Bala, Ontario

Bala is an unincorporated Canadian place located in Muskoka Lakes Township where the Moon River enters Lake Muskoka.

It is considered one of the hubs of cottage country located north of Toronto, Ontario. Thus, its year-round population of several hundred is swamped by thousands of seasonal residents and day-trippers.

History

It was settled by Thomas Burgess starting in 1868. It is named after and now officially twinned with the Welsh town of Bala in the United Kingdom. Located on the Canadian Shield, it proved unsuitable for farming and its fortunes declined as logging became less economically viable.

In 1914, the town incorporated with Burgess’ son as the first mayor. Three years later, a small hydroelectric dam was set up on the river. Muskoka Road (formerly Highway) 169 still traverses the top of the dam. The town was large enough to be served by the Ontario Provincial Police and the Liquor Control Board of Ontario. In 1971, the town was amalgamated with other townships and municipalities to form the Township of Muskoka Lakes.

Culture and entertainment

Lucy Maud Montgomery, author of the Anne of Green Gables books, visited Bala in 1922. Based on a tenuous connection to a beloved Canadian author, a community museum featuring L.M. Montgomery was opened in the 1990s. The more established, larger and more wide-ranging community museum remains at the Muskoka Lakes Museum in nearby Port Carling, Ontario.

Bala maintains a link with its agrarian past by hosting the Bala Cranberry Festival each fall. Other notable sources of food are Don’s Bakery, which has sold bread, pastries and cookies for decades from the same wooden building in the centre of the community.

Since 1942, under various management and names, the community and the surrounding area was offered live musical entertainment. In the 1940s and ‘50s, Big Bands like Mart Kenney, Duke Ellington, Woody Herman and Louis Armstrong played at Gerry Dunn’s Dancing Pavilion. Since the 1960s, rock musicians like Kim Mitchell, April Wine, Burton Cummings and Jeff Healey played at The Kee to Bala, as it had become then. In the 1980s, Bala and Port Carling were also featured in a hilarious skit by The Frantics on Boot to the Head. In the skit, a man on his way to Bala bores his companion to distraction in part by endlessly enumerating the communities' features.

In the summer months, students at a nearby ski school perform aquatic stunts on a weekly basis for local residents. The students form pyramids, jump obstacles, ski barefoot, and, on occasion, ski while wearing alpine skis.

External links

• Bala semi-official site
• Bala unofficial site
• Bala’s Museum featuring Lucy Maud Montgomery
• The Kee to Bala commercial site
• Bala Cranberry Festival commercial site