Severn River: An Illustrated History

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

The Severn River cuts through Ontario’s cottage country, a few hours
drive north of Toronto. Once the spinal cord for a rapacious lumber
industry, the Severn is now a highway for recreational boaters. The
river’s many rapids, chutes, and waterfalls have earned it lavish
praise for picturesque scenery. Its centrepiece is Big Chute, where the
river pours through a narrow gorge with solid rock walls and crashes
dramatically down a chute of jumbled rocks and cliff-hanging pines. Big
Chute is the site of North America’s only marine railway, a system
that uses rails and pullies to transport boats across a highway and
redeposit them in calm water beyond the rapids.

Angus concentrates on the period from approximately 1850 to 1970. He
explores the many small communities that dot the Severn River—Washago,
Severn Bridge, Port Severn, Severn Falls, Sparrow Lake, Swift Rapids,
Little Go Home Bay, Big Chute, Gloucester Pool, Buckskin, etc.—tracing
the founding, development, and changes to each. He gives special
emphasis to the hydro-electric power developments on the river and to
the political impact on plans for canals and the marine railway.

The work is rich in detail and human-interest anecdotes, yet it is not
a lament for the good old days. Unlike most local historians, Angus is
alert to the impact of technology on the area and attributes many social
changes to changes in communication systems. He presents change as part
of the unfolding history of the area, in contrast to the usual view of
change as a destroyer of history.

The book is packed with more than 350 reproductions of archival photos
and documents; some are of poor quality, as gleanings from family albums
usually are, but most are of sufficient quality to be both intriguing
and informative, even if there are no artistic masterpieces included.

A must-have work for any library in the Muskoka–Simcoe County area of
Ontario and a book that will be welcomed by the residents, cottagers,
and boaters who claim the area as their own.