Book Reviews by J. Patrick Boyer

Old Muskoka

Century Cottages & Summer Homes

Liz Lundell

Muskoka's mystique is drawn from its natural setting, its special accommodations, and the sense of escape without ever having to go very far from the populous south. In Old Muskoka, Liz Lundell introduces specific instances of just how this is so.

Port Carling authors remember the 1950s

Indian River Tales –Anne Duke Judd
Sparkling Waters: Memories of a Muskoka Childhood –Christine Pearl Bennett
Out of Muskoka –James Bartleman

One Muskoka village had three observant youths who, several decades later, turned their recollections into books about Port Carling in the Fifties.

Providence Island

Gregor Robinson

Muskokans come in the two basic categories of seasonal vacationers and permanent residents, and the symbiosis of the two is a nuanced mixture of mutual dependence, friendship, and antipathy.

The magic for Ray Carrier, central character in Gregor Robinson's new novel Providence Island, is that he lives in both worlds at the same time. His uncommon blending of local culture and the social universe of the vacationers entails all the complications you might imagine, and then some.

Remembering the Saga of Wahta Mohawks

A History of the Wahta Mohawk Community
–Wahta Mohawks

For seven thousand years aboriginal peoples, primarily identified today as Ojibwa, travelled through and lived in the territory that would become known as "Muskoka" after Chief Musqua-Ukee. When we think about early Canadian history and European settlement, the idea invariably is that aboriginals were here first, back through "the mists of time" and millennia of unrecorded history, truly the country's "first nations."

Santa's Village, Muskoka

50 Years of Magic

Diane Rimstead

When Santa and Mrs. Claus took up residence their new Muskoka seasonal home in 1955, the event was so important a milestone in the province's development that Ontario's premier Leslie M. Frost arrived to officially open the place before thronging thousands.

Sylvia Du Vernet

An Indian Odyssey –Sylvia Du Vernet
Muskoka Assembly of the Canadian Chautauqua Association –Sylvia Du Vernet
L.M. Montgomery & The Mystique of Muskoka –Sylvia Du Vernet

In the 1970s Sylvia Du Vernet's doctor said she had only months to live, a year at the most. Resolving to do something special with her remaining time she wrote a book about Muskoka. Sylvia published her book, and, since she hadn't died yet, decided to write another.