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.