June 21, 2026

BOYER’S ‘MUSKOKA HERITAGE NUGGETS VOL. III’ FULL OF TALES ABOUT SUMMER REGATTAS, FALL FAIRS AND LIFE IN HINTERLAND BEFORE AI TELLING

GRAVENHURST — Muskoka history books are often pleasantly predicated on old photographs.

Patrick Boyer — “literary and historical legend:” to quote author Cheryl Cooper — knows the power of art and imagery.

Many of the books he has written and published feature cover photos that mirror juxtaposed pictures on the back reflecting a parallel vision.

Like the birch bark canoe wedged on a rocky shoreline and a satellite image of Muskoka opposite in his “Putting Muskoka on the Map.”

Or “Muskokans Fight the Great War,” about Muskoka’s First World War 122nd brigade, with uniformed soldiers marching across a bridge; compare that to a reflecting photo of women back on the farm keeping the home fires burning.

They’re part of “Boyer’s Modern History of Muskoka Series.”

So a pic him I snapped yesterday morning at the Bracebridge Library hoisting above his head his latest offering — “Vol. III of Muskoka Heritage Nuggets” — could be the opening shot.

As if he was lifting the Stanley Cup — World Cup?

Patrick Boyer cheers after releasing ‘Muskoka Heritage Nuggets Vol. III’ Saturday in his Modern History of Muskoka Series, as Wahta knowledge and story-keeper Chris Stock and friends smile. PHOTOS Mark Clairmont MuskokaTODAY.com

The symbolism being the reverence he has for the written word.

So what would be the rear image? Perhaps a Muskoka minister raising the Bible, chalice or communion wafer.

Pictures worth the clichéd thousand words, as Boyer admitted addressing 35 history buffs and fans of the entertaining, enjoyable — and animated — speaker.

Boyer proved a natural orator and story-keeper in the best First Nations traditions.

Contradictory as that may be for a writer who grew up in a family for whom inking prose on a printing press paper is sacrosanct.

Muskoka Heritage Nuggets is his third go — each with 14 short stories — which equal 42 interesting and intriguing tales of people, places, events and historical Muskoka markers.

Each told with his lust for his home patch.

Saturday he shared them mixing history and humour with captivated letters lovers in apropos the library’s community room.

**Boyer’s book club fans Judy Humphries, left, librarian Cindy Buhne, Cheryl Cooper and in front Mary Willis and Sybil Jackson.**

Boyer started with Vol. III’s cover art. A great Frank Micklethwaite black and white (before colour) of a hidden man in a bowler hat fronted by two young women in long gowns, white blouses shaded by wide-brimmed straw hats. The latter lady staring into Micklethwaite’s box camera lens mounted on a tripod.

They’re standing at the top of Manitoba Street where below behind them is an assemblage of hundreds of people gathered on the dirt road for a parade or other Heart of Muskoka town event.

The back cover has a pair of pictures a century apart: a log cabin and the Bethune House in Gravenhurst, with a note explaining how Muskoka has evolved from humble beginnings to become an international destination and place of pilgrimage for Sino Canadians and mainland tourists.

Thus affording another literal cover to cover must read.

Friend Cooper calls Boyer “a remarkable local historian … a living, breathing encyclopaedia about the district and its people.” She ought to know, collaborating with him a decade ago on the film documentary “Life on the Edge: Stories from Muskoka’s Past.”

She encouraged him to compile his many columns and assorted writings in to Vol. I of Muskoka Heritage Nuggets. “Enthralling portraits of those who laboured to create the Muskoka we adore today,” she said in her launch introduction.

This while taking a break from writing book five of her 1812 “Seasons of War” series.

**Boyer looked like he was hoistig the Stanley Cup – or World Cup – when he lovingly launched his latest Muskoka Books offering Saturday.**

Gravenhurst archivist Judy Humphries, also on hand, wrote in her book preface that after looking over table of contents, “I can’t wait to hold this book in my hands … And bring my brain up to speed about such men as David Thompson or about governments in Muskoka. Or about cemeteries outside Gravenhurst where Muskokans are buried from diverse cultural and faith-based communities. And second, I must have my pencil at hand to mark all the passages that will require further re-reading and exploration.”

Boyer thanked her and noted Humphries, too, has just launched a new book entitled “Remembering the Fallen,” about all the Gravenhurst, Morrison and Ryde young men who went to the First World War and actually died in fighting.

Unlike one soldier honoured on Remembrance Day, laughed Boyer, who died in hospital from “venereal disease.”

But I digress, as Boyer often did to mild amusement in taking his engaged listeners down a rabbit hole in unforeseen and interesting directions.

Such as somehow switching to the imminent change in the U.K. prime minister-ship and the shrinking sphere of influence within the once all-consuming Commonwealth universe.

Or how Britain’s six prime ministers the past 10 years have led to ins and outs with trading partners that included gutting New Zealand’s mutton exports to the motherland.

And Muskoka’s pioneer link to today’s softwood lumber tariffs.

Among theses 14 Heritage Nuggets stories are: Indidgenous Artefacts, David Thompson’s Fate Entwines Muskoka, Publications and Railways, City Elite Forms It’s Own Muskoka Government, Fur Remains Muskoka’s Longest-running Business, Atrocious Muskoka Roads, Summer Regattas and Fall Fairs, Queen Elizabeth Visit Energizes Muskoka, Muskoka Sanctuary for Eminent Jurists, Defiant Faith-Based Communities, Hard-Working Boats Enable Lives of Leisure, Diverse Burial Grounds Host Ancestral Presence and Building Makeover: Cinderella or Frankenstein?

In his book introduction Boyer calls it ‘Finding Clues and Connecting Dots,’ which he does with ease of depth and detail.

The former Tory Etobicoke MP who followed in the political and publishing footsteps of his Muskoka MPP father, Bob, whose family ran the Herald Gazette, continues on with his Muskoka Books business today publishing not only his own works but a few others with relatable titles.

But it’s always the great stories and photos he digs up and that dominate Boyer books.

Like the one about a cabal of early “elite” Muskokan cottagers who formed their own ratepayers group to influence local government and lumber barons putting a temporary halt on railway expansion past Gravenhurst in 1875 to prevent competition from emerging sawmills in north Muskoka.

At one time 17 lumber mills dotted Muskoka and Gull lakes at the foot of the lakes, where booms of logs were brought down the Muskoka Lakes to build a booming Gravenhurst “Sawdust City” economy.

**A photo worth a thousand words, said Boyer, shows students working on computers surrounded by books and overseen by Andrew Carnegie.**

Boyer says it’s his vast collection of some 2,000 personal books he’s been left with — having recently moved and been forced to cull and build bigger bookshelves for — that remain truest to his heart.

“My library contains my best friends,” who he can turn to at anytime as they patiently await him without bugging him to text or socially engage by the hour.

But one photo he shared early on captures sentiments of his newfound understanding and reluctant grappling of with technology that threatens his life’s work with print publication.

It’s in an earlier book “Local Library Global Passport: The Evolution of a Carnegie Library.”

About the original Bracebridge Carnegie Library, the predecessor to the one he was talking at Saturday.

His mother was a librarian there and it shows two students at computers sitting under a photo of Carnegie. The same one sent out to each of his hundreds of libraries he funded that prominently hung looking down on millions who came to read of take out books.

The original Bracebridge copy hangs hidden in the new library’s history room.

It symbolized the changing world and how information is now written produced, consumed and shared. The hard truth about soft-covered books.

A truth not lost on Humphries who said her professor son, Mark, and his wife are consumed in the new world of AI teaching and developing the next generation of artificial intelligence to students at Laurentian University.

Boyer’s 75-minute book launch encompassed all of this and a great deal more off-the-cuff and unrelated tales and anecdotes, which Boyer adeptly wove in out of to provide what was more of a professor’s lecture than a book-reading launch as perhaps could be expected.

Nonetheless it was actually more enjoyable and encouraging for book-buyers to pay $29.95 for one of his many books. A price well worth the knowledge and understanding of our Muskoka surroundings, existence and pioneering past.

Fascinating fact: Did you know that lumber

from the hard wood trees in north Muskoka

became the foundation in Britain butchers blocks

and bowling alley lanes?