‘CRAZY BOB’ VOWS TO RETURN AFTER BARKWAY CABIN FIRE

Mark Clairmont | MuskokaTODAY.com

BARKWAY — “Crazy Bob’s comin’ home.”

“You can quote me on that,” says Bob Beach, the never-say-die 81-year-old, who was lucky to escape a wood stove fire in his tiny cabin in rural Barkway Feb. 18.

The feisty octogenarian has been recovering at the St. John’s rehab in Toronto the past week — after three weeks in their burn unit at Sunnybrook hospital in Toronto.

In an upbeat phone interview Thursday morning, he said he’s “getting better every day.”

He was badly burned after fleeing the fiery shanty and rolling in the snow to put out his flaming pants and coat.

It was almost mid-afternoon that Tuesday when he came in for his mid-day meal — wieners and buns.

He said he had just finished and was nodding off when the pot with water and a bit of grease caught fire.

Beach says he woke up to find his little room full of smoke and flames.

“I had maybe 25 seconds to get out.”

He raced to the door, shoving it open with his hand and ran outside on fire, falling into the snow to smother his burning backside.

“I just hit the door and ran.

“If I hadn’t gotten out, I could have been dead,” he said.

Neighbours John Cureton and John Hamilton ran to his aid, with a fire extinguisher, and called 911.

Beach was taken to hospital at Bracebridge and transferred to Toronto with major burns to his hand and the backs of his legs and buttocks.

“The flames were licking up my back.”

It was a good thing he had a big coat on, or “it would have given me a good haircut,” he said with a laugh.

“I don’t recommend a fire for entertainment.

“Don’t become complacent — it only takes a few minutes.”

As it was, he suffered severe burns that required skin grafts and ongoing care, mostly to his left leg.

He said his hospital care has been “super” and the doctors “fantastic.”

His only lament is he lost his guitar and harmonica, which he loves to play and entertain with at local functions in the community east of Gravenhurst and Bracebridge.

“We’re all rooting for him,” said neighbour Hannah Lin, who has known him since moving to Barkway 17 years ago.

“He’s a survivor, a tough bird,” said the executive director of the YWCA, who went down to Sunnybrook a few days later with Cureton, her husband.

“We’re all hoping he can make a comeback.”

Beach is a well-known “character” in Barkway, “a critter, a recluse,” Lin said today.

“Everyone knows him. He’s a very good soul.

“He’s tough, but he needs help.”

Beach grew up in the Uxbridge area and had to help with the family farm at age 15, when his father died.

He never finished school and and since then he’s been a jack-of-all-trades, including working as a builder and doing road construction.

“The only thing I haven’t done is electrical,” Beach said proudly.

He was married four times, losing two wives to cancer and two to heart attacks, he says.

His last wife, Gretta, worked at Muskoka Shores, where his adopted daughter Tina Godfrey also works.

But Beach says he’ll never end up there.

He says he adopted the “Crazy Bob” handle back in 2002 when he had his first of two heart attacks, and friends nicknamed him after he returned to chopping wood and oherwise going about his usual business so quickly after having a multiple bypass.

An ingenious inventor, he’s lived off he grid in Barkway for years without water or hydro, relying on solar and wood to heat one of his handful of small buildings that he’s been trying to renovate as shelters for the homeless and as a vehicle to introduce single moms and kids to the joys of nature he loves and relies on.

Lin calls him an inveterate scavenger.

She says Beach is always one of the first to reach out to anyone in the community who needs help.

Now, the community wants to give back.

Judy Campbell, of the Ryde Co-op, says they plan to turn their monthly pot-luck on March 26 into a fundraiser for Beach — pending possible changes due to Corona virus concerns.

There could also be a gofundme campaign.

Meanwhile, Beach is looking forward to getting back home so he can announce his annual summer weather forecast on March 25.

He’s done it faithfully twice a year for 50 years — spring and fall.

And he boasts of being wrong only four times.

It’s kind of like Wiarton Willie — but not the Farmers’ Almanac, which he disses.

Last fall he called for this warm spell, but says April may return to cooler temperatures.

He says his predictions, which he shares with KICX-FM radio in Orillia, are based on nature and his natural instincts interacting with it.

He advises watching beavers, “they’re six months ahead of us.”

If you’d like to wish Beach well, he welcomes calls at 705-323-0403.

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