OBITUARY: Aug. 26, 1956 ~ May 11, 2025

Mark Clairmont | MuskokaTODAY.com

GRAVENHURST — They called us “The Bay Street Terrors” and “The Bay Street Beatles.”

On a hot summer’s morn we were up early and stayed up late.

Every day was the longest day of the year when Brian Whitehead, Dougie Barnes, Jeff Draper and I grew up in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s.

Our neighbourhood was Bay Street and we owned the Bay corner to corner — west of the North Ward and east of West Gravenhurst. Kids from the Wartime Houses who ventured down to Bay knew they were in our turf between the “Look Out” and the jutting point overlooking Muskoka Bay.

It was our  ’hood. But we weren’t hoods.

We were nice, fun-loving boys who had a ton of fun playing baseball and football in Sagamo Park, decades before crass commercialism consumed and claimed our playgrounds for the Muskoka Wharf.

It was the “post War” when most families had so many kids, which meant after school was our time to rule our big roost.

And boy did we ever, exploring literally every square inch of the rocky hills that surrounded our humble homes a block apart.

When our moms called us for dinner, they simply stepped outside and shouted our names in every direction — “SUPPER!”

My Dad, Hugh, was the newspaper editor and band leader. Brian’s Dad, Chum, worked at Rubberset and had a cottage on Bear Bay. Dougie’s Dad, Doug Sr., ran the arena. Jeff’s Dad, Roy, worked at the Gravenhurst Hardware and was Gravenhurst’s deputy fire chief.

Our moms — Maisie, Eileen, Eileen and Kitty — worked various jobs at either the Muskoka Centre or retail on the main street. My Mom, Maisie, had our Clairmont’s on Bay Canadiana gift shop and art studio.

All of our families have streets or roads named after them.

I, Brian, Dougie and Jeff were fast friends playing street hockey on Cherokee Lane next to the Barnes’s home, or on the ice between the Sagamo and Segwun ships where we scraped the snow off Muskoka Lake and invited all comers and challengers. Often shooting our pucks up past Greavette Island skating toward the Narrows. That same spot where we learned to swim on the “Town Dock” and dove off the Segwun — some of us cannon-balling nearby watchers or falling splat on our faces.

Simple foundations and the building blocks of similar kids’ lives of the times.

Ones that also helped guide our older and young brothers and sisters: the Clairmonts Mary, Paul, Chris and Cyndy; the Whitehead girls Linda and Mary; the Barnes boys Mike and Brian and their sisters Jane and Rhonda.

Many of whom had nicknames. “Snares” Clairmont, “Boozie” Barnes, “Cabbage Head” Whitehead, “Cash/Slugger” Barnes, “Boozie” Barnes, Mike “The Legend” Barnes, “Rusty” Draper. “Fruffry” Draper. I was “Chink.”

There were other big families in our neighbourhood, the McNabbs, Proctors, Wilsons and Simcoes with equally lived young, exciting lives.

But it was our quartet who achieved ’60s fame as “The Bay Street Beatles,” an early version of Milli Vanilli at “Mayor Wanda Miller’s Talent Shows” in the Opera House and on The Barge.

Jeff’s mom bought us Beatles wigs at the CNE and we were kid “stars” in an era when other local pop and rock bands were really playing music and not just mimicking the sounds in the “Cove,” a summer dance hall when it wasn’t used to store boats in the winter in front of the Bay’s steamships.

We were 7 and 8, listening to music and having a ball.

I was the pots and pans drummer, Brian and Dougie were the faux guitarists on tennis and badminton rackets. Jeff played a broken-down ukulele.

And he was the cool, “cute Beatle.”

Jeff Draper died Mother’s Day — May 11, 2025 — worn out. And his family buried him in a moving ministerial-type of gravesite celebration of life by Rev. Rusty five weeks later, last Thursday, June 19, at the family plot at Mickle Memorial Cemetery. His ashes were buried on top of his dad’s coffin and placed next to his beloved mom’s ashes.

I played the Last Post and the “Saints” — one of our first real gig hits as one more time we gave him a deservingly fitting and fine farewell and restaurant dinner.

Jeff would have been 69 on August, 26, 2025.

It felt like when John Lennon and George Harrison died.

We all knew each other’s birthdays, always celebrated those over first 20 years and later most often called each other wherever we were working to keep close.

While each of us developed our own talents and personalities, Jeff was particularly unique.

A natural athlete at hockey and soccer, he had a gifted but unrealized talent as a piano player and a personality people gravitated toward — especially the opposite sex.

Not exactly a scholar, he didn’t realize his own intelligence, which wasn’t nurtured in school and thrived only by his sheer nature.

Jeff didn’t finish high school opting instead to work as a lineman on the CN Railway; but much later he pulled together enough credits for a BA from Georgian College where he also drove sports teams’ school bus. That was after he also took advantage of several training courses including as a brick layer — a skill that ran on his mother’s side of the family.

She was a Simpson and his uncle was Gord Simpson, a renowned block and stone mason in town. The Simpson farm is a well-known local landmark at the north end of Gravenhurst, on Bethune Drive, where the family’s old barn is currently undergoing a makeover as an event centre.

NHL v-p and ex-Maple Leaf Kris King is a cousin.

Jeff was always the one friends and strangers asked about when Brian and I were out alone.

“Where’s Jeff. How’s he doing?”

Jeff made his way in life living relatively well and existing on his handsome good looks, charm and tenacity.

When his mom died he lived in the family home on Bay Street and at his Bay boat house next to the Lady Muskoka for a few years. That was before selling and moving to Barrie for further schooling and eventually to Orillia where his 10-years senior brother Rusty (Ross)  — who he was very proud of — had a achieved lasting fame as the most popular CFOR-Radio morning man.

But much of Jeff’s life was working in Toronto where he, like I, swept floors at Maple Leaf Gardens.

While I was doing so at Ryerson he was finishing out west with Dougie Barnes on the railroad on Vancouver Island.

Jeff eventually returned to Ontario and Toronto where his endearing personality allowed him to work at the Gardens and be able to bugger off unannounced for a few days of R&R and somehow still return to his job as if he was reporting for work the next day. His supervisor always cursed and always welcomed him back.

Draper’s bogey-woogie piano styling served him ever so well.

One Saturday afternoon at the famed Brunswick Hotel, on Bloor Street West in Toronto, he enthralled the raucous beer joint crowd on the small stage engaging them by banging on the beat up stand up while freely entertaining them for hours earning him endless mugs of draught piled up on the “pi-an-i.”

Single, enjoying the best of an eat, drink and be merry lifestyle while taking advantage of all the new vices it had to offer, Jeff epitomized the “every day’s a holiday and every meal’s a banquet” philosophy.

Another fond memory is of Jeff at the wheel of my dad’s “Hot Wheels Hughie” dixieland fire truck on the way home from Paul Rimstead’s wrap-up cottage party at Bass Lake west of Orillia in the middle of the night. After a long party imbibing we were forced into a gas bar halfway north with our truck’s alternator giving up the ghost with our lights, and we received a police escort another 10 miles the rest of the way up Hwy. 11.

A big man, and sports fan with an even bigger heart and a bright if complex and inquisitive, talkative nature and smart mind to go with it.

And who can really ask for more? No debts, no real regrets.

Jeff Draper, 68, was an optimist to the end.

On his palliative care death bed at Orillia Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital — where we got a chance to share a fond final phone farewell — he told Rusty there was a “one-day sale” on computer tablets at Best Buy. He gave his brother his credit card and sent him shopping.

When Rusty called from the store to say the purchase was complete, Jeff asked: “Is there was a warranty?”

“One year, standard,” said the sales person.

“See if they have an extended warranty.”

“Yes, three years.”

“Get it,” Jeff ordered his brother.

That’s the last of many online orders Jeff Draper placed.

Too bad he couldn’t read his obituary on it. He would have let out one of his infectious laughs and enjoyed every story and memory of his life.

A really great guy with a great sense of humour who the Bay Street Terrors and Beatles loved and won’t forget Aug. 26 and each year till we die.

He is survived and deeply missed by his brother, Rusty and his wife Pat (McCullaugh); and by his beloved nephew Roy (Beth) and his family (of Orillia) and niece Jane Hokanson (Stephen) and her family of Missouri. And also by two special cousins, Kathy King and Jenifer Bartlett.

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