If you're coming up to Muskoka from the south, there's really only one way in: Highway 400 or Highway 11. Most of you reading this already know the road sign…the big green one just on the north end of Barrie, where the highway splits and there's a choice to make.
This shirt was designed from a real photo we took of that sign years ago. The split. The arrows, the names of all the places further north stacked up above the highway like a list of possibilities: Orillia, Parry Sound, North Bay, Sudbury.
The iconic photo behind the initial design.
But honestly, the design was never really about the sign itself. It's about what happens right after you pass under it.
The city starts to fall away. The noise gets a little quieter. The air even feels different somehow (cleaner, softer, I don't really know how else to describe it), and we joke in the shop all the time that this is the exact spot where your blood pressure either rises or falls, depending on if you're traveling North or South.
We recently released a night version of the tee, called Friday Night Lights.
It's funny...almost everyone who recognizes this shirt ends up telling us something about that sign. Which highway they take and where they're headed. Either way you go, the road will take you through parts of Muskoka. But a lot of the time our customers are going even further than Muskoka itself...Parry Sound, North Bay, Sudbury and beyond. Everyone seems to have their own version of that moment, their own road home, or their own route to their home away from home.
When we first made this design, our very first Pure Muskoka shirt, we honestly just thought it looked cool. A bit of an inside joke, really, for anyone who knew the road. But over time, people kept telling us their stories, and we started to notice how often the sign actually meant something to them. Even if they couldn't always explain why.
That's when it clicked for us.
It's more than just a place…it’s a feeling.
