Barclay

Posted on April 27, 2013 by Highway11.ca Editor

I swear that I’m not a Trekkie. Really, I’m just a casual fan. It was a nice part of a childhood Saturday night – maybe we’d get a bit of pop with our supper, if we were lucky we’d make a pizza, and then we’d watch Star Trek before settling in for Hockey Night in Canada. That nostalgia may be the reason that every time I see the word “Barclay”, immediately this guy springs to mind.

OK, back to the content.

Barclay is another one of the dots on the map along Highway 11 that contribute to the municipality of Innisfil.

There is some other stuff in Barclay – the Innisfil municipal hall, a gas station, the Innisfil recreation centre that the Ontario Gaming Corporation has been promoting the heck out of in a not-so-subtle bid to convince Torontonians to build a casino downtown. But to my recollection Barclay is more a smattering of services than a little village that hugs Highway 11, like Churchill or Stroud.

Barclay is also home to the southern-most woodpile that I saw along Highway 11, although I think it was a result of someone logging their back forty rather than being a permanent local fixture like the woodpiles in that dot more northern communities.

Barclay, Innisfil, Ontario highway 11 feed and grain elevator

You know you’re in rural southern Ontario when the village has a feed and grain elevator…

Barclay, Innisfil, Ontario, speedway on Highway 11

…and a motorsports facility…

Model home centre, Barclay, Innisfil, Ontario, Highway 11

…but is still under pressure to accommodate suburban residential development.

Ontario Highway 11 Innisfil Recreation YMCA OLG highway11.ca

Innisfil’s super-swish YMCA, of OLG commercial fame.

Barclay speedway, Ontario, Innisfil, Highway 11

Whenever I see a speedway, I just feel so country. I expect to see Brad Paisley jump out at me or something.

Barclay, Ontario, feed and grain elevator, on Highway 11

Innisfil

Posted on April 26, 2013 by Highway11.ca Editor

Innisfil is the town in Ontario. Innisfail is its namesake out in Alberta. I’m going to get that out of the way and try my best not to make any typos and avoid any negative emails. For this site, typing Innisfail would be an epic fail.

Highway 11 Ontairo, Innisfil, highway11.ca

For years, David Wilcox was never invited to play my hometown’s summer festival because the organizers thought that his crowd (baby boomer dads?) was “too rowdy”

Innisfil is pretty well-known throughout southern and central Ontario for its beach on Lake Simcoe and its outlet malls on Highway 400 near Cookstown. After driving down Highway 11 south of Barrie, however, I gotta say that I’m a little confused.

I knew that, administratively, Innisfil encompassed a collection of villages and hamlets south of Barrie and along the western shore of Lake Simcoe. But, I always thought that there was a specific settlement named Innisfil on Yonge Street / Highway 11. That may be the case, but it wasn’t apparent during my recent trip on Highway 11. My map reads: St. Paul’s, Stroud, Barclay, Churchill, Fennell, Coulson’s Hill, and then Bradford. No Innisfil in sight, other than in block letters over the region.

Innisfil has changed a lot since its first settlement in the late 1800s. After more than a half-century as a farming region, Innisfil has slowly become more commuter-focused. At one time, almost every house on Lake Simcoe was a recreational property. Today, more than 90 percent are year-round permanent residences.

Though the Ontario Stock Yards moved here from Toronto in 1993, Innisfil has gradually become less agricultural. It lost land to Barrie in 1967, 1982, 1993, and 2010 despite pressure to facilitate development for commuter residents bound for Barrie or Toronto. Book-ended by Barrie’s 135 000 people and Newmarket’s 80 000, Innisfil’s 32 000 (spread over over seven or eight communities) are facing the squeeze of urbanization. Contrast this to the depopulation problems faced by communities an hour or two further north and you’ll have a good sense of how Ontario’s diversity can be a challenge in creating political and societal consensus province-wide.

Innisfil, Ontario on Highway 11 farming highway11.ca

Farms outside Innisfil, Ontario on Highway 11 (Credit: User P199 at Wiki Commons.)

I don’t often advocate leaving Highway 11 for 400-series highways, but in the case of Innisfil you have my blessing. Not only if you’re going to the beach, but also if you’re looking for antiques. The Roadshow 400 Antique Mall is located right on Highway 400. And it is really fantastic, open during the week and weekends, with some of the best selection of antiques available day-in-day-out in Ontario. (It gives Southworks in Cambridge a run for its money.) And the yellow-and-black chip truck in the parking lot has a pretty decent poutine.

Antiques in Innisfil, highway11.ca Ontario

Don’t get distracted by the neighbouring flea market, focus on the antique mall at the east end of the complex.

The other reason to head off Highway 11 in Innisfil is Herbert’s Western Boots and Western Wear. One of two cowboy boots stores on Highway 11, Herbert’s has the best selection in western boots in the area, and I can attest that staff are helpful and low-pressure – willing to help you for hours if need-be, even if you can’t find the pair for you. (Keleher’s Western Boots and Tack, also in Cambridge, has a slightly larger selection.)

Innisfil, Ontario, Cowbow Boots Herbert's Western Wear, Highway11.ca

Uhh, yup we’re not in Toronto anymore.

Stroud

Posted on April 26, 2013 by Highway11.ca Editor

Naturally, this did not excite me as a kid

Oh, I was mad at Stroud for a long time.

It all began one day in April when the parents of some kids that we played with down the street came home with a motorboat.

This was completely foreign to us. Our parents might come home from work with a chocolate bar. Or a roast chicken. (We always wished for a puppy.) But a motorboat? We didn’t know what to think.

At the time, we didn’t consider the broader implications of a family down the road buying family-sized pleasure watercraft. We weren’t terribly concerned that our playmates were now rarely able to play on hot, boring weekend afternoons. We weren’t super bothered that their stock amongst the rest of the neighbourhood kids shot up astronomically, increasing competition for playtime with these new-found all-stars on the block. No, we were pretty young. We were much more single-minded than that.

We just really really really really wanted to go on that boat. And we waited. Patiently. Politely. Never asking. Never hinting. We watched them hitch that boat to their Ford Windstar, pile into their minivan, and drive-off early Saturday mornings their smiles broad and toothy. And we waved back like two siblings wishing their parents bon voyage for a second honeymoon on an oceanliner.

And then, one Friday morning, it happened. One of the girls asked, off-hand, if we’d like to spend the next day with them out on the Grand River, as if it were nothing more than a trip to the park. At home, we heard the phone call, their mother running the plan by our mother. The click of my mom putting down the phone was our cue. We raced down the stairs, beaming, excited, delirious with anticipation for the one thing we had waited for all summer long.

“We’re going to look at houses,” stated our mom, rather matter-of-factly. It wasn’t immediately apparent to us that this was the royal “we”.

“We’re all leaving early in the morning. On Saturday. We’re going to Stroud.”

…?
……..?
????????????

We couldn’t believe it. To go from a boating extravaganza to a two-hour-plus trip in the searing August heat of our non-airconditioned Chevette to the middle of nowhere? Fueled only by home-made sandwiches, a handful of piecefruit, and two cans of pop sweating all over your hands from their time in the cooler, all shared across the four of us? To look at dusty subdivisions of half-constructed model houses that even us kids knew that we were never going to buy?

We were furious. So it’s safe to say, we pouted the whole time. A further boating invite was never forthcoming. And more than twenty years later, as I drove into Stroud, I noticed that, in some ways, not a lot has changed since my childhood visit to the place that denied me a long-anticipated boat trip.

Sure, Stroud is much more suburban than it was twenty years ago, but hasn’t lost its rural nature. Like an old country town, it still has its cluster of road-side houses and businesses on Yonge Street and it is still decorated by goofy business names you’d expect from a small town, in this case Doo or Dye (hair salon) or Killer Inkstink (tattoo parlour). Subdivisions are tucked off the main drag in a way that lets you know they’re there without making you feel like you’re in Mississauga. There’s the local bar, Tapps, with karaoke on Friday nights, and the standard Chinese place, always “famous” for its food. (I can assure you that The China Inn is too far south to offer authentic Northern Ontario Chinese Food.) In sum, Stroud seems to have been able to balance multiple pressures: population overspill from Barrie, demand for recreational properties for Toronto weekenders, and everyday needs of a rural farming community.

Stroud, Ontario plaza on Highway 11 highway11.ca

The plaza at the north end of town definitely wasn’t there some 20-odd years ago. (I’m not sure what part of my brain says “Yes, take a grainy photo of that plaza!“)

Although I can’t speak for my sister, I’ve largely gotten over my beef with Stroud. Boats are expensive and inconvenient. They get old fast and once you’ve lost the love they’re difficult to offload. You’re better-off renting one. Or, even better, staying on land. When you’re in the suburbs, you’re better off using the space you’d need to store a boat to park your third, fourth, or fifth car. In short, I no longer pronounce the word “Stroud” with same invective as Jerry would say “…Newman…(!)“.

And today, as a parent, I realize that my parents probably pulled that trip to Stroud right out their ears. Not only to keep us from an activity that they couldn’t supervise but to avoid a flat-out “no”, which would have been inexplicable to us and insulting to the other family. If so, well done Mom and Dad. Well done.

Highway 11 Ontario, highway11.ca Stroud, Ontario

Highway 11 just north of Stroud, Ontario

St. Paul’s

Posted on April 26, 2013 by Highway11.ca Editor

St. Paul’s is a hamlet just south of Barrie on Highway 11.

I was at a public town hall meeting discussing my former community’s development prospects many years ago when the guy I was sitting beside leaned in and whispered in my ear. “Look,” he said, pointing at the screen. “Every subdivision is named after the things that the houses just eradicated.”

I looked for this phenomenon in St. Paul’s. Why? Because St. Paul’s marks the end of Highway 11’s southern agricultural interlude. St. Paul’s still has its farms, its little circle of country houses, and its Anglican Church. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not been paved over a la Brampton. And sure, there are suburban and estate developments in nearly every dot on the map along Highway 11 as it runs north of Newmarket.

Wow. This is one intimidating name for a fruit farm. Carpe diem, carpe fructum.

This is one intimidating name for a fruit farm. Carpe fructum, my friends.

But it’s in St. Paul’s where you start seeing more and more subdivisions off the side of the road.

You have to assume that this development creeped into the local community long before Barrie annexed St. Paul’s from Innisfil in 2010, as mandated by the province. It all made me feel kind of bad. It’s not that suburban development is necessarily bad; I grew up in the burbs and for me, I couldn’t have wished for anywhere better. But I’m sure that for long before Barrie‘s suburban boom starting putting the squeeze on its neighbours, people sought a home in smaller communities like this as a means of enjoying the best of rural life, with the conveniences of the city nearby.

Change is never avoidable. And I don’t want to give the impression that St. Paul’s is some concrete jungle – far from it. It’s still small and rural.

But after escaping the suburbs of York Region and enjoying the mental and physical space afforded by the rolling farm hills of Bradford and Innisfil, St. Paul’s was a warning that when you’re in southern Ontario, urban reality always lies just around the corner.

St. Paul's, Yonge Street, Ontario Highway 11 highway11.ca

It’s still called Yonge Street even 85 km north of Lake Ontario.

Barrie

Posted on April 17, 2013 by Highway11.ca Editor

London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Philadelphia, Tokyo, Johannesburg, Moscow, and Barrie.

…wait a second.

Live 8 in Barrie.

How does Barrie fit into a list of world class international cities?

Barrie hosted Canada’s Live 8 concert at Molson Park, when Toronto couldn’t handle the last minute capacity due to other festivals and events. And Barrie was sufficiently far enough away from the Big Smoke that putting “Toronto” down on the list would have been misleading.

That must have felt good, Barrie. Real good.

Barrie is a suburban community of about ~~150 000~~ 135 000 (175 000 if you count the greater area) that has the potential to be the next Brampton.

For the geographically challenged, or very narrow-minded, Barrie is considered the start of northern Ontario. But for everyone else on the planet, it’s completely clear that Barrie is in southern Ontario. So they’re at a bit of a crossroads. Barrie is also where Yonge Street ends and the real Highway 11 begins on its route across Ontario.

Barrie’s waterfront

Barrie used to be a farming, industrial, and brewery town. But they developed much of the land and Molson’s closed up its operations so now Barrie is a regional centre and a suburb for those who work in Toronto’s suburbs or who are willing to do the commute all the way into the big city. This means that while it used to have more in common with towns like Sarnia or Stratford, some might say it now has more in common with Brampton. Barrie is Canada’s fastest growing city, at a whopping 25 percent between 2000 and 2005.

Barrie, Spririt Statue, Kempenfelt Bay Highway 11

Spirit statue near Kempenfelt Bay

Highway 400 to Toronto is congested, busy, and used above capacity. This is especially true during cottage season and on long weekends. So be warned. While they say it only takes 50 minutes to go from Toronto to Barrie it’s usually about an hour and a half. Barrie has commuter train service via the GO Network, but if I recall correctly the station isn’t downtown. The government has introduced legislation to keep a belt of land between Toronto and Barrie essentially undeveloped, it is very likely that sprawl will simply hop this area, called the “greenbelt”, and continue to develop it on both sides.

Barrie also gained international notoriety for having one of Canada’s largest drug busts. Someone had converted part of the old Molson’s brewery into a secret pot operation and it apparently flourished until getting busted. Everyone was really surprised.

This is no St. Louis Arch, that’s for sure

To me, a product of the southern Ontario suburbs, Barrie isn’t particularly different…it is a lot like home. Its population is large enough to give you some stuff to do. The Barrie Colts are the local junior hockey team. There are two ski hills in the area (Blue Mountain and Horseshoe Valley), and there are many beaches on Lake Simcoe. Barrie has a nice waterfront along Kempenfelt Bay, with boating, swimming, and other recreational opportunities. There are many cottages nearby as Lake Simcoe is a cottagey area. For those who like Art there is the Maclaren Art Centre and the annual Kempenfelt Arts Festival.

The Downtown offers good waterfront access, a fish and chip shop, and a few nice walks along Lake Simcoe. And there is a Pita Pit. Any town with a Pita Pit gets points from me. Barrie has made an effort to keep its downtown alive despite the box stores and these new outdoor mall plaza things that have taken over outskirts of every suburban city these days, including their own. Like any other city of this size, there are the usual indoor attractions, including miniputt, movies, and bowling.

I’ve received a fair amount of emails (okay, six) complaining that I painted Barrie as dry, uneventful and homogenous. In a sense, it is. That’s not a criticism; that’s the point of the suburbs, including the one I called home for more than 20 years. Barrie doesn’t fit into the molds (e.g. rural, or northern, or isolated, or tiny, or non-existent) that apply to most of the towns on this site. So if anyone is from Barrie and thinks this doesn’t do the town justice, I’m sorry. That was never my intention. Please add to this – send me an email with your thoughts and tips: info (at) highway11 (dot) ca

North Shore

Posted on April 17, 2013 by Highway11.ca Editor

Aha! So you thought that Barrie and Orillia were close by. Think again! It’s about 40 kilometres from Barrie to Orillia.

Ice fishing on Lake Simcoe, just watch out for global warming

As an ignorant southern Ontarian I always grew up associating the two, sort of Barrie is to Orillia what Hamilton is to Burlington. Well, it’s a mistake that I made countless times – thinking that once you hit Barrie, you’ll hit Orillia about 10 minutes later. Well no, you won’t. It takes a while, especially if you think past the distance between the town boundaries and actually are driving from Barrie town centre to Orillia town centre.

This is where the transition begins, southern Ontario slowly blending northward into a no man’s land of cottage country temporariness. It’s evident in the mix of permanent and seasonal businesses that dot the highway – the junk stores disguised as antique shops, the candy stores for the kids, a Napoleon barbecue outlet, the cottage furniture stores, the old-school huntin’ and finshin’ sporting goods and outfitters, the portable sawmilling service, the ads for timber framing, the cycle of independent burger joints constantly opening and closing juxtaposes against the opening of a new Oliver & Bonacini restaurant to serve the cottage crowd.

  There are a few towns in between Barrie and Orillia along the north shore of Lake Simcoe but I haven’t profiled them because this section of Highway 11 is more like a real highway – it has four lanes, it has exits, and it completely by passes the area’s small towns in the name of faster travelling. So I’m sorry, Crown Hill, Guthrie, Oro, and Forest Home, I haven’t visited and considering that this is the last stretch of real highway on Highway 11, I’m unlikely to stop anytime soon.

Additionally, many of the towns are a bit of a detour off the highway, sometimes all the way to the shores of Lake Simcoe. If it was in northern Ontario I’d probably take the detour, but up north towns are few and far between. They’re a luxury. In southern Ontario and especially in cottage country towns are a dime a dozen. So I’m sorry Shanty Bay, Oro Station, and Hawkestone, I haven’t visited.

I’ve always found this bit of a difficult drive. You go from the 400 series Highways, averaging 120 kilometres an hour over three lanes to a highway littered with fast food restaurants on the side, cars merging and exiting at speeds way too high for the two-lane divided highway that is this part of Highway 11.

So now that you know there is some space between Barrie and Orillia, you may continue your journey to either of those two cities.

Orillia

Posted on April 17, 2013 by Highway11.ca Editor

Orillia is an interesting town.

A bit of a mix of blue-collar rural town-dwellers, working-class provincial employees, and left-leaning urban-escapee folkies, Orillia is a strange brew – the kind of place where you’ll see a lineup at both the spelt-flour bread stall and the Dairy Queen. Imagine Guelph without the university.My first substantial visit to Orillia came in March. And I must say, even in the drab, dreary days that aren’t quite winter but aren’t quite spring, I was pretty impressed.

Orillia has enacted by-laws to try to keep its downtown quaint and small-towny. And they’ve succeeded. Downtown Orillia is pretty cute.

There are many independent and specialty stores. We visited a specialty kid clothier. A store that sold upscale pet accessories. Apple Annie’s bakery and breakfast that sold french desserts alongside pancakes and waffles. Hudson’s kitchen store that sold everything from fancy La Creuset enameled cookware to cat-themed soap dishes, where I finally found myself a plastic thing to help scoop chopped and diced vegetables. The main street was pretty full, for a good three blocks. I can only imagine that it is cuter, busier, and even nicer in the summer.

Downtown Orillia is cuter when it’s not winter and when I’m not the photographer

Home of the Ontario Provincial Police, Orillia is a town of 32 000 people about 45 minutes north of Barrie on Highway 11. One hundred and thirty five kilometres north of Toronto, Orillia has waterfront on both Lakes Couchiching and Simcoe. Home to the Stephen Leacock Museum, the Orillia Opera House, and the Orillia Museum of Art and History, Orillia also has a nice waterfront park with a boat launch, walking trails, and a boardwalk.

Orillia was founded in 1867 and has been home to eminent Canadians such as author Stephen Leacock and musician Gordon Lightfoot. It was the first North American municipality to adopt daylight saving time. Today Orillia is a retirement and casino community, as nearby Casino Rama draws both gamblers and seniors. It has almost 20 doughnut shops. ___Insert OPP police joke here___

The Orillia Opera House is a pretty impressive building. With two turrets, it stands out in downtown Orillia, and is pretty much unmissable. The Orillia Opera House hosts plays, concerts, and even comedy. In the back, the Opera House hosts a farmer’s market every Saturday morning, that runs through winter (we bought some jam.) The morning we were there, there were about five older men and women standing outside the opera house, protesting against war. For no particular reason, as far as I could tell, except that it seemed like something they probably did every Saturday morning since they moved there in the 1960s. Wrapped in wollen blankets, ready with pamphlets, rainbow flags, and thermoses, these grown-old hippies showed pure dedication, even if they were small in numbers.

Every Saturday Orillia’s Opera House hosts a farmer’s market and a protest for peace

Orillia is well known for the Mariposa Folk Festival and less well known for its annual perch fishing derby. There is also a store across from the Opera House that sells bongs, and only bongs. I know that Orillia has the leftover hippie element from its folk music days, but a store specializing in selling technicolour, skull-and-crossbones, flaming ninja bongs? The woman in the store was nice enough to let me take a photo. And this is only one half of the store.

Other than Opera, hippies, folk music and maybe the bong store, Orillia is also known for is Weber’s Hamburgers. This place is so popular that it built its own pedestrian overpass over Highway 11. Sometimes the lineup stretches over Highway 11. This is a popular stopping spot for people on their way to cottage country. I’ve heard of many people who swear by their burgers but with a big lineup and a Harvey’s in Orillia, I’ve never stopped.

Highway 11 overpass, pedestrian, Orillia, webers

Pedestrian overpass on Highway 11 built to serve customers of Weber’s Hamburgers, near Orillia, Ontario

Best bong store ever, Orillia, Highway 11 Ontario

I’m guessing this bong store serves the folk music crowd more than the opera crowd in Orillia, Ontario. They told me that people come from as far as Huntsville and that I wasn’t the first to ask to take a photo.

Kahshe Lake / Severn Bridge

Posted on April 17, 2013 by Highway11.ca Editor

Kashshe Lake is a small cottage community a bit to the east of Highway 11 south of Muskoka Falls about 25 minutes north of Orillia.

Kahshe Lake began as a series of logging camps in the 1860s. A guy named James Grant soon built a sawmill near the lake and others followed, eventually building a hotel and a general store. However James Grant died and the rest fell into disrepair. Kahshe Lake was then abandoned and eventually become a cottage community.

There two ideas of what “Kahshe” means. Some think it came from an Aboriginal word Kah-she-she-bog-a-mog, which, according to one source, means Lake of Many Ducks and Birds.

This is cooler in person – a solar-heated seedling-starting operation in Kahshe Lake, on Highway 11

Others think that Kahshe means healings waters. The lake itself is “Tea Coloured”, due to a high level of dissolved organics and is said to have healing properties.

Kahshe Lake Barrens Conservation Reserve is home to numerous provincially and nationally rare plant and animal species. It is ecologically significant because of its large size and lack of habitat fragmentation.

I’ve always just passed it by when driving Highway 11 but one spring I took a mid-day drive up to explore.

Who buys these things? I’m talking about the bear statues for sale along Highway 11, not the family plots at the Symington cemetery in Kahshe Lake

There wasn’t much beyond the usual-yet-random highway-facing stores of a cottage country thoroughfare, like an RV dealer, an inflatables repair service, and a store that sells Muskoka chairs and carved wooden bears. Most notable was the Symington Township pioneer cemetery and the really cool solar nursery setup that one of the local greenhouses has on the east side of Highway 11.

North Kahshe Lake road passes through some year-round houses, ending at a small private marina. South Kahshe Lake road leads to a small cottage community whose main road peters out into a single-lane gravel path adorned with beware of flood signs. I didn’t go past that point, though I did stop to enjoy the absolute silence – bullfrogs, bulrushes, leaves, the wind – just five minutes from a bustling, 120-kilometre per hour highway.

Kahshe Lake, at the end of South Kahshe Lake Road, just east of Highway 11 / Yonge Street

Severn Bridge

Severn Bridge, Ontario on Highway 11 / Yonge Street – the town sign, the community hall and the church

Severn Bridge was named after the Severn River, which divides England and Wales and is criss-crossed by many bridges. It is on the Severn-Trent Waterway that connects the Trent River to Georgian Bay via the Severn.

Severn Bridge was founded in the mid 1800s as a logging camp. From there it developed: the post office came in 1861, the railway in the 1870s, and Highway 11 in 1927. Today it is a town of about 300 half way between Orillia and Gravenhurst. There is a small hydroelectric dam and otherwise it’s all about cottage country tourism. And bird breeding.

Severn Bridge – still a southern Ontario town with the agricultural society and permanent fairgrounds

Cute but tiny Severn Bridge is one of the first highway-side towns you north of the Lake Simcoe strip of Highway 11 just outside of Orillia. Severn Bridge straddles Highway 11, with the Rowing Club and the boat dock and the Shamrock Bay Marina east of the highway and the town proper, including a local potter, an independent gas station, two auto repair shops, an old community centre, a really nice elementary school, and an agricultural society on the east side.

Close by there is the Muskoka Wildlife Centre which offers education programs for kids. Severn Bridge has two bed and breakfasts (Sparrow’s Nest and Severn Shores) and hosts an annual fall fair at the agricultural society grounds.

I can only wonder how many times this street sign has been stolen from just outside Severn Bridge

Severn Bridge boat launch on the Severn River, right by the rowing club. If I recall correctly, the dock is not public

Severn Bridge’s tree of signs

Gravenhurst

Posted on April 17, 2013 by Highway11.ca Editor

If you’re coming up Yonge Street / Highway 11 from the south, Gravenhurst is the first real town north of Orillia.

And Gravenhurst is one of the first towns to truly straddle the northern-southern divide.Being in cottage country, Gravenhurst is home to all sorts of little things you’d not find in a northern town – a tea shop, two independent cafés, an upscale pub, a resort restaurant. There is a small arts community – the downtown is littered with murals – and there is even the Gravenhurst Opera House, built in 1901. The Muskoka Gallery By the Bay displays art near Gravenhurst’s cute waterfront. The town hosts an annual Music on the Barge festival at Gull Lake Park, with many musicians playing in a picturesque setting.

But you can tell that there’s a bit of north in this town too. It’s evident in the nature statues and the goofy motels and that one of its best-rated restaurants is a truck-stop. It’s in the tacky miniputts and the ageing tourist traps and the way a community that essentially hugs a single main road tries to brand itself into two distinct districts (Downtown vs. Uptown).

And it is in the local restaurant rivalries that split long-time residents – the stone hearth knotty-pine rustic welcome of the China House versus the more run-down but all-day dim sum of the Rickshaw, and the Greek-Canadian combo at the Uptown Diner pitted against the Greek-Canadian-Italian of Rombo’s Family Restaurant.

Gravenhurst on Yonge St, Highway 11 Ontario

I’m a little bit country – Fish-and-bear statues, strange motel-restaurant combos, big weird cottage chairs (watch out Callander and Fort Frances), and more bear sculptures…Gravenhurst has touches of northern Ontario

It's not every Muskoka town that has an Opera House and a statue of a communist doctor

And I’m a little bit rock and roll – It’s not every Highway 11 town that has an Opera House and a statue of a communist doctor – Gravenhurst is still a bit southern, too.

Gravenhurst was named after a village in England which is mentioned in Washington Irving’s book Bracebridge Hall. Between 1940 and 1943 it was known as “Little Norway” due to its proximity to the Norwegian Air Force’s temporary training base in Canada. Today Gravenhurst is a retirement and cottage community.

With a permanent population of 10 000, Gravenhurst is the smallest of the towns that make up the cottage country triangle (Bracebridge and Huntsville being larger) but it is still big enough and touristy enough to have the main food and lodging franchises, as well as other tourist amenities. Muskoka steamships operate three different ships that give tours of the many picturesque lakes in the area, with dinner and music cruises available.

But what struck me most about Gravenhurst was the pace.

Cars sauntering down the road, none hitting more than maybe 30 kilometres an hour.

Moms chatting along the main street, enjoying a sundrenched May weekday before their kids get released from school in six weeks.

A young family resting in the shadow of the statue of Dr. Norman Bethune, likely oblivious to the fact that he’s the only westerner to have a statue in China (and probably the only communist to have a statue on Yonge Street) taking in the fresh air whilst retrieving the shoes that their toddler had kicked off.

Local kids out for lunch, meandering in their flip flops having jumped at the chance to wear summer clothing in the decidedly spring weather, full of the listlessness of near-freedom in the face of limited opportunity brings after a tiring, cold winter.

Everyone enjoying the space that becomes so competed-for once the cottagers come in, yet likely all-too-aware that none of this would be possible without the annual invasion of busy and bustling out-of-towners that trample this vibe for twelve weeks each and every year.

Even after all of these years eating at northern Ontario Chinese food restaurants, I have never ordered the “Canadian” food

Downtown Gravenhurst on a warm and sunny May morning

More Adirondack oops I mean Muskoka chairs on Highway 11…and another inexplicable Yonge Street / Highway 11 dinosaur sighting.

Muskoka Falls

Posted on April 17, 2013 by Highway11.ca Editor

Muskoka Falls is a village southeast of Bracebridge just a couple of minutes east off Highway 11.

If you need a break from the Raffi and the kids need a chance to do more than just shake shake shake their sillies out, the small beach strip is a good spot – there is swimming, sand, a couple of picnic tables, and the dull roar of the falls in the air – all in an area small enough to be able to keep an eye on the kids while still relaxing.

If you’re driving from the north, take the second Muskoka Falls/Bracebridge exit (first if you’re driving from the south), turn right, and then take your first left. Don’t be tempted by the signs pointing to a Subway, a McDonald’s and a Harvey’s just a few kilometres away – that’s the sneaky back route that Bracebridge uses to get you on a long, winding trip that often plunks you down not in the fast food drive-through of your choosing, but right into its downtown instead.

Muskoka Falls was one of the first stops on the Ferguson Road, an old gravel precursor to Highway 11 that was built section by section between 1858 and 1927. The site of free government land grants to encourage settlement of the Ontario backcountry, Muskoka Falls was intended to be an important agricultural spot but crap soils meant that it never became one. Lumbering and hydro followed – particularly as sections of Highway 11 were connected and paved – but by and large the area become reforested and overgrown.

Today it’s a tiny village with an elementary school, a boat launch and a small public beach facing Muskoka Falls. The village has a church, Muskoka Falls United Church, and there is a cemetery with some burials from as far back as the 1800s. There’s a Lafarge Cement plant, the Skyway Motel, and small private airfield just west of the village site, off Highway 11.

If you have photos of or info on Muskoka Falls let me know, post below or email me at info (at) highway11 (dot) ca.

: Random graffiti at the Muskoka Falls public beach

The falls, from the public boat launch in Muskoka Falls

Ontario Highway 11 Blog

A virtual town-by-town roadtrip along Yonge Street – the world's longest street.

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Muskoka Falls