Grandfather's Beach

When Joseph and Elizabeth Tapley arrived here in May, 1905, the place didn't look like it does today.

While Elizabeth and the two young boys, Douglas and Percy, stayed at Port Cunnington Lodge, Joseph checked out farms that were for sale. He rejected some for being too rocky. One for being an Island... we're a little upset about that one, with hindsight, since it was Bigwin Island, pretty much all of it... but Grandpa had a point -- come winter, the livestock could just walk away, and come spring and fall the folks living there couldn't.

He was about to leave, seeking his fortune as a farmer somewhere farther south of here, when he came across this piece of land at the head of Haystack Bay. Mr. McIelwain was farming it -- and it boasts a pocket of some of the nicest farm soil in this area, an area better known for the superior quality of it's granite rock.

What sold Joseph on the farm was location. It reminded him of the beach he'd left behind him in Australia, where he had enjoyed an illustrious career on the comic opera stage of the Williamson and Musgrave Company. Three tours from England to Australia and New Zealand before 1901 took Joseph all the way around the globe. He was outstanding on the stage. Less so as a farmer... but when he came upon this bay, it reminded him of Bondi Beach, near Sydney. He bought it. He named it Bondi... (and he spent the next several years being called "Mr. Tapley" by his young wife, who had no idea when she married this star of the 1890's stage that she would no longer be attending dinners with George Bernard Shaw, or enjoying opening night performances, but that she would all of a sudden be a pioneer wife in the wilds of Muskoka.)

Nowadays, people often ask us where the name came from, because they don't see the resemblance. Fair enough: Bondi Beach has been heavily developed. And it has a lot more beach. Not to mention Great White Sharks.

But... back in 1905 there was no dam at Baysville. That dam raised Lake of Bays about 5'. That's a whole lot of water.

Right now, with the lake levels drawn down very low to allow for the spring melt and April rains, and with the ice melting away so you can in fact see that beach, for a brief period of time, Bondi has the beach my grandfather saw. That big sweep of sand, that same curving bay...

We can see the resemblance.