, since a few days later I received a thank-you note from him, structured as a pastiche of a William Carlos Williams poem (one of his many enthusiasms from a generation later than Holmes's). I was charmed, as I have always been charmed by everything to do with Room 221B and the Collection -- and I still am.

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Mike Whelan, MBt, BSI is the current “Wiggins” of the Baker Street Irregulars, and as such, a major leader of the Sherlockian world. He has been a most important influence in rejuvenating the literary aspect of Sherlockiana through the publishing projects of the BSI. Mike has strong historical connections with both the Bootmakers and the Collection. He currently resides in Indianapolis, IN.

My Canadian friends, with characteristic modesty, will probably not mention on the occasion of ACD@35 that in the early 1970s the Bootmakers and the Metropolitan Toronto Central Library created the first North American Sherlockian conference. This partnership is just as vibrant today as it was 35 years ago. Unfortunately, many of the movers and shakers of that earlier time are sadly no longer with us.

The vision to create this remarkable and prescient public collection of Doylean material was largely provided by Cameron Hollyer and John Parkhill. These gentlemen not only made this important collection happen, but also had the insight to create a special room in which to display it for the benefit of the general public. With the advent of the ACD Room at the old Library this magnificent collection now had a proper repository in which to be housed..... and viewed. What a thrill it was at that time to have these wonderful artefacts out of the stacks and in a venue any private collector would have been thrilled to possess. Cam Hollyer, though himself a very modest man, shepherded the expansion of the Collection with unflagging dedication and perseverance. He extended his most gracious hospitality to visitors of the Collection as he personally welcomed thousands of visitors--collectors, researchers and curiosity seekers--over the years.

On a personal note, my last memories of Cam are bittersweet. He hadn’t been to a Baker Street Irregular dinner for some time so I wrote to encourage him to come to New York City, which he did. His many friends were extremely delighted to see him, and I later felt he had a very enjoyable time that January weekend. A few months later,Cam was gone but I was very happy that he had given the Irregulars the pleasure of his company one last time.

Links:
Toronto Reference Library
Toronto Reference Library's Special Collections page

Friends main