You don’t need to look any further than Doppler’s Wayback Wednesday photos to know that Huntsville is proud of its past. These were some of your favourite Wayback photos in 2016. (With thanks to Muskoka Heritage Place and Muskoka Digital Archives for supplying many of the images. If you have photos depicting Huntsville’s past that you’d like to share, we’d love to see them! Send them to [email protected].)
Wayback Wednesday is sponsored by Cavalcade Color Lab
Ray Porter has been a familiar face around Huntsville for decades and when we shared a photo of him checking meters downtown (featured above), you knew instantly who he was and the comments were nothing but positive. Brian Tapley said, “A fair and reasonable meter guy! Yes, he gave me a few tickets over the years but he was always there with a friendly comment and you can bet that if he did give you a ticket…. well, you deserved it! A really great guy!”
Al Kudryk chimed in with “That’s Ray Porter!!! He is the Meter Guy, the Crossing Guard, but most of all the Real Santa that my kids grew up with! Always smiling and a ‘how do you do’ when you would meet. A prince of a man! But most of all a friend!”
Photo courtesy of Linda Kelly
These young hockey fans played together about 60 years ago. From left to right they are Roy MacGregor, Peter Salmon, Tim Kelly, Don Strano, and Doug Conway. Linda Kelly, who submitted the photo (thanks, Linda!) tells us this was from a weekend game of local kids. Tim was wearing a Detroit Red Wings jersey because he was on the team opposing the Leafs.
Sometimes these photos stir up other memories, and David Johns shared this one with us: “Two of these fine lads played another form of hockey, back in the day, floor hockey. Pete Salmon and Doug Conway were two of the best at it. Sutherland Hall every Thursday night was the locale for rugged action on the hardwood floor at our Scout meeting. Cheap sport to play, just cut off your old hockey stick blade and lay some tape on both ends. A rubber puck wasn’t used, it was replaced with a leather donut. No equipment was used so your legs from the knees down had a lot purple bruises all season. Thanks for the great photo.”
Photo courtesy of Muskoka Digital Archives
in Huntsville’s early years steamships plied the lakes and rivers ferrying passengers and supplies. Most are familiar with the Algonquin and the Iroquois, but there were other, smaller ships, too. This is the S.S. Gem, built in the late 1800s, which brought milk from local farms to the cheese factory in Port Sydney, as well as towing timber rafts to sawmills and running market trips to Huntsville. In 1899, the cheese factory consumed 5,000,000 pounds of milk, most of which was transported by the Gem.
On November 20, 1903, the Gem caught fire while docked near the Navigation Company office in Huntsville. The burning boat was pushed away from the wharf, and by the time the Huntsville fire brigade arrived, she was too far away to be helped. The blazing steamer drifted over to the opposite shore, where she grounded and sank. Its owner, Albert Sydney-Smith, had the hulk of the Gem pumped out and towed back to Port Sydney, where she was lengthened and rebuilt over the winter. After changing owners a few times, she was dismantled and abandoned on the north shore of Lake Vernon, not far from Huntsville, in about 1931. (Photo and details courtesy of Muskoka Digital Archives.) Read more about the S.S. Gem here: It’s Wayback Wednesday: blow off a little steam.
This undated photo shows Blackburn’s Boat Works which predated Blackburn’s Marina. In that location now is Boston Pizza, and the marsh across the road is now the plaza and parking lot affectionately known as “Beer Lake” in the spring.
Several Doppler readers had other details to share, but Brian Tapley’s is perhaps the most colourful: “This was Blackburn’s 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 it 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!”
Photo courtesy Anne Shorn
This 1944 photo of the Algonquin steamer heading down the Muskoka River prompted some comments about the surrounding landscape:
Dave Johns guessed the photo was taken pre-1930 and said, “the Fall Fair building is still up located top left, now Fairvern, Look Out mountain top right. Photo is facing east and taken from the west side of Brunel Rd. On the left side of the Algonquin steamship is Hinton’s Garage and Marina who once had a car dealership and made and repaired boats. The house on the right is still located at the corner of Brunel and road that goes down to High School and Arena.”
Larry Smith added, “Our 25 High Street was a new edition way after that. I’m just guessing but I would say around 1934-36. High was built 1939 November and there were about 5 properties on the go just before the war. Neat, eh?”
And Paul Naish noted, “I would suspect it was later in the 1900s given the trees seem to have started to grow back.”
Do you have a favourite Wayback Wednesday photo from 2016 not mentioned here? Let us know what it is in the comments! If you missed some of the earlier ones we’ve posted, you’ll find them all here.
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