Five stages in municipal evolution got us to the present impasse in Muskoka District governance.

Once the Crown finessed this territory from Indigenous people, surveyors imposed a basic framework in the 1860s and 1870s, dividing the land into logging berths for lumber companies and township lots for settlers. The 1860 census disclosed Irish, Scottish, English, and German settlers, but population remained scant. Just to manage limited self-government, people scattered across several townships could only form a single council for themselves by uniting two, three and, in the case of Draper-Macaulay-Stephenson-Ryde, even four townships.

Ontario’s free land incentive from 1868 created a land boom, and drew more people.

“Saving the Bala Falls” has glared under publicity’s recent spotlight. Downstream, however, much graver issues about electricity generation stretched out far longer, and in relative obscurity – not only for being less visible to the public with no highway crossing Wahta Territory until 1958, but because the power projects were “just on Indian lands.”

Like most matters impacting Indigenous people, settler society was uninformed and uncaring, while governments emphasized “the greatest good of the greatest number” by facilitating large-scale public works, such as for electric power.

A process to confront historic Indigenous grievances and provide restorative justice began in 1995, when Wahta Mohawks and Ontario Hydro identified the issues, developed deeper understanding of the historical events, and evaluated physical, environmental, economic, and cultural impacts of the public utility’s activities on Wahta Territory.

The campaign to “SAVE THE BALA FALLS” kicked in before one even reached Muskoka. Doug Ford, among thousands, read that sign along Highway 400 by a Barrie car dealership driving north to his Muskoka cottage.

On February 27, 1918, Ford’s path to the PC leadership ran through Bala. He called constructing a power-generating facility on the falls a Liberal green-energy “scam” for special interests. “It is troubling to see the government force this project. The good people of this region do not want this project and it’s not in the public interest.” Candidate Ford pledged to stop it. Even as he spoke, Swift River Energy’s 4.7 megawatt project continued under construction.

In the crowd cheering his stance was Bala businesswoman Cassandra Ford and her husband Martin, owners of a Bala restaurant and marina. Our newspaper’s Agatha Farmer reported their opposition to a dam in the village centre.

For two years Britons have thrashed around arranging their divorce from the European Community. Although Canadian coverage treats this Brexit drama as just a current event, it is really the last throes of an Empire that shaped us then tore us apart militarily, economically, and culturally.

A century ago when Britain went to war against Germany, the “Mother Country” took all her colonial children to battle with her. The toll of that mad sacrifice, and then a devastating Second World War, caused depleted Britain to slip in power and world standing. Meanwhile, colonies powered by national self-determination achieved effective independence and the “British Empire” morphed into the “British Commonwealth” and then, simply, the “Commonwealth.”

Yet the trading system continued in place. Lower tariffs between Britain’s lands created a world-wide common market exclusive to those under the British Crown. Just as the 1914-1918 war tied in militarily all peoples of the British, French, Belgian, Russian, German, Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, and Japanese empires, so did favourable trading terms back then economically unify each empire’s respective possessions.

On March 8 in Iqaluit Prime Minister Trudeau officially apologized to Inuit peoples for the Canadian Government’s handling of tuberculosis cases in mid-20^th Century. Methods used, he said, were not accidental or isolated but part of Ottawa’s colonization policy to eradicate indigenous communities and cultures.

The PM expressed sorrow for many specific injustices inflicted upon generations of Inuvialuit. More than just apologizing, a new Inuvialuit-Crown partnership will embrace community-driven initiatives, one being “Let’s Find Them!” Those to be “found” are the thousands of Inuvialuit diagnosed with tuberculosis and removed from their communities during the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s.

Coast Guard ship C.D. Howe anchored offshore on medical voyages twice each summer. Villagers were boated out to be tested for TB. If positive, they were kept aboard, unable to say goodbye to families or fetch personal items, lest they’d fail to return, which was increasingly possible: they knew going to the ship meant, if diagnosed with TB, vanishing from their community. With tuberculosis rates 300 times higher than in southern Canada’s non-Indigenous population, the disease facilitated a massive “scoop” in the name of medical treatment.

It’s dress rehearsal. Lights come up on principal characters of the Rene Caisse Theatre’s play “Co-Location Blues.”

Mayor begins his opening lines. “The challenges over the years started with the fact that all the money didn’t get raised.” A crackling noise is heard, then sonic feedback blare, filling the intimate playhouse with a deafening sound surge; then, silence. That wasn’t in the script.

Schoolman is responding. What he’s saying won’t be heard. Stage lights beam super high; house lights flicker; a clap of muted explosion; sparks fall stage centre; harsh white-lightning flash; then, blackness. Nor was that.

This year’s actual drama about an out-of-the-way playhouse located inside a school on the far side of a residential subdivision at the northern edge of Bracebridge has been diligently covered by our reporter Mary Beth Hartill.

Last year Premier Ford cancelled direct popular election of the person who chairs Muskoka District Council. At the time, three candidates sought our votes – each a former District Chair who’d already had their turns in office. One advocated single tier municipal government (the “One Muskoka” plan), a second wanted to keep the two separate sets of municipal government in Muskoka but somehow make them more efficient, and the third merely had “a few matters still to deal with” after eight years in office.

Outcry over Muskokans being denied direct election of the person who’d hold local government’s top office was understandable. It is scandalous that any Canadian law-making body has members not elected by the people and not accountable to us. The most egregious case is our un-elected and un-accountable (and un-necessary) Senate in Ottawa; our local example is the presiding officer of District Council.