Roy MacGregor on his new book and his early years in Huntsville

It’s no secret that Roy MacGregor loves Canada and loves canoeing. With the release today of his 50^th book, Canoe Country: The Making of Canada, he merges those two loves into what its publisher calls “a story of high adventure on white water and the sweetest peace in nature’s quietest corners, from the author best able (and most eager) to tell it.”

I had the pleasure of talking to Roy recently about his inspiration for Canoe Country and his early years in Huntsville.

On Canoe Country

Roy’s book, Canoe Country: The Making of Canada, will be released September 8. (Cover from Random House Canada)

The idea for the book came to him by accident when he was on a panel of judges for CBC’s The Seven Wonders of Canada competition. “I got it into my head that Canadians were so obsessed with being politically correct that this panel would end up spreading (the choices) across the country. So I started thinking, what can I argue in favour of that has no geographic base and that is equally meaningful for people in all parts of the country? That to me was the canoe.” It won. And that got MacGregor thinking about whether he could write a book about it.

There were already many books on the subject, mainly tales of adventure on the water or detailed specifications on the canoe’s construction and history, and he wondered how he could add anything new. But, as the storyteller he is, it occurred to MacGregor that he could treat the canoe like a great Canadian character and write a biography of it, telling its story through history and recreation and relaying what it means to individual people.

“I hope that people who like the canoe will find in this book an explanation of why the canoe matters historically and why you still see it around,” he said. “You don’t see steam trains anymore, you don’t see many horse carts, but you sure see a lot of canoes. There are over a million canoes owned in Canada now, more than a century after the outboard motor was invented. There must be something to them that people like.”

On canoeing

MacGregor was taught how to paddle by his mother, Helen, in the waters of Algonquin Park and its surrounding areas. “My grandfather was the chief ranger in Algonquin Park, my father spent his entire life working in logging in Algonquin Park, and my mother was born in a tent in the middle of Algonquin Park. Well into her teenage years the only way they could get around was by canoe.” He’s been picking up a paddle as often as he can ever since.

One of his favourite places to paddle, and one which he refers to in Canoe Country, is the Petawawa River. “It’s extraordinarily beautiful, but it’s also a challenge and there are some great stories on it. It’s where Pierre Trudeau dumped when he was on one of his last canoe trips. It’s where Blair Fraser, who was the Ottawa editor of Maclean’s magazine, drowned. I did a whole chapter on Blair Fraser and his family going back to where he drowned to put up a cross to honour him. And it’s a trip I’ve done with one daughter and friends. I just love it.”

On growing up in Huntsville

Born in Whitney in 1948, MacGregor spent his formative years in Huntsville, a town that has had a profound impact “because it was where my friends were, where I met my wife, where I got married, where my children got baptized, where my parents lived and are buried, where my sister is buried. Even though I left in 1972 or so, never was there a time when we didn’t return regularly for cottaging or to visit.”

A young Roy shows off his catch with siblings Jim and Ann

He has written much about the area, too. “One of the beauties of growing up in a small town, especially a northern small town, is you meet every imaginable sort of character. You learn not to judge people based on how much money or education they had but for who they were and what they had made of themselves. I always thought there was a kind of spirit to Huntsville – (its people) are extraordinarily proud and there are all kinds of eccentricities which I’ve found endlessly amusing. The high school used to close down in the fall for a couple of weeks because everyone went off to the hunt camps and then in the spring most of the kids would be missing because of the smelt run. You tell people that now and they can’t believe it. And that wasn’t that long ago.

“Our house was on Reservoir Hill on Lorne Street and my bedroom looked out over the town. I could sit there and look over this great bowl of a town that went down toward the river and you could see from the mountain on one side across to Hunters Bay on the other. That made it always like a play, like a stage. Huntsville always had its own very strong personality.”

Part of that personality comes from its residents, of course. “There have been all these fascinating people there – Winnifred Trainor, I’ve written a whole book about her and Tom Thomson; the Rice family, the Hutchesons, the Terzianos. It’s just such an interesting town.

“I think quite fondly, too, of some of the people who have passed on. Mike Greaves died last fall – he was a good friend. And the two people I grew up with were Eric Ruby and Brent Munroe. Brent has also passed on but we have memories that go back so far it’s ridiculous – our three houses were side by side up at Lorne and Mary Street. We went to the first day of kindergarten together and fought all the way there and all the way home and were best friends ever since.”

On his school years

MacGregor went to Huntsville Public and later Huntsville High. Teachers at both schools left a lasting impression – his favourites were Mern Parker and Clyde Armstrong.

“Mern ran what was called an accelerated class – you did grades 3, 4 and 5 in two years. She’d have as many as 48 students in her class teaching three grades with no help whatsoever and I can’t recall a moment’s disciplinary problem. She also lived on Lorne Street so when she walked to school she was like a great mother goose with a gaggle of geese walking beside her. We’d argue over who could hold her hand as we walked down the street. She was just a terrific person.”

One of the memories Parker recounted of MacGregor when he was made an officer in the Order of Canada in 2005, was from when he was no longer in her class. “She was downstairs in her large classroom and the kids started freaking out because a large garter snake had worked its way into the classroom. She said her first thought was, ‘I better go get Roy because he’ll know how to handle it.’” She always signed off his report cards with ‘keep up the good work’ and did the same in a note she sent him when he received the Order. “She died last year at age 102 and so many of her former students came out to the funeral because she had clearly had an effect on all of those people.”

Clyde Armstrong was an English teacher at Huntsville High where MacGregor’s academic performance was less than stellar. “When I was in grade 12, I failed every class with one exception. Doug Stone, the principal at the time, wrote across my report card ‘Going, going—you fill in the rest, Roy.’ He wasn’t too keen about letting me back into school. I had 53 per cent in English, the only class I had passed, and Clyde talked Doug into letting me come back to do grade 12 again. He also took me aside and told me he was going to start up a school magazine and that I was going to be the editor. Now, why would he do that? I had just barely passed English and flunked every single other course. What did he see that I didn’t even see myself? That’s when I first started thinking perhaps I could be a journalist. I owe him hugely.” MacGregor is now a journalist for The Globe and Mail and has worked for the National Post, the Ottawa Citizen, Maclean’s magazine, the Toronto Star and The Canadian Magazine.

1957 All-Stars. Roy is fifth from left in the back row.

When he wasn’t in school, sports occupied most of his time. “We were all sports crazy. Brent and Eric and I all played baseball together. We played lacrosse together. We were on a team that won the provincial championship in peewee. And I played a lot of hockey. I was very wrapped up in the sports scene. I had drifted away from it when I was in the rebellious teenage years and I’ve regretted that so much since. But you can’t go back and change things. You do what you do. Eventually I came back to hockey and I still play.”

On the changes to Huntsville over the years

“Huntsville is, to my mind, one of the very prettiest towns in all of Canada with quite a vibrant main street that is still as much fun to walk up and down both sides as it was when I was a teenager. I’m very fond of it,” said MacGregor.

He loves some of the new changes he’s seen. The Group of Seven Outdoor Gallery murals. The Tom Thomson statue by Brenda Wainman Goulet outside the Algonquin Theatre. The old town clock that still stands as a symbol of Huntsville’s roots. And the town docks that are now so people-friendly.

Still, there are some changes he could have done without. “Huntsville has made some mistakes that I hope they’ve learned from. Placing the LCBO on one of the nicest views in the entire area is an absurdity. And on the highest spot in town, overlooking all the lakes, you have an ugly Home Depot. Who allowed that kind of planning to take place? I hope that in the future, planners take more into consideration about preserving the quaintness and beauty of the town. You can have a Home Depot and you’ve got to have a liquor store,” laughs MacGregor, “but you don’t give them the best locations in town.”

MacGregor grew up next to a nephew of the Rice family and vaguely knew H.E. Rice, former mayor and publisher of the Huntsville Forester. “The Rices did an excellent job just as the Boyers did down in Bracebridge. Muskoka had a rich tradition of family-held newspapers that believed in serving their communities. I regret that the resources aren’t provided to (community newspapers) today as they were once provided by those families. We have an online world now and maybe that’s where we are all headed. I sometimes get the feeling (writing for print) that, wow, I’m a blacksmith. This job can’t last.”

He also recognizes the disparity between Huntsville’s reality and the world’s view of Muskoka. In a recent Globe article, The story of the Muskoka River: A struggle between preservation and development, he wrote, “Never refer to this area of Canada as ‘The Muskokas.’ The locals cringe. And they didn’t much care for a recent newspaper story that tagged them ‘The Hamptons of the North.’ It’s ‘Muskoka,’ nothing plural and, in their minds, nothing compares.” It’s the Hamptons reference and ones like it that MacGregor, like the locals, bristles at.

“Huntsville is isolated from the big money like you see on the big three Muskoka lakes. It doesn’t have all kinds of things that you might associate with that rich summer life, but it does have a rich summer life of its own in terms of summer camps and ordinary cottagers, if I may call them that, and the town itself. The mix of different socioeconomic spheres, to me that is a large part of the personality of Huntsville.”

MacGregor’s new book is available today online and in bookstores.

Photos supplied by Roy MacGregor except where noted.