Jim Smart Talks About Camp Mazinaw

Jeff Green | May 03, 2023

The history of Mazinaw Rock, the Bon Echo Inn and its eccentric matriarch Flora MacDonald Denison, her devotion to Walt Whitman and connections to the Group of Seven Painters, and her playwright son Merrill, are the stuff of legend in the communities surrounding what is now Bon Echo Park.

But in between the era of the Bon Echo Inn in the 1910s and 20s, and the modern era of the park, there was a boys’ camp located near what is now the park, Camp Mazinaw.

The camp had a music and arts component, as well as a canoeing and camping component. It was founded by a school teacher from Toronto, Harry Hambly, who was joined soon after by two other teachers, C.R. Blackstock and Harry Hull.

Some of the camp's history has been preserved by the Cloyne and District Historical Society (CDHS), and in March, a video interview with one of the early campers, Jim Smart, prepared by Ken Hook, was presented at a meeting of the CDHS at the Barrie Hall in Cloyne.

Jim and his wife Barb purchased the Marina on Lake Mazinaw and renamed it Smart's Marina. The family run business thrives to this day under the direction of Steve and Pauline Smart, with their own children taking a more major role in its operation.

But long before that, Jim Smart was a young boy, who went to Camp Mazinaw in the 1940s, and eventually became a councillor at the camp. Jim died in 2018 at the age of 85, but using a video interview taken in 2008, Hook put together a 20 minute video that was presented on March 20, and is now posted on Youtube. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ndpr-Pa0Tkg)

In the interviews, Smart paints a picture of life in the camp in the 1940s. His strongest memories of the camp are about week-long camping trips to local lakes, which were then completely undeveloped, giving campers a wilderness camping experience. On the weekend they returned to the camp, where they swam in the lake, played music, and participated in regattas.

The campers were split into two tribes, the Algonquins and the Iroquois, and the camp was set up with strong Indigenous references, extending to bi-weekly lodge gatherings in the evenings, that were based on the Camp Directors understanding of the culture of what Smith called the “Plains Indians” in the video.

The use of regalia in the lodge ceremonies, and arrowheads as awards for camper achievements, would not be acceptable today, but from the way Smart describes it, the intention of the camp's founders and subsequent directors was to learn from, and respect, the skills and way of life of the original inhabitants of the territories.

Smart also remembers Merrill Denison, who was a renowned playwright, and continued to live on part of the former Bon Echo Inn property (the inn had burned down in 1936, before the camp was founded).

“He was pretty grumpy about us using his property, as I recall, but people say that when you got to know him, he was a good chap,” Smart recalls in the video.

He also talked about Frederick Hagan, a well known painter and printmaker, who was the art director at the camp in the 1940s, and ended up teaching at the Ontario College of Art for decades. Many of Hagan's pieces, that were made during that era, are in the collections of former Camp Mazinaw directors and campers.

The next meeting of the CDHS will feature the history of the Spicer farm, in a presentation by Marlean and Wayne McLean. The meeting takes place on May 15, at 1pm, at the Barrie Hall in Cloyne. All are welcome. The Pioneer Museum, which is operated by the CDHS and located on the same property as the hall, opens for the season in late June.