Making Muskoka: Tourism, Rural Identity, and Sustainability, 1870-1920, 2023

Andrew Watson’s Making Muskoka: Tourism, Rural Identity, and Sustainability, 1870 – 1920 carefully tells the story of the original inhabitants of Muskoka, both Indigenous and colonial settlers, from the early land rush to the influx of tourists in the early twentieth century. Watson digs beneath the history of tourism to examine the shifts in the rural economy, environment and identity of the region. In a region not well suited to large scale agriculture, but attractive to regular seasonal visitors, Watson describes the hardships and limited benefits as well as short- and long-term impacts on the residents, environment and economy.

The first part of the book paints a clear picture of a region that, in the absence of tourists, failed to thrive. Watson argues that while no approach was fully sustainable, some variations were more sustainable than others. His example of wood harvesting highlights this point. When the settlers were allowed to harvest the wood on their properties and sell it locally, it did less environmental damage and proved to be more sustainable in the long term. It also benefited the local economy. The government restrictions on harvesting timber on settlers’ land for the first five years, however, largely prevented this from happening. Instead, the government sale of permits encouraged the large-scale harvest of the most profitable trees – White Pine and Hemlock – to outside parties who extracted the timber and moved on with limited economic benefit to the community. By the 1920s the damage was irreparable with devasting environmental consequences in land and water pollution.

Watson extends the idea of sustainability into the realm of household economy making the latter part of the book particularly interesting for historians interested in consumer culture. He argues that a symbiotic relationship existed initially amongst the settlers and ultimately between the settlers and the tourists who arrived in significant numbers at the turn of the century. The sharing of harvests and labour shaped these early relationships, allowing settlers to survive and tourists to occupy the area (at least through the warm summer months). But a growing consumerism challenged those relationships. Locally grown wood, a staple for early residents, was replaced by coal and oil from other parts of North America removing a key revenue source for permanent residents. Transportation and distribution systems that revolved around steam ships and local labour also slowly disappeared with the introduction of the motorboat. Even consumables sold by local merchants like fresh fruit, meat and dairy were rapidly replaced first by the mail order catalogue and eventually by chain stores. The symbiosis that existed in the 19th century and early 20th century was all but gone by the 1920s

Embedded in Watson’s economic arguments for change over time is the idea that rural identity was important but undervalued and often invisible to outsiders who bought up the land and demanded modern, urban consumer goods. Their choices caused the local economy to decline and often drove locals to move with the seasons and jobs to survive. Rural identity faded. The holders of this rural identity don't come through clearly, though, and we don’t know how long they quietly persisted. Watson tells us of a steamship operator who waxes poetic about his family’s way of life and the development of the region, but did he represent the norm? (p. 149) Watson relies heavily on secondary sources to make claims about the quality of life for people, but noted the limitations of his primary sources in the appendix. The stories that survived and used here are the exception, but may better represent the more successful members of the community rather than those who eked out a meager existence.

At the core of this book is the notion of sustainability, but I wondered about regeneration or reinvention as alternative organizing theses. While Watson makes a compelling case for the environment and the economy as being neither fully sustainable nor fully destroyed, we don’t clearly see reinvention of identity alongside economy. There are a series of vignettes of peoples’ lives, but when their utility to the narrative stops, so does any mention of the individual. Early in the book we get to know what happens to some of the families, but as the book progresses, later life outcomes disappear. One of the exceptions is John Bigwin who appears in chapter two on Indigenous identity and then again in the conclusion to give some closure to the narrative of the Anishinaabeg in the region. But what happened to the entrepreneurs who, for example, started the floating stores, early resorts or the tanneries that eventually disappeared under the pressure of social and environmental change. Did they remain, move on, or just sail into the sunset?

The discussion of Indigenous identity and the impact of settler colonialism on the Anishinaabeg is also important for scholars interested in Muskoka. Watson notes that little has been written on the region and what appears here attempts to fill a void.(176) The Anishinaabeg appear prominently in the introduction, chapter two and briefly in the conclusion, but then disappear getting only passing mentions in the last half of the book. He notes the role of Department of Indian Affairs in the day to day lives of the Indigenous peoples that made interactions and participation increasingly difficult in the period. The discussion of Indigenous identity, however, largely gets siloed into a chapter alongside chapters on wood harvesting and the impact of mineral fuels.

This book is well-researched and accessibly written. For scholars interested in rural economy and consumer society, this book delivers. Individual chapters on wood harvesting or settler colonialism can easily stand alone. The book’s strength is its capacity to intertwine the complexities of different economies, the impact of consumer society and the challenges a local community faces when presented with different and competing groups of individuals inhabiting a single area.