With Spirit and Resolve
Huntsville never had an easy time during its formative decades. Founded in the 1860s amid the picturesque lakes and rolling wooded hills of northeastern Muskoka, the hamlet struggled in competition with nearby settlements.
Stories From Muskoka's Past
The story of Muskoka is one strongly tied to the environment. For centuries, the granite that lies beneath its surface has shaped life on the edge of the Canadian shield. This is the story of those seeking opportunity just beyond the familiar.
A History of Recreation & Sport in Ontario’s Cottage Country, 1860-1945
This book surveys how Muskoka residents and visitors enjoyed the District’s recreational opportunities by focusing “on how people in the past used recreation and sport to enhance their lives.”
In earliest days of Muskoka colonization, the District’s most central place was also its most spectacularly beautiful. Two colonization roads intersected here, just where Muskoka’s most dramatic waterfall plunged a hundred feet down a rock faced chasm.
Just released, Nuggets gathers magazine features written over several decades by Muskoka historian J. Patrick Boyer. His wide-ranging subjects were assigned by savvy Muskoka publishers attuned to topics of popular appeal. Richly illustrated with 149 photographs and 15 illustrations, the 14 “nuggets” include Chief Musquakie, Muskoka Bridges, Muskoka’s Hospitals, First Bank, Photographing Muskoka, Muskoka Electricity, Gold Diggers, Treating Tumours, Bigwin Inn, and Windermere House.
150 Years of Courage and Adventure Along the Muskoka Colonization Road
Muskoka's Main Street describes the road's 150-year history through the eyes of people who designed, built, and travelled it, and who settled along its winding course to carve communities from raw bush.
Striking Back for the Empire, 1914-1918
In August 1914 Muskokans rushed to enlist in the British Empire’s war that was supposed to be over by Christmas. After four years, with millions of soldiers and millions more civilians killed, the euphoria had long since turned to grim despair.
Timiskaming, Nipissing & Abitibi
Steamboats once travelled all of Ontario's navigable waterways - the Great Lakes, the Ottawa River, the Rideau, the Kawarthas, the Muskoka Lakes - but nowhere did they find a greater variety of employment than in the North.
Gateway to Northern Ontario
Parry Sound, at the mouth of the Seguin River on Georgian Bay, is the gateway to Parry Sound District. The town's economy and society have changed dramatically over the decades, as author Adrian Hayes shows with accurate research and colourful episodes.
From Indigenous Wayfinding to Satellite Imaging
Between Samuel Champlain’s first map in 1615 and today’s satellite images of Muskoka from outer space lies a centuries-long drama which proves that putting Muskoka on a map was neither easy nor simple.
Cameos of 1890s Justice from a Magistrate's Bench Book
While dispensing speedy justice, Muskoka Magistrate James Boyer kept a written record of his cases in a "bench book." Recently discovered by his great-grandson, lawyer J. Patrick Boyer, that record now provides the raw material for Raw Life.
How I Survived Five Years in the Canadian Bush
Reluctant Pioneer provides a brooding sense of adventure and unsentimental realism to deliver a powerful account of pioneer life where tragedies arrive as naturally as rain and where humour resides in irony.
A Historical Perspective of the Land, the Holinshead Family and Huntsville
Huntsville teacher Shelley Yearley, whose family’s farming life in north Muskoka began just two years after Confederation, recounts in her well-researched account of Springfield Farm the saga of pioneer settlement, the evolution of farming practices, development of the farm as a tourist lodge, the role of British “home children” in farm work, and dozens of other down-to-earth aspects of community evolution during a century and a-half.
Muskoka & Parry Sound
This was the first book published in Muskoka. Printed in 1871 at the Northern Advocate offices in Bracebridge, where its author Thomas McMurray published his weekly newspaper, the book Free Grant Lands of Canada promoted settlement by offering “practical experience of bush farming in the free grant districts of Muskoka and Parry Sound.”
Canada’s Abandoned National Dream
It took challenging decades to build the St. Lawrence Seaway. It took even longer to not build the Georgian Bay Ship Canal – although it's promise was much greater. Muskoka author Ray Love documents this dramatic saga about “Canada’s Abandoned National Dream.”