The classic tourism model of Muskoka had two main peaks, each representing a part of Muskoka’s heritage and creating traditions and narratives that have lived on. The first, of course, was the days of rail trips and steam ships, of fancy dresses and lavish vacationers.
But the popularity and enthusiasm of vacationing in Muskoka in the post-war era was just as pronounced.
It represents, in many ways, a simpler time. Family of mom, dad, and children would pack the car and head north to Muskoka for the same week they had travelled the summer before, and the summer before that. They would arrive at their resort of choice, the one they had chosen when the kids were tots and continued to return to, and greet their fellow visitors with hugs and smiles, for they knew those families: they, too, had been vacationing at this same resort during the same week for many years. The family would return to the same pair of rooms or simple cabin as they’d stayed in the year before, reserved upon their departure, of course, and they’d have group dinners and breakfasts with the other families. The adults would sit by the water and gossip by day, observing their kids splashing around in the lake, and attend talent and other low-key entertainment shows by night.
For Judy Embleton, this was her family’s routine until less than a decade ago. She and her family travelled every year to Pinelands Resort, a Victorian-style lodge on the shores of Lake Joseph.
Pinelands had a very distinctive-looking lodge with a bright red roof. The resort was situated on a sandy shoreline of Lake Joseph.
Photo courtesy of Judy Embleton
“We first went in 1996,” Embleton recalls. “The kids were little—they were born in 1991 and 1993—and we hadn’t gone on a vacation in awhile.”
“I went in to the Ontario tourism office in Toronto and I started looking at all the brochures for Muskoka. The most beautiful brochure was the one from Pinelands.”
When Embleton talks about her summers at Pinelands, you can hear the emotion in her voice. Pinelands was not simply a vacation spot for her, but rather a place of true attachment; her family’s first summer there, she says, led to a “love affair with Muskoka.”
“I remember when we’d drive off of highway 118 and start down the driveway (to Pinelands], we’d roll down all the windows and smell the pines,” she says. “Then you’d see the lake and there were flowers everywhere and that big Victorian house with the red roof. You’d go in and there’d be a scent of old wood, a fireplace going, and it always smelled old and warm and almost old-worldly.”
“It was all part of its charm.”
Bruce Reville and his family owned Pinelands Resort from 1970 to 1998. His parents originally took it over from his uncle in what he says was a fluke.
“It was like their second home, just like people who come to their cottage on the lake. This was part of their Muskoka summer.”
“My uncle had a manager and wife running it, and the manager ran off with the pastry chef,” he says with a laugh. “My uncle had no one to run it, and this was in June! He asked my parents if they would run it, so my parents dragged the four kids along and we ended up staying on.”
Reville says the best part of owning and running a hotel in Muskoka, and the part he misses the most, was the people who kept coming back.
“We had a high, high repeat (rate),” he says. “Those guests that came back for 10, 20, 30 years, they would bring their kids, who would then bring their girlfriends or boyfriends, get married, and then bring their kids.”
Judy Embleton, her husband Garry, and their daughters Ally and Melanie, pictured here in 2002, vacationed at Pinelands until it closed after the summer of 2004.
Photo courtesy of Judy Embleton
“That was really special,” he says. “It was like their second home, just like people who come to their cottage on the lake. This was part of their Muskoka summer.”
Indeed, this was the case for Embleton.
“We always rented the same cabin,” she says. “We’d book at the end of our week for the next year.”
By this time, several of the original lodges in Muskoka, most made of wood, had burned down. But others, like Tamwood Lodge, Bangor Resort, and Shamrock Lodge, were still going strong, each experiencing the same kind of repeat customer experience.
But slowly, things began to change, the impetus from beyond Muskoka. Reville says it began just as his parents took Pinelands over.
“At that point, the ’70s, people were expecting more,” Reville says. “They wanted the luxuries they had at home in a hotel. They didn’t want to go to something more basic.”
Reville and his family spent much of their yearly profit improving Pinelands, installing air conditioning, a pool, and a tennis court, and even renovating the rooms to the point that two rooms were now one. But while that satisfied vacationers for a while, it was not to last. As waterfront property taxes continued to increase, consumer demand eventually became too much for many small “Ma and Pa” operations like Pinelands, forcing owners to give in to the high offers from developers who came a-knocking.
Check in to Shamrock Lodge, one of the last resorts of its kind in Muskoka, owned and operated by the Bryant family.