It started with a Facebook page.
Picnic table cushions.
In February 2013, Andy texted his brother Ben a photo of his picnic table after a heavy snowfall, joking that the snow on the benches looked like seat cushions. Ben made a Facebook page that same day and called it Pure Muskoka. Posted Andy's photo with the caption "Picnic Table Cushions, Muskoka Style."
Three hundred likes by morning. A hundred shares.
Neither of them had any idea what Pure Muskoka was supposed to become. They kept posting. They didn't miss a day for over a thousand days.
Two years earlier.
The brothers had only just moved home to Muskoka. Their mother had died in February 2011. Both of them bought houses on the water in Bala within a few months of the funeral, moved their young families up from Toronto, and started the cottage retirement they'd vaguely planned for someday. Immediately.
They didn't tell anyone in their city work lives. Ben was a brand and marketing strategist. Andy was a videographer and digital content creator. They both kept their Toronto clients and commuted into the city as needed.
The reverse cottage commute. It worked, mostly. The clients didn't know. The kids saw less of them than the brothers wanted.
Decisions, Decisions.
Build a life here. Or keep driving south.
Pure Muskoka stayed a side project for years.
Portraits of Muskoka, a video series about local businesses. Photography prints. A book. A few one-off hoodies. None of it added up to a real business.
The city work kept growing. The side hustle kept slipping.
Already a brand.
Not yet a business.
Over a beer at the Bala Falls Pub.
October 2019. The side project had been on the back burner long enough. Ben and Andy agreed to learn a new craft and commit. They bought a screen-printing rig, converted Andy's garage into a print shop, and launched a monthly t-shirt club that Christmas.
The catch: each month's design retired at the end of the month.
The first run had over a hundred subscribers. The club ran from late 2019 to 2025. More than fifty original designs. Then they retired it.
Three months later the world shut down.
December 2019, the T-shirt Club launched. By March 2020, nothing was open.
Most apparel brands were figuring out how to shrink. We did the opposite. Opened a store in Bala that summer. Then a year-round shop in Bracebridge that September.
Muskoka filled up. Cottagers stayed all year instead of leaving Labour Day. People who'd driven past for decades suddenly lived here. They wanted something that said where they were.
It worked. Not because we were smart. Because we were already going.
Here we are.
Cindy joined full time in 2022. Kara joined in 2024. What started as two brothers and a Facebook page is now a small team, a print shop in Bala, two stores, and a lot more than t-shirts.
Thirteen years after that first photo, we live where we work. The seasons set the calendar.
Hard to explain. It's a feeling.
