SLOAN’S NAME SYNONYMOUS WITH GRAVENHURST; FAMILY NAME COULD CONTINUE WITH NAMING OF OLD TOWN HALL
Mark Clairmont | MuskokaTODAY.com
GRAVENHURST — Many here lament “the good old days.”
Especially for a generation of Baby Boomers around when Sloan’s Restaurant was the epicentre of the main street.
If TVO’s great little Main Street vignettes were to do a piece on Gravenhurst, the iconic eatery would be the focus with a photo of Gordon Sloan’s grey-haired face atop his animated bow-tied body.
Those glorious times are long gone now — alive only in name and among those with vivid.
Sadly the restaurant was gutted — its contents sold to the highest bidder — and is but a shell of its former self.
The end of that particular era came last Friday when Rev. John Gordon Sloan died at the Granite Ridge Retirement Home Friday March 8, 2024.
He was 87 and the last of Gordon and Dora Sloan’s four children.
Rusty Draper was one of the last people to visit John Gordon, who was in ill health last month.
But he was happy to hear from the former radio man who had good news for him that made him smile and say “thanks.”
Draper and some of his buddies had come up with a plan to honour the Sloan name.
A lot of well-known local people have been recognized with street names like the Mickle Cemetery and the Greavette condo at the Muskoka Wharf.
But there’s no mention of the Sloans, Draper told me a day before he appeared before the town council last month with a plan to pay tribute the legendary family name.
Draper, Alan Boyd, Ian Hunter and Robin McNab tossed around ideas, considering the corner lot at First and Brock Streets where the fire hall once stood with a jail in the basement.
They even considered First Street itself when the idea of renaming Muskoka Road was thought to be too difficult to pull off because it was a District of Muskoka Road.
Finally they set on the former town municipal office on Harvie Street, which was also for a brief time home to the town’s last police station complete with two jail cells. Fittingly also, it’s now the town’s fire department headquarters.
Draper and his friends want to rename it the Archy Sloan memorial building or something similar.
That’s because it was Archy — “spelt with a Y and not an IE” said Draper — was the town’s first police chief and an all-round leading citizen and businessman.
E.F. Johns wrote in a 1971 piece for the Gravenhurst News that Sloan’s approach to petty crime committed by kids like Johns was “more of a Sunday school teacher than a hard-nosed cop.”
Though his most hairy-raising and dangerous experience was when he was called by the railway agent to arrest two drunken teamsters who were unloading a car-load of dynamite.
In the early part of last century, Archy Sloan was the entire police force, Johns wrote.
“And policing the town was only one of his innumerable duties. Mr. Sloan was also the truant officer, the town assessor and one of the few individuals who could operate the steam-powered fire engine. He also was expected to ring the town bell at 7 a.m., noon, 1 p.m., 5 p.m. and the curfew at 9 p.m.
“In addition he was to be on hand to ring the alarm whenever there was a fire; and to have the fire engine steamed up and ready for action on short notice. Mr. Sloan also operated the team-drawn road grader whenever road work was being done.”
But it was after he opened Sloan’s Restaurant that the family’s name became enshrined in local lore for its international reputation with travelling tourists and its world famous “Sloan’s blueberry pie.”
Its reputation was solidified by son Gordon who died in 1976 after turning it in to a landmark beyond the town’s borders.
Many teenage girls worked a Sloan’s waiting tables as their first job.
Sloan’s had everything. An ice cream cooler inside the front door, public washrooms downstairs, a cashier with tantalizing candy bars on hand, an unrivalled fresh bakery, and a dining room with a ship’s wheel mounted on the wall in front of a fireplace in separate room set off behind.
The main dining room area was genius — set up with park bench seating.
And a back room just outside the kitchen doors lined with signed photos of movie and entertainment stars who had stopped in to eat along with politicians’ pictures and other well-known cottagers.
Upstairs was a community hall where Rotarians — like Gordon — met Mondays and others held public meetings, weddings and funeral receptions other days and nights.
Sloan’s was synonymous with Gravenhurst.
And before Draper pitched his idea to honour the family he approached John Gordon Sloan with the idea.
The last Sloan son with ties to the restaurant (he worked down in the dungeon-like basement bakery helping bake those blueberry pies) was tickled and said so almost with his dying breath.
So when Draper heard about John Gordon’s death last Friday from his daughter Mary Logan, he was both saddened and happy to have been able to confirm he had a date with council and that the Sloan name would carry on publicly.
Draper did meet with council, where he said it drew favourable comments.
They’ve turned it over to the town’s heritage committee for further study and recommendation.
Draper had hoped John Gordon would have been around for an unveiling.
But is just happy another great piece of Gravenhurst heritage will soon continue with deserving prominence.
A fortuitous happenstance is that the iconic Sloan’s sign that hung over the front door — made with the name spelled out in white birch bark lettering — has been saved and preserved.
It was rescued from a backyard on Bay Street and now hangs prominently on one of the Sloans’ family cottage properties off Brydon’s Bay Road.
A deserving locaton on Lake Muskoka for a family that brought great fame and fortunes to Muskoka.
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