Where Were the Cylinders?
Solving the Dragon Seer's Gift Book Hunt Clues
Congratulations to all winners!
The first clue to be solved was number 5: Gwyn remembered something. “Dad went to school here, didn’t he?”
“Holloway School. Yes. They tore it down before we were born.”
This clue was solved by brother and sister Andrew and Michelle Taylor, on the very first day of the Book Hunt.
The answer was Holloway School and cylinder was placed at the new
Holloway School monument on Longs Hill at Long Street, across from the
site where the school once stood. The photo on the left shows the
monument. The cylinder was placed at the foot of the plaque just to the
left of the monument in the first picture. The second photo shows where
the cylinder was.
The second winner was John Power, who solved clue number 4: They passed The Rooms and the police station, coming out on
Harvey Road by a granite monument. Gwyn vaguely remembered it was for
some people who had died when a dance hall burnt down during World War
II. The Knights of Columbus something or other.
This clue refers to the monument commemorating the Knights of Columbus
Hostel fire, December 12, 1942, right near the Tim Horton's on Harvey Road. The first photo shows this monument,
and the second shows the location of the cylinder (with a pretty good
reflective shot of my elbow). The cylinder is in the middle of the
photo. If you want to find out more about the event that inspired this
monument, here's my Knights of Columbus Hostel Fire page.
The next clue solved was number 9, A February thaw had started, with puddles nestled on the ice like
tiny, glacial lakes. The frozen snow from just a few days before was
melting and the park looked like the end of an ice age. “That’s a sign
of spring,” Maddie said nodding toward groups of kids who were hanging
out in the band shell. It was the first time they’d seen teenagers in
the park.
John Brett drove in from Portugal Cove to crack this one. The cylinder
was placed at the foundation of the band shell in Bannerman Park.
I didn't take a picture of the cylinder when I planted it because men
were working in the park and I didn't want to draw attention to what I
was doing.
By the time the weather was good enough to go back, the clue had been
solved. The cylinder was at the back of the band shell, and it did take
a bit of looking to find.
Clue 7, solved by Mike Judge, was also located in Bannerman Park: Gwyn
remembered there had been riots here in the 1930s, he’d seen a
photograph in one of his textbooks of this building with all the
windows shattered. Except for the windows, it hadn’t changed since
then–a large, grey stone block that made Gwyn think of the word
“edifice.” The front had a towering row of stone columns resting on a
massive staircase that went all the way up to the second storey. It
seemed more approachable from the side.
This clue refers to the old Colonial Building, and the cylinder was on the right-hand side of the doorway that faces the park.
The next clue solved was number 8, on September 21.
Gwyn flung his arm at the huge pile of glass and steel and stone.
“Look at it,” he cried. “You can see it from all over the city. It’s
hideous. Tourists have stopped me in the Battery to ask, ‘What’s that
ugly building?’ And they ruined an archaeological site to build it. An
important one.”
Maddie sighed. “Most people have forgotten about Fort Townsend, Gwyn.
Things would be easier if you could be like everyone else.”
I thought this one was going to need extra clues, but Andrew Ludlow and Kathryn Snow unraveled it neatly.
The clue refers to The Rooms, but The Rooms is a big place. I put the
cylinder at the base of the sign on the side facing away from the
building, as shown above. The small boulders around the base are filled
with gravel, providing plenty of hiding spots, so this one was
challenging. The second photo shows the cylinder in place.
The next clue was one of the hardest. 3. Gwyn’s own street was the oddest in the neighbourhood. Two blocks
were pure Georgetown, with plain wooden row houses hugging the
sidewalks. The third (and final) block held four big Victorian mansions
with lawns and trees, each unique, facing property owned by the
Catholic Church. That last block, Gwyn’s block, looked as if it
belonged to a different part of the city.
First of all, you had to identify Mullock Street but, having done that,
the cylinder was like the proverbial needle in a haystack. Sister and
brother Kathleen and Aidan Osmond (with help from their mother, Jackie)
looked for this cylinder more than once before they found it.
The last block of Mullock Street faces St. Bon's School and (although
most people never notice it) a small cemetery. The main characters in Dragon Seer's Gift live on the opposite side of the street, in my imagination at least.
The picture on the left is the street view. Note the yellow plastic
wire guards on the left hand side of the photo. The picture on the
right shows the cylinder in place. It's harder to see in this picture
than it was in real life. It's in the centre of the photo, hanging from
one of the diamonds in the chain link fence.
The next clue, solved by student, Daniel Browne, was one of the harder
ones as well." 6. A few minutes later, when Gwyn left the woman at
King’s Bridge Road,
he had to make a quick decision. Across the road, the trail followed
the Rennie’s River in the direction of home. Gwyn would be alone if
Tyler caught him there, but it was faster. There was a break in the
traffic so Gwyn jogged across the street and let the tree-lined trail
swallow him.
The location is obvious to anyone who knows the area, but the trail is
long. I wanted to hide the cylinder closer to King's Bridge Road, but
on the night I was putting out those cylinders a few people were
enjoying the evening on the benches, so I placed the clue along a bit,
out of sight of the little park near the road.
The cylinder was located on the left side of the path going in from
King's Bridge Road, in a small tree right beside the trail. You can
just see it in the photo on the left, behind the larger tree. The
second photo shows the cylinder, on the dead branch in the middle of
the V. Although you could touch it from the trail, it wasn't easy to
see.
I haven't heard from the people who solved the next two clues, but I
walked around the lake Sunday morning and noticed the cylinders were
gone. One of the books has already been claimed.
Clue number one was a challenge. 1. A hard wind blew off the North Atlantic, shrinking Gwyn into the
warmth of his down jacket. The ocean was out of sight, just beyond the
hills on the other side of the lake. He could picture it, an icy,
heaving expanse of black water stretching all the way from Newfoundland
to Europe. Somewhere out there a storm was brewing. He could feel it in
his bones.
Gwyn glanced at the mouth of the Virginia River beside him again, looking for the birds he’d come to see, two male wood ducks.
The river has two sides, and the clue from the book doesn't tell you
which side to look on. Added to the mix was the fact that people were
sitting on the bench near the water. This was also the second clue I
placed, and I think I got better at placing clues as I went along. The
hints must have helped because somebody solved this clue after the
picture on the right went up, along with the clue "look between the
gazebo and the river."
The picture on the left shows the tree where the cylinder was hidden.
The picture on the right shows the cylinder in place, on the right hand
side of the cavity in the middle of the trunks.
Clue number ten was the hardest to situate, and one of the hardest to
find. 10. His memories took him a quarter of the way around the lake
without
seeing anything. Finally, Gwyn looked up. The lake was veiled in
curtains of falling snow, yesterday’s grey ice now a vast coverlet. It
was just cold enough to keep the snow fluffy. Gwyn was warm and dry
inside his winter gear. He was now opposite the Virginia River where
he’d met Tyler Cull the day before. This part of the trail was nearer
to the ocean but sheltered by hills from the worst of the winds so it
was covered with trees and thickets.
This was the only clue I changed, adding "the Virginia River," which
was not in the book. The written clue I put up on Thursday asked the
hunter to find a clear view of the gazebo by the mouth of the Virginia
River from the opposite side of the lake (this is the gazebo in the
picture above).
The photo on the left shows where I intended people to be. Behind,
there's a stand of dog berry bushes, and the photo on the right shows
where the cylinder was placed.
Two was the final clue to be solved: He looked at the bridge that
crossed the Rennie’s River where it flowed into the lake. He’d
found out about The Rooms on that very spot, three years before, while
helping with the Christmas Bird Count for the first time.
The one was solved by Rebecca Carolan on September 25th. It obviously
refers to the bridge that crossed the Rennie's River where it
flows into the lake. I couldn't place the cylinder on the actual bridge
because I was afraid it would be knocked or blown into the water, so I
put it on a branch in the bushes just beside the bridge.
You can see the bushes on the right side of the bridge. The
cylinder was in the first bush as you approached from the bridge. It
wasn't visible from the bridge itself, but clearly visible as youwalked past.
You could still win. Some copies of Dragon Seer will be given away at the book launch party on Sunday, October 2. You'll find all the
information, with a map, at this Dragon Seer's Gift book launch page, part of the Canada-wide Culture Days celebration.
Back to Janet McNaughton's main page.