Up the Great North Road The Story of an Ontario Colonization Road

I began taking an interest in the history of my community (I was born, in 1925, on a farm near Dunchurch, about 25 miles outside Parry Sound, Ontario) while still quite young. What got me started was listening, enthralled, to old-timers yarning about their adventures in the lumber camps and on the river drives of the late-19th and early-20th centuries. Out of this came my first book, Parry Sound Logging Days, an oral history of the industry as viewed by those who did the actual work. My interest in local history soon overreached the bounds of the lumbering days, and after retiring, I launched an historical column in the local weekly newspaper. I had begun capturing district people and scenes on photographic film early in life, and also borrowed and copied old photographs while I was interviewing old-timers, so I had a ready source of pictures to illustrate those columns with. Twenty-three years later, I'm still writing a column for the Parry Sound North Star. While my field of interest as a gatherer of history includes all of the Parry Sound and Muskoka Districts of Ontario, it is only natural that my thickest files are those dealing with central Parry Sound District. The lifeline of that region is Provincial Highway #124 whose beginnings date from 1867, when it was launched from Parry Sound into the interior as the Great North Colonization Road. Settlers and their families streamed up the road over the next 20 years, and although the attempt to turn the inhospitable soil of the Precambrian Shield into lush farmland was a failure, the colonization scheme laid the framework for the outdoor recreation and summer cottage industry that is the region's mainstay today. Up the Great North Road documents this story in words and pictures. The book will particularly appeal to descendants of the pioneers, the recreation property owners and tourists who frequent the area today, and students of Ontario history in general.Macfie, John is the author of 'Up the Great North Road The Story of an Ontario Colonization Road', published 2004 under ISBN 9781550464214 and ISBN 1550464213.