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!
Huntsville has changed a lot over the years. Can you name this waterfront business that used to be on the Muskoka River? How about what’s in that location now or what’s now in the marsh across the road? Bonus points if you can name where the vantage point might have been. (Photo courtesy of Muskoka Heritage Place.)
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Wayback Wednesday is sponsored by Cavalcade Color Lab
When they decided to build the grocery store there in the marsh, they asked a local contractor with a ‘hi-hoe’ to dig them some test holes where they would put their foundations. He told them they would find saw-dust, garbage and old car parts. They asked him to dig anyway. He said he dug up saw-dust, garbage and old car parts. Apparently the muskrats had already left.
I agree with all comments as well. The first thing I envisioned was Blackburn’s Marina, but it does look like a saw mill. I notice that there are no vehicles nor piles of material around it,… maybe shut down by then ? – just before Blackburn’s Marina ? I agree with Gail Orr on the vantage point. I notice what appears to be the peak of a roof near the bottom left corner, so possibly the top floor or even the roof of the church. I’d love to know the date of this image and also, what was the two + story building (with two roof lines…veranda and posts?) …. middle left side, behind the row of buildings on the river front.
Yes, I agree with all of the above. Mill, Dollar Store, Home Hardware. The vantage point is the house on the top of the hill beside the Anglican Church. I think you might even have to be on the top floor to get that vantage point.
This house originally belonged to my great uncle, Norm Ware, where he raised his 5 children. He was an original partner in Ware Bros. grocery store in the Ware block with his brothers Ernie and Bert Ware ( my grandfather).
I think the location above is Blackburn’s Marina/ now Boston Pizza area.
The photo was taken by someone standing on the swing bridge.
Blackburns Marina. Possibly from Anglican Church parking lot. Canadian Tire, Brewers and grocery store in the marsh.
This weeks “Wayback” pic is I think of the waterfront where the Boston Pizza is now. The swamp behind is now the Beer Lake parking lot and the sort of abandoned Dollar store and stuff is there now.
This was Blackburns marina when I was younger, I was told that there was a sawmill there prior to this so maybe this is part of that sawmill.
Dad always told me that there used to be lots of Muskrats in the swamp and the mill gradually filled it in with sawdust and stuff.
The businesses along the main street that backed onto this swamp did their usual thing in those days and dumped everything they did not want into the swamp, hey it’s a Canadian “thing” to do this.
Now we get folks that know nothing of the history and they complain that the parking lot is “falling apart” floods with every rain and so on. Well gosh, it’s like a land claim. We stole if from the muskrats, filled it with junk and only just high enough as fill costs money and then built on it… You wonder why things sag and fall apart!