Welcome to Wayback Wednesday sponsored by Cavalcade Color Lab! Every week, we’ll be sharing a vintage photo and asking our readers to chime in with anything you can recall about the photo, other related memories, or even a funny caption. Have some vintage photos of your own? Send them to [email protected] and we may share them with our readers!
Scroll down to see last week’s photo.
This week, Casselman’s Garage. Do you know where it used to be or what is in that location now? Can you guess the year that this photo was taken?
Photo courtesy of the Muskoka Heritage Place Collection
Wayback Wednesday is sponsored by Cavalcade Color Lab
Last week we shared this photo with you:
This ca. 1910 photo is of the former Agricultural Park and Hall.
In Huntsville: With Spirit and Resolve, Susan Pryke writes: “The Agricultural Park and Hall occupied the site of what is now Fairvern Nursing Home, Mountainview Avenue, and the sewage treatment plant.
An agricultural society has existed in Huntsville since 1876 when the East Muskoka Agricultural Society was first created with the assistance of Captain George Hunt…The society got off to a shaky start and appears to have dissolved in 1877.
The society re-established itself and in October 1886 held a large stock fair in Huntsville. The following year the society arranged to buy the old school site (the school was located on Church Street between Mill Street and Mountainview Avenue) as a permanent fairground… The parcel, later called the Agricultural Park, included 12 acres of land on the northeast side of the Muskoka River. In 1895 the Agricultural Society purchased the western portion of Mill Street to be used as part of its show grounds.
It’s not entirely clear when the name changed from East Muskoka to North Muskoka Agricultural Society, although literature of the society suggests it was 1887.
The popularity of the fair necessitated the construction of a two-storey pavilion in 1910. ‘It had a hard wooden floor for dancing and a built-in porch overlooking the grounds and the river. Young ladies in pastel coloured dresses and long white gloves passed down the receiving line before dancing to the music supplied by the town band.’
The Agricultural Society held its fairs at Memorial Park from 1930 until 1973 when it moved to a site on Ravenscliffe Road. The name of the society changed to Huntsville and District Agricultural Society in 1966.”
The Huntsville and District Agricultural Society still holds the town’s annual fall fair, this year from September 21-23.
If you want to see more Wayback Wednesday photos, click here.
Casselman’s Garage was located at the north corner of Main and Center streets. The photo was taken for C.O. Shaw in 1936 to get some tax relief which he thought was too high on all the building he owned in Town. Today this location is where our Post Office now stands. Love the old gas pumps and air pumps.