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!
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Cutting ice was a reality of life during Huntsville’s early decades. Can you guess the date and location of this photo? (Courtesy of Muskoka Digital Archives)
Wayback Wednesday is sponsored by Cavalcade Color Lab

Marilyn Parsons and Brian Tapley corrected guessed this location as Dwight Bay between 1900 and 1920. (The date we have courtesy of Muskoka Heritage Place is 1900.)
Looks just like my Dad and his team looked but this is not him. I remember cutting ice in the 50’s and they had done it for many years before that. Being little (and light) I got the job of going along the edge of the opening and hitting each crack with an ice chisel nearly as big as I was to break the blocks free. Then the bigger (smarter) men would guide these blocks to the little conveyor that lifted them up to the sleigh or truck as the case might be, for their trip to the local ice houses. I fell in a few times. They hauled me out and sent me packing up to see Mom for fresh clothes and I was expected to be back at work in less than half an hour… or else!
Hey it was not all that bad, I had no smart phone so did not realize it was child labor and it was kind of fun.
That picture is my Uncle and my Grandfather on Fairy lake cutting ice, not sure what year it would have been but probably around the 20,s maybe.