REFLECTIONS FROM THE END OF THE ROAD

ByLee Ann

I’ve just returned from my final field trip hunting down the remains of the original Muskoka road. This time Geoff and I drove from just north of Burk’s Falls to Nipissing Village. And although I didn’t take as many pictures as I had wanted to – too many orange-clad men in pick-up trucks and gunshots in the woods – I still got a feel for the northernmost sections of the road. 

Nowhere else along the road’s length have I been so struck by how completely life changes. Here’s a picture taken at the intersection of the Muskoka Road and the South River Road.

South River Road from Muskoka Road looking east

This trail used to connect the village of Uplands – the northernmost settlement along the Muskoka Road – with South River, an important railway depot. Through South River on the train came the mail for all of Machar township, plus food and supplies for the five villages that once existed here.

There’s not much left of this formerly vital link. There’s not much left of Uplands either – no sign of the stores, the school, the post office. We saw maybe five modern houses and one woman walking an unruly dog. At one time this was the busiest settlement in Machar. But as the centre of commerce shifted to the east along the railway line, Uplands withered.

I was shocked to find that so little remains! I’ve been so immersed in the 1880s and 90s that I fully expected to see that once-major intersection of the Muskoka Road and the South River Road. Instead, we drove right by it and had to double back, peering into the woods until we saw the trail snaking off to the east.

So there you go: for everything there is a season. Some villages take root, thrive for a time, then slowly fade away. Some roads – including parts of the Muskoka – suffer the same fate, and are now mere traces on the map compared to former thick, vital lines.

 In fact, the ten northernmost kilometres of the Muskoka Road itself are now a snowmobile trail – best explored in winter and certainly not during hunting season.

RESEARCH A.K.A. DIGGING FOR BURIED TRUTH

ByLee Ann

Everything I’ve ever read about the Muskoka Road says that it got to North Bay in 1884. This information bothered me for two reasons. One, I couldn’t find the primary source to confirm it – a survey or newspaper report, or a map showing the route in 1884. Two, all the research I was doing about the North Bay area at that time – and about the towns to the south of North Bay that the road apparently went through on its way, towns like Powassan, South River, Trout Creek – said that these towns sprang up around railway depots, not a road.

But all these articles said the road got to North Bay in 1884.

You can guess where this is leading. I recently found the primary source material: annual reports from the Superintendent of Colonization Roads. I read them from 1880 to 1913. And the road went nowhere near North Bay. It terminated in Nipissing Village in 1898.

Who knew I was writing an exposé?

And what about these other articles? Where did this myth of North Bay in 1884 come from?

Here’s my theory. The accepted story of the Muskoka Road includes its evolution into the Ferguson Highway, which ran from Temagami to North Bay in 1927, and was quickly extended southward to encompass the supposed route of the Muskoka Road. I now know that the Ferguson between North Bay and roughly Sundridge encompassed trunk roads built by the government around 1900, not the Muskoka Road. This seems to have been forgotten over time. And as the Ferguson in turn evolved into today’s Highway 11, the details of the origin of the highway became less important and the misinformation kept getting repeated in later reports.

I am very glad that I dug deeper and did not continue to perpetrate the myth. Stay tuned for the next episode of CSI Muskoka!

APPROACHING THE MANUSCRIPT REVISION

ByLee Ann

In Holly Lisle’s Boot Camp for Writers called “How to Think Sideways,” she teaches how to revise the first draft of a novel. You need to have a plan, she says, and you need to revise only once. Her process includes stepping back to ask yourself some big-picture questions before starting to edit.

While I won’t follow her approach exactly with Main Street – for one reason, my book is not a novel – I do see the value of asking Holly’s big-picture questions before I dive into the revision process.

So here goes:

1. Write one sentence that describes what you want this book to be.

This is the story of the Muskoka Colonization Road, told through the eyes of the people who designed, built and travelled it for the past 150 years.

2. Why did you write this book?

I wrote it because I was invited to by a publisher who read an article I wrote about the Muskoka Road. This opportunity is the stuff that writers dream of!

3. What do you want your readers to find in your story?

I want my readers to find a historical adventure story filled with courageous and creative characters… and a spectacularly beautiful region of Ontario that refused to be tamed.

4. How did writing this story change you and what do you hope to leave with your readers?

I learned so much more than I had expected – way beyond the boundaries of Muskoka-Parry Sound. I took on new challenges as a writer. I developed a much stronger pride in the rich history of my home province. I also no longer take roads for granted!

I hope to leave my readers with a rollicking good story, some new information and a better sense of what it took to build Ontario.

Now, somebody hand me a red pen – let the edits begin!

ANATOMY OF A FIRST DRAFT

ByLee Ann

Well, break out the bubbly – it’s done! The first draft, with all its holes and glory. Being the analytical type, I’m going to take a brief look back and see what the process so far has been all about.

So what have I done, and what have I learned?

  • I’ve written 25,999 words. This is a tad short of the 40,000 that I’ve told the publisher I will deliver – but I know the story will expand. I have not yet written Chapter 8, “Travelling the Muskoka Road Today,” because I haven’t done the complete trip myself yet, and which will be about 3,000 words. Plus there is more research to do and some expansion of what I’ve written so far. I expect to come in at about 35,000 words, which is respectable for a book of this type and for what I’ve promised.
  • I’ve followed the original Table of Contents pretty closely, except that I’ve turned Chapter 1 into a Preface. I fully expect to re-organize the structure somewhat for the final version. But as you’ve heard me say before, I love my outline and I love my Table of Contents – they have been the beacons that have guided my research and writing all along.
  • In writing the first two chapters I found my voice and my style, and learned to read my words out loud. This took a long time – probably 3 months elapsed – but was time well spent.
  • During the writing of Chapters 4 and 5  I learned that, even though this is a non-fiction book, the process of telling the story I want to tell is very organic. It’s not at all like the business reports I used to write. It sometimes seemed like I could not write one single sentence without stopping to research something for an hour or two. Very frustrating in terms of accumulating word count. But the nature of the beast.
  • By Chapter 6 I had figured out how to expand my outline down a level or two, defining more specifically the flow of the topics for that chapter… and the writing went faster as a result.
  • Chapter 7 was my biggest challenge; there are few people in it. Up until then, I had enough primary source material – diaries, memoirs and the like – to tell the story through the eyes of people who had actually lived it. My temptation was to rush through Chapter 7, but since the timeline is very long – from 1912 to today – that wasn’t really fair. I did the best I could to personalize the events in this chapter and to tie back to some of the people I wrote about earlier on. We’ll see if my critiquers think it works.

Speaking of critiquers, I want to acknowledge my two writer friends who have been with me every step of the way, reading every chapter as I’ve written it. Lynn and Jen are both excellent writers who have encouraged me and given me clear comments and suggestions. Neither of them have never been to Muskoka and they don’t usually read this kind of book. So if I can keep them interested – and I seem to have so far! – then I figure I’m telling the story the way I want to. Thank you, my friends – may all writers have the benefit of your kind of advice!

My next steps are:

1) Take  a week off to visit with my sister and brother-in-law who are here from Texas.

2) Review and make the recommended changes from my critiquers.

3) Go back to Muskoka to explore the original Muskoka Road further and take pictures.

WALKING THE MUSKOKA ROAD TODAY

ByLee Ann

It’s one thing to drive along part of Highway 11 and know you’re following the same route as the original Muskoka Colonization Road. It’s quite another to walk along part of the original road that still looks like it did 150 years ago.

This is the Muskoka Road as it looked back in the 1800s: a dirt pathway that gambols up and down and around and through some of the roughest territory in Muskoka-Parry Sound. This is the actual road just north of Huntsville:

Complete with ruts, minus the tree stumps, and maybe four feet narrower than in the 19th century, stretches of the original road can still be travelled, if not by car, then by foot or mountain bike. Picture yourself clinging to the side of the stagecoach along this stretch just north of the Big East River:

Remember that the road was maintained by the adjoining settlers under statute labour laws, which required every man over the age of 18 to provide two days of road work per year. But every man over the age of 18 was too busy trying to hack a farm out of his “free grant land” to do much road maintenance. Here’s part of James Matice’s 100 acres, which rises up along the east side of the Muskoka Road at the very north end of Chaffey Township:

In 1879, Matice and his wife Mary lived with their eight children in a shanty or log house right beside the road near this stone fence:

A little over a decade later the 1891 census shows no trace of the Matice family anywhere in Canada. I wonder why. Or is it obvious from the look of their land?

I plan to walk more sections of the original road – as much as is possible all the way to North Bay. But my adventure doesn’t begin to match that of the surveyors, settlers and entrepreneurs who made their way along this exact route 150 years ago.

ARE YOU MY READER? Defining the Audience For My Book

ByLee Ann

As a writer, it’s important for me to think about readers. Who is going to read this book? I mean specifically. What are the demographics, geographical locations, values and interests of the people who are going to care enough about this book to actually buy it?

Some writers write for one “Ideal Reader.” Stephen King’s Ideal Reader is his wife Tabitha. She is the one he wants to wow. She is the one he imagines laughing or crying or cringing when she reads one of his stories. Author and teacher Holly Lisle defines her readers in terms of the values they hold and the types of stories they like to read.

I don’t think there is one “Ideal Reader” for Muskoka’s Main Street. I think – I hope – a lot of different people will buy this book for a lot of different reasons. But I do think there are some specific characteristics that would draw people to my book.

You are my reader if:

  • You like a gripping story where real people overcome crushing hardship.
  • You are interested in learning about what changed the face of Muskoka-Parry Sound from raw wilderness and built the Ontario of today.
  • You are fascinated by entrepreneurs and enjoy learning about their lives, their motivations and innovations.
  • You like history but only when it reads like an adventure story.
  • You’ve noticed signs for “The Old Muskoka Road” and wondered what that’s all about.
  • You’ve ever wondered what it was really like to be a pioneer settler in Ontario’s 19th century.
  • You like to be shown facets of Ontario and its history that you might not know about.
  • You like to travel “off the beaten path” and see where the old road might lead.

Are you my reader?