Be Careful What You Wish For When It Comes to the New and Improved District of Muskoka - As We Distance From the Good Old Days, Watch Out

Birch Hollow Photo by Suzanne Currie

     I feel very fortunate that our family arrived in Muskoka, and Bracebridge specifically, at a time when it was still a small town, and a moderately populated region. It was the mid 1960's, as I've explained in previous posts, and we Curries were what you could rightly call "urban refugees." Both my mother, Merle, and my father, Ed, had spent most of their lives in Toronto, and it's where most of our family members were situated, in what was pretty much a family tradition of being "urban," in all ways; living, working, and building extended families.

     But my father saw something significant in Bracebridge that he never really explained, when he arrived back to Burlington one Sunday evening, after a business related trip to Muskoka to see a friend in the lumber business, who was offering him a managerial job if he'd be willing to move north. By the very next weekend, he loaded us in the car, and we made the return trip to a small lake near the village of Minett, where we were invited to spend the weekend with the Jones family, owners of the historic Shier's Lumber, named after its founder, J.D. Shier. It was Bruce Lake that sold me on the rural life, and it was a weekend that pretty much influenced the rest of my family's life, and traditions from that casual, recreational introduction to Muskoka. It's the reason we once again pointed our failing jalopy northward a short time later, and said goodbye to city life forever. Well, I did spend some time in the city while attending university, but it certainly didn't influence me to stay there when the school week was up.

     It seems incumbent more now than ever, to revisit those days in those mindful moments, when I am wondering aloud with friends and family, if the expansionary trend here in South Muskoka, will eventually swallow up all that was once a charming collection of hamlets, villages, and the towns of Gravenhurst, Bracebridge, and Huntsville. I knew those towns then, from a great frequency of visitations, with my family in whatever junker we owned at the time, and with various baseball and hockey teams that played around the district each week in the appropriate seasons. I was a gad-about kid with lots of energy to burn, and friends to lead me astray, as they did, and I willingly followed, to all the nooks and crannies of my hometown Bracebridge, first and foremost. I loved what it didn't have of city attributes, and I took every opportunity to sit down at the abandoned train station, and watch the daily locomotives pounding the rails in front; while we sat spellbound by the rolling stock, while sitting on the huge iron wheeled freight cart stored on the platform. I almost lived in Downtown Bracebridge, and all the shopkeepers knew me by my first name, as did the local constables. I would just park myself down on the steps of one of my favorite businesses, such as Bill Elliot's five cent to a dollar store, or over at the Thomas Company gift shop, across the road, where I used to buy my mother her china cups and saucers for those special occasions; and or, when I was in trouble somehow and needed something nice to soften the punishment coming.

     Over the decades living and working in Bracebridge I watched the transformations occur rapidly once the mid 1980's rolled along, and as an example, there was the sad demise of the train station; an attractive building that had a lot of future potential, and was likely to be saved if not for the fact, that the progressives in administration saw fit to bring in the demolition without much notice in advance, and pummeled the landmark into sawdust before us historical zealots could chain ourselves to the platform.

I think often about what has been sacrificed to herald the urbanizing realities of the so called modern era. The city builders have been working on this plan for decades, and it is starting to appear than within ten years, this may be the outcome. It's accelerating at a significant rate but I do truly ponder, whether the politicians encouraging this huge expansion of urban attributes, will also be in place to handle the consequences that inevitably develop as anything grows larger, and more visibly robust; take for example policing, roads, infrastructure spending, and just the general hubbub where there was once a far more casual, rural, comfortable settlement, where folks from out of town gathered in friendly clusters in downtown Bracebridge on a typical Friday night in social recreation. Some shopped, some wandered about in the soft overhead lamplight, and others discussed everything from home economics to the quality of a hardware company's hammers and saws. It was a communing time, of good social and cultural sharing and cajoling, and it was the intertwining of the rural residents and the good folks from town, but their gatherings were an extension of the way things were done in the olden days. Or so I assumed as the voyeur to it all unfolding. Which was pretty neat for a city transplant, to what gave every appearance of a friendly, sharing community light years, it seemed, from ever becoming even a ghost of a city.

     I own all the ghosts of this romantic, nostalgic former reality, that became mine out of sincere interest in their preservation; so that when the investors decided that the past was expendable, in the physical sense, and the politicians were sold on the idea of an empire to be built, presumably in their honor (boy were they mistaken), I knew, as a writer-of-old-tales, that my stewardship of those memories would be inked for posterity. I have many times, been offered the unwanted opinion, that I should just leave the past to molder in the undertow of "new and improved," and that "time" you see, "waits for no man." I have never been particularly compliant to those who suggest I should leave well enough along, on almost anything I saddle up to as a worthy cause, and it's for sure that I will never abandon the compelling sentiment I have now, about these memories of the old town, and district, having a golden streak of relevance to contemporary times; that without, have no underpinning to validate the whole premise of progress making life here better. It was already pretty good, and I know from experience, that the towns and villages I knew in Muskoka, in the mid 1960's were pretty darn neat; and would be treated with exceptional attention by visitors to the region wanting that "old time Muskoka" they've read about, and seen duplicated on cheesy painted signs and articles aged to look notalgic. Heck, I lived it, and gosh, I'm so pleased to be able to write about it today; at a time when the past is actually becoming strangely vogue, such that someone decorating a multi-million dollar cottage might like to rent a couple of genuine Muskoka historians (Suzanne and I), to sit on their docks like "Muskoka chairs," and look the part; reading a Muskoka book and holding onto rustic paddles, and vintage life vests.

     My son Robert and I enjoy afternoon breaks from our Antique and Vintage Music Shop at about two o'clock every afternoon, principally to walk our dogs Muffin and Pooh Bear. We take a motor trip north along Muskoka Beach Road, all the way to Stage Coach Road, at the Ennis Bay junction. We have been taking this highly therapeutic drive for more than a decade now, as a little daily stress reliever, because we enjoy the beautiful country scenery in real time; not from a video while having a coffee. We travel this route in all kinds of weather through the four seasons, and the most spectacular portion of the road is when we reach the magnificent arches of the natural Cathedral of maples, that enchants the historic pathway with light and shadow, with a most invigorating scent of sweet grass and trilliums in season. It used to be a lightly travelled roadway used mostly by residents along the road, and as a more calming passage north and south between Bracebridge and Gravenhurst. We have watched and experienced in full consequence, how this charming country road, mirroring the values of the Muskoka we once knew and loved, has been changed into a two lane freeway, where all driving excesses and misconduct can be experienced in less than a five to seven mile length, and in our opinion, as frequent travellers, it should be labelled "Use at your own risk." This heavier use by the way, is the result of development both along the road between towns, and the fact that work vehicles and high performance cars have found it both alluring because of it Muskoka-ness, and convenience; as one could watch unfold in an urban dynamic, if you were to park at the intersection of Ennis Bay Road and Stagecoach Road during the mid-day rush. It is a consequence that is only going to become more pronounced in the coming months and years, and it is something that local town councils will be forced to contend with, especially upgrading the often terribly condition of the pavement and the prevalence of tire swallowing pot holes. This will be a first responders nightmare as the raceway of Muskoka Beach Road garners more attention from really bad and fast drivers, who don't share the roadway, or care about the safety of others, as long as they get their jollies, so to speak.

    Arguably, and I would lose every time, I would like some things to return to the way they were; that for example, we could still take a drive on this scenic country lane, and not fear the potential of a head-on collision from a careless driver passing on a hill or on a corner. Sometimes the progressives and the urban builders, and the capitalists who want what they want in big returns, have any real sentiment for what changes they are creating beyond their attempt to remake, and improve, what was already pretty good left alone.

     I am not anti development, because we need progress to move us forward in this ever changing world. But we also can't avoid dealing with consequence of this same progress, as it relates to the welfare of the stake holders - and that would be us, who have invested our lives in this most wonderful place, and the cemetery markers hold our family names going back generations. Yes, we are stakeholders, and we have a vested interest in keeping some vestiges of the old ways as suits us. Not everything if for sale to the highest bidder. My Muskoka memories are going to fountain-forth in the coming months, because they are my most precious antiques and collectables, and I will share them freely for the love of the good old days, and how much we owe our ancestors for setting down such a strong foundation; such that it can be built upon today with security and stability. So we do owe history a little more than we first thought! These citizens of yesteryear sacrificed for our communities, and their good work shows. Take a good look around our towns before it's knocked down and they put up a parking lot!