In addition to our trailer parks, tents, short-term rentals, and screen-door cottages, we’ve got sprawling lakeside estates. A Saudi newspaper covering the G-8 gathering at Huntsville ran a large front-page photo of Deerhurst Resort alongside their reporter’s story, describing it for Arabian readers as a “typical Muskoka cottage.” Check today’s real estate ads.

Muskoka’s selectively reinforced high-end image is historically grounded. Fabulous estates on Lake Muskoka, readily viewed from passing boats, showcased Pennsylvania tycoons making Beaumaris their summer community. Only locals called it “Millionaires’ Row.” Those whose extensive boathouses and rustic island spreads among pines surrounded with stone walkways and lush flower gardens more aptly dubbed their colony “Little Pittsburg.”

In the words of American story-teller O. Henry, “Pittsburg millionaires are a fine body of plain, wholehearted, unassuming, democratic men. Nearly every one of ‘em rose from obscurity.”

Not all elections in this constituency have been as orderly as the one just ahead, on October 21, when we’ll collectively choose our new representative in the House of Commons.

We know the date. Indeed we have known it for some time, thanks to a change in the Canada Elections Act that fixes a general election voting day every four years. Before that little reform delivered its big payoff, a prime minister picked the optimal time for his government’s re-election, anything up to five years after the last vote. But under our much vaunted “Rule of Law” which precludes those with power taking arbitrary acts in matters of state, how was that possible?

Paradoxes reveal truths. For instance, humans are being replaced by technologies, but really competent people remain in high demand.

This has been going on awhile. A century and a-half ago Canada’s economy was still predominantly agricultural, but increasingly mechanized. North Muskoka farms were filling up with wards of Britain’s orphanages, at a higher rate than anywhere else in Canada, because farmers here applied for boy-workers – essentially, captives working for free.

“Farmers in Ontario find a difficulty in getting really competent farm hands,” said William Fream in 1886, “and such men can always secure high wages.” His report on agricultural resources across Canada noted Ontario’s average farm wage, with board, was $175 yearly; without board, $257 (in present values, $4,800 and $7,000). A Muskoka farm, incidentally, rented for 88 cents an acre, lowest rate in the province.

Some readers may remember the triple joy of celebrating Civic Holiday in the 1950s. Unlike today’s mid-summer event, it took place in September.

After the Second World War, Muskoka’s vacation economy was surging to new records in every department. Pent-up demand, following poverty and deprivations’ double whammy 1930s Great Depression and 1940s war years, exploded into the “post war boom.”

The general prosperity of an un-throttled economy meant our small highways became parking lots, many hundreds of southern Ontarians built cottages throughout Muskoka, and the provincial government ran up record budgets expanding highways, building schools for the “baby boomers,” and supporting tourism in North America’s competitive new economy to draw vacationers.

A “mobile home” ceased to be a contradiction in terms, and “motor parks” opened across Muskoka. The continent’s Big Name bands played Dunn’s Pavilion in Bala. Huntsville organized special trains from the United States boldly elevating its vacation economy with downhill skiing in winter. In 1955 Ontario Premier Leslie Frost, cheered by thousands, officially opened private enterprise Santa’s Village summer entertainment park.

The Commission on Residential Schools began a better approach than just listing general recommendations for government, by instead issuing “Calls to Action” in dozens of specific areas at all levels requiring concrete steps to achieve truth and reconciliation between Indigenous and settler peoples of Canada.

Two current developments in Muskoka, both arising from those calls to action, will prove how well humans can adapt to shaping a better future together.

On June 18, a round table of Muskoka’s two distinct orders of government was convened. One consists of eight Indigenous communities with longstanding connections to territory that, since the mid-1800s, has been known as “Muskoka,” so named to honour valiant Ojibwe Chief Musquakie. The second order is municipal government in Muskoka.

Canadians, understanding generally how a federal system works, know there can be confusion, competition, duplication, and gaps when our national and provincial orders of government each have jurisdiction over the same territory and the people residing on it. Although the relationship between Indigenous community governance is fundamentally different from non-native municipal governance, their operations can likewise produce confusion, competition, duplication, and gaps.

From the perspective of First Nation peoples Muskoka is special land, as it is to a vast number of non-Indigenous folk. But the story is different.

When Leila M. Cope wrote her 1956 history of Port Carling, it was a perfect settler-society book. It began with arrival of Europeans – “the first white men paddled from McCabe’s Bay (Gravenhurst) in birch bark canoes.” It made no mention of Obajewanung, either, the well-established year-round Ojibwe village whose farming families had been forcibly removed to Parry Island to make way on the same site for Port Carling’s immaculate conception.

Which is worse: marginalization, or full memory obliteration?

While Premier Ford wants liquid barley more accessible at lower prices, Ontario’s bigger beverage story is unfolding in Muskoka’s supermarkets and convenience stores where astonishing space is now devoted to selling bottled water.

Our thin slice of today’s multi-billion dollar global bottled water business makes no difference to anybody’s bottom line, but does give perspective to how Muskokans are subject to world consumer trends and deep-pocket marketing campaigns.

Indigenous peoples and settlers hereabouts drew water from lakes, streams, and wells. As the number of people grew, the incidence of water-borne diseases increased, and municipalities improved public health by building reservoirs of potable water and installing underground pipes to safeguard its delivery to residents. Safe tap water was available, a benefit of living in community. For convenience through Muskoka’s hot seasons, drinking fountains offered cool spring water in various public parks. Rural Muskokans mostly continued drawing safe water from wells. Town boys hiking the countryside carried Army-surplus metal water bottles. Campers added purifying tablets to their pail of surface water. Boiling is always the failsafe, making tea a popular beverage around the world and in remote areas. Generally, unless corners are cut to overcome water shortages (when Bracebridge diverted river flow in dry seasons) or to save money (in Walkerton), most folks reliably depend on municipal government for ample good water.