Once upon a time a Irish princess joined her dad in
a expedition to the North Eastern part of Britain in the
late 6th century.There she met the local Prince Owain.
His kingdom was in dissarray after the assassination of
the King,and his Alliance was engaged in a civil war with
recent immigrants from the mainland.

    The sparks flew and the tale has come down through the
ages in various forms.One of these is a childrens book
titled "The Loathsome Dragon".

       Near the beginning of WW1 a dutch youth who
would later be known as a quiet spoken grandfather was
anything but meek and gentle.

       He was a smuggler who brought in contraband across
the Dutch/German border.The authorities caught him and
he was sent to prison.

          It was in prison that he recieved the foot long scar
from the knife fight.

     When his mother died in 1921 he was forced to
abandon his criminal ways and grow up pretty fast.He
met a girl ,they got married and raised a family.

      The RumRummer,for it was he,was a tight fisted miser,
which was a characteristic shared with the Champion
Owain.

     Later WW2 came along and the smuggling and
blackmarket opportunities re-emerged in that area of
Holland.

        It was a complex brew,where the German occupying
soldier was a friend(nudge nudge wink wink),your cousin
was fighting in Russia ,your uncle was hiding Jews in the
back shed and your neighbour was a filthy collaborator.

           In Dragons of Histh this was the region talked
about when the dragons were involved in the
Great War.

          The war ended and after Holland lost Indonesia
the RumRunner and his family headed across the Atlantic
to Halifax,Nova Scotia,Canada.Slowly they made their
way down to Ontario.

          In Dragons of Histh,this is described as the
Great Migration.

      The year 1995 was the year a neighbours labrador
retriever visited a Waterloo mennonite farmers sheep
dog.Out of this union was born a pup named Heidi,who
a farmer from the south bought in July for $75.As the
farmer headed south again the frightened pup hid behind
the drivers seat.That year she visited a International
Ploughing Match,where many a visitor asked the farmer
if she were one of the attractions since she was s friendly
around children.

      At this same time there lived a very rich baker
in the GTA.His wife was a socialite in very high places.
She was Irish born and they were friends with royalty.The
rich baker had met a Jew and they'd struck a deal that put
the Jew's travel agencies inside the rick bakers bakeries.The
baker and his wife were also patrons of the arts,as was a
Indian they would later have dealings with.

In the
GTA also lived the farmers sister,who was a travel
councellor by profession.

               Down in Philadelphia lived a bad person
who had connections to Russia and Israel.

The rich baker also had
connections to Ireland,Israel,the USA and the fashion
and art communities.

      The travel councellor met the Jew and bought a store
in one of the rich bakers bigger stores in 1998.

While things in the
GTA puttered along the Philadelphia bad person was
kicked out of the USA and returned to his boyhood haunts
in the GTA.By 1998 the bad person had figured out a travel
agency would come in handy in his line of work.He set
one up and dreamed of a enterprise that would allow him to
travel in the same social circles as rich bakers and Indians.

       Being a bad person however his method of achieving
his goals was suspect.He knew of a corrupt African state
where you could scoop up diamonds off the desert floor
if you made appropriate gifts.

    The bad person was eyeing the travel business's in the rich
bakers store .In early 1999 the Jew yanked out $500,000
from the franchise to repay a loan his father had given him,
just before the law swooped in to seize the cash.

    There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth amongst
the people who had a store in the rich bakers stores.
The Indian nodded and spoke in whispers,but did nothing.

              Meanwhile the bad person had met a Hong Kong
acquaintance.They departed from their castles in Thornhill
and Richmond Hill and approached the rich baker with a
offer.They acquired the right to operate travel business's
in the rich bakers bigger stores.This would give the bad
man access to passports,a phone network,travel tickets
and other goodies bad people love to get their hands on.
Of course no one in the GTA knew about Philadephia,
except perhaps the Spy Agency.

                   So while the farmer
and Heidi pranced through a tiny region with perhaps
a 1000 souls in it,up in the GTA interesting things were
bubbling away as a gangster,a rich baker ,a Irish princess
played their roles and dreams in a international high
stakes game.

         Including threats by the bad person to the farmers
sister.Come the summer of 1999 the sister got her dress
caught in a preheated oven and when the oven door was
openned the dress burst into flame and the sister ran into the
night in shock and screaming.She wasn't expected to live
but somehow pulled through.

           With a second skin she returned to a travel agency
that had been deserted by her loyal helpers.After a decent
period the bad person resumed his threats

.In the
fall of 1999 the farmer and Mother went to Nova Scotia
to visit relatives where they met the Uncle who was the
ex Marine in the KNIL,whose ancestor had been a
mercenary in the Napoleonic wars.This Uncle appears
in Dragons of Histh somewhere near the end playing a
game of dragon soccer in the caverns.

       The farmer and Mother ( who also appears in
Dragons of Histh,as well as her sister who commtted
suicide in 1966 with a unborn child(Greta))returned to
the GTA .

               One month later the sister came to the rich bakers
store and discovered that her store had literally been ripped
out and tossed into the dumpster by the bad person.
Which was a shock.

                 This didn't help the computor Dragons
of Histh would later be typed out on either:BANG
goes "Rich Baker shopping cart".

        There was a period of mourning for about a quarter
of a year before the very bad person suddenly marched
in and created a stunningly beautiful and expensive new
store for the sister.At which point he was just a bad person
again.

Meanwhile his chinese acquaintance had gone
"kerpoof".

        This was the time when the sister clung to the beautiful
baby business like a mother hen,and had visions of
partnerships with the rich baker,his socialite wife,etc ,etc.

    By the way,the sisters partner in the Jew mans franchise
had been her dad(who shows up in Dragons of Histh as a
dragon explorer to the New World prior to the Great
Migration)himself also a veteran of the KNIL.

                    The other partner in this travel business was
 her holy friend(who used to work for the Spy Agency
watching bad people from his car while eating donuts)
who after the early 1999 breakdown departed the scene
more or less.The former Spy Agency spook,ex travel agent
is now a
Man of God.

         Dragons of Histh is the fault of "Rupert the Beaver"
In the summer of 2000 the farmer listened while sister
explained she wanted a new promotion to present to the
rich baker.Rupert the Beaver was going to be the mascot
for a new travel promotion.(Meanwhile the bad man was
apparently phoning in under assumed names and buying
tickets to African places)

              The farmer had other ideas.
Rupert was nice,but a real life southwestern Ontario
hamlet that had been founded the same year and month as
the country had would surely have more marketing potential
then Rupert.So the farmer banged out a ill written essay on
the historical wonders of a certain hamlet.

            The sisters
stunning shocking response was "Yawn,where is the Rupert
the Beaver promo for the rich baker ?"
      A stuffed toy was more important than a real world
hamlet with a least a century of real people buried in
its cemetary.
 

        If you want to pinpoint the moment Dragons of Histh
came to be,that was the moment.
 

      That led to a summer campaign of emails to the premier
and others up in government circles with the usual "wish
you the best to you" response letters.

              CBC also promoted The Great Canadian Story
Engine crosscountry tour that summer.This was the year
of the Canadian Flag giveaway ,Year 2000 celebrations
and the year the sisters astronaut friend would walk in
space.

                Somewhere in archive.org is probably a file titled
http://www.cbc.ca/storyengine/kinglakeasouthwesternontariohamlet
whose first lines run along the lines of
" Kinglake is the heartland of the contrary.....dust is
invisible in the air yet it surrounds and covers everything....
a forest of trees that was once a lake...a hamlet named for a
man who left no grave yet the man who built it and left
a grave,a blacksmith from Vienna named henry Walmsley,
has not a marker to honour him...."

       About a month or two after that the farmer was stressed
due to failures on the farm,failures to have the hamlet
recognized,failures in the markets and one night it all
came apart together  as "Margaret the Dragon".

       Which begat the Master Dragon builder which begat
the imperfect immortal omnipotent pit viper orphaned
snake Histh.

However theologians,philosophers and literary giants did not
appreciate the genius of this creation,so the stories soon
retreated back to the backwaters of the forgotten hamlet.
 

       Here the tale was  banged out
"clikity clikity clikity clikity clikity clikity clak"
8 hours a day,5 days a week in December 2000 and January
2001.

          It was a  tale of Aida and her sisters,Harethe,Greta
the dragon explorer,the ex marine dragon and Histh herself
in "Dragons of Histh"

     It was also the story of two elderly dragon friends of
Maegrethe the High Priestess.Their real life counterparts
probably had more in common with the Philadelphia bad
person then their fictional characters.

       It was also  where Cultus Creek made its first
appearance.

Meanwhile in the real world the Spy Agency was running a
operation to shut down telephone scam artists.They had
discovered that the bad man was scaming people in a
 diamond scheme.

                   Perhaps the rich bakers wife "got it"
as well,since she was into pretties and she and her husband
travelled the social circles of high society.

       Anyways in the May of 2001 the Spy Agency swooped
down on Richmond Hill and had a big press conference
showing how they'd nabbed their man.They quickly realized
their man was connected to two very important persons in
Canada,a corrupt African leader,Belize money laundering
and other hot potatoes.

           Around the same time the Spy Agency was trying
to hush things up the farmer was trying to crank up the
volume .

      Dragons of Histh was dribbling onto the internet in June.

             The Indian  had apparently
bought the travel franchise from the missing chinese
accomplice of the arrested bad man.This came as a
shock to sister.

            So while farmer was flogging Dragons of
Histh sister was discovering she had been dragged into
a terrorist financed boiler room diamond scam rich
socialite smearing Spy Agency protecting National
Security sting operation.

       Meanwhile the missing supposedly murdered oriental
accomplice of Enemy #1 had apparently resurrected and sold
her business to the Indian who would soon become Enemy#2.

      All without a sales reciept of course.

    Such is the parentage of Dragons of Histh.

        A simple tale meant to resolve the farners personal
issues,serve as a family history,save a dying agricultural
village and with the sounds of diamonds,F-16's and
AK 47's in the background fabric.

       The rest is a bit anticlmatic.The sister and the Indian
started arguing about the ownership of the wrecked travel
company.

        Along came 9/11 and the travel industry went into
the dumpster.

                    In the fall of 2001 the Indians men tried to
seize cntrol of sisters business.Sister dragged farmer and
Spy Agency and the law into the spat and Indian backed off.
 

A short while later farmer's Heidi looked on as a 18wheeler
smashed in her side of the farmers truck.Which led to a
short burst of creativity in a now dead story universe.

    Come the spring of 2002 one of the people represented
in Dragons of Histh as one of Ida's 5 sisters ( Ida was sister)
died in the old country.

                    Naturally the weekend of her
funeral had to be the same time the Indian marched in and
changed the locks of the disputed travel agency inside the
rich bakers bigger store.

          The 5 sisters represented the 5 real
life sisters of farmers Mother.So now there are 4 sisters left
in Dragons of Histh.

     Since then sisters ex Spy Agency Man of God partner
has used his contacts to snoop into the bad mans past.

The
bad man did a year or two,but the court transcripts were
sealed and sister has been unable to look at them due to
"National Security" reasons.

                         The Spy Agency has kept tabs
on the bad man,who has tried to sneak out of Canada to
retrieve his loot(no doubt in some Caribbean offshore
account)and he's been nabbed for parole violation now and
then.

         Since bad mans other associate was a russian computer
nerd,theres always been the sneaking suspicion by the farmer
that the reason the ex travel agency computer that Dragons
of Histh was partly written on was always freezing up was
due to a virus care of the Russian mafia.

                The other computer was a 20year
old computer with a busted harddrive.

           Much of Dragons of Histh was typed inside a 18 foot
West German Daysailor named the Clara Ann.Appropriately
enough 2000 was the Year of the Dragon and 2001 was the
Year of the Snake.

             She was built by a
plastics company and stored inside a 1926 beef barn.

               Meanwhile the Indian was gently (or not) eased
out of the rich bakers store after the sister was much more
forcibly booted out by the Indian.

I suspect the rich baker
wants nothing more to do with travel,diamonds ,etc

      The website URL set up by the bad man for what was
supposed to be his masterwork( in early 2000 he really
spared no expense to create his new vision of a travel
agency) was quietly moved to a Hong Kong PO Box by
unknown parties.

                              Which left the question of whether the
bad mans chinese partner was somewhere in Hong Kong or
mainland China.Many chinese in Canada go by that name,but
none are willing to admit being THAT person.

Sister also
found the chinese community tended to close its ranks to
nosey inquiring sisters.

Investigations by farmer found a connection between the
Indian and one of the rich bakers companies as both were
on the governing board for a Ottawa Art Theatre.

The bad
man also voiced his suspisions.When the GTA Star finally
realized something smelt,they did a article on the rich bakers
involvement with bad people( in a very "off hands"way).
 

Bad man snuck in a quick commentary on the Stars
website saying it had all been a scheme by the rich baker
to get other people to finance a business he intended to
pick up for free.

              However after the rich baker booted out the
Indian the pretty furniture and goodies that sister had
brooded over ( and had a indirect role in the birthing of
Dragons of Histh) were all dumpstered.

             The business now sits in a Indian Donut Shop.

  So the years 2002.2003. and 2004 were spent by farmer spending time on investigating Indians,bad men,murdered
chinese man,diamond scam funded travel agencies.Dragons
of Histh ,taking Heidi for walks out in the back country and
along smelly shallow Norfolk creeks.

               Heidi never appeared
in the original Dragons of Histh version but showed up in
later reworkings of the tale.

                   When you're stuck in the middle
of GTA lunacy,a faithful companion helps.The faithful
dog was somewhat rewarded in a literary fashion.

         In the fall of 2005 farmer had gone to Straffordville
Watermelonfest and had left Heidi tied all day beside the
1926 barn.( as a sidenote,the Armstrongs also make a
appearance in Dragons of Histh.In the real world he was a
Welsh accountant-farmer .Kinglake had more banks then
nearby bigger towns because of him.The barn is known
as the Armstrong Barn by hamlet locals.)

              And so the next day
she was released to run free.She ran after the farmer,who
was on a bike.

                  Despite a inner voice that told the farmer
to turn back three times,the farmer continued.It was such
a beautiful Sunday afternoon.

                  Shortly after the third warning
a passing car honked as Heidi dashed in front of it.She was
struck,and crept into a nearby soybean field to die.

    Mean
while the farmer cycled back to the barn to get the truck to
retrieve the dying companion.Others had shown up and the
dog was found.
 

The dying dog was carried swiftly in the
farmers arms back to the truck where she was placed in the
seat behind the drivers seat.
 

Back at the barn the farmer
dealt with the distasteful task of writing a $50 cheque to the
people for the damage done to their car bumper when the
dog hit the bumper.

                 Then the strangers were gone and it
was time to drive the truck back into the barn.Heidi was
gasping at this point and the farmer knew she could not
last.

     A grave was dug in front of some trees near the barn in a
spot where a Dragon Totem on the barn was visible and
where the sun would shine as it rose on the grave.
 

    She was dead,directly behind the drivers seat.
 

            She was cast into the grave( a dead dog is...dead)
and her grave goods were placed with her.Then the grave
was filled in.

             Another cast member of Dragons of Histh had
passed away.

                      For the next two nights all was shock and
barreness.Every sound,every rustle of leaves seemed like
a yip,the rustle of fur,the padding of paws.

        Then on the third night the farmer had a dream about a
dragonet on the Edge of the Cathedral of the Lord.

The next
morning the farmer collected some relics(tufts of fur,a
chewed corn cob) associated with Heidi and drove the truck
to Langton,where there is a special Roman Catholic
cemetary laid out in the outline of a cathedral.

Where the
altar would be stands the grave of the farmer who donated the land to the church in the 1930's.And around it every grave
has a statue of Mary facing inwards.On the donors spot
stands a lifesize crucifixian scene of the three Mary's beneath
a crucified Christ.

                    It should come as no surprise that Histh
represents a imperfect blundering Christ figure in her
world.

           It seemed unseemly to place Heidi's relics so close to
the true believers,so a spot " On the Edge of the Cathedral of
the Lord" was chosen near the congregation of the dead
further back under a pine tree.

   Near the grave of some Belgian and his wife who died in the 1980's.
 

And that was the end of Heidi.

              The bad man
has pretty well slid back into obscurity and sister gets her
revenge on him and missing (presumed dead) chinese
accomplice by picking up the corporations they abandoned
in 2001/2002.

She still keeps tabs on these shell companies and buys them.
for $300 as they become available.Theres a web of deceit
and worn out harddrives out there,and sister uses whatever
tools she can.

             She has appointed herself director to leverage out
information about phantom shareholders and directors the
bad man and his chinese accomplice had used in order to
perpetrate the supposed travel and diamonds telephone
scam.

     Meanwhile the farmer continues to research the many
stories that all came together to form Dragons of Histh
in the Winter of 2000/2001.

     And that my friends,is the tale.