From Wayback Wednesday, sponsored by Jamie Lockwood, broker/owner of Sutton Group Muskoka Realty, with family roots of more than 100 years in Huntsville
We’re not sure when this photo was taken, but most agree that the pizza was amazing when the building contained the 141 Café.
According to the Port Sydney/Utterson Chamber of Commerce, Utterson once had three general stores, but this one was the largest.
The G.W. Lankin store, as it was originally known, was by far the largest. After a succession of shopkeepers, it was last in operation as the Utterson General Store and 141 Café until that business closed in the late 2010s.
“Mr. Lankin carried a full line of goods. Food, flour, feed and furniture, hairpins to harness, bolts of cloth, boots to bedding were all sold there. Once the motor age arrived, Mr. Lankin wasted no time in setting up a truck with his merchandise. Each day of the week the driver would call on those who had settled in the northwest as far as Bent River and in the west as far as Ufford. News of recent happenings would be passed along, and messages from one family to the other would also be passed along. The G.W. Lankin store housed at one time the switchboard of the Watt Municipal Telephone Co., and it remained there until they moved to their location on Old Muskoka Road. The company was taken over by Bell in the 1950s…,” according to a historical account on the Chamber’s website.
Do you have interesting photos to share of days gone by? We’d love to see them! Email: [email protected]
See more Wayback Wednesday photos HERE.
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Re: The Country Corner Store in Utterson.
I thought the telephone operations were located in a building across from the present day Post Office?
Perhaps that was after they were in the store.
Would like to see pictures of the original post office.
This would have been the late 70s or early 80s when the store was opened under the ownership of Norm and Karin Lightheart. I worked for Norm at that time and my wife was their first employee.
Norm later purchased the odd brick home across the road which used to be the Appoloni ice cream bar as I understand it. Norm never saw the store reach its goal as a laundromat as he passed away a few years after.
Several owners later the building is now a feed store.