Ada Florence Kinton worried about loss of Muskoka woodlands in late 1800’s
Took exception to the woodsman’s axe
Since the mid 1990’s I have written frequently about a young lady by the name of Ada Florence Kinton. Following her death in the early 1900’s, her family in Huntsville, published the journal she had commenced before arriving in Muskoka, entitled “Just One Blue Bonnet,” most of the text devoted to detailing her work with the founding Booth family, and the world missions of the Salvation Army.
I found the softcover text one day in a second hand book shop, in the Town of Bracebridge. As I am an antiquarian and collectable book dealer, I couldn’t believe my good fortune, to be able to secure this biographical treasure, with many references to the outdoor experiences the young artist enjoyed in North Muskoka. What made her exceptional to me, as both an historian and a Muskoka heirloom collector-dealer, was that it offered impartial observations of building advancements in the region’s fledgling villages, particularly in Huntsville, where her brothers were already prominent businessmen when she arrived from England.
For the purposes of this blog entry, my interest is in her honest appraisal of how these communities were being constructed between forest, rock and water. Ada Kinton was an accomplished artist and teacher who was forced to come to Canada after the death of her father and the settling of the family’s estate. Her mother had died some years earlier. As she already had brothers and their young families in Canada, it was decided she should travel to the new Dominion, until she could make more secure plans for the future.
She arrived in Canada in the winter season and when she describes the lonely and bitterly cold journey to Muskoka, the final leg by horse-drawn sleigh, it’s obvious the adjustment from the old country to new was going to be long and difficult to heart and senses.
During this period in the newly opened District of Muskoka, Ada made many important observations about the living conditions, social and cultural observances, and advancements in civilized existence established by the new settlers to the community; some homesteads created in the English tradition inside and out. She wrote daily notes about what the community looked like, at work during the day, in gay regalia for special events, as witnessed in either full sunlight, or enhanced by the moonlight reflection off the newly fallen snow. What was striking for me was her many sojourns back into the woodlands south of Huntsville, where she sat for hours making sketches of the flora and fauna, some she describes in colorful detail. She would write for awhile, sketch for a time, and then pause to enjoy the many creatures she could see moving back and forth between birch and evergreen.
She makes numerous references to the forests in peril, and the ceaseless work of the loggers to reduce whole woodlots to stubble in a matter of days. It wasn’t simply to provide room for new buildings but rather to harvest the lumber for building purposes. The harvest of timber in Muskoka was becoming a huge industry in the late 1880’s with much timber being exported from the region to other important Canadian centres for milling and re-sale. Ada Kinton had some concern that these thriving forests were going to be toppled without any recognition of what purpose they serve the creatures within. Would they consume every wooded acre in the district?
Ada Florence Kinton saw the beauty in nature at a time when most settlers looked at trees as both a nuisance and a survival material. They could cut and mill it for their own homes, sell it outright, or use it for fuel in their fireplaces. There was always a good and honest reason for hacking down a tree; it was in the way of a future garden, it was worth money, and it wasn’t serving any other useful purpose. She despaired that there was no way of protecting this inherent resource. While some people vacationed to Muskoka to see these woodlands, the loggers raced against the clock to fill quotas for timber to the mill. Needless to say Muskoka communities were stripped rather bare in those early years, part by necessity to establish villages and farmsteads, the other because of plain and simple greed. It was a resource and there was money to be made. Now tell me what’s different today? Even though many folks continue to come to Muskoka to see our beautiful forests, trees still have that nuisance – value attraction that encourages their annual removal a/ to enhance the lake view and b/ to be sold off to build something or other….or burned up in a fireplace.
The honest, untutored opinion of Ada Kinton, in the late 1880’s, was that we were being reckless with clearing. Those who have little use for the pretty picture of nature, might argue, “what do artists know about anything; they just get emotional when they see a tree cut down.” What Ada Kinton saw was not only a beautiful vista in an enchanting region of the world but a critically important habitat for the creatures of the land. Something we forget about today when another wetland or woodland meets the developer’s mission of over-consumption.
On an unscheduled writing pause, I’ve just now come in from a walk down into The Bog, the charming greenbelt across the road from our home here at Birch Hollow. I can’t really describe the pleasure of being immersed in the heart of this amazing little habitat, surrounded by urbanity. There are deer tracks throughout the upper embankment of The Bog, and it has become a great distraction for our dog Bosko….our very own Deer Hunter. There are many Chickadees and Blue Jays flitting branch to branch overhead, and the squirrels have been chattering warnings to the dog since we touched the outside edge of the forest. The sunlight is dazzling off the newly fallen snow, and what began as a seriously cold day has matured in early afternoon to be most pleasant and inspiring. Ada Kinton would have celebrated this place as well, seeing and feeling its intricacies, its abounding life forms above and below. I would feel terror today to hear the start-up of a chainsaw, just as she feared the distant slash of the woodsman’s axe.
In the past few weeks of blog entries, as I’m sure you can read etched with frustration and annoyance, I’ve tangled with some members of local governance about what is in the best interest of Muskoka. As you can undoubtedly sense, the effort has been as fruitless and ignored as Ada Kinton pleas to spare the forest over one hundred years earlier.
When I look out over a perfect winter landscape with its plethora of inhabitants, all creatures great and small, above the snow mantle and below, I can’t help but wonder what catastrophe of man will be great enough in order for him to stop, and ponder awhile, if sacrificing nature for tarmac and urban sprawl all these decades has generated this most recent despair?
I confess to coming to these woods a lot in recent weeks to seek sanctuary from the urban philosophers and their condo aspirations; the commerce seekers, who know how to suck the last shiny penny from our coffers; the land sharks, the speculators who know we’ll buy the monstrosities they build. It seems so impossible that wisdom might prevail at some point, and a government official, an elected representative, just one, would rear up and say, “Enough, enough! We have consumed too much. We have abused our inherent duty to protect our environment. We must conserve and protect before we build one more strip mall, one more condo unit, one more box store.”
Alas, I am but a hopeless romantic, reared on the work of Washington Irving, who adored such natural splendors, enchanted forests and haunted waterways; Charles Dickens who lashed out against the urban sicknesses, and marveled at natural wonders……standing in awe at Niagara Falls having witnessed nothing as its parallel….just as I’ve adored the words of poet Robert Frost, these snowy woods and leaning birches reminding me of his stops along the way…..Wallace Stevens poem, “The Idea of Order at Key West,” where nature, the sea haunts eternal. Yes, I am mired in these antiquated thoughts of nature and its place in our lives. Yet I have no reason to seek escape from these naïve, outdated thoughts,…ones I have learned from sage authority, wise to the ways of life and times; nature and her seasons.
At the age of 52 this year, I’ve written about environmental protection since the mid 1970’s and I can’t look at my home community and find one woodland I was able to protect from urban expansion. Even when I tried (most recently) with a great sense of desperate mission (and dedicated companions), to save a century old parkland in urban Bracebridge, known as Jubilee Park (where I played as a kid), the fight was lost before it began. The open space where I used to take my wee lads to play, when I lived in that neighborhood, will soon be the campus of an Ontario university…..a place of higher learning. It’s just hard to understand, in this newly turned-on world to issues such as global warming and environmental well being, how we can still be so narrow focused, as to deem irrelevant, a little open space for the enjoyment of an old, well populated urban neighborhood. But it happened and those who tried to save it have no choice now but to watch as one vision of future prosperity is replaced with another.
There are some folks I hear tell, anxiously awaiting the arrival of the earth moving equipment, to gouge out and build upon this open space as soon as possible. I feel sorry for them, I really do, and I’d gladly offer them a walk in partnership through this open space at The Bog, if I thought it would soften hearts of stone.
I’ve spent too many years in this mission to promote environmental conscience to abandon it now. I’m only half sorry to have to tell my opponents in their mission to pave over Muskoka that I have no intention of dropping my protest, my pleas for conservation any time soon. While I can’t stop the determination of government to sell the public on the philosophy that “expansion is good, expansion means progress,” I can be a stick in the spokes whenever opportunity presents. While I’d like to see the citizens of Muskoka rally to the cause, I don’t really expect the cavalry will possess many more than the few committed souls who make it a matter of daily life, to guard the well being of mother earth.
You decide what will inspire the human spirit; my choice is a stroll through the woodland. Can’t find a parallel experience strolling through the strip mall!
Thank you for reading this blog editorial.
Took exception to the woodsman’s axe
Since the mid 1990’s I have written frequently about a young lady by the name of Ada Florence Kinton. Following her death in the early 1900’s, her family in Huntsville, published the journal she had commenced before arriving in Muskoka, entitled “Just One Blue Bonnet,” most of the text devoted to detailing her work with the founding Booth family, and the world missions of the Salvation Army.
I found the softcover text one day in a second hand book shop, in the Town of Bracebridge. As I am an antiquarian and collectable book dealer, I couldn’t believe my good fortune, to be able to secure this biographical treasure, with many references to the outdoor experiences the young artist enjoyed in North Muskoka. What made her exceptional to me, as both an historian and a Muskoka heirloom collector-dealer, was that it offered impartial observations of building advancements in the region’s fledgling villages, particularly in Huntsville, where her brothers were already prominent businessmen when she arrived from England.
For the purposes of this blog entry, my interest is in her honest appraisal of how these communities were being constructed between forest, rock and water. Ada Kinton was an accomplished artist and teacher who was forced to come to Canada after the death of her father and the settling of the family’s estate. Her mother had died some years earlier. As she already had brothers and their young families in Canada, it was decided she should travel to the new Dominion, until she could make more secure plans for the future.
She arrived in Canada in the winter season and when she describes the lonely and bitterly cold journey to Muskoka, the final leg by horse-drawn sleigh, it’s obvious the adjustment from the old country to new was going to be long and difficult to heart and senses.
During this period in the newly opened District of Muskoka, Ada made many important observations about the living conditions, social and cultural observances, and advancements in civilized existence established by the new settlers to the community; some homesteads created in the English tradition inside and out. She wrote daily notes about what the community looked like, at work during the day, in gay regalia for special events, as witnessed in either full sunlight, or enhanced by the moonlight reflection off the newly fallen snow. What was striking for me was her many sojourns back into the woodlands south of Huntsville, where she sat for hours making sketches of the flora and fauna, some she describes in colorful detail. She would write for awhile, sketch for a time, and then pause to enjoy the many creatures she could see moving back and forth between birch and evergreen.
She makes numerous references to the forests in peril, and the ceaseless work of the loggers to reduce whole woodlots to stubble in a matter of days. It wasn’t simply to provide room for new buildings but rather to harvest the lumber for building purposes. The harvest of timber in Muskoka was becoming a huge industry in the late 1880’s with much timber being exported from the region to other important Canadian centres for milling and re-sale. Ada Kinton had some concern that these thriving forests were going to be toppled without any recognition of what purpose they serve the creatures within. Would they consume every wooded acre in the district?
Ada Florence Kinton saw the beauty in nature at a time when most settlers looked at trees as both a nuisance and a survival material. They could cut and mill it for their own homes, sell it outright, or use it for fuel in their fireplaces. There was always a good and honest reason for hacking down a tree; it was in the way of a future garden, it was worth money, and it wasn’t serving any other useful purpose. She despaired that there was no way of protecting this inherent resource. While some people vacationed to Muskoka to see these woodlands, the loggers raced against the clock to fill quotas for timber to the mill. Needless to say Muskoka communities were stripped rather bare in those early years, part by necessity to establish villages and farmsteads, the other because of plain and simple greed. It was a resource and there was money to be made. Now tell me what’s different today? Even though many folks continue to come to Muskoka to see our beautiful forests, trees still have that nuisance – value attraction that encourages their annual removal a/ to enhance the lake view and b/ to be sold off to build something or other….or burned up in a fireplace.
The honest, untutored opinion of Ada Kinton, in the late 1880’s, was that we were being reckless with clearing. Those who have little use for the pretty picture of nature, might argue, “what do artists know about anything; they just get emotional when they see a tree cut down.” What Ada Kinton saw was not only a beautiful vista in an enchanting region of the world but a critically important habitat for the creatures of the land. Something we forget about today when another wetland or woodland meets the developer’s mission of over-consumption.
On an unscheduled writing pause, I’ve just now come in from a walk down into The Bog, the charming greenbelt across the road from our home here at Birch Hollow. I can’t really describe the pleasure of being immersed in the heart of this amazing little habitat, surrounded by urbanity. There are deer tracks throughout the upper embankment of The Bog, and it has become a great distraction for our dog Bosko….our very own Deer Hunter. There are many Chickadees and Blue Jays flitting branch to branch overhead, and the squirrels have been chattering warnings to the dog since we touched the outside edge of the forest. The sunlight is dazzling off the newly fallen snow, and what began as a seriously cold day has matured in early afternoon to be most pleasant and inspiring. Ada Kinton would have celebrated this place as well, seeing and feeling its intricacies, its abounding life forms above and below. I would feel terror today to hear the start-up of a chainsaw, just as she feared the distant slash of the woodsman’s axe.
In the past few weeks of blog entries, as I’m sure you can read etched with frustration and annoyance, I’ve tangled with some members of local governance about what is in the best interest of Muskoka. As you can undoubtedly sense, the effort has been as fruitless and ignored as Ada Kinton pleas to spare the forest over one hundred years earlier.
When I look out over a perfect winter landscape with its plethora of inhabitants, all creatures great and small, above the snow mantle and below, I can’t help but wonder what catastrophe of man will be great enough in order for him to stop, and ponder awhile, if sacrificing nature for tarmac and urban sprawl all these decades has generated this most recent despair?
I confess to coming to these woods a lot in recent weeks to seek sanctuary from the urban philosophers and their condo aspirations; the commerce seekers, who know how to suck the last shiny penny from our coffers; the land sharks, the speculators who know we’ll buy the monstrosities they build. It seems so impossible that wisdom might prevail at some point, and a government official, an elected representative, just one, would rear up and say, “Enough, enough! We have consumed too much. We have abused our inherent duty to protect our environment. We must conserve and protect before we build one more strip mall, one more condo unit, one more box store.”
Alas, I am but a hopeless romantic, reared on the work of Washington Irving, who adored such natural splendors, enchanted forests and haunted waterways; Charles Dickens who lashed out against the urban sicknesses, and marveled at natural wonders……standing in awe at Niagara Falls having witnessed nothing as its parallel….just as I’ve adored the words of poet Robert Frost, these snowy woods and leaning birches reminding me of his stops along the way…..Wallace Stevens poem, “The Idea of Order at Key West,” where nature, the sea haunts eternal. Yes, I am mired in these antiquated thoughts of nature and its place in our lives. Yet I have no reason to seek escape from these naïve, outdated thoughts,…ones I have learned from sage authority, wise to the ways of life and times; nature and her seasons.
At the age of 52 this year, I’ve written about environmental protection since the mid 1970’s and I can’t look at my home community and find one woodland I was able to protect from urban expansion. Even when I tried (most recently) with a great sense of desperate mission (and dedicated companions), to save a century old parkland in urban Bracebridge, known as Jubilee Park (where I played as a kid), the fight was lost before it began. The open space where I used to take my wee lads to play, when I lived in that neighborhood, will soon be the campus of an Ontario university…..a place of higher learning. It’s just hard to understand, in this newly turned-on world to issues such as global warming and environmental well being, how we can still be so narrow focused, as to deem irrelevant, a little open space for the enjoyment of an old, well populated urban neighborhood. But it happened and those who tried to save it have no choice now but to watch as one vision of future prosperity is replaced with another.
There are some folks I hear tell, anxiously awaiting the arrival of the earth moving equipment, to gouge out and build upon this open space as soon as possible. I feel sorry for them, I really do, and I’d gladly offer them a walk in partnership through this open space at The Bog, if I thought it would soften hearts of stone.
I’ve spent too many years in this mission to promote environmental conscience to abandon it now. I’m only half sorry to have to tell my opponents in their mission to pave over Muskoka that I have no intention of dropping my protest, my pleas for conservation any time soon. While I can’t stop the determination of government to sell the public on the philosophy that “expansion is good, expansion means progress,” I can be a stick in the spokes whenever opportunity presents. While I’d like to see the citizens of Muskoka rally to the cause, I don’t really expect the cavalry will possess many more than the few committed souls who make it a matter of daily life, to guard the well being of mother earth.
You decide what will inspire the human spirit; my choice is a stroll through the woodland. Can’t find a parallel experience strolling through the strip mall!
Thank you for reading this blog editorial.
1 comment:
Hello,
In the past few years while researching my genealogy, I had come to find that I am related to Ada Florence Kinton (I am a Kinton - Father born in Burk's Falls) as well I am pleasantly surprised to know of her contributions through her writings, drawings, and life devoted to the Salvation Army. I do have an electronic version of the Blue Bonnet book, and I must say how lucky you are to have found a used copy. I believe an original copy is with the University of Toronto archives.
Thank you for the information provided in your blogs. I was pleased to see Ada Florence's contributions making their way out of the archives and now a part of the internet for myself, and future generations to come.
Best Regards,
Judy
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