Between the Lakes
 |
|
Old cabin from Interlaken’s settler or lodge outpost days, 2012 (Val Kremer)
|
Interlaken was the name given to the landing between Dotty (Long) and Oxbow (Fatty) Lakes by Limberlost Lodge owner Gordon Hill, when he purchased the property in Finlayson Township as an outpost for the lodge’s riding parties in the late 1920s. It had been a strategic location for William Hood’s general store in the late 1880s, and for the Antioch Post Office under postmaster Edgar Joseph Brooks, who took over the store between 1883 and 1895, after Hood had moved away. Settler Frank Peelar, however, was the homesteader who received a patent on the lot between the lakes in 1912.
Vesle Skaugum
Hill’s outpost camp was purchased in 1942 by the Royal Norwegian Air Force as a recreation and ground training camp for service personnel in Canada, after the German occupation of Norway. The Air Force was first based at “Little Norway” on Toronto Island and later at the Gravenhurst airfield, and the Interlaken property provided an ideal setting for recuperation as well as survival and cross-country training, especially skiing. The Norwegians participated in Huntsville’s winter skiing and ski-jumping events of the period and were visitors at local resorts. Among other buildings, the Air Force constructed the signature log building modelled on their king’s summer home. Named Vesle Skaugum – meaning “home or clearing in the woods” – the camp was on the itinerary of Norwegian Crown Prince Olaf and Princess Martha during a visit to Canada later that year.
 |
 |
|
| Dog team from Vesle Skaugum waiting in front of the Billie Bear staff house, ca. 1942. The Norwegians often visited Camp Billie Bear for tea. (Olive Corcoran) | Norwegian dog team crossing Brooks Lake, January 1944, photo by C.N.A. Jeeson (Shelley Sproule) |
“For the improvement of Canadian children…”
When the war in Europe ended, the Air Force closed the camp and in 1945 sold it, “complete with all the furnishings down to the last saucepan in the kitchen,” to the Kiwanis Club of Toronto, which operated a summer camp for underprivileged children beginning in July of that year. “It was the desire of Norwegian service personnel that this camp be used for the improvement of Canadian children,” reported the Huntsville Forester.
 |
 |
|
| Camp Kiwanis, August 1959 (Billie Bear Photo Archive, Gertrude Davis Slide Collection) | The pirate ship on Oxbow Lake, Camp Kiwanis, 1958 (W. Blair Mansell) |
The Kiwanis Camp operated successfully for more than 30 years. Mabel Brook of Brook’s Mill observed in her column to the Forester in July 1954, “It is a lively time at the Kiwanis Camp. It is the girls’ turn, and they are having a very good time, if one can judge from the noise.” At the beginning, only one two-week session had been set aside for girls, with the other three allocated for boys.
In 1979 the property was sold again, and it continues to serve young people as the Olympia Sports Camp.
Sources:
Huntsville Forester, “Around Town,” December 19, 1940 and February 26, 1942, p. 1; “Little Norway Locates Camp at Emsdale,” July 10, 1941, p. 1; Norwegian Royalty Are Visitors to Huntsville,” January 22, 1941, p. 1; “Norwegian Camp to be Moved to Muskoka,” March 18, 1943, p. 1; “Vesle Skaugum is Summer Haven for Underprivileged Boys and Girls,” June 7, 1945, p. 1; “Brook’s Mill,” July 15, 1954, p. 4.
Paterson, Barbara, “Muskoka Doesn’t Have ‘Ghost Towns’ it has ‘Ghost Offices’” in W. Dan Mansell, Carolyn Paterson, and Marlene Walker, eds., The Sinclair Raconteur’s Anthology: Barbara Paterson’s Published Stories (Peterborough: asiOtus Natural Heritage Consultants, 2014).
Research Committee of the Muskoka Pioneer Village, Pictures from the Past: Huntsville and Lake of Bays (Erin, ON: Boston Mills Press, 1986).