Arts & culture woven into the very fabric of Muskoka-Parry Sound

If a spin around Muskoka-Parry Sound doesn’t give you the urge to dust off the watercolour set or grab the Nikon off the shelf, then I’m going to have to declare your creative soul truly dead and gone, my friend.

These are the very vistas that inspired some of the best work of the Group of Seven and helped shape our national identity nearly a century ago. And although the hood has since undergone a wee bit of uglification here and there (the price of superhighways literal and electronic), much of Muskoka-Parry Sound remains just as stunning as it was the day Tom Thompson signed up for guide duty in Algonquin Park.

This is the kind of place where people choose to live, blackflies notwithstanding, and for most there’s an artsy angle to it somewhere. You can hardly swing a paddle around here without hitting a paintbrush-wielding real estate agent, a lawyer writing a novel, or an engineer raising alpacas to feed her knitting habit. District Council has even gone so far as to make Muskoka a Designated Arts Community.

Postcards to the G8

There is a plethora of arts and culture groups, activities and events, some of which even the locals can’t keep straight. Top of the heap is the venerable Muskoka Arts & Crafts, which got the Designated Arts Community ball rolling in the first place and which, in honour of certain events taking place around here of late, are organizing Postcards to the G8.

As a community the Town of Huntsville is particularly hip and happenin’, with its Huntsville Festival of the Arts, the Group of Seven Mural Festival, the Artists of the Limberlost Studio Tour and the Huntsville Art Society.

But when you get here you won’t need a guidebook to find the arts scene. Drive (or boat) in any direction and, trust me, from the Archipelago to Midlothian Ridge to Ziska Road, you’re sure to come upon someone up to something creative. We can’t help ourselves. Something in the air.

Courtesy of Muskoka Tourism

By Tamsen Tillson

Bracebridge, ON

Published on May 20, 2010

Last updated on May 25, 2010

Go to our Arts, Culture & Local Flavours Sources & Resources