THE HILLS OF BRACEBRIDGE - HOW THE LANDSCAPE HAS INFLUENCED THE GENERATIONS
THE HILLS IN THE URBAN AREA PLAYED A ROLE IN HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT - AND AS KID WITH BIKES, WE HATED THEM
This afternoon, I took off. Suzanne pointed to the door, and the van, and said, "go west young man." So I went south instead. I took a little antique-hunting venture, for a few hours, and I went real slow from Gravenhurst to Bracebridge. The Muskoka Beach Road is one of the finest country trails in all of Muskoka, and today it was just magnificent, in the light and shadow of mid afternoon, especially in the stretch of high ground, beneath the cathedral maples. I couldn't believe the perfect matting of ground cover, and the tantalizing aroma of sweet grass, growing somewhere close. Honestly, it's what I enjoy most about living and working in Muskoka. The lakeland and these thriving, beautiful forests. And part of this landscape includes hillsides. I love them too. Not so much as a child however, but I've come to respect them in my mature perspective, of what makes our region so darn picturesque.
If the matter of Bracebridge hills, and their topographical placement, in the community, came up in general conversation, at the local coffee shop, then it would be a billion to one occurrence, so better go out and buy a lottery ticket. Even in my era, growing up in Bracebridge, the only time the disadvantage of hills was discussed, was when we faced one, as members of the local youth, on our way home from Kirby's Beach, hot, exhausted and fed-up with the distance just go swimming. Or when I was driving with my father, and we got stuck on the ice, halfway up a hill, and then started to slide all the way to the bottom. Which in fifty percent of the icy conditions, necessitated a call to the towing firm of choice. On these occasions, Ed usually had about fifteen cents to pay the tow truck operator. I had to cough up the rest.
It's not that the hills of Bracebridge aren't important considerations, in today's urban community, but I dare say, physical conditions, especially with better roadways, and technological improvements, have somewhat lessened the impact of inclines and declines, on day to day living. When I was a kid, if I complained about the hills and the condition of the roadways, in vicinity of any citizen older than fifty, I was bound to get a lecture. The kind of retort that begins, "You think these roads are bad today sonny? You have no idea what bad roads are all about. In my day, you held on for dear life, coming down from Hunt's Hill, and at least once a week, there was a roll over on Tanbark Hill, heading down to The Hollow." By the way, it was called "Tanbark Hill," because of the many hundreds of times, during the years of the Beardmore Tannery, particularly, that wagon-loads of hemlock bark were dumped because the horses stumbled on the ruts, in the dirt road, or the load shifted on the wagons. The reason it was called "tanbark," was because it was used, for its natural qualities, in the tanning of leather. I don't know if tanbark was also being run down this hill for the Anglo Canadian Tannery, on the other side of the Muskoka River, just before the confluence of the north and south branches; which was near the Beardmore Tannery on the north side.
Although I've written about this before, I remember Bill "Willy" Andison, while he was working as a gardener at South Muskoka Memorial Hospital, telling the coffee crew, about the times he and his chums, would scare the horses, pulling loads up the Queen's Hill, on Manitoba Street, in front of the former Queen's Hotel. They only got caught once, and that's when someone saw them firing sling-shots at the team, pulling a loaded dairy wagon up the hillside. Willy told us, that he got off an exceptionally accurate shot, hitting the horse's ass in the sweetest place, with a small rock, to garner the most aggressive reaction. One of the two horses reared-up, as the wagon was at the halfway point on the hillside. The second horse reacted to the one Willy hit, and soon, the front of the wagon was in the air, and the milk cans were rolling and spilling their contents, all the way to the intersection with Thomas Street (at the clock tower). Before they could truly enjoy the scene unfolding, and discern all the cuss words used by the driver, the boys were caught before they could flee the scene.
Here's a strange one for you. I was working through that particular winter, writing-up some Bracebridge heritage features, for Bob Boyer, the editor of The Muskoka Sun. I used to write copy a half-year in advance of the summer publication schedule, which back in the mid to late 1980's, was being published weekly, beginning on the Victoria Day holiday weekend. So I started writing editorial copy in December, and by the first of April, I'd send off a bundle of material to Bob for type setting. I was working on a little piece about the advantages, and disadvantages, of building a town on hilly terrain. Suzanne and I, and our wee son Andrew, were living then in one of the old, turn of the century, tannery houses, just below the hill, on what was then the extension of Ontario Street. Now, I believe, it has been renamed as Quebec Street, the same as the hillside. There had been a physical disconnect previously between Ontario Street, the result of a change in the original roadway from the town's early years, to reduce some of the steepness of the decline. If you were to stand at the bottom of the hill now, and look up the hillside to the right, where Ontario Street ends, you will appreciate how it was once the continuation, to Wellington Street, and why it had to be moved, and angled differently, to reduce the carnage of out of control wagons, and more modern vehicular traffic.
I was heading up to the former Herald-Gazette office, at the west end of Quebec Street, but actually sitting on a lot at 27 Dominion Street, with an armload of material for Bob to approve. There had been some freezing rain the hour before noon, but I didn't worry too much about getting up the hill. I should have. The only thing that saved me, was the fact I had good shoes on, with ice-gripping soles. I got halfway up Tanbark Hill, thinking about the story I could write about dangerous hills in our community, when I saw two ladies coming at me from the junction, with the High School driveway. One woman, who I knew from my days living at the Weber Apartments, on Alice Street, was starting to slide and the only hope I had, was that she didn't veer toward the roadway. It was a sheet of ice, and cars were turning at the bottom of the hill, onto either Victoria, or back to Ontario Streets, to avoid getting stuck. This lady friend, as fortune would have it, fell on her behind, got up, fell again, and repeated it another couple of times, before finally staying on the ground, and subsequently spinning down the hill like a fully clothed curling stone. The other lady went down on her knees, and was crawling toward a snowbank on the High School side, where she would eventually be able to climb onto, and get up to the recently sanded driveway. Now, the first woman, spinning at me, (I was a quarter way up the hillside) about twenty yards away, couldn't see my old Captain friend, Chuck, driving the Salvation Army van, at the top of the hill, planning to come down. Oh the humanity. He was new to town, and in fact, this was his first Muskoka winter season. His very first ice storm, as it relates to the navigation of Tanbark Hill, famous for all the wrong reasons.
I could see the fear in Chuck's eyes, even as far away as I was, at the commencement of his spin down the hill. He tried to abort the forward momentum at the top, but by applying the brakes, it locked the van into a slip and slide for the first part of the adventure. Here, at this moment, we have two ladies down on the sidewalk, out of control, me, a short distance beyond this, and Chuck has now put the van into a similar curling spin. So it appeared this was not going to end well at all. One woman noticed the van, just as she regained control, and was able to scamper up the snowbank, onto the driveway. The second woman was curling down the sidewalk, almost side by side the Salvation Army van, with Chuck trying to keep the van from rising up over the curb. If the sliding pedestrian was able to watch a replay, of this near tragic event unfolding, she would have known just how close death had been at that moment, on an early spring afternoon in Bracebridge.
Chuck had successfully navigated the spinning car past both women, and was headed right at me, twenty yards down the road. I'm pretty sure his prayers and mine were intermingling in the frosty air, for those few moments, and miraculously, he was able to get the vehicle to slide toward the south side of the hill. This surely would have resulted in an accident, if there had been a car at the bottom; but to his good fortune, the artery was clear. I remember watching from the top of the snowbank, where I had retreated, just in case, and seeing Chuck's nervous grin, as he waved at me on the fly-by, obviously feeling better that he had just avoided killing three people. I couldn't even wave back without losing my balance on the ice, but what happened next was absolutely amazing. It was just like a luge run, at the Olympics, because the van, with Chuck wildly trying to get control, had to surrender to the curve in the road, that kept him spinning right around the corner, as if this is what he had been attempting. The van just followed the angles of the decline, and went from Ontario Street right into a beautiful southern sweep onto Victoria Street, where he eventually ran out of momentum, where the old green Agricultural building still stands, opposite the former Victoria Street School. I could see far enough down the street, to be able to see him now facing the opposite way, with his forehead lowered to the top of the steering wheel. The first lady, who had been curling down the sidewalk, had finally passed me, and got back on her feet, and the other pedestrian decided to stay at the high school instead. Gads, what a great story I had just been delivered, in actuality, and by the grace of God, no one had been hurt, except maybe some pride for the ladies who had hit the ground on the slide. Chuck told me later, that the downhill ride was in God's hands, because there was nothing corrective he could do, at the speed he was going, and the spinning of the vehicle, on what he described as the wildest ride of his life. Ah, the adventures of the Bracebridge hillsides!
When I was living up on Alice Street, back in the late 1960's and very early 1970's, the lads of the Hunts Hill gang, would on occasion, decide to travel the four miles or so, down to Kirby's Beach, on the sandy shoreline of Lake Muskoka, just off Beaumont Drive. We usually would go to Bass Rock, on the North Branch of the Muskoka River, which was only a couple of blocks and a bridge from where we lived. But Kirby's Beach offered a magnificent sandy bottomed bay, and a lengthy docking system, made out of scaffolding, that was used by the swimming instructors for morning classes. The beachfront itself was tiny, back then, (it has been improved upon since) but because you could walk out, a long, long way, and benefit from the island docks, in pre-planning the morning before, it was always seen as a worthwhile mission, to deal with the summer heat. It was, most definitely, considered this way, on the trip to the beach. Not so much, on the way home.
First of all, with the exception of the small incline at the Thomas-Manitoba Street intersection, which we walked our bikes up, the trip to the beach took us down Hunt's Hill in a flash of humanity, and then down the hill above Bracebridge Falls, which could generate some serious speed. There was a small incline to connect with Beaumont Drive, but nothing terribly taxing. There were some minor hills along Beaumont Drive, which parallels the Muskoka River, in its passage to Lake Muskoka. So even on the hottest afternoon, the trip to the beach wasn't exhausting. Of course, we were nice and fresh at that point. We'd swim for two to three hours, and have a ball, because it is such a nice place to hole-up with mates; especially the girls we knew from school. My buddies caught me peaking through a hole in the girl's changeroom, and they gave me crap for being a pervert. But once they knew what I'd viewed through that popped knot, they were lined-up and pushing for their turn. The girls in the line-up to get into the changeroom heard the buzz, and started snapping their towels at us, to get lost. Good times.
The trip back home, was an ordeal, for a lot of different reasons. First of all, you know what you feel like after a good swim in relaxing water. You just want to find some gentle place to fall into, for a little post recreation hiatus from the hustle and bustle of a Muskoka summer. Well, we had to head out on our bikes, into the hottest part of the afternoon, carrying our wet towels around our necks; sometimes, the towel getting so low, it would get caught-up on the chain or the spokes, causing a cartwheel onto the tarmac. If there was going to be a bike misadventure, odds were it was going to happen on the way back home. For most of those years, I had a small bike with a banana seat, and was riding close to the pavement, when it came down to the actuality of peddling along the roadway. My chain used to fall off a lot, and get jammed, and Al Hillman was the only mate who could fix it up again. As he usually was one of the lead bikes, because of his proficiency, and the condition of his bike (he tweaked it), I would often get stranded somewhere on Beaumont Drive, having to yell for assistance. On one memorable occasion, I had to walk all the way home, pushing the bike I came to call "The Green Snot," and when I got up to the Hillman homestead, on Toronto Street, there was Al working on one of this models, on the porch steps. I think it was the first time I used the word "bastard," in general conversation. He just smiled and said, "I didn't hear you calling me." It also became the second occasion when "bastard" fit the mood of the moment, as I passed his house, on the final leg of my trip home. I was hot, bothered (as my mother called these summer moods), sunburned to a lobster shade, and thirsty. It was on that day, that I decided it was better to swim at Bass Rock, for the rest of that summer. And it was those steaming hot, steep hills of Bracebridge, that inflicted most of the pain. By time I got to Hunt's Hill, I was ready to toss the Green Snot into the river. Riding up the hill, on the old bicycles from my era, was nearly impossible; and if you could, chances are you also had legs like the ones holding up a Steinway. Even just walking up that hillside in the hot sun, was what I always expected stood in the way of the soldiers, of the French Foreign Legion, through the desert lands of the Middle East.
I remember the first week I got my new ten speed bike, from Bill Elliott, at his five and dime store on Manitoba Street. The Green Snot had been purchased "on time," from Ecclestone's Hardware a couple of shops south. I remember spotting this nice red framed ten speed, outside of Bill's store, one mid-summer day, in maybe 1971. I had to have that bike. Bill let my mother make payments, as she was working for Bill back then; and instead of selling me the shop model, he took another one from a box, and we built it piece by piece in the back of the shop. It was a good and secure bike, with those thin, high air pressure tires, as hard as rock. When I brought it home, my dad suggested I should avoid major hills (almost impossible navigating the streets of our town), until I got used to the brakes on the handles, instead of engaging the pedals, as with non-ten speeds. I did this for about a week, and there was only one minor crash, and that was my fault entirely. I tried to avoid the area around the green apple tree, at the bottom of Flynn's Hill, on Richard Street, where the Hillman brothers, Rick and Al were playing their war games, acting as snipers, aiming at passing cyclists. I actually hit a big green apple on the asphalt, and it caused me to lose balance on the much higher bike. I had been used to riding low to the roadway on the Green Snot. I left a lot of skin on Flynn's Hill in my youth.
When I was ready to take the ten speed rocket, down the incline of Hunt's Hill, I was tuned to all the safety procedures, for saving one's ass, except for one small detail. There had been construction and repaving on Toronto Street, that season, and without appreciating all the changes, that had occurred, some more substantial than others, I did what most of my associates followed as biking safety. There was only one rule. Don't fall off! The first new sewer grate I passed over, caused me to ponder what would happen, if I hit the opening closest to the sidewalk curb. I used to have fat tires on the old bike. These much thinner tires looked like they might fit into these larger, end-of-the-grate openings. The second storm sewer grate I passed over, reminded me that I should actually stop and check it out, by rolling the tire right at the larger opening, just in case. On the third grate, just as I was about to hit the crest of Hunt's Hill, I thought about that opening, coming up on the very next storm sewer. So being lazy, and stupid at the same unholy moment, I drove the bike in such a trajectory, as to meet the opening head-on, with a perfect angle to test out my theory. It would have been so much better, and less painful, to have gotten off my bike first. Not slowing down, I hit the opening with great accuracy, and considerable speed. The tire sucked down into that slot, like I was pulling into a bike stand. I rode the centre bar, on impact, and felt the incredible pain associated with running one's private parts into an upright post, and then cartwheeling over the handlebars, onto the newly repaved Toronto Street. A couple of girls from the neighborhood, walking on the opposite side of the road, started laughing at my sudden departure from the bike. So as not to embarrass myself further, I grabbed my bloodied knees, and not my privates; but I sure as hell wanted to, at that moment of extreme pain. The bike actually returned to an upright position, as the wheel was firmly locked in the opening. I broke trail on this one. From this point on, all the bike riders in our part of town, had heard about my nut-cracking accident, and kept their tires away from this larger than usual opening, on all the new grates. I wasn't pleased by the attention, and being called "nutty," for weeks after the mishap.
I had to get a new rim for the bike, because the original had been bent beyond repair. I lost a third of the spokes as well. I eventually took that bike down Hunt's Hill, a few weeks following the unexpected sudden stop, and all was well with brake deployment and rider stability. I could walk much better, by that point, as well.
Then there was the time I was heading to a hockey game, at the arena, with the back of my Vauxhall Viva loaded with goalie equipment, and I stalled on the snow-laden hillside of Anne Street, about twenty yards above the rail crossing. I had to back down the hill, but soon after commencing the decline, I began to slide, and by time I made it to the halfway zone, which is the level ground of the crossing, a sort of topographical shelf on the incline, my car was stopped horizontal across the road, pointing south, such that I was aimed down the tracks toward the clock tower, of the old federal building. Wouldn't you expect, of such a tale, that I would then relate, a train horn was echoing in the distance. Well it was. I knew the blast of horn was coming from the crossing at Douglas Drive, to the north, about five minutes from crashing into my stalled auto, perched precariously on a slippery slope. I couldn't push it off the tracks because it had sucked into the grooves, and between the built-up ridges of snow, acting like book ends. There were no books, just a little white car made in England, where they have very little snow to navigate through in their winter seasons.
So I did what my father taught me, by the actuality of many years driving in crappy vehicles, that started infrequently, and broke down on the roads and highways of our region. I kept trying to start the car, by manipulating the dashboard choke; now there's something from the past; most modern drivers have never known the displeasure of flooding the engine, and then having to be patient. I didn't have time to be patient. After three of the five minutes before the train arrived, the engine finally turned-over, and I was able to rock the car gradually, by using the manual gearshift and clutch, a little forward and a little back, until I was able to free it from the ruts, and get it pointed downhill; which by sliding alone, would get me and the vehicle out of harm's way, whether the car stalled or not. It worked, and with about a full minute to spare. Then the engine stalled once more, and I satisfied myself, by forcing a slide, with brakes locked, to the bottom of the hillside. I survived. Someone had put a clump of snow into the gas tank at our apartment, thinking it was funny, but could have killed me with that stalling episode. I was able to start the engine one more time, and through some painful sputtering, I even managed to crawl up Hunt's Hill, and back home to the Weber Apartments.
I did the same thing, once after this, but it was with a much larger car, being my dads Oldsmobile 98, which was a dryland boat sort of affair, and minus the worry about an oncoming train. This time, it was a hill on Woodchester, a block and a half from Toronto Street, and in total, only a minute from our apartment. I got to the crest of the steep hill, when I started spinning my wheels without travelling forward. It was one of those Road Runner / Coyote moments, when the dynamite is lit, and it's in your hand, so to speak, and you realize, oh drat, I'm screwed. At the point I began sliding back down the hill, and all I could hear, over and over, was my dad's warning about the well being of the car; and that "if you damage it, don't come home!" Nice eh? So as I'm curling down the hill, with this honking big car, that kills the entire width of the road, imagine my surprise, or expectation, that there are now headlights coming from the bottom of the hill. The driver of this vehicle, seeing tons of steel spinning down the hill, was able to make a speedy retreat. I hit the snow banks on both sides, which slowed the car's momentum a tad, but sent me in more violent gyrations, left and right, until finally I hit another embankment with the back bumper, and stopped with an unpleasant thud. As long as there wasn't a pedestrian between the car and the bank, I had arrived at the bottom with serious consequence. In fact, I had bounced back onto the roadway, and connecting with a little sand on the snow, I was able to turn myself around, and head back the way I had come, and eventually selected a lesser grade hillside, up to Hunt's Hill. The music playing on the radio at the time? The "William Tell Overture." Perfect.
The smaller hill on Thomas Street, between the Patterson Hotel (formerly the Queen's Hotel) and the Clock Tower, at the junction with Manitoba Street, was where driving instructors and crazy fathers, took young folk to learn about clutch driving. Oh jesus, did we have some close calls. I remember spending about fifteen minutes, blocking traffic one day, and my father refusing to change places with me, despite the pissed off motorists honking and yelling behind. His idea, of course, is that I would learn how to master the clutch and gear shift, if I was put in a pressure situation, immersed in a heavy traffic circumstance. Maybe he was right, because I did finally figure it out, after that first major debacle. I still hate that intersection today, even with an automatic transmission, so I know Ed gave me post traumatic stress disorder, just to satisfy himself, that his trial by fire method of driver training, worked to make me a more proficient driver. I never hit another car in those roll-backs and leaps forward, but it was bloody close. So the young drivers of Bracebridge, had to learn all about the dynamics of hill climbing and declining, in all kinds of whacky weather, and traffic chaos.
More about the geographical, topographical realities of living in the river-hugging, hill laden community, of Bracebridge, Ontario, coming up tomorrow.
FROM MY BRACEBRIDGE ARCHIVES
WHEN WILL WE REGAIN THE PRIDE IN OUR TOURISM INDUSTRY
I think it may have occurred in the mid to late 1970's. The time when our community economic development activists, and deluded governance, decided that tourists were a good way of making a buck but we needed to be more independent, just in case? I suppose there was some concern tourism was sliding backward and there might soon be a time when we’d have to count on our other industrial pursuits to keep our local economy chugging along.
It was at this period when we seemed to develop a more pessimistic attitude about tourism generally, and it heralded a new cocky period in our communities, as we began to delve into new ideas for economic diversity. Some of it worked for a period, others investments failed miserably but the attitude of independence from the tourism industry was strengthening. From my years of editorship with the former Herald-Gazette, in Bracebridge, covering the community political and commercial beat, I saw it first hand. Instead of looking at all the ways and means to make the most of the district’s number one region, the town movers and shakers were looking at everything else, and wasting a lot of time and energy on investigations and promotions designed at making our region an industrial mecca.
All these years later, I can reiterate the same editorials I was publishing in the 1980's. Tourism has been our mainstay industry since the late 1800's. It was the original catalyst of change from a resource based economy, timber, to a recreational paradise that suited those in search of clean air and thriving woodlands, for the good of their failing health, and for the adventure away from the din of their urban environs. The local settlers, who were having a tough go making anything grow on their Muskoka homesteads, were forced to diversify their economies, many working in the lumbering and related industry, and eventually, either renting out rooms in their abodes for visitors, or working in some capacity, to assist the rapidly growing tourism industry. Possibly it was helping to build one of the early hotel / resorts, providing guide services to anglers and hunters, selling off land and resources to assist the budding industry......everything from doing domestic services at the hotels, to augment homestead finances, to building and then working on the boats that facilitated travel across the quickly developing region.
There has always been a wee bit of a problem with the tourism industry and the modern generations, who have rebelled in a minor yet profound way, of being subservient for all these years to make a living. What had served this region of Ontario so well for so many decades, had apparently rubbed the relationship raw. Instead of economic advisors, in our Muskoka communities, pushing for new and larger re-investment in the tourism sector, we began to see far more interest in industrial and commercial development but the most obvious change was in the overflow of retail expansion. Not commercial investment tied directly to the advancement of tourism but rather, retail that would largely serve our own year-round population. While there was nothing terribly wrong with this, we admittedly have become a tad over-retailed......and it was a retail expansion the tourist industry didn’t require to enjoy a stay here.
If you were to examine a collection of postcards of the mainstreets in Gravenhurst, Bracebridge, and Huntsville, from the early part of the 1900's right up to the 1990's, you won’t have any trouble recognizing the transition. The main street of Gravenhurst from the 1950's is just a delightful image of a full and thriving main street. It is the kind of commercial landscape that was indeed, an image a tourist would cherish, and be proud to send off to friends and family. When you look down that same street today, (pre construction), you will see a starkly different image, and appreciate a much different image of prosperity. Despite all the efforts of the movers and shakers, who apparently know better than the historians and economic realists, far too much time has been spent on industry seeking missions, and not enough on tending the region’s undisputed, number one industry.....tourism.
In the past ten years there has been a slow but promising change in our town and others, from councils aware of the misspent years, trying to prove something that was unnecessary. The development of The Wharf, will, in the next decade, be a much more powerful economic draw in Gravenhurst, and although there are aspects I don’t fully appreciate, it is nonetheless, proof that the past council recognized that tourism dollars are of critical importance......and no matter how independent we desire to be, it can not be at the expense of this enduring and ever-adapting industry. We just have to adapt along with it!
As the economic soothsayers used to warn that an economic downturn in the tourism economy could kill our region, my retaliation editorially, has been the counter worry, that one day the federal government and the province will cut back on its civil service staffing, as it has in the past, and then folks, watch the economic tumble into the waiting arms of tourism......a good mate for a lot of years. Just consider how many government jobs there are currently in Muskoka, and the debt-load of both in this new and financially stressed century. Even cutting the work for by ten percent could cause a real estate panic, as displaced civil servants are forced to re-locate. While we still like to think we could get by without a thriving tourism industry, just consider how precariously perched we are, on the razor’s edge of the taxpayer. Government staff represents a really big chunk of our population. That’s not industry. And it’s always vulnerable because of new governments and new fiscal realities. We just shouldn’t get too cocky about our independence from either tourism or government cradling of the economy.
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I live in Muskoka today because of a vacation taken in the summer of 1965, the guests at a new cottage on Bruce Lake. From the city to the country, I was in paradise, just as I feel today. My father worked in the lumber trade that made most of its income during the period of May to Thanksgiving. My mother worked in a small variety store, known as Bamford’s in central Bracebridge, that also had small rental cottages. I grew up playing with the kids who stayed at the cottages over the summer, and my first job was delivering fruit and vegetables to resorts and summer camps for Clarkes Produce. It was the only job I could get but it was my first education about the diversity and significance of the visiting population. I would go on to be an Assistant Editor of The Muskoka Sun, and for many, many years, I wrote for the largely tourist, second-home owner readership. It kept me in a job. Even to this day our family businesses, in the antique and music industry a very much influenced by the tourist economy.
My wife Suzanne’s family began working as part of the tourism industry from the late 1800's, in the Three Mile Lake area of the present Township of Muskoka Lakes. They were pioneer settlers in Ufford and although they weren’t involved in tourism entirely, they were beneficiaries just the same. Her grandfather and father worked for many cottagers, from the Eaton family, of department store fame, and the Burtons of Simpsons to name just a few. Her parents went on to own the Windermere Marina, on Lake Rosseau, where Suzanne worked for many summers, tending her largely tourist, cottager clientele in the snackbar known as “The Skipper.” Each summer the Stripp family rented out their home nearby, and their cottage and smaller guest cabin, (both which had been built by her grandfather, Sam Stripp, as residences), while they lived above the marina. It was opportunism plain and simple, and the money that was garnered over the summer months, padded the slower winter economy. One of Muskoka’s well known boat restorers, who previously owned the Ditchburn known as the “Shirl-evon,” (used to deliver cottagers and their luggage to their island properties etc.), Norm had a line-up of boats to work on each winter which was a fact right up until his final two or three years in Windermere. And he loved his association, as did all of his family, with the cottagers and visitors to the region.......friendships which still survive with my wife today, even though we no longer have property on Lake Rosseau or in the charming village of Windermere.
Our combined families have depended on the tourism industry in some form or other, from the homestead years in Muskoka. And despite our own diversification by profession, we are likely to continue our long and prosperous relationship with tourism long into the future.
We need councillors in this new municipal term of office, who are willing to run their own fact finding mission, to determine how tourism has and continues to affect our region.....and from second home owners (cottage owners), resort guests, day travellers, and all those businesses tightly related to their services and accommodation, it is necessary knowledge, that we know exactly how interconnected we are here with an industry that found us........not the other way around.
If we continue to appreciate that the tourism business can be bigger and more successful, and that we have shortfalls to accommodate new growth, possibly this well be the period of economic sensibility, to re-invest in the sector showing the most consistent, historic promise.
While there are times when the demands of the industry, and the volume tend to make us a little crazy by the end of the traditional season, our family is always sad to see the end of this most exciting and dynamic time of year. It’s when our friends return home. And they are indeed our friends.
The challenge is to make the season longer, and the opportunities and accommodations more abundant, to facilitate four seasons travel. This is happening, and it is an enormous improvement in attitude as well as infrastructure. Thanks to folks like the hale and hearty Cranberry gang in Bala, and the stalwart artists of the annual September Studio Tour, we have most definitely stretched the peak season a little further.
The trend in the future, and not so far distance, is that more people will take advantage of their winter-equipped cottage/homes more time through the off-season months. This as well, is a current trend that needs to be examined more carefully.
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