Summer Memories ~ Lake of Bays

The Village - Baysville (Part One)

The village of Baysville wasn’t far from our cottage. We could get there by car or boat. My choice of travel, as you can imagine, was by boat. Since I didn’t have a driver’s license and I wasn’t old enough to drive, my only choice was by boat. Even after I got my license, the boat was still my choice! Baysville is located on the Muskoka River. The entrance to the south branch of the river is located on the southeast portion of the lake. We would boat south to the river’s entrance and then follow it right into Baysville. Baysville had one police officer, who patrolled the river on his flat bottomed “fan-boats” (you can look it up on Google, if you don’t know what I’m talking about). The engine was very loud, so you knew when he was patrolling! He wasn’t all that friendly to young boaters! I, of course, never ran into him.

When you reached Baysville you could tie up at the municipal docks or as we normally did, we tied up at one of the 2 marinas, Kelmar Marina. I’ll tell you more about the marinas later. From the marina it was an easy walk to the McCormack General Store. Interestingly, Mrs. Haynes, who sold us our cottage lived right beside the store (coincidence?). It was there that we bought some of our emergency grocery needs. For larger purchases, we would travel to Huntsville, which was about 20 minutes away. McCormack was “okay”, but not a lot of “fun”. For that, we needed to cross the town bridge to get to the other side of the river. 

(To be continued in Part Two)

 

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