It is always a busy time at the Pioneer Museum as members of the Cloyne and District Historical Society prepare for the annual museum opening in late June each year.

This year, however, it is busier than usual because the museum has almost doubled in size since it closed last fall. Thanks to a relatively modest Trillium grant of $39,000, a lot of local fund-raising and some volunteer labour, a 1400 square foot addition has been added to the building.

The addition will allow for much improved viewing of the museum's collection of local artifacts, particularly the display of tools. It also includes a gallery for displaying photographs and other artwork, space for genealogical research, a work room for restoring artifacts, and a fully accessible washroom.

The old two-seater outhouse, which has served the staff and patrons of the museum since it opened in 1982, was being carted away early this week, but it will not be gone entirely. The solid doors of the outhouse have been re-purposed as display tables for the new tool display area.

When the Pioneer Museum was opened in 1982 it was a 600 square foot log building. In 2002, a 1,200 square foot addition was added, and with this latest upgrade the museum now has 3,200 square feet of space. It has a schoolhouse section, a homestead section, church display, and a Tourism and Bon Echo display as well as the new sections that are being added in the new space.

“The tools had been jumbled together before, and now they will be properly displayed,” said long-time museum volunteer Margaret Axford on Monday, as a half dozen volunteers and three or four trades-people scurried about, putting the final touches on the renovation and preparing to set the museum up for the opening on Saturday.

Among the tools on display will be the museum's latest acquisition, a well preserved forge. But among all the tools on display there is one that Marg Axford pointed out which symbolizes the kind of life that the settlers in the region lived. It is a corn seeder with a wooden wheel covered by a thin strip of rubber salvaged from something else. It has a wooden frame. The seeds were held in an old washbasin with ¼ inch holes cut into it that was nailed to the wheel. The seeder still works as well today as it would have 50 or 100 years ago. The settlers who used the seeder had to use whatever was at hand to try to coax food out of the thin soil and granite that passed for farmland in Frontenac and Addington Counties.

It is that same spirit that enabled the Pioneer Museum committee to build a 1,400 square foot addition, with a washroom, on a $39,000 grant.

L&A County might consider talking to the museum committee about building the new ambulance base in Northbrook, which will likely cost 20 times as much to build.

The season opening/ribbon cutting celebration starts at 11am on Saturday, June 22. There will be live music as well as a BBQ. The museum is open from 10 am to 4 pm throughout the summer. It is located in Cloyne, on the east side of Hwy. 41 next to the Barrie Township Hall (across from the post office) call 613-336-8011 or go to pioneer.mazinaw.on.ca

Long before it officially became a provincial park in 1965, the flavor of Bon Echo Park had begun to take shape decades earlier, thanks to the influence of three distinct personalities.

In a presentation titled "The Dentist, the Feminist and The Writer", local historian Margaret Axford spoke of the influence these three people had on the park, which continues to draw visitors from across the country and from all over the world.

Photo: Dr. Weston A. Price courtesy of Ian Brumell

The first was the dentist, Dr. Weston A. Price, who was born in Newburgh, Ontario, but who lived and worked in Cleveland, Ohio. Price's wife was from Brampton, Ont. and she taught in Ardoch. In 1898 Price began renting land in what is now Bon Echo in the summer months from a farmer named David Weese. In 1899 the couple acquired land in the area and Price decided to build an inn modeled on the tourist hotels of the Adirondacks. Axford stated, “He [Price] knew that the setting of the Mazinaw Rock would be a natural draw and it was the Prices who gave the name 'Bon Echo' to the area, and who gave birth to tourism in the region.”

Price, who was described by one observer at the time as a “wiry man, always rushing somewhere with a hammer in his hand” used local labor to build the inn, which consisted of the main building, five cottages, a separate staff house, a boat house, a laundry house, an ice house, numerous docks and a bridge across the Narrows. By the end of Price's second summer after purchasing the land, the Bon Echo Inn was complete. In 1901 a telephone line that originated at the Kaladar train station and ran along the old Addington Road became the first telephone line in the area.

Price hoped to attract like-minded nature lovers to the area, and because he was a teetotaler and a religious man, the inn was dry until Merrill Denison took it over decades later.

Photo: Flora MacDonald Denison courtesy of Ian Brumell

In 1901, Flora MacDonald Denison arrived on the scene at Bon Echo with her husband Howard and son Merrill, first as guests in the tower room suite of the inn. Axford said that “she would have bought the place at that time if Price had been selling it” but instead she bought a lot south of the Narrows, where she built a summer cottage. Flora and her family would spend the next nine summers there. Flora MacDonald Denison was born in 1867 in Actinolite, worked as a teacher near Actinolite, and as a dressmaker in Toronto. She later was a writer on women's rights and the suffrage movement.

It was on her annual trip to Bob Echo in 1910 that Flora learned that Dr. Price wanted to sell the inn. Differing reasons are given for Price's reason for selling. One was that his 10-year-old son Donald was ill at the time; he later died either of spinal meningitis or from a diving accident.

Flora paid Dr. Price $13,000 for the inn, Big Bear Island and numerous acres of land, and Flora's husband Howard ran the Inn from 1911-1913 until the two separated and their marriage ended. Flora then took it over and her intent was to create “a haven for artists and philosophers in an inspiring natural landscape with an incredible view of Mazinaw Rock, where visitors could renew their souls, their energies and their creative instincts.” Flora also celebrated the teachings and writings of Walt Whitman, the famed 19th century American poet. According to Axford, Flora “was caught up in his [Whitman's] democratic ideals and she saw Bon Echo as being a symbol of democratic freedom...that would always be enhanced by the spirit of Walt Whitman.”

It was Flora who had a large rock face on the lake inscribed with a dedication to “Old Walt”. As a practicing spiritualist and part of a group whose members claimed they could communicate with the dead, Flora held numerous séances at Bon Echo. One observer at the time recalled that guests at Bon Echo “often preferred a séance at midnight to a Sunday morning church service.” Under Flora's command the inn housed many notable guests, including James Thurber, Morley Callahan, Frank Lloyd Wright and the painters from the Group of Seven; the latter would often be guests when Flora's son Merrill took over ownership. Financially the inn ran at a loss, with “Flora's dreams always outstretching her financial capabilities”.

Photo: Merrill Denison courtesy of Ian Brumell

Flora died at 54 years of age on May 23, 1921 and a bronze urn holding her ashes was deposited in Mazinaw Lake just below the Whitman inscription. Her son, Merrill Denison, a writer and later a well-known radio personality, inherited the inn and its 10 square miles of property, and began some much-needed repairs. His contacts at Hart House and the Arts and Letters Club in Toronto put him in touch with many famous Canadians artists of the time, many of whom would become regular visitors to Bon Echo. Merrill's partner, Muriel Goggin, whom he would marry in 1926, ran the inn from 1923-1928 “like a general”, and it prospered during this time until the stock market crash of 1929. From then until 1934 it was closed to the public at large and became Camp Mazinaw, a boys' camp for Trinity College School in Port Hope.

 In 1936 the inn burned down after being struck by lightning. A Toronto woman who was working at the inn at that time, when she was 16 years old, sadly recalled watching it burn. Though the inn was never rebuilt, Merrill and Muriel continued to spend the summers at Bon Echo after selling off some of the land. They kept less than 100 acres for themselves. Merrill's aim still was to preserve the area as “a meeting place as it was for the Alonquins, a center to which people would come to learn and discuss ideas in an inspiring natural surrounding.”

 In 1959 he turned over the buildings and land to the provincial government to be used as a provincial park. The official ceremony did not take place until 1965. Merrill died in 1975 at the age of 81.

 Axford ended her presentation defining the legacy that these three personalities left behind for all who continue to visit and enjoy Bon Echo Park. “The legacy they left was that the democratic spirit should prevail and the ordinary person must continue to have access to this wonderful place.” For those wanting a more detailed account of the history of Bon Echo and the personalities who helped to create it, a number of books on the subject are available at the Cloyne Pioneer Museum. They include "The Oxen and The Axe" (Brown, Brumell and Snider), "The Mazinaw Experience: Bon Echo and Beyond" (John Campbell), "Sunset of Bon Echo" (Flora MacDonald Denison), and "Bon Echo: The Denison Years" (Mary Savigny).

Sharbot Lake Public School, which is slated to close at the end of the 2013 school year, will long be remembered by countless former students and staff alike as one small rural school with one big family feeling.

The construction of the original one-room schoolhouse, which was the first official school in Sharbot Lake, commenced on April 21, 1887 following a public meeting at which a building site was chosen. The schoolhouse was located near the present school, but down the hill and closer to Road 38. It housed students from 1887 until 1930.

Jerome Thomson of Sharbot Lake was a merchant and lumber dealer who moved to the area in 1870, when he was 20 years old. He died at his Sharbot Lake residence on December 16, 1946 at the age of 96. He was also a keen hunter and it was while hunting that he crossed paths with children who did not attend school, an experience that inspired him to become a champion of education in the area. He approached W.D. Black, representative of Lennox in the Ontario legislature, and asked him to consider erecting a school in the north. In fact, before the first school was built, classes were held in one of Thomson's buildings beside his Sharbot Lake home and he paid the salary of the first teacher in Sharbot Lake prior to the school’s opening in 1888.

Thomson, who was elected to Frontenac County Council in 1907 and served until 1913, became warden in 1910. He also served on the school board for a number of years.

By 1928, overcrowding in the Sharbot Lake schoolhouse forced some classes to be moved to the local community hall. The original schoolhouse remained until 1930 when it was decided to build a new, brick, two-room building on land that was purchased from M. Avery, with one room above serving as the principal's office. The new building was where the present day school is now located. Students from various one-room schoolhouses in the vicinity would eventually come to this new school to write their grade eight entrance examinations, a policy that remained in effect until 1937.

In January 1946, this newer school also became overcrowded and the board opted to pay for grade 9 and 10 students to be transferred to Sydenham High School. In January 1947, grade 7 and 8 students were also moved temporarily to the Masonic hall due to overcrowding. As a result, in September 1948 four new classrooms were added and renovations were made to the two original existing classrooms. New washrooms with running water and a new hot water heating system were installed at this time.

In September of 1965, an $85,000 three-room addition was made to the school. The addition consisted of two new classrooms with one all-purpose room below them. When the school officially opened after this renovation, the event attracted over 200 guests. In an article published at that time, the high school’s principal, Robert Joyce, commented on the benefit to older students attending the school, who up until that time were having difficulty adjusting to high school. Joyce said he felt that the new consolidated school would help bring students together at an earlier age and therefore would allow grade nine students entering high school to have greater success in their first year there.

In 1975 additional office space was added to the existing principal’s office. The library at the school, which had been initially located between the two original school rooms, was moved to a new room in the basement in the early 1970s and after a time was moved again upstairs to the main floor. In June 1980 the school celebrated its 50-year anniversary with a reunion organized by the parent teacher group.

I spoke with two residents of Sharbot Lake who worked as staff at the school for years, and who look back on their years there with a special fondness. Pam Woods, who taught kindergarten and grades 1 and 2 at SLPS for over 15 years and who retired in 2009, recalled the school as being “a wonderful environment” to work in. “The staff were incredibly cohesive because we had to work closely together to accomplish all of the tasks that came our way. That is really what accounted for the kind of big family atmosphere that really defined the school.”

John Pariselli, who was a principal at the school for five years before retiring in 2000, said arriving at SLPS from Toronto was like “coming home. … It was a great experience and it was also a different time and generation; a time when the roles of staff were more blurred and tended to overlap, which made for strongly knit bonds among staff.”

Both Pariselli and Woods said they feel that the move to the new school need not remove the big family feeling that was predominant at SLPS. Regarding the feeling at the new school, the biggest factor will be seeing if the adults involved will have the same intent. “No matter the size of the school, it is the intent of the staff there that will set and define the tone at the school,” Pariselli said.

Woods agreed that the closure of SLPS need not be seen as a negative. “It (the new school) obviously will not be as intimate a setting as that at SLPS but I’m sure that plans have been made to accommodate the younger students in the best way possible so that the school functions well as a whole,” she said, adding, “It seems to work at North Addington so it will interesting to see how it works at the new Sharbot Lake school.” Woods said that the older students will surely benefit by the addition of younger students to the school. “Staff will be able to tap into the benefits of inviting older students to take on more leadership roles and that can be a really positive thing. Seeing older students accepting new responsibilities and taking them seriously can be a really wonderful thing.”

* History and old photos were taken from a history compiled by Shirley Peruniak, a dedicated and long-time volunteer at SLPS