History of Bala, Wood Township

The following excerpt was taken from, "Muskoka, Past and Present", written by Geraldine Coombe published in 1976 by McGraw-Hill Ryerson Limited.  The book is no longer in print, but can be found at your public library or through inter-library loan.

Thomas W. Burgess, the town's founder, disembarked from the Wenonah in 1868 about a mile north of Bala Falls at a channel in Lake Muskoka between Sutherland and Bala Bays. A Scot by birth, he was moving to Muskoka from his first Canadian home at Saugeen River, in Bruce County, Ontario. He and his family, using at first a vacant lumber camp as living quarters, located on ten lots in Medora township near his landing point, the channel which became known as the Wallis Cut when it was deepened in 1876 by Joseph Wallis, a sawmill man from Port Carling. The Wallis Cut, incidentally, was further deepened to eight feet in 1925-26 as a navigation aid.

According to the late F. W. Sutton, author of The Early History of Bala, Thomas W. Burgess "at once built a sawmill on the Mill Stream to supply building needs and a store to supply surrounding farms," and named his new home Bala because of his recollection of the beautiful Bala Lake section of Wales which he had visited. He had six sons and four daughters, some of who were born in Muskoka.

Thomas Burgess was appointed Postmaster when the post office was established in 1872, the year the Musquosh Road linked Bala with Gravenhurst. His business interests expanded over the years to include a bakeshop, blacksmith shop and a supply boat. He was Reeve of the united townships of Medora and Wood for several years and acted as an Agent of the Department of Indian Affairs for the Wahta Indian Band at the nearby Gibson Reserve after their arrival in 1881. An exponent of the railway, Thomas Burgess died just a few years before the railway reached Bala.

In 1914, when Bala was incorporated as a town, Dr. A. M. Burgess, one of the six sons of Thomas Burgess, became its first mayor. Before that Bala had simply operated under township Council jurisdiction and did not serve a municipal apprenticeship as a village.

Information about the early families of Bala, such as the Guys, Kniftons, Suttons, Jacksons, Greens, Boards, Curries, Mays, Hamills, Clementses, Moores, Spencers, Hurlings, Wilsons, and Huggetts, is given in F. W. Sutton's booklet. A story about his own family, who arrived in 1882, engaged my interest. After making the observation that pioneering was hard on men but harder still on women left so much alone in the bush, early reading having filled their minds with dread of wild animals and wilder Indians, Sutton continues:

I can imagine my Mother's perturbation when, while alone, an Indian called and asked for the Boss. Mother of course said, he will soon be in; the man seated himself just inside and said he would wait. Hours after, when Dad returned, it transpired the Indian wanted to borrow a gun. What a quandary! Not wishing to make a bad start by offending a native, the gun was lent and the folks went to bed thinking they had seen the last of their gun. Morning came and lo, the gun and a hindquarter of venison were hanging in the porch. A life long champion for the Red Man was won.

Ephraim Browning Sutton, the father of F. W. Sutton, cleared a farm and developed a summer resort, known as Camp Sutton, for use by a group of U.S. Civil War Veterans who had broken away from the famous "Solid Comfort Club" of Beaumaris in search of better fishing grounds. In 1914 he built a brick summer hotel, the Swastika (now Balabay Lodge). From 1886 until his death in August 1917, he was a correspondent for the Bracebridge, Gravenhurst and Orillia papers, which also printed his verse under the nom-de-plume "Muskoka Bard". His only surviving child, F. W. Sutton, was born in Muskoka January 3rd, 1884, three children born in England having died there, "victims to the filthy vaccination system of that time".