Not ready to let go of the Bracebridge I knew – and adored
I could get into heated debates with most of the new progressives these days that are bound and determined to scale away all signs of the past. The imprint they want is that of 2007 to 2050, and if they could get rid of all signs of a past having been lived and I dare say even enjoyed, they would bulldoze it into a decaying pile of useless, rotting nostalgia. There are a few of us historical activists who thrive on this tired, musty old sentiment and refuse to accept the future without the bracing precedents of the past.
I arrived in Muskoka in the spring of 1966. We left the urban jungle for life in the hinterland of Ontario. Our new home was a small recently constructed bungalow on upper Toronto Street, and my father was employed by one of the well known, and historic, lumber companies in the region. Shier’s Lumber. The Junior hockey club was known as the Shier’s Lumber Kings. While the founder of the lumber company, J.D. Shier had passed away some years before the arrival of my father, it was still very much a respected name in the building and supply industry.
While it took a couple of years to get the lay of the land, and make enough friends to fully integrate into the neighborhood philosophy of play, I knew from about the second week in Bracebridge, that it was going to be a decent home site. Sure, there were a few adjustment moments, like getting past the schoolyard thugs. While I had a few antagonists at school in Burlington, the toughs in Bracebridge were much more numerous and pugilistic when settling a territorial dispute. Rather than dredging up a fair number of dust-ups that didn’t go in my favor, suffice to say it wasn’t long before I’d earned their respect by placing a number of well executed boots to the groin area, when my opponent(s) least expected a lower level assault. I learned it from the city school. So while I got off to a rough start in my new hometown, it was to be expected afterall. Word got around that the Currie kid was okay and gradually the bullies set their sights on a few others with less kicking prowess and I might say, accuracy!
I have always been an intense observer-type who spent a lot of time examining the characteristics, the events, and townsfolk of my new neighborhood. While most people these days seem oblivious to the day to day activities in their ballywick, I found it all so entertaining. I had shortcuts that put me within earshot of hundreds of backyards and by golly, the stuff I heard and witnessed could fill a tell-all book three times. I saw the best, the humorous and the controversial. I watched wives toss husbands out of their abodes, and I listened intently as they begged their spouses to re-consider. I saw booze-inspired donnybrooks where the bagpipes sounded the call for retaliation, no kidding, and I watched in awe as mothers dragged their sons home by the ear, and daughters (sisters) laughed and laughed and laughed at the sight.
It had the same characteristics as any home town. Some events were tragic and many twists of fate brought forth the kind of unsettling circumstances that affected the whole town, not just a family or neighborhood. There were community gatherings and sporting encounters that were just plain good hearted fun, and there were those impromptu gatherings in backyards on late summer nights, when neighbors talked on and on about the good old days. I remember laying in the cool grass at midnight, in the front yard of our apartment at 129 Alice Street, the only way to chill from the stifling humidity of a July heat wave. As I listened to the residents of the apartment talk about day to day stuff, gossip and offer-up tell-all confessionals, I scanned the universe for signs of extra terrestrial life. Four or five of us apartment kids would congregate for these late evening vigils planning our lives in the heat of the night.
When I witness all the allegedly progressive changes to Bracebridge these days, I can get as intense as those over-zealous days of childhood. The changes now are creating a deep chasm between the good town that was, and the urban life and times we are still, as a district, unfamiliar. While it’s difficult admittedly to expand and improve a town without sacrificing some relics and safe havens of the past, it seems to me that very few who have initiated this transition, gave much thought about the sacrifice of town identity; the characteristics of neighborhood and family history ingrained over a century. The most recent sacrifice of Jubilee Park, to accommodate a new university and college campus is a case in point. A neighborhood known as “The Hollow,” with considerable heritage and identity, dating back to the early tanneries and the houses for laborers constructed there, was changed forever by the stroke of a pen, selling land that should have remained parkland forever. There was only a small group, the innermost circle of the power elite, who knew differently, and only shared it with the constituents when it was, by and large, a done deal as they say. While there was debate about land use designations, and official plan requirements, set backs and sideyards, geez, not one councilor or proponent of the project, had anything to say about the heritage and identity of that neighborhood being sacrificed, as if the park had meant nothing to residents for over a hundred years.
It is the fault and ignorance of local government when the essence of community goodwill of an established, time honored neighborhood, is overlooked in the quest for the almighty buck. The decision will adversely alter this old-town neighborhood forever, and council showed absolutely no regard for the best interests of this small parkside community. The Hollow neighborhood was thusly hit with something “historic” for sure but in many cases, to many homeowners, the impact is just shy of tragic. They are told by the master builders of the new cityscape that they had better get with the program or die out with all others who resist progress. A few of us die-hard Fezziwigs question selling-out our rural values and our small town way of life in exchange for the promise of prosperity. Fezziwig was the Charles Dickens’ character in the book “A Chrstimas Carol,” who refused to sell his business to the new “vested interest,” preferring instead to carry on with the traditions and kinship of a small family business. Fezziwig’s reverence to “small is good” and “traditions are important,” has paralleled my own philosophy these many years; and indeed because of my personal miring in the past, alas I’m also part of a dieing breed, who cherish the values, the virtues of small town life and times.
I think the main street of Bracebridge is becoming a rather sad domain these days, far removed from the intriguing place it was when I spent my Saturdays haunting its corridor. If I couldn’t be found anywhere else in town, my mother knew to call down to the five to a dollar store and have staff send me home for supper. I spent a lot of quality hours staring in that store aquarium and budgie cage, and checking out the dinky toy display rack that was everso appealing to a dream-consumed kid. It wasn’t ancient times. It was the 1960’s. The 1970’s for God’s sake. The changes since have been profound and I hardly recognize parts of the community any more…. and I don’t think that’s necessarily a good thing. As the town sprawls out with malls and box stores, the main street, despite its most recent makeover, has become an intersection between the business nodes, and of a greatly diminished economic entity. Why?
From the founding business leaders in Bracebridge, the main street corridor was owned by those entrepreneurs who operated the businesses within. Today there is a greatly reduced number of building owners who actually run commercial operations. They’re landlords not retailers. When a business owner lived over the commercial establishment they tended daily, there was a greater devotion to their home neighborhood; Manitoba Street. From an historical perspective, the founders and developers of the community from the 1860’s onward, were investors in main street commerce and it can be documented they were also the political elite. There’s nothing like having the political elite as residents, to properly represent the rights and privileges of the neighborhood. If there were government and economic development officials living around the site of Jubilee Park, it is unlikely the park would have been declared surplus without much deeper and wider debate.
The main street of Bracebridge now, due to huge commercial pressure elsewhere in the community, is destined to a harsh and lengthy economic decline. If the business and professional leaders of the community were major property owners in the historic area of the mainstreet, commercial development away from the centre would be much different than it is currently….just as it was held in check for decades by what many called “protectionism.” Main street investors then did not want business expansion away from the downtown core, and I was one of the reporters in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, covering debates about the new stresses being placed on the main street, by proposed development planned for the Wellington Street, Highway 118 urban corridor….an old pasture where I used to skate in the 1960’s. Today it is, in my opinion, an urban eyesore, that makes Bracebridge look exactly like a thousand other small communities that believed strip malls and urban sprawl were signs of economic prosperity. They sold their souls so to speak, for the promise of economic well being. Without question substantial and ongoing profits on investments were made but what has been left in the wake. Urban sprawl contaminating a rural community in one of the best known tourist regions in Ontario!
While urban expansion is needed and beneficial, and it would be foolhardy to ignore the dynamic of growth, the course it has taken in Bracebridge will test the resolve of downtown merchants, loyal to the first business community, to hang on for the rough ride of commercial disconnect coming like a hurricane. I wish them the best. They can count me one of the unfazed, unfaltering supporters, who believe a community’s total well being rests with the health of the place where it all began….the mainstreet.
I enjoyed growing up in Bracebridge because, I suppose, it didn’t have the trappings, the hardships of city life. When I was playing minor hockey in Burlington, in the years 1963 to 1966, my games were held as early in the morning as 3:00 a.m. at both the arena, and the Kiwanis open air rink. When I think of my poor father driving me to those games (we had no practices because of ice shortages and expense), watching us play in the shivering cold, driving me home, and then having to be at work in Hamilton by 8:00 a.m., it was a dedication of time I will never forget. In essence it was a reality of city life. Everything seemed to be a hustle and bustle. When we moved to Muskoka in 1966 my games were Saturday mornings from 8:00 a.m. to noon, evenings through the week, with actual time for practices….all indoors at the Bracebridge arena. I liked my days spent in Burlington only because I grew up in a tight-knit neighborhood in one of the oldest parts of the fledgling city. In our Hunt’s Hill neighborhood, in Bracebridge, there were many similarities to what I had left in Burlington. There was however, no hustle and no bustle. Over time, this lack of city-characteristic was what I adored most. I guess it is what I fear is being torn away by those who fail to recognize that urban expansion is like releasing the proverbial genie from the bottle. The Pandora’s Box……piggy-backing one speculative venture on top of another at the expense of the mainstreet.
The population of Bracebridge is not doubling. Speculation is however, operating at break-neck acceleration. The shopping venues now and in the immediate future are not proportional to the day to day material needs and desires of the permanent population, and the seasonal visitors have many of these same venues in their own hometowns, in a much larger format, diminishing the relevance of having more of the same here in the Ontario hinterland. “Build it and they will come,” is the operative statement these days, and it all seems a hell of a big gamble to a way of life we have enjoyed in Muskoka for all these years. There are few urban planning experts that would give the downtown core a prognosis of good future health under the present stresses being placed upon it in 2007.
There are many consequences ahead for Bracebridge councilors, who will be held accountable for the negative side-effects of urban sprawl and the creation of development nodes where woodlands and pastures should have been preserved. If they believe they won’t be held accountable, or that the citizens today will forget who helped forge the path for urban sprawl, this historian has made copious notes all along to facilitate future reference when the need for historical overview is required.
I never thought Bracebridge was so lacking in economic sustainability that it needed to expand over God’s half acre, now requiring new transportation initiatives to connect the nodes. If the same capitalists and speculators had put their money into revamping the mainstreet buildings, or replacing them with newer, higher level structures, instead of sprawling outward, we would have a concentration of dynamic enterprise, in sensible, efficient buildings still in the traditional, easy to access downtown. And while expansion outward is inevitable, we would have, at the very least, a strong, resilient core to spin the commercial wheel;…. unlike today when the faltering hub is going to unbalance and wobble the whole community. In this case Bracebridge has the distinction of being like many other communities that neglected the health of their main business corridor. Their historic business centre. The place where it all began. The street adored by our tourist friends.
The Bracebridge downtown building owners and business community need to adopt a more aggressive approach to deal with this huge decentralizing commercial force before the nails are pounded in to the proverbial coffin. Some say it’s too late now! I say there’s still a chance for strong revitalization. Take it from the historian….the tourism industry is our number one financial contributor to this region, and as it began with the mainstreet business dynamic, it can continue, by the thorough recognition visitors wish to experience history and tradition…..and few get really excited by the strip malls and box stores they see every day in their own hometowns. The true Muskoka experience as it has been from the earliest days of tourism, is inseparable from the good graces of the natural lakeland. Thank you for reading this most recent blog submission from a passionate Muskokan.
I could get into heated debates with most of the new progressives these days that are bound and determined to scale away all signs of the past. The imprint they want is that of 2007 to 2050, and if they could get rid of all signs of a past having been lived and I dare say even enjoyed, they would bulldoze it into a decaying pile of useless, rotting nostalgia. There are a few of us historical activists who thrive on this tired, musty old sentiment and refuse to accept the future without the bracing precedents of the past.
I arrived in Muskoka in the spring of 1966. We left the urban jungle for life in the hinterland of Ontario. Our new home was a small recently constructed bungalow on upper Toronto Street, and my father was employed by one of the well known, and historic, lumber companies in the region. Shier’s Lumber. The Junior hockey club was known as the Shier’s Lumber Kings. While the founder of the lumber company, J.D. Shier had passed away some years before the arrival of my father, it was still very much a respected name in the building and supply industry.
While it took a couple of years to get the lay of the land, and make enough friends to fully integrate into the neighborhood philosophy of play, I knew from about the second week in Bracebridge, that it was going to be a decent home site. Sure, there were a few adjustment moments, like getting past the schoolyard thugs. While I had a few antagonists at school in Burlington, the toughs in Bracebridge were much more numerous and pugilistic when settling a territorial dispute. Rather than dredging up a fair number of dust-ups that didn’t go in my favor, suffice to say it wasn’t long before I’d earned their respect by placing a number of well executed boots to the groin area, when my opponent(s) least expected a lower level assault. I learned it from the city school. So while I got off to a rough start in my new hometown, it was to be expected afterall. Word got around that the Currie kid was okay and gradually the bullies set their sights on a few others with less kicking prowess and I might say, accuracy!
I have always been an intense observer-type who spent a lot of time examining the characteristics, the events, and townsfolk of my new neighborhood. While most people these days seem oblivious to the day to day activities in their ballywick, I found it all so entertaining. I had shortcuts that put me within earshot of hundreds of backyards and by golly, the stuff I heard and witnessed could fill a tell-all book three times. I saw the best, the humorous and the controversial. I watched wives toss husbands out of their abodes, and I listened intently as they begged their spouses to re-consider. I saw booze-inspired donnybrooks where the bagpipes sounded the call for retaliation, no kidding, and I watched in awe as mothers dragged their sons home by the ear, and daughters (sisters) laughed and laughed and laughed at the sight.
It had the same characteristics as any home town. Some events were tragic and many twists of fate brought forth the kind of unsettling circumstances that affected the whole town, not just a family or neighborhood. There were community gatherings and sporting encounters that were just plain good hearted fun, and there were those impromptu gatherings in backyards on late summer nights, when neighbors talked on and on about the good old days. I remember laying in the cool grass at midnight, in the front yard of our apartment at 129 Alice Street, the only way to chill from the stifling humidity of a July heat wave. As I listened to the residents of the apartment talk about day to day stuff, gossip and offer-up tell-all confessionals, I scanned the universe for signs of extra terrestrial life. Four or five of us apartment kids would congregate for these late evening vigils planning our lives in the heat of the night.
When I witness all the allegedly progressive changes to Bracebridge these days, I can get as intense as those over-zealous days of childhood. The changes now are creating a deep chasm between the good town that was, and the urban life and times we are still, as a district, unfamiliar. While it’s difficult admittedly to expand and improve a town without sacrificing some relics and safe havens of the past, it seems to me that very few who have initiated this transition, gave much thought about the sacrifice of town identity; the characteristics of neighborhood and family history ingrained over a century. The most recent sacrifice of Jubilee Park, to accommodate a new university and college campus is a case in point. A neighborhood known as “The Hollow,” with considerable heritage and identity, dating back to the early tanneries and the houses for laborers constructed there, was changed forever by the stroke of a pen, selling land that should have remained parkland forever. There was only a small group, the innermost circle of the power elite, who knew differently, and only shared it with the constituents when it was, by and large, a done deal as they say. While there was debate about land use designations, and official plan requirements, set backs and sideyards, geez, not one councilor or proponent of the project, had anything to say about the heritage and identity of that neighborhood being sacrificed, as if the park had meant nothing to residents for over a hundred years.
It is the fault and ignorance of local government when the essence of community goodwill of an established, time honored neighborhood, is overlooked in the quest for the almighty buck. The decision will adversely alter this old-town neighborhood forever, and council showed absolutely no regard for the best interests of this small parkside community. The Hollow neighborhood was thusly hit with something “historic” for sure but in many cases, to many homeowners, the impact is just shy of tragic. They are told by the master builders of the new cityscape that they had better get with the program or die out with all others who resist progress. A few of us die-hard Fezziwigs question selling-out our rural values and our small town way of life in exchange for the promise of prosperity. Fezziwig was the Charles Dickens’ character in the book “A Chrstimas Carol,” who refused to sell his business to the new “vested interest,” preferring instead to carry on with the traditions and kinship of a small family business. Fezziwig’s reverence to “small is good” and “traditions are important,” has paralleled my own philosophy these many years; and indeed because of my personal miring in the past, alas I’m also part of a dieing breed, who cherish the values, the virtues of small town life and times.
I think the main street of Bracebridge is becoming a rather sad domain these days, far removed from the intriguing place it was when I spent my Saturdays haunting its corridor. If I couldn’t be found anywhere else in town, my mother knew to call down to the five to a dollar store and have staff send me home for supper. I spent a lot of quality hours staring in that store aquarium and budgie cage, and checking out the dinky toy display rack that was everso appealing to a dream-consumed kid. It wasn’t ancient times. It was the 1960’s. The 1970’s for God’s sake. The changes since have been profound and I hardly recognize parts of the community any more…. and I don’t think that’s necessarily a good thing. As the town sprawls out with malls and box stores, the main street, despite its most recent makeover, has become an intersection between the business nodes, and of a greatly diminished economic entity. Why?
From the founding business leaders in Bracebridge, the main street corridor was owned by those entrepreneurs who operated the businesses within. Today there is a greatly reduced number of building owners who actually run commercial operations. They’re landlords not retailers. When a business owner lived over the commercial establishment they tended daily, there was a greater devotion to their home neighborhood; Manitoba Street. From an historical perspective, the founders and developers of the community from the 1860’s onward, were investors in main street commerce and it can be documented they were also the political elite. There’s nothing like having the political elite as residents, to properly represent the rights and privileges of the neighborhood. If there were government and economic development officials living around the site of Jubilee Park, it is unlikely the park would have been declared surplus without much deeper and wider debate.
The main street of Bracebridge now, due to huge commercial pressure elsewhere in the community, is destined to a harsh and lengthy economic decline. If the business and professional leaders of the community were major property owners in the historic area of the mainstreet, commercial development away from the centre would be much different than it is currently….just as it was held in check for decades by what many called “protectionism.” Main street investors then did not want business expansion away from the downtown core, and I was one of the reporters in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, covering debates about the new stresses being placed on the main street, by proposed development planned for the Wellington Street, Highway 118 urban corridor….an old pasture where I used to skate in the 1960’s. Today it is, in my opinion, an urban eyesore, that makes Bracebridge look exactly like a thousand other small communities that believed strip malls and urban sprawl were signs of economic prosperity. They sold their souls so to speak, for the promise of economic well being. Without question substantial and ongoing profits on investments were made but what has been left in the wake. Urban sprawl contaminating a rural community in one of the best known tourist regions in Ontario!
While urban expansion is needed and beneficial, and it would be foolhardy to ignore the dynamic of growth, the course it has taken in Bracebridge will test the resolve of downtown merchants, loyal to the first business community, to hang on for the rough ride of commercial disconnect coming like a hurricane. I wish them the best. They can count me one of the unfazed, unfaltering supporters, who believe a community’s total well being rests with the health of the place where it all began….the mainstreet.
I enjoyed growing up in Bracebridge because, I suppose, it didn’t have the trappings, the hardships of city life. When I was playing minor hockey in Burlington, in the years 1963 to 1966, my games were held as early in the morning as 3:00 a.m. at both the arena, and the Kiwanis open air rink. When I think of my poor father driving me to those games (we had no practices because of ice shortages and expense), watching us play in the shivering cold, driving me home, and then having to be at work in Hamilton by 8:00 a.m., it was a dedication of time I will never forget. In essence it was a reality of city life. Everything seemed to be a hustle and bustle. When we moved to Muskoka in 1966 my games were Saturday mornings from 8:00 a.m. to noon, evenings through the week, with actual time for practices….all indoors at the Bracebridge arena. I liked my days spent in Burlington only because I grew up in a tight-knit neighborhood in one of the oldest parts of the fledgling city. In our Hunt’s Hill neighborhood, in Bracebridge, there were many similarities to what I had left in Burlington. There was however, no hustle and no bustle. Over time, this lack of city-characteristic was what I adored most. I guess it is what I fear is being torn away by those who fail to recognize that urban expansion is like releasing the proverbial genie from the bottle. The Pandora’s Box……piggy-backing one speculative venture on top of another at the expense of the mainstreet.
The population of Bracebridge is not doubling. Speculation is however, operating at break-neck acceleration. The shopping venues now and in the immediate future are not proportional to the day to day material needs and desires of the permanent population, and the seasonal visitors have many of these same venues in their own hometowns, in a much larger format, diminishing the relevance of having more of the same here in the Ontario hinterland. “Build it and they will come,” is the operative statement these days, and it all seems a hell of a big gamble to a way of life we have enjoyed in Muskoka for all these years. There are few urban planning experts that would give the downtown core a prognosis of good future health under the present stresses being placed upon it in 2007.
There are many consequences ahead for Bracebridge councilors, who will be held accountable for the negative side-effects of urban sprawl and the creation of development nodes where woodlands and pastures should have been preserved. If they believe they won’t be held accountable, or that the citizens today will forget who helped forge the path for urban sprawl, this historian has made copious notes all along to facilitate future reference when the need for historical overview is required.
I never thought Bracebridge was so lacking in economic sustainability that it needed to expand over God’s half acre, now requiring new transportation initiatives to connect the nodes. If the same capitalists and speculators had put their money into revamping the mainstreet buildings, or replacing them with newer, higher level structures, instead of sprawling outward, we would have a concentration of dynamic enterprise, in sensible, efficient buildings still in the traditional, easy to access downtown. And while expansion outward is inevitable, we would have, at the very least, a strong, resilient core to spin the commercial wheel;…. unlike today when the faltering hub is going to unbalance and wobble the whole community. In this case Bracebridge has the distinction of being like many other communities that neglected the health of their main business corridor. Their historic business centre. The place where it all began. The street adored by our tourist friends.
The Bracebridge downtown building owners and business community need to adopt a more aggressive approach to deal with this huge decentralizing commercial force before the nails are pounded in to the proverbial coffin. Some say it’s too late now! I say there’s still a chance for strong revitalization. Take it from the historian….the tourism industry is our number one financial contributor to this region, and as it began with the mainstreet business dynamic, it can continue, by the thorough recognition visitors wish to experience history and tradition…..and few get really excited by the strip malls and box stores they see every day in their own hometowns. The true Muskoka experience as it has been from the earliest days of tourism, is inseparable from the good graces of the natural lakeland. Thank you for reading this most recent blog submission from a passionate Muskokan.
1 comment:
Agree with you almpost totally except for the Nippising campus which I believe can do much to restore downtown.
For what it's worth, your blog was forwarded to me by a friend in Virgina
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