Pioneer Muskoka

The history of Ontario's premier cottage destination, Muskoka, was not commonplace or uneventful. Beginning in the 1860's, emigrants from the British Isles and Europe were lured to this desolate region with the promise of free land grants for farming. What they found were mature forests, swamp, and never ending rock. Their heroic attempts to make a living farming on the Precambrian Shield did not come without considerable discomfort. Pioneer Muskoka documents the struggles faced by these early homesteaders and their response to hardship, isolation, disease and poverty. This is the tale of a community banding together to overcome fear with courage and determination. Readers will be astounded by the lengths these settlers went in their quest to make a home for themselves and future generations in Muskoka. The eventual shift from farming to more profitable industries such as lumber and tourism brought a shift in attitude towards this now highly sought after locale. The first families, through their enormous efforts, were able to create this positive and enduring change.

The history of Ontario's premier cottage destination, Muskoka, was not commonplace or uneventful. Beginning in the 1860's, emigrants from the British Isles and Europe were lured to this desolate region with the promise of free land grants for farming. What they found were mature forests, swamp, and never ending rock. Their heroic attempts to make a living farming on the Precambrian Shield did not come without considerable discomfort. Pioneer Muskoka documents the struggles faced by these early homesteaders and their response to hardship, isolation, disease and poverty. This is the tale of a community banding together to overcome fear with courage and determination. Readers will be astounded by the lengths these settlers went in their quest to make a home for themselves and future generations in Muskoka. The eventual shift from farming to more profitable industries such as lumber and tourism brought a shift in attitude towards this now highly sought after locale. The first families, through their enormous efforts, were able to create this positive and enduring change....

Newsletter covering the pioneer days in Port Sydney.

Thomas Osborne delivers a gripping account of 1870s Ontario pioneer life. The view 16-year-old Thomas Osborne first had of Muskoka was at night, trudging alone with his even younger brother along unmarked primitive roads to find their luckless father who, in 1875, had decided to make a new start for his beleaguered family on some "free land" in the bush east of the pioneer village of Huntsville, Ontario. The miracle is that Thomas lived to tell the tale. For the next five years Thomas endured starvation, falling through the ice and freezing, accidents with axes and boats, and narrow escapes from wolves and bears. Many years later, after returning to the United States, Osborne wrote down all his adventures in a graphic memoir that has become, in the words of author and journalist Roy MacGregor, "an undiscovered Canadian classic." Reluctant Pioneer provides a brooding sense of adventure and un- sentimental realism to deliver a powerful account of pioneer life where tragedies arrive as naturally as rain and where humour resides in irony.

Newsletter covering the pioneer days in Port Sydney.

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.