to own and operate its own electricity system, buying out a private power plant and propelling the town’s economic surge with clean, cheap hydro-electricity for the motors of industry and better lights for homes, shops, and factories. By the end of the 1890s, demand for electricity in town led to construction of Bracebridge No. 2 generating station at the foot of the falls, completed in 1902.
municipal milestone being reached to town constable Robert Armstrong, who rang the town bell for a full hour as the community celebrated their new municipal status and their law officer’s stamina.
Major leather tanning facilities in Bracebridge and Huntsville helped Muskoka emerge as part of the largest tannery facility in the British Empire, with cow hides imported from as far as Argentina. In addition to creating many (often dangerous) jobs, the tanneries also provided Muskoka farmers with a new lease on life, buying hemlock bark from them to brew the tannic acid they needed to cure the leather. The money was a boon to the farmers, but the tanneries’ effluvia resulted in the two towns’ rivers becoming outrageously polluted.
Another major milestone in the development of Bracebridge was the creation of an electricity system for the town. Bracebridge became the first municipality in Ontario to own and operate its own electricity generating station. In conducting these developments, council took a leading role. Clerk Boyer, among other related duties, conducted the plebiscite by which ratepayers voted to raise funds for the municipal hydro-electric system. The electric works greatly benefited townsfolk and existing business operations: the installation of thirteen streetlights transformed the main streets downtown, allowing shops to extend their shopping hours into the evening, and increasing safety in the streets at night. Stores and workplaces acquired electric lights, then electric motors. A competitive advantage had been gained with the town’s ownership of the electricity supply. Bracebridge offered electric power at low cost to sweeten the deal for new industries it was competing with other Ontario municipalities to attract.
On October 12, 1890, James wrote Hannah, who was visiting her sisters in New Jersey, “There is talk of another very large Tannery in Bracebridge. I have written to the parties to meet the council tomorrow night.”
The town’s ensuing success in landing yet another leather tanning operation illustrates how the tight interaction of government and industry in Bracebridge helped municipal development. First, town council, when negotiating with David W. Alexander of Toronto to establish the tannery, offered a two-thousand dollar bonus as further enticement beyond the advantage of low-cost electricity.
Second, James, as clerk, drafted a bylaw for voters to approve the incentive payment, which they did in the plebiscite that he conducted. Third, it was decided that the new tannery should be on the south side of the river. But the piece of land, although increasingly a part of the town socially and economically, with the J.D. Shier lumber mills and Singleton Brown’s shingle mill in that same section, as well as a growing number of homes, was still legally part of Macaulay Township. So the town council and its residents immediately set to work to ensure that the necessary changes were made to bring that land within the town’s borders. On cue, residents in the affected area applied to Bracebridge for this section to be annexed by the town, council voted money to get the necessary private bill passed through Ontario’s legislature, and also offered $150 to Macaulay Township council if its members would help lobby to get the act passed, which they did. The act passed, allowing the town to expand further both in industry and territory.
It was a fine example of a working democracy, with the local council advancing interests that benefited the town and its people, the citizens being involved by appealing for annexation and by voting in a plebiscite, and the legislature holding a vote on its interest in the matter. Time and again, across Muskoka, this thoroughgoing democratic nature was on display, a direct product of the time of the district’s political formation and the kind of people who had come to build a new society for themselves.
Fortunate settlers, winners at land-grant roulette, discovered pockets of truly fine farmland in Muskoka’s intermittent valleys and flats. They prided themselves on good animal husbandry and crop practices. Their produce was shown for prizes in Muskoka’s many fall fairs. It compared well to the best in Ontario at other agricultural fairs in populous parts of the province.
Whether as the secretary, a director, or, by 1888, president of the Bracebridge Agricultural Society, and later as president of the Parry Sound and Muskoka Agricultural Society, James enthusiastically travelled, usually in the company of a fellow officer, to display Muskoka’s prize-winning produce. In successive years he appeared with bushels and baskets at the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto, the Central Canada Exhibition in Ottawa, and the fall fairs at Owen Sound and Barrie, to put Muskoka farmers’ best products on show. This became increasingly important, he knew, because Muskoka was getting a lot of bad press as a stony nightmare for luckless farmers.
A good harvest of Muskoka hay required storing it from rain, wind, and animals; these men used ladders and pitchforks and piled it high outdoors to dry. For this impressive 1890s photograph, women donned Sunday clothes while men posed with a yoked team and atop a stack. The barn’s well-selected logs were squared at the corners, though not all were debarked; a fine shingle roof, and boards nailed up until the supply ran out, helped keep the interior dry.
In one letter home to Hannah from Owen Sound, James described himself as “terrifically bound up in fall fair work.” When a reporter favourably looked over the exhibit of Muskoka produce, he offered a proposition: “Good exhibit. If you pay me, I’ll write it up in the paper.” James was indignant, and “did not pay.”
It was no different in Toronto. In 1887 the Bracebridge Agricultural Society sent its president, Peter Shannon, and secretary, James Boyer, to exhibit produce at Toronto’s Exhibition. Both men were keen to show that Muskoka could be an agricultural contender despite what the district’s critics said. James, in a September 12 letter home to Hannah from Toronto, described the CNE praise Muskoka’s produce received. People discovered “a splendid exhibit” of prized entries from farms in all sections of Muskoka. “It was difficult,” James wrote, “to make some of the visitors believe that grapes (Lindley or Rogers No. 9), some bunches of which weighed 1¼ pounds each, were grown in the open air of
Livestock, baked goods, and farm produce were on proud display each September at the Bracebridge Fall Fair, as were townsfolk. The spacious agricultural hall housed prize-winning entries from kitchen and field, and offered a balcony view of the race track. The buildings at left and right are on Victoria Street, the house at left, atop the rocky hill, is on Church Street. James Boyer, proud booster of Muskoka farming, was for decades an officer of the Agricultural Society, including serving as president.
Muskoka.” One of the samples of wheat grown on light, sandy soil in Macaulay sold at the close of the Exhibition to an American for one dollar, a notable amount in that time. “Our Duchess apples are not beaten by any that are exhibited prizes. Both the Globe and the Mail wanted to be paid to puff our exhibit,” he concluded, “but Shannon and myself refused to pay them one cent.” Muskoka’s valiant farmers faced hardened newspapermen as well as hard land.
Bracebridge Public School, as it appeared in the 1890s. The windowsills and other stonework were made by James Boyer’s brother-in-law, Harry Boyer. The school bell at the top came loose one day, while being rung to call children in, tumbling heavily to the ground, missing James and Hannah Boyer’s son George by two feet.
The
