“Mr. and Mrs. James Boyer” had quit a bustling, overcrowded, foul city to enter a pristine wilderness, whose thick silence was punctuated only by bird songs, the hollow rushing of quiet breezes in tall pines, and the steadily comforting sound of crashing waterfalls. Muskoka’s pure air had special buoyancy, its dampness releasing the pungent earthy muskiness of fresh wood and mossy rock, a swilling mixture with heady evergreen scents made even fresher by breezes crossing the district’s rocky expanses and crystalline lakes. Bracebridge itself, a stark settlement barely a decade old, was a tiny scattering of shacks, tree stumps, and rough, muddy pathways, isolated, primitive, and much further from New York than all the miles the Boyers had journeyed to get here.
Hannah and James Boyer settled in Macaulay Township, east of Bracebridge, where he soon set about clearing land for farming. James cherished the remoteness, as did other settlers resolved on escaping their pasts. His New York years had simply been the latest chapter in a life buffeted by fate so poignantly that Edward Greenspan remarked, “The tale of his life’s journey would not be out of place in a Charles Dickens novel, except that James’s story is not fictitious.” Greenspan believes “the chapters on James’s life are essential to this book.” Yet the telling of his story and of the equally stirring, entwined saga of Hannah Boyer would require more space, to do their story justice, than can be accommodated here. So it will appear as a separate volume entitled Another Country, Another Life.
In 1868 Bracebridge was designated district capital because of its geographic centrality, and soon several provincial government offices opened to serve the entire Muskoka territory, which not only contributed to the settlement’s growth, but also helped establish the community’s character as the centre for Muskoka government and administration of justice. Muskokans, irregularly scattered across a large and rugged landscape with poor transportation and rudimentary communication, recognized the emergence of a central hub. In Bracebridge itself, these officials and courts faced plenty of work sorting out the human and economic hodgepodge emerging from Muskoka’s raw opening phase.
In the larger picture, the provincial policy of building colonization roads and offering free land had served its intended purpose. The district was being populated and settlements were growing.
Clear-cut logging created drab open space for the emerging settlement of Bracebridge, seen here in 1871, two years after the Boyers arrived from New York. The Muskoka Colonization Road enters this picture from the right, just after crossing the Muskoka River, then turns north to become the village’s main street. The Northern Advocate newspaper, which James Boyer edited, was the first publication in Ontario’s northern districts.
As the settlement grew, the usual aspects of civil society developed. Protestants in early 1870s Bracebridge had the choice of salvation through Methodist, Presbyterian, or Anglican churches. By mid-decade a Roman Catholic priest took up residence in town for the first time — the beginning of another flock. Adherents not only headed to worship services segregated into their respective denominations, but enjoyed community entertainments sponsored by their particular churches.
More broadly, social life was becoming organized: members of the Orange Lodge had a meeting hall; the children, a school; and adults, the Mechanics’ Institute library and its reading room with newspapers and periodicals from Toronto, New York, and London. This Mechanics’ Institute, which began to operate the community’s first library service in 1874, was a worthy institution for Bracebridge. A Mechanics’ Institute was the best available structure for organizing a community library in those days, since free public libraries had yet to emerge. The first Mechanics’ Institute in Ontario was formed at Kingston in 1834, and other larger centres in southern Ontario had since created community libraries this way as well.
The Muskokans of the 1860s and 1870s were different from the immigrants arriving in southern Ontario in the 1820s. The earlier settlers, recalled by historian Robert McDougall, were often “the bungs and dregs of English society,” characterized by their poverty and illiteracy. Those reaching Muskoka a half-century later were, in much greater proportion, educated and entrepreneurial. Just as McDougall recognized in the former their “sterling qualities of character” that made them “the muscle and sinew of the new civilization” emerging in the province, he saw how a smaller number of educated and literate immigrants amongst them gave the emerging community “its mind, its taste, and its voice.”
The fact that Muskoka remained closed to settlement until the 1860s meant it had been held in reserve for later waves of settlers, whose social and economic status and levels of education gave the district strong minds, decided tastes, and outspoken voices. This historical sequence contributed to differentiating Muskokans from others in earlier-settled southern Ontario. Many of those coming to settle Muskoka between the late 1860s and 1880s were more accustomed to modern ways and had higher expectations for themselves than did the earlier settlers, but their fresh start in life required more of them: not just a pioneering encounter with raw land, but also a struggle with the rude conditions on the Canadian Shield. The exchange was bound to produce a particular character.
Bracebridge itself is a river town, and the waterfalls have played a central role in its development, not only powering its early grist, lumber, and shingle mills, but forcing into existence a local economy based on transshipment of goods: moving cargoes from steamboats to horse-drawn wagons, and vice versa, because the falls were a barrier to water-borne transport further upstream into the Muskoka interior. The waterfalls and river also inspired construction of facilities to accommodate travellers and their needs, because the natural setting of the town attracted visitors who enjoyed its scenery despite the stumps and mud. Soon the town site was dotted with hotels and taverns, on both sides of the river.
During Muskoka’s navigation season, which could stretch to eight months, steamboats from Gravenhurst brought freight, mail, and passengers to Bracebridge Wharf. The Muskoka River’s falls at Bracebridge marked the upper reach of Muskoka River navigation and made the town the main transshipment centre between boats and wagons for Muskoka’s north-central interior, a local advantage that lasted until the railway came through in 1885, continuing to Huntsville and beyond.
As its economic activity and commercial trade hummed, Bracebridge emerged as a central hub, not only for government offices and legal administration, but also for the movement of people and cargoes by river, by road, and, after the Grand Trunk Railway reached the place in 1885, by rail.
Agricultural settlement in the townships around Bracebridge, in the spots it could flourish, added a farming economy to this mix, advanced by the early presence in Bracebridge of a grist mill. Next, businesses selling farm equipment and supplies emerged, followed by the formation of an agricultural society and the holding of fall fairs to inspire improved farming methods and better animal husbandry.
Pioneer William Spreadborough’s wife stands behind the fence while he and their four boys are out in front. The family’s hard work and pursuit of quality are displayed in their cabin: logs squared and interlocked at the corners, a sloping and shingled roof, framed windows with curtained glass panes, and the fence built of split rail.
General economic development created a demand for labourers, millwrights, woodsmen, factory-hands, and teamsters. Several