100-YEAR-OLD BOATS STARS OF ACBS SHOW

Photos & Story by Mark Clairmont | MuskokaTODAY.com

GRAVENHURST — A hundred years ago the pleasure crafts that plied the Muskoka Lakes were more pedestrian.

Not the magnificence of mahogany you would have marvelled at on Saturday at the 39th annual Antique & Classic Boat Society (Toronto Chapter) show.

Many of the wooden wonders at the Muskoka Wharf were celebrating a century of boating bliss.

Like boat owner Murray Walker, who enjoyed a pleasant — if “slow” — early morning cruise down into Gravenhurst Bay in his 100-year-old Minett.

Hylo, Murray Walker’s 1919 Minett, was one of the featured century-old boats at this year’s ACBS show at the Muskoka Wharf in Gravenhurst.

He was there early to place a big, blue celebratory banner on his Miss Supertest III, which is marking 60 years since the “crown jewel of Canadian racing” won three straight Harmsworth Cups in Detroit (1959) and Picton (1960-61).

He’s hoping to make it the centrepiece of a future boating hall of fame at the Muskoka Discovery Centre, where several other boats winter while their owners winter south.

He was joined by his daughter who navigated into dock another of the family’s sleek, rum-runner-style, cigar-type classics called Clarie II.

They were among dozens of similar-sized, shaped and polished crowd-pleasers on a nice, sunny day.

In addition to the boats, and the awards ceremony in the Lions Pavilion, in recent years they’ve added some antique and classic cars, along with the usual marine vendors.

Murray Walker’s daughter pilots the Clarie II into position next to his Hylo.
Murray Walker and Jamie Smith with Walker’s Miss Supertest III, which could be the centrepiece of a Gravenhurst race boat hall of fame one day.