Muskoka
The Muskoka Lakes Region is about 200 km north of Toronto and it boasts what are truly the lovliest lakes in all the world. Carved out of the Canadian Shield by glaciers during the last ice age, the area has tens of thousands of lakes, but there are three large lakes that make up what we call the Muskoka Lakes.
Lake Muskoka was the first to have cottages, built back in the 1800's. Lake Rosseau and Lake Joseph remained quite wild and remote for quite a while with only vicars and missionaries building on them.
I have 35 mm film of my father as a young boy back in the late 1930's at Clevelands House with my grandparents, but of course, other than the contour of the lake, everything else has changed. I grew up going to church on Sundays at Elgin House, but that is now the Lake Joseph Golf and Country Club.
The region caught on in the nineteenth century, with the well-to-do being transported up to the region by train from Toronto and ferried to one of the great houses on the three lakes by steam ship.
Paignton House was bulldozed to make room for the Marriot Hotel complex on Lake Rosseau and all of the old hotels all burned down at various times. On Lake Rosseau in 1883, Pratt’s Hotel burned down and in 1945 the Beaumaris Hotel was lost to arson when a disgruntled employee set it ablaze in the night. The famous Royal Muskoka Hotel was also lost in 1952, also likely by arson.
Only a few of the original houses remain on the lakes with Windermere House and Clevelands House being the ones that come to mind.
Muskoka is now the summer vacation destinatin for some of the world's richest people with myriad business tycoons, politicitions, movie stars and athletes owning massive estates on the shores of all three lakes. The region is now known as the "Malibu of the North". Those same steam ships, and modern replicas of them, now transport tourists around the lakes to take in the scenery -and oppulance - that is Muskoka.
Despite the massive influx of billionaires and even just us regular cottages, the lakes remain lovely and clean, and I don't know of anywhere in the world I'd rather be on a hot July day.
Links
Here are some links to places and things to do around the cottage:
