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soft cover
The photograph top right is a view down Main Street in 1886, the year Huntsville was incorporated as a village (courtesy of John Hall). The front cover features a rare watercolour of the Huntsville downtown waterfront, also in the mid-1880s, by Ada Florence Kinton, a sister of the first village reeve. See the bottom of this page for an enlargement. The main elements of the scene are the original Muskoka Road bridge and the steamboats Northern (the larger one) and Florence.
An important component of the steamboat service that radiated out across the lakes from Huntsville was what was known as the Portage Railway, connecting Peninsula Lake with Lake of Bays a few miles east of town. Beginning in 1984, the Huntsville and Lake of Bays Railway Society worked hard to restore the steam locomotives to live operation in Huntsville. In his illustrated book Rebirth of the Portage Flyer, Society member Russ Nicholls chronicles this 20-year effort. |
AWARD-WINNING BOOK!
Huntsville: With Spirit and Resolve by Susan Pryke
In her lively, information-packed style, Muskoka author Susan Pryke demonstrates that the history of a small town on the Canadian Shield is anything but dull. Huntsville never had an easy time of it during its formative decades. Set amongst the picturesque hills and lakes of northern Muskoka, it struggled in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to win the railway, attract sawmills and other forest-based industries, and expand its hinterland via an extensive steamboat service radiating from town. Then, as the forests dwindled, survival depended on luring tourists to resorts on the surrounding lakes. Despite Huntsville’s rough-hewn beginnings, the town’s energetic citizens achieved fame with an early form of medicare, a first-rate band, and thriller ski jump; in the 1930s they warded off the Depression by throwing a giant winter carnival, pioneering what was then a novel concept in Ontario: winter tourism. Huntsville: With Spirit and Resolve covers the period from earliest settlement to the 1950s. The main text is complemented by numerous sidebars and photos, making this book appealing for both serious reading and casual browsing.
Huntsville: With Spirit and Resolve was designed and typeset for Heritage Huntville by Fox Meadow Creations. |
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