rather than in Ontario). By the turn of the century, heavily promoted by the businessman Alexander Cockburn, the district had mushroomed with more than fifty summer resorts. The grandest of these was the Royal Muskoka Hotel on Lake Rosseau. It came complete with its own golf course and billed itself with no undue hyperbole as âThe Grandest Spot in all America.â 11
Harris and MacDonald moved northward into an area less touched by summer tourism. It appears the two men made their base at the home of MacDonaldâs wifeâs aunt, Esther Prior, in Burkâs Falls, forty kilometres north of Huntsville on the Magnetawan River, not far beyond the western boundary of Algonquin Park.
The journey between Huntsville and Burkâs Falls, made on the Grand Trunk Railway through tracts of land heavily logged by the lumber baron J.R. Booth, would have been an unprepossessing panorama of slash and deadfall, primitive settlersâ shanties, and trails for skidding timber cut into the dense bush. Burkâs Falls itself was an old lumber town, with dirt streets and wooden sidewalks scarred by the cleats of the loggersâ boots. At the end of their journey were the rapids and falls of the Magnetawan River, described by the English painter and teacher Ada Kinton as a âboiling, broken tumbling tumult of fall and swirling rapids . . . bubbling and seething, dancing a mad, frantic waltz in dazzling circles.â 12
Although MacDonald would paint these rapids and falls on later journeys, on this particular visit the two men were taken more with the winter landscape, including the activities of the lumber industry (a favourite subject of the Toronto Art Studentsâ League). Winter was a busy time for logging companies, with trees cut almost exclusively in the colder weather because felling was easier with no sap flowing. Most drives had to wait for spring, but the swift flow of the Magnetawan evidently meant it was still possible to float sawlogs downstream to the mill. Harris witnessed one of these midwinter log drives and, inspired by the sight, as well as by MacDonaldâs By the River, Early Spring, made studies of drivers in the middle of the river.
This visit to Burkâs Falls was not Harrisâs first experience of the lumber industry. He might have looked the part of a tweedy patrician, but he had fairly impressive experiences of outdoor life. After leaving Berlin he had ridden a camel four hundred kilometres across the desert from Jerusalem to Cairo. He had been accompanying another Brantford expatriate, Norman Duncan, the thirty-six-year-old author of two successful novels, Dr. Luke of the Labrador and The Cruise of the Shining Light , based on his travels in Newfoundland and Labrador. In 1907, contracted to write an account of his journey through the desert for Harperâs Monthly Magazine, Duncan invited Harris along to prepare illustrations. For three weeks the two men travelled the old caravan route south from Jerusalem, enduring blistering heat and passing through windstorms and settlements of (as Duncan did not scruple to express it) âevil faith and monstrous reputation.â 13 After returning to Canada in 1908, the pair was dispatched by Harperâs to a Minnesota lumber camp, in the middle of winter, for a similar assignment.
Harrisâs sojourn in the Minnesota lumber camp inspired a scene of back-breaking hibernal toil not unlike Horatio Walkerâs paintings of rural labour in half-lit agrarian landscapes. In 1911 he painted a large canvas called A Load of Fence Posts depicting a horse-drawn wagon crossing an iced-over lake against the backdrop of a radiant sunset. In this rural companion-piece of sorts to the urban The Eaton Manufacturing Building, the northern bush was envisaged as a place of hard physical work as well as gorgeous visual effects.
Returning to Toronto following his visit with MacDonald to Burkâs Falls, he turned his hand to another such scene, a
Harris and MacDonald moved northward into an area less touched by summer tourism. It appears the two men made their base at the home of MacDonaldâs wifeâs aunt, Esther Prior, in Burkâs Falls, forty kilometres north of Huntsville on the Magnetawan River, not far beyond the western boundary of Algonquin Park.
The journey between Huntsville and Burkâs Falls, made on the Grand Trunk Railway through tracts of land heavily logged by the lumber baron J.R. Booth, would have been an unprepossessing panorama of slash and deadfall, primitive settlersâ shanties, and trails for skidding timber cut into the dense bush. Burkâs Falls itself was an old lumber town, with dirt streets and wooden sidewalks scarred by the cleats of the loggersâ boots. At the end of their journey were the rapids and falls of the Magnetawan River, described by the English painter and teacher Ada Kinton as a âboiling, broken tumbling tumult of fall and swirling rapids . . . bubbling and seething, dancing a mad, frantic waltz in dazzling circles.â 12
Although MacDonald would paint these rapids and falls on later journeys, on this particular visit the two men were taken more with the winter landscape, including the activities of the lumber industry (a favourite subject of the Toronto Art Studentsâ League). Winter was a busy time for logging companies, with trees cut almost exclusively in the colder weather because felling was easier with no sap flowing. Most drives had to wait for spring, but the swift flow of the Magnetawan evidently meant it was still possible to float sawlogs downstream to the mill. Harris witnessed one of these midwinter log drives and, inspired by the sight, as well as by MacDonaldâs By the River, Early Spring, made studies of drivers in the middle of the river.
This visit to Burkâs Falls was not Harrisâs first experience of the lumber industry. He might have looked the part of a tweedy patrician, but he had fairly impressive experiences of outdoor life. After leaving Berlin he had ridden a camel four hundred kilometres across the desert from Jerusalem to Cairo. He had been accompanying another Brantford expatriate, Norman Duncan, the thirty-six-year-old author of two successful novels, Dr. Luke of the Labrador and The Cruise of the Shining Light , based on his travels in Newfoundland and Labrador. In 1907, contracted to write an account of his journey through the desert for Harperâs Monthly Magazine, Duncan invited Harris along to prepare illustrations. For three weeks the two men travelled the old caravan route south from Jerusalem, enduring blistering heat and passing through windstorms and settlements of (as Duncan did not scruple to express it) âevil faith and monstrous reputation.â 13 After returning to Canada in 1908, the pair was dispatched by Harperâs to a Minnesota lumber camp, in the middle of winter, for a similar assignment.
Harrisâs sojourn in the Minnesota lumber camp inspired a scene of back-breaking hibernal toil not unlike Horatio Walkerâs paintings of rural labour in half-lit agrarian landscapes. In 1911 he painted a large canvas called A Load of Fence Posts depicting a horse-drawn wagon crossing an iced-over lake against the backdrop of a radiant sunset. In this rural companion-piece of sorts to the urban The Eaton Manufacturing Building, the northern bush was envisaged as a place of hard physical work as well as gorgeous visual effects.
Returning to Toronto following his visit with MacDonald to Burkâs Falls, he turned his hand to another such scene, a
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