Article by J. Patrick Boyer

In 1869 Charles and Fanny Minett reached Medora Township’s peninsula between lakes Rosseau and Joseph where Ojibwe people were present. A mid-20s couple, the Minetts had been married in England before travelling with fellow immigrants Josiah and Louisa Callard to Toronto in 1867.

When Charles developed serious bronchitis in the city’s heavily polluted air, a doctor recommended escape to Ontario’s healthier northern districts. With free land grants to encourage settlers, this seemed an ideal solution. That fall Charles and Josiah journeyed to newly surveyed Medora’s wilderness. Finding adjacent lots they liked, they felled trees and built a log cabin – building was second nature to Minett as a skilled carpenter and woodworker.

Charles returned the following year with Fanny and their household effects – by steam-train north to Lake Simcoe, steamship up to Washago at the top of Lake Couchiching, on stage coach over the brutal colonization road to Gravenhurst, then aboard steamer Wenonah to Port Carling, dropped off on the Indian River’s bank (no lock yet built), to continue on their own by raft across Lake Rosseau to their homesteading adventure. Charles called the waiting cabin “Clevelands” after his English birthplace.

A number of Fanny’s babies died in infancy but by 1870 a boy lived awhile and Charles filed his land claim under the homesteader act because, if a child under 18 resided with them, he could add an extra 100 acres for each such son or daughter. With Muskoka’s land boom underway, getting all the free land possible included being savvy about timing.

In 1871, Medora’s population combined with that of abutting Wood Township gave enough people for municipal organization and Medora-Wood became one of the district’s earliest self-governing municipalities. It was also certainly Muskoka’s largest with 41,619 acres in Medora (half of them underwater) and 62,776 in Wood (some 5,000 of its acres also lake bottom.) 

Despite having good land and prospering farms, the Minetts and neighbouring Callards saw opportunity in housing and feeding visitors arriving to fish and hunt. Like other newly settled Muskokans with waterfront property, they helped erect the fourth pillar of Muskoka’s economy, tourism, alongside forestry, farming and manufacturing. They became hoteliers by first converting their homes and then building purpose-designed summer hotels. More resorts began encircling the lakeshore and by 1875, arrival of trains direct to Gravenhurst Wharf from southern cities, the expanding fleet of Muskoka steamships, the addition of a lock at Port Carling and the Joseph River dredged, the district’s vacation economy began to boom.

In 1870, Charles first built Minett House with a large dock of crib construction at which steamers could land. By 1874, he’d added more rooms to accommodate additional summer guests. By 1880, he applied for a post office, suggesting the name “Clevelands.” On November 1 Ottawa granted both requests, making that the community name. Operating postal service from their home, now known as Minett Lodge, reinforced its role as a gathering place for peninsula settlers.

Building on success, he and Fanny planned a purpose-designed summer hotel to serve upwards of 25 guests. Their two-storey Clevelands House hotel, built during 1881 and 1882, opened in May 1883 for the summer season, with the post office in the hotel for guests’ convenience during those months. This higher building required upgrading the water system with a windmill to pump water into an elevated storage tank from which gravity flow could work.

Transportation in the vicinity was improving, too. In 1876, rocks removed from the Joseph River enabled rowboats to use this shortcut around the tip of the peninsula much further south. Dynamiting “The Cut” two decades later, to a depth of four feet, allowed many steamers to transit this route also. By 1877, the Peninsula Road ran north from Port Carling to Port Sandfield and that year construction began extending this route to the head of Lake Rosseau.

The vicinity was alive with the sounds of construction as more “homesteaders” claiming free peninsula farmland devoted effort to sculpting lakeside resorts and, if they cleared “the back forty” acres at all, it was more likely for a golf course and tennis courts than crops of barley or potatoes.

Following Charles death at age 50 in 1892, Fanny was appointed post mistress in his stead on June 1. For the summer of 1895, on May 1, the post office was renamed Minett, with Fanny continuing in charge. Despite more infants perishing and the loss of her husband, she had surviving children who helped make Clevelands House a landmark – including son Arthur who in 1904 succeeded his mother as post master of a village bearing its founding family’s name – a position S.A. Minett would hold until 1953.