Wasaga Archives brings Wasaga's Past to Life
Yes, Wasaga Beach is best known for its beach, but did you know that people started visiting in the early 1900's? The Wasaga Beach Archives was established in 1997 and along with Archivist Mary Watson and a dedicated group of volunteers, has been collecting and cataloguing images and stories about our town's history. The Archives have an extensive collection of pictures, postcards, memorabilia and artifacts which have been donated by residents and past visitors to Wasaga Beach. You can visit the Archives located in the Wasaga Beach Library on Tuesdays, Fridays & Saturdays from 11:00am to 1:00pm.
To help support the Archives, which is completely volunteer based, Archivist Mary Watson has produced a 16 month calendar beginning at the start of the school year, September 2009 full of great photos of times past. Mary says it was difficult to limit the choice of images to the few selected for this edition of the calendar. Every picture has a great story behind it and I think she did a great job! Hopefully this calendar will be an annual edition. Calendars are $10 each, drop by my office, Royal LePage In Touch Realty at the corner of 45th & Mosley streets to pick yours up and support this great effort.
My favourite picture is from January 2010 and depicts an Ice truck on Marl Lake loading up blocks of ice in the 
30's. Like the Milk Man, the Ice Man was a fixture as many cottages only had the old fashioned ice boxes and relied on the arrival of the ice man to keep their food cool. Ice boxes were cabinets usually made of wood with a tin or metal lined compartment at the top for the ice block that provided refridgeration. The drip pan had to be emptied regularly or your floors would be full of puddles. There was certainly no leaning on the open door, letting all of the cold air escape while contemplating what you were going to eat! My father delivered ice for one of the companies operating in the area as a teenager and likes to tell stories of heaving large blocks of ice onto his shoulder with big iron tongs and hauling them into people's iceboxes. Some of my childhood memories involve going on the road with him delivering ice in the 70's, only now the ice was cubed and in bags and went into freezers to keep frozen, not to provide cooling. He still has a set of tongs and an old refinished icebox in his home.
For more great stories and pictures, take the time to visit the Archives and let one of the knowledgable volunteers walk you through Wasaga Beach's distant and not so distant past!