AT HOME IN MUSKOKA AND LOVING IT

VACATIONING AT HOME?

Our family has enjoyed everything Muskoka has to offer. For decades. And we keep on finding more things to do, and have no plans to change what has been a fulfilling relationship. It isn’t to suggest that we don’t leave the area, and it’s true our boys, for business purposes, do travel the country, but for mom and pop, the best part of travelling beyond, is coming home......and for us that’s the end of the day. We’re not cheap and anyone who knows us, would acknowledge we like our adventures. We are most definitely sticklers for detail. We won’t return if we’ve been shortchanged. We want good value no matter what we’re spending money on, and that includes our vacation and recreation. We may be accused of having simple, basic demands for our comfort, but we’ve found it for years, as they say, “in our own backyhard.”

Our demands for vacation time are as high as if we were travelling regularly to Europe or Asia, or packing up a recreational vehicle for a tour of the continent. Our goal is to start enjoying ourselves immediately, as our free time begins. Outdoors or indoors, we plan accordingly, and find that home-district holidays are enthralling enough to meet our expectations. Some travellers come home and fear the coming of the mail, when the credit card invoices demand re-payment. We don’t miss this at all.

Suzanne’s family owned and operated the Windermere Marina, on Lake Rosseau, from the late 1960's into the 70's. She worked with her mother Harriet, tending hungry patrons at “The Skipper,” which was the small café on the second floor of the marina. Her summers were spent meting the needs of cottagers, tourists and the local population throughout the summer months. The Stripp family would move to another part of the marina for July and August, so they could rent out both their nearby home, and a cottage (actually a family homestead), and small cabin on Lake Rosseau. It wasn’t necessarily what they wanted to do, but the off-season was a ten month drag on the economy. You needed to make money while you could. While her friends, many of them cottagers, celebrated the good life in Muskoka, in the wonderful lakeland, Suzanne had to work. Although she did take time off, and some of it during the daytime, there was a great deal of sacrifice enabling a seasonal economy to survive year after year.

Suzanne, to this day, is reluctant to put too much emphasis on this, because she also enjoyed working at the Skipper, and it was a wonderful meeting place with a juke box and great milkshakes. Still, there were many opportunities missed as a result. She started to work early in her teens, and when the family sold off the marina, she then worked summers at the Windermere Golf and Country Club. When she wasn’t at university, she was tending the summer visitors to our region. I think if she had the opportunity to re-live those early days, growing up in Windermere as it was then, she wouldn’t hesitate agreeing. It would kind of mess up our marriage and family with this kind of time-reversal but the point is, tending seasonal visitors, as Muskoka has been welcoming since the late 1800's, is part of who we are as long-time Muskokans.

While I didn’t have quite the same demands, and we didn’t have any real estate to rent out, the Currie family was all occupied in the tourist trade. My father’s busiest time of year was the summer months, as a manager at Shier’s Lumber, then Building Trades Centre, in Bracebridge. My mother Merle tended a small tourist cabin business, known as Bamfords. Her responsibility was to run the variety shop on the corner of the property. I grew up across from this in-town tourist accommodation, and it was neat to have the smell of campfires and hear sing-songs, while we were living the urban-apartment lifestyle, less that fifty yards away. We had many friends who came to those cottages every summer, and we often got invited to sit around those same fires, and join in on the singing.

As Suzanne was filling the burger and ice cream needs of our visitors, I was on the road by 5 a.m. twice a week, with Clarke’s Produce, of Bracebridge. Our run was through Lake of Bays up to Mountain Trout House on Lake Kawagama (Dorset). We had several husky lads from the neighborhood working nights at the warehouse, to fill-out orders for the grocery stores and summer camps / resorts. Short of carrying drywall and patio-slabs to cottages, in my late teens, when employed by Building Trades, the produce trade was incredibly taxing to the body. Those bags of spuds, onions, carrots, and beets left our shoulders raw and sore for days. Walking in and out of the coolers, into humid nights, and then back thirty or forty times during a shift, was hard on the body let me tell you. We worked for a buck an hour. We supplemented this with scoffed strawberries which were damn good. I didn’t really like my job but I did enjoy the trips around the lake to drop off supplies. It let me see how our summer guests were being accommodated in the Muskoka hinterland. It was fascinating. The only part I hated, was showing up at breakfast, and having to deliver fruit and vegetables, while the respective camp and resort kitchens were cooking up the breakfast menu. I was always hungry and my boss would have fired me, if I’d ever been caught biting into a ripe peach, or a tomato for lunch. I couldn’t blame him but there was so much temptation sitting within arm’s reach..

It was with this travelling produce show that I truly began to appreciate the differences between us and the tourists. And it did highlight the reality that they had privilege, as a result of money, and I had a job as a result of that same money. Some have said the tourism industry has always set about a master-servant relationship between the so called “them and us,” scenario. Historically speaking, there’s not much I can do, to smooth what has manifested here, in many quarters, since the 1870's onward. The tourism industry has allowed us to survive as a regional economy, at a time when agriculture couldn’t sustain us, and the lumber industry went boom-bust. Manufacturing was successful, for a time, but not a long-time. The industry that has survived, is the one we often see as oppressive......keeping our shoulder to the grindstone at the best times of the year, just to make “their” stay pleasant. Some families have been serving the tourist and cottager clientele, for four to five generations. Can it be that bad then, to embrace the seasonal economy.

Muskoka movers and shakers, back in the mid 1970's, and 1980's, began to believe, as if the result of an oft-chanted new mantra, that the district economy could and would diversify. That by encouraging new industry and development to the region, we could, once and for all, prove the one-trick pony thing was a trait of the past. As a reporter on the municipal beat, and later editor, I sensed that council hubris was bulging like an inner tube out of its tire. It seemed a matter of some importance, to start diversifying the economy for the future. It wasn’t a new idea but there seemed a good quantity of interest, developing pods for stability, such that if, one day, the tourism industry was to collapse, Muskoka would simply put the weight of economy on other industries.

It was a necessary management situation and I don’t blame government representatives for seeking out alternatives, at a time when it seemed a priority. The problem, and it still affects us today, is that in the process of diversifying, and opening our collective arms to development investment, we had also initiated a lengthy period of neglect. Our number one industry, by far, and proven by statistics gathered, was becoming a lesser concern. It was as if local politicians had decided to put tourism in its place, as an equal economic partner to all else. Instead of booming, expansive industry, we got retail and residential development. To say that we were over-retailed in Muskoka is a giant under-statement. What was supposed to be a thriving manufacturing sector didn’t measure up to the grand plan. So on one hand, while we were buying magic beans to grow a self-supporting empire of manufacturing, we turned, in large part, away from tending the garden that had always been fertile and productive. That’s not to say there weren’t economic slow-downs for the entire industry, based on global events and financial depression.

For well more than a decade, at a critical period of “finding ourselves,” we didn’t focus on our number one economic stimulus. Which meant that when we should have been building new tourist accommodations, and recreational opportunities, to suit all walks of visitors, and the second home owners (cottagers), the end-all instead was to prove by advancements otherwise, that we were no longer totally dependent on the tourist industry. It was a hiatus we couldn’t afford and we’re still playing catch-up all these years later. Every now and again I hear the same mantra, from a township council, about a new mission of diversification. There’s nothing wrong with diversification aimed at improving the future economy....just not when it means disregarding the health and welfare of what is actually sustaining our present economy.

As retail plazas and strip malls seemed a great enhancement to the local economy, constructing new hotel / motel units wasn’t a priority at all. While it’s true that there was a lot of controversy at this time, about massive lakefront developments, there would have been little public objection to the construction of smaller, affordable motels, to improve the dynamic of tourist economy generally. Even today, in this supposedly enlightened new era, we’re still not paying as much attention to tourism, as we should, especially in regard to affordable accommodation, especially for day travellers, families on the go, with limited budgets. We’re certainly improving but we need more places to roost for a day, a week or longer.

The problem, for a time, was the very narrow view of what tourism represented. There were few if any district wide examinations, about what industries within the industry could be developed. Local governments, like many before them, didn’t know as much about the tourism and cottage industry as they should have, and counted way too much on what they believed was new de-centralized manufacturing. Manufacturers who would agree to locate in a small town as a result of tax and property incentives, only to close up a tad later, as efficiencies were commanded by lesser budgets, and more centralized association with related industry.

If they had intimately known the tourism industry, as many of us have experienced for generations, then it would have been more clearly understood, that there’s more to this economy than any generalization or overview could simply reveal. Tourism has always been understood in general terms, except if you were employed directly or indirectly by it.....and you realized the industry had a bulging dynamic being ignored. You can call it tourism, and imply there are many resources to harvest from the same tree, but it’s another thing entirely, to appreciate each spin-off relationship, large or small, that now keeps us more fiscally dynamic, even in the traditional shoulder seasons. But these small diversifications have been drawn out by business-interest gold-miners, creative thinkers, and the never-say-never attitude of industry insiders, to more fully understand the true dimension of the behemoth tourism sector. Unafraid of tapping into lucrative pockets of potential income, in an industry with a huge history in our district. Moreso than the ambition and sensibility one finds of political enlightenment and administrative will......which still persists to quest for the elusive investment of unrelated industry, seen as an almost desired unshackling from the old ways of doing business here. Most often at the expense of Muskoka’s primary economic mover and shaker......which still has enormous untapped potential to offer our region, for the next 100 years. If nurtured with the same intensity.......as the time and effort spent otherwise, to build a manufacturing sector city-scape that doesn’t suit the environs.

While Suzanne and I had many moments, as youngsters, when we thought ourselves disadvantaged, simply because we couldn’t chum around with our buddies all the live long day, today we feel fortunate to have had this opportunity. Just as our boys now realize that tourism is a daily reality.....not confined to two to four months each year. If you were to discuss the pros and cons of the tourism industry, with their regular hometown customers, you’d find that a majority still count the traditional tourist economy as part of their annual income potential.

We have a healthy, expanding, 12 month tourism period now, in this exciting new century, and we should be looking at many more ways, to make it function better. We are the stewards of one of the most beautiful places on earth. Keeping paradise is good for business. So to the city builders, I continue to harp, our tourism industry will not be improved by urban sprawl. It will be nurtured and improved by its conserved and healthy hinterland. Those delusional folks who believe that tourists, and cottage owners, flock here for the same urban landscape..... of what they can enjoy or loathe in their respective home regions, have perpetrated a binge of destruction that has caused more harm than advantage to the industry as a whole. Each year the retail cull takes more of what we simply didn’t need....but got anyway. While we have loads of retail opportunities, we don’t have the accommodations even yet, to truly make this area visitor-friendly and affordable for short and long stays for the general population of potential travellers. Box stores? I’ve never met a tourist yet, in many years of interaction, who told me “I came to Muskoka just to shop,” as a destination. While shopping, especially at some special events planned for the industry, has always been a part of the experience, it isn’t that remarkable to overshadow the attributes of the lakeland as a primary draw.

Suzanne and I, and the boys, for the most part, have celebrated our holidays in Muskoka. We adore our region throughout the year, and find very few temptations elsewhere, that could be as wonderful as lounging at this place.....looking out upon this beautiful winterscape, on a cozy hiatus from a winter walk.....settled comfortably by this crackling cedar fire. Maybe it’s true that being denied free time to explore Muskoka, more fully, as young adults, made us jealous about what we were missing. We’re catching up now, on what was missed before.

I think this new recognition of our region, is as much inspired by the tourism industry, as by anything else. Knowing how badly our admirers want to get back to Muskoka, can’t help, over a lifetime, to influence us hometowners, to appreciate more fully, the attraction from the inside out. We don’t have to travel hours, or deal with jammed traffic arteries to get here. We rise to it every morning, and it is magnificent.

Those who know our commitment to Muskoka, will tell you the Curries are loyalists to the region, and winter, summer, spring, or fall, they will vacation where they feel most inspired, most connected to nature, and most relaxed. We don’t criticize those who don’t share our passion, or only part of it, and who need a Mexico or South Seas vacation to renew their lives. But excuse us if we chortle, a wee bit, on our own, when we see that another snowstorm has closed an airport, at vacation time, or that a group of funseekers has been stranded by the collapse of their travel agency or cruise line. When I see lines of traffic backed up, on Highway 11 and 400, in the suffocating heat, and think about the angst to get to a destination, well, we both think about how lucky we are to live in a tourist economy.......a win, win situation in a place we simply call, our home.

Live in Muskoka? Try a vacation here! Truly the best of both worlds!