In this week’s photo, you won’t see this winter sport on Muskoka’s lakes these days. Do you know what event this was and where it was held? (Photo courtesy of Ryan Kidd)<\/strong><\/p>\n Wayback Wednesday is sponsored by Cavalcade Color Lab<\/strong><\/p>\n At the end of December we shared this photo with you:<\/p>\n We couldn’t fool you with this one.<\/p>\n Debi Davis on Facebook said, “Is that the SkiTrain\/Snow Train? I believe it came from Toronto to Huntsville.”<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Marg Wood commented, “This could be The Ski Train- from Toronto to Huntsville \u2013 to stay and ski at Limberlost for the weekend. I remember my parents, Isabel & Andy Kellock, telling us about it and they would join the group at Limberlost. Could be Circa 1930\u2019s!”<\/p>\n Brian Tapley concurred: “Sure looks like a train so I concur with Marg Wood. There is not a cell phone or iPod in sight so the 30s sounds about right. Also, even though these folks are woefully \u201cout of touch\u201d with society by not having a smart phone and lacking a GPS co-ordinate one has to notice that they all seem happy!”<\/p>\n It is indeed the ski train. This is what Susan Pryke’s Huntsville: With Spirit and Resolve<\/em> tells us about it:<\/p>\n The Board of Trade and the (Huntsville) ski club set to work on a promotion campaign with the cooperation of the Canadian National Railway, which had agreed to run “cent a mile” ski trains to Huntsville for the winter season.<\/p>\n In mid-January 1933, Huntsville hosted its first winter carnival…A special ski train, with reduced fares, whisked the skiers north. The townsfolk met the visitors at the station and led them by a torchlight parade to the town hall. Here they registered for events and sorted out their lodgings. But few of them went to bed. They returned to the town hall auditorium for a jamboree and danced until 3 a.m. Then followed two days of skiing excursions, slalom races at Stevens Hill (near the main highway south of town), and other festivities, including an energetic “moccasin dance” on the ice at the arena.<\/p>\n Huntsville repeated the performance in following years, and eventually held three winter carnivals a season.<\/p>\n By the late 1930s, the CNR ran six ski trains a season, with cut-rate fares subsidized by the towns of Gravenhurst, Bracebridge, and Huntsville. Huntsville’s Sunday Ski events had become so popular that religious leaders began to worry that the Sabbath was not being kept properly. In March 1941 the heads of the Protestant churches took their complaint to the provincial legislature where they tabled a petition against Sunday ski trains.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In this week’s photo, you won’t see this winter sport on Muskoka’s lakes these days. Do you know what event this was and where it was held? (Photo courtesy of Ryan Kidd)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1903,"featured_media":25394,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,24,865],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-25393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community","category-photos","category-wayback-wednesday","tag-breaking"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n![](\"https:\/\/media-doppleronline-ca.s3-accelerate.amazonaws.com\/2016\/12\/Wayback-Wednesday-50-header.jpg\")
<\/p>\n