I am a history buff by nature, and nostalgic by condition. Nostalgic, specifically, for a time I never actually lived through. Muskoka in the early 1900’s calls to me in a way I can't really explain. Maybe it's the house we restored, which was built in that era and still holds the same bones. Or maybe it’s the knowledge that these ancient rock faces and lakes were host to regattas and hiking spots and hunt camps long before my own family came to settle here.
I often sit on my veranda and look out to the water. In my mind I am wearing the most beautiful 1920s dress and a wide-brimmed hat, a glass of iced tea in hand, watching the steamships come in. The Cherokee. The Islander. The Segwun. Pulling up to dock just below the old Bala CP Rail station, passengers stepping off with their trunks and their summer expectations. Steamships haven't been able to visit Bala since 1964, when the swing bridge at Bala Park Island was sealed shut. The train station is gone too. All of it, vanished. Replaced by pavement and parked cars and cottagers…many who have no idea what happened there so many years ago.
And yet, some things don't change.
The Jump (Shop Now)
There is an old photograph, taken in Bala on August 3, 1925. A woman, mid-air and arms swept wide, having just jumped from “Big Black”, the CP Rail bridge over the North Falls. For a fraction of a second, she is weightless and free. Many of us know that feeling well.
A friend of ours found the photo in the archives and passed it along. We immediately envisioned the scene on a t-shirt, because if you know, you know. A hundred years later, generations of Bala kids and cottagers are still climbing those rocks, squeezing through that fence, walking barefoot down sun-hot tracks to the edge…and making the jump. It never gets old, and it probably never will.
Jumping off the Bala train bridge in 1925.
We've written the full story of The Jump, read it here.
The Boat Flag (Shop Now) & The Indian River Ride (Shop Now)
There is a sound that will stop you mid-conversation on a dock. A deep, rolling, throaty rumble that you feel more in your chest than hear with your ears. It’s the sound of an antique wooden boat idling, gleaming mahogany and polished chrome. These beauties were built back when time moved a lot more slowly.
Cruising up the Indian River in Port Carling.
Some lucky Muskokans still have these boats, and we love them for it.
Once upon a time these were the only gas-powered boats on these lakes, and they shared the water with steamships running on coal, and everything else moving by paddle. We all know what it feels like to be out there: wind in your hair, arm hanging over the edge, fingers dragging through the rushing water, feeling the force of the lake against your hand. The Canadian flag snapping at the stern and the tree-line blurring past.
That feeling is exactly why we made these shirts.
Cruising the lake in an old woody.
Mortimer's Point Esso - Still Standing (Shop Now)
Between Bala and Port Carling, if you're traveling by boat, you'll know when you're passing Mortimer's Point. The Mortimer family has been a Muskoka family staple since 1856, and their marina has served the lake culture here for over a century. But it's the vintage Esso sign that catches most people’s attention whether they know about the marina or not.
Mortimer's Point Esso near the Kettles on Lake Muskoka
To us, it's more than a gas station marker or a navigation landmark. It's a reminder that some things have a way of persisting. That not everything from the old Muskoka has been replaced with something newer, bigger or “better”. That if you pay attention on the water, history is still out there, standing in the lake catching the afternoon light.
These four shirts are a collection rooted in real photographs, real places, real moments pulled from archives, from memory and from the particular kind of love you only develop for a place over time.
The kind of love that sits on a veranda in a 1920s dress and watches for ships that aren't coming anymore.
But still looks, just in case.
