ARBORISTS DO WINTER NIP AND TUCK ON GREAVETTE’S ISLAND
Mark Clairmont | MuskokaTODAY.com
GRAVENHURST — Ross Ashforth’s recent passing late last month is being remembered by local horticulturalists.
The former town treasurer and member of the Gravenhurst Horticultural Society (GHS) died Feb. 23 at the age of 95.
He loved his home on Clairmont Road and lovingly tended to his garden in back, which he offered on GHS fundraising tours in summers past.
His green thumbs have passed on to a grandson, Kevin, who is a Muskoka arborist with Coulson Bros.
The Milford Bay company has been able to keep busy this winter pruning trees amid COVID restrictions.
He and workmate Logan Taylor were busy the other day on a bright, warm sunny afternoon trimming branches and performing tree surgery on Greavette’s Island, off the Muskoka Wharf.
A little nip and tuck in the off season.
Flames from their small brush fire on the lake could be seen from shore as they burned debris from cut pine boughs.
A small job, but normal work to keep trees healthy.
And that is much easier to do this time of year, especially being able to reach islands by snowmobile rather than by boat, said Ashforth who built a small 10×10 bunkie at the family’s cottage.
The well-known island landmark on Lake Muskoka was named after Tom Greavette, founder of the legendary Greavette Boatworks.
Local historian Cyril Fry, 93, tells MuskokaTODAY.com that the cottage — on tiny rock outcropping with a small old lighthouse on the west side — was likely built in the 1930s.
That was before the Second World War, when wood became scarce and was rationed in the war effort even as Greavette’s was commissioned to build small naval boats.
The late lawyer Peter Stuart eventually bought the island in the mid-1980s, said his daughter Anne who is living part-time in her family home and working for Laurier University in Guelph.
She’s not sure of the exact age of the cottage, which her parents pretty much rebuilt.
Her brother Charles and his wife Dr. Christine Purdon own the island now and hired Coulson Bros. to tidy up.
Ice around the island is still about a foot thick, but is quickly melting with days like today when it was 15 degrees.
Ice-fishing huts are starting to be pulled off the lake as is usually the law by mid-March in most municipalities.
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