Almaguin: A Highland History

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian Studies at
Concordia University and an avid outdoor recreationist. She is also the
author of The Mountain Is Moving: Japanese Women’s Lives, Kurlek, and
Margaret Laurence: The Long Journey Hom

Ontario’s Almaguin Highlands form an extensive 90-kilometre corridor
from Huntsville north to Callander, west to Dunchurch and east to the
Algonquin Park border. The area was a centre for lumbering in the 18th
and early 19th centuries and has become a year-round mecca for
wilderness enthusiasts.

Astrid Taim, a city girl, summered for years in the District of Parry
Sound. Born to Estonian refugees, she soon learned to love the Highlands
for their history and beauty. Today she lives in Burk’s Falls, writing
and working on environmental and humane causes.

Taim is indebted to local sources for historical photographs and
anecdotes. The photos, often poor in quality but rich in interest,
include shots of turn-of-the-century general stores, hotels, pioneer
museums, the making of apple cider, antique farm equipment, a 1915
logging locomotive, a 1905 lumber mill, a horse-drawn sled on a snowy
logging road, and steamboats circa 1902–06.

Clearly Taim loves her subject and writes well. She regrets that
relatively few written records have survived from the 19th century. Her
sources include district weekly newspapers, periodicals, undated
stories, unpublished community histories, and diaries. One diarist
supplemented her record with watercolor sketches of the numerous little
villages near Huntsville.

Almaguin is a labor of love and an important historical record.