When the middle-aged man walked into the Meaford Express office on that day in 1963, his request struck even experienced newshands Walter and Phyllis Brebner as out of the ordinary. He’d recently accidentally hypnotised his 14-year-old daughter, Joanne, explained Ken McIver, who’d travelled to Meaford from Orillia. While under, he said, she’d uncovered various past lives, including that of Susan Ganier, a farm-wife in Sydenham and St. Vincent Townships during the mid to late1800s. He wanted to know if the Express could help him find evidence of the woman’s existence.

The paper ran a letter from him seeking anyone who might have known of Ganier, but it wasn’t until three years later that the real research began. Jess Stearn, a 52-year-old American journalist and author, received an assignment to investigate the claim. The self-described skeptic arrived in Orillia in 1966 to begin his exploration into the case, which would result in The Search for the Girl with Blue Eyes: A Venture Into Reincarnation.

It wasn’t easy. Joanne hadn’t described a prior life as Cleopatra or Queen Elizabeth I. Susan Ganier was a simple farm girl who’d married a young tenant farmer, become a widow at a young age, and lived out her days uneventfully in an isolated region of 19th century Ontario.

Stearns’s research into the pioneer days in the Meaford area included visits to Meaford and talks with locals, such as Wilfred Barr, Major Spike Malone, Joe Walker, Vina Ufland, Milford Johnston, Duncan Lourie, Arthur Eagles, and the Brebners.

Eagles, in particular, said he remembered the Ganiers, and pointed out sites described by Joanne on an old map of St. Vincent.

The book, which was published in 1968, leaves dangling the question of whether Joanne was reincarnated (though suggests that if the story was a hoax, why would the McIvers have chosen such an obscure past life?) but remains a fascinating read for people who are interested in things beyond our ken – particularly those living or loving the Meaford area!

(A side note: The inimitably tart Nora Ephron mentioned the book in a 1968 article for the New York Times, calling it a “second-rate Bridey Murphy adventure about an uninteresting small-town Canadian girl who turned out under hypnosis to be the reincarnation of another uninteresting small-town Canadian girl.”)