It’s Wayback Wednesday: Brendale Square

Welcome to Wayback Wednesday sponsored by Cavalcade Color Lab! Every week, we’ll be sharing a vintage photo or video 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 waaaaay down to see last week’s photo.

This week, a Wayback throwback for those of you who might have missed it the first time around. With Brendale Square in the news lately, we thought we’d share a photo of what it looked like at one time. Share your memories in the comments below.

Wayback Wednesday is sponsored by Cavalcade Color Lab

We couldn’t fool you with our description of this photo: The junction of Highways 11 and 60 is now home to Commerce Park, but at one time it looked like this (albeit in a different location). Do you know the date or the original location of this junction? (Photo: MTO)

This is the Department of Highways’ truck weigh scale at the Hwy 11 and Hwy 60 junction in 1941, which today is where Hwy 60 and King William Street meet.

Here’s what Doppler readers had to say about this image:

Guesses on the date the photo was taken ranged from 1940 (so close, Reg Garnett!) to the 1960s.

Ellen Duncan: “Was that little log place at the junction of Hwy 60 and King William?”

Brain Tapley: “The log place was at the junction of what is now Muskoka 3 / King William Street and highway 60. Back then the part of highway 60 that goes out to the highway 11 bypass did not exist. They built this section in the mid ’70s I think. Anyway, back to the log building … it sat on the side of Muskoka 3, right near where the ramp from Muskoka 3 East bound onto Highway 60 now is. It served I think as the building for a weigh scale at that location used to weigh the trucks. Near the end of the ’60s or maybe the early ’70s this building was moved and become a sort of boat house/beach building down on Fairly Lake. I think it was purchased by one of the town doctors. I think it is still there and could probably be found by looking from the water if one went boating along the piece of shore between 3 guys and the river mouth but I don’t know this for sure.

Marjory Goodwin: Originally the junction of hwy 60 and hwy 11 was at the location of Muskoka Landing and the stop lights at Muskoka Rd.3 N. and hwy 60. This photo is of the weigh scales that was located there. A great place to ride our two-wheeled bikes in the ’60s!!

Sue Ward Cooper: Early ’60s for sure, even though I wasn’t suppose to go there Lol