Synopsis
Even if you have never been there, most people in North America are familiar with the idea of Muskoka - the northern wilderness playground of the rich and famous. Home to huge summer homes, expensive mahogany boats, and luxurious resorts. This documentary explores the rocky and uncertain development of the Muskoka district, and the brilliant marketeers who would stop at nothing to turn a clear-cut, polluted, inaccessible landscape into one of the premiere tourist destinations in North America. This is the story of the Anishinabek, who plied the region’s many rivers and lakes for thousands of years - until they were banished following the Treaty of 1850. It’s the story of the European farmers, enticed to travel thousands of miles by a government’s offer of free ‘farm’ land - who arrived to find thin acidic soil and an inhospitable climate. It’s the story of the first tourists, who dared to venture into the sparsely settled wilderness. But above all, this is the story of those seeking opportunity just beyond the familiar, on the edge of the unknown North.

This project was produced in cooperation with the Living History Multimedia Association, with funding from the Ontario Trillium Foundation, FedNor and the City of Greater Sudbury. It is part of the Ontario Visual Heritage Project.