Muskoka Traditions

A heavily illustrated guide to the lifestyle, houses and traditions of the affluent Muskoka area of Ontario, long a playground for affluent North Americans.

Justices of the peace, constables, and game wardens from the late 19th century are brought to vivid life interacting with a variety of accused citizens. Rare views of human lives in turmoil are revealed in several hundred trials conducted in 1890s Muskoka by Magistrate James Boyer of Bracebridge. The charges and evidence show how raw life really was in Canada’s frontier towns, with cases ranging from nostalgic and humorous to pitiable and deeply disturbing. While dispensing speedy justice, Boyer, who was also town clerk and editor of the Northern Advocate, the first newspaper in Ontario’s northern districts, kept a careful record in his handwritten "bench book" of all these cases. That bench book, recently found by his great-grandson, lawyer J. Patrick Boyer, provides the raw material for Raw Life. This first-time publication of the these cases demonstrates how, in Canadian society, some things haven’t changed much over the years – from early road rage to the plight of abused women, from environmental contamination to punitive treatment of the poor.

Vanessa Moss, an executive with the National Television Corporation, thinks somebody’s trying to kill her. To protect herself, she engages the services of old classmate and gumshoe Benny Cooperman to go undercover as her personal assistant. Benny discovers a warren of competing executives, backbiting lawyers, arrogant producers, and sycophantic flunkies. But when an NTC employee is murdered, Benny finds out that taking care of Vanessa Moss is a seductive but risky business. Book 10 in the Benny Cooperman Mystery series.

Recreation and Sport are an integral part of Canadian culture. This is nowhere more evident than in the Muskoka District of Ontario. Beginning in the 1860s, people from more populated areas of Southern Ontario and the North Eastern United States flocked to Muskoka to enjoy nature's bounty. They came to fish, hunt, canoe, sail, swim, hike and explore. Many vacationed at one of the ever expanding selection of Muskoka resorts. Others built their own recreational retreats or cottages. Also beginning in the 1860s, Free Land Grant recipients ventured to the area to take land and attempt to farm it. They became the permanent population base and set about developing their own recreations and sporting organizations. This book surveys the attempts of all of Muskoka's residents and visitors to enjoy the recreational opportunities the region provided. The main focus of this local history is on how people in the past used recreation and sport to enhance their lives. In other words, what they did for exercise and fun.

Martin Avery reflects on the place of hockey in the Canadian soul. Bobby Orr And Me flows from Avery's boyhood games in the Muskoka/Parry Sound region in the heart of Canada and it examines the globalization of hockey. Part memoir, part essay on national identity, part hockey history, Hockey Dreams is a meditation by a Canadian author on the essence of the game that helps define our nation.

Muskoka. Now a premier destination for nature tourists and wealthy cottagers, the region underwent a profound transition at the turn of the twentieth century. Making Muskoka uncovers the connections between lived experience and identity in rural communities shaped by tourism at a time when sustainable opportunities for a sedentary life were few on the Canadian Shield. This rocky section of Ontario was transformed from an Indigenous homeland to a settler community and a part-time playground for tourists and cottagers. But what were the consequences for those who lived there year-round?