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      Herb Dietrich reminisces about the "ice man" Bill Lamb, who lived in a pointed stone house and kept an ice house by the 8th Line dock. Herb recalls going to help shovel sawdust (used as an insulator) and his father going with a team of horses pulling a sleigh to ...

      Brian Baker discusses the arrival of the telephone in Innisfil in 1949 via the Beeton Telephone Company, which had an office in Cookstown. He describes the use of a party line with typically 8 to 10 families on one line, each with a distinctive ring. This of course meant others ...

      Longtime Innisfil resident Margaret Baker recalls her career as a teacher at Huronia and Warnica schools, 1957-1975. She begins by recalling her visits to Innisfil as a child where she would go to Goodfellow beach and visit her grandmother, Susie Goodfellow, and get lemonade and homemade cookies. She didn't have ...

      Longtime Innisfil resident Margaret Baker describes tracing her family tree and discusses her great-grandfather, John Lyon Warnica, and his family. She began her research by wanting to investigate if she had any United Empire Loyalists in her family. She had heard that the Hollingshead and Soules families were, and mentions ...

      Jean Warrington describes the islands of Lake Simcoe and her memories of the First Nations people who resided on Snake Island. She remembers going to Fox Island to swim, but the island itself was covered with poison ivy. She recalls it also had a lighthouse, which was a relatively small ...

      Jean Warrington and Brian Baker each explain the community aspect of how fires were dealt with in Innisfil prior to the 1960s. Jean begins by talking of how she was forbidden to use the coal oil lamps at her family's cottage as a child as her grandmother was terrified of ...

      Jean Warrington and Brian Baker discuss the arrival after the Second World War of Dutch immigrants to the farming community of Innisfil. Jean's uncle who lived on a farm invited a Dutch family, the Eisses, to stay with him to assist their move to Canada. The family was allowed to ...

      Jean Warrington discusses her childhood visits to her grandmother's cottage, which had been built by her grandfather near Lake Simcoe. Her grandmother spent summers there after her husband passed away in 1933 because the family property passed to her son and she stayed at the cottage so that she wouldn't ...

      Jean Warrington discusses going fishing as a child in the creek near the 9th Line of Innisfil. She used a stick with a string and safety pin tied to it, and she remembers catching a small perch but can't recall if the family ate it or not. The creek had ...

      Rosemary Campbell and Jean Warrington discuss dances as a pastime in Innisfil, and visits to Peggy's Dance Hall in particular. Rosemary recounts having square dances once a month at Nantyr Public School, but that she and the other girls would end up dancing with the farmers since there were no ...

      Herb Dietrich talks about his school days in Innisfil. Nanytr Public school was set to close but when the Dietrich and Flagel families moved to Innisfil the school was kept open. The building itself was only one room and held eight grades with only nine students before the other families ...

      Herb Dietrich recalls the time he spent fishing and ice fishing on Lake Simcoe, often with the local 'ice man', Bill Lamb. Herb explains that Bill's ice hut would be about a mile out from the foot of the 7th Line, and would feed his line down about 80 feet. ...

      Rosemary Campbell (née Fagents) came to Innisfil in July 1944 as an 11-year old, and though it was different from the city she came to love the area. She originally arrived on Concession 8 (now known as Innisfil Beach Road), which only had about five farms between the 20th and ...

      Rosemary Campbell (née Fagents) discusses the pivotal role of the Andrade family in her youth and their mark on the Innisfil area. She and her family came from the city with the Andrade family, and she notes that several street names are based on members of the Andrade family or ...

      Rosemary Campbell recounts her family's arrival in Innisfil and the construction on their property in the 1940s. She begins by discussing how when her brother got married in 1951, he built a house for their mother at the back of his property, though Rosemary was married in 1952 and therefore ...

      Brian Baker recounts his emigration from England to Innisfil as a 12 year old, and being one of the first farming families to arrive by airplane (Pan-American Airlines) instead of boat. They first arrived in New York and then took a train to Toronto, and then to Barrie. He and ...

      Brian Baker recounts several stories of the daily life of a farmer in Innisfil in the 1940s and 1950s, including the use of work horses, threshing parties, children's chores, herding cows across Highway 400, the community combine, and baling hay. The horses, a black and a roan, were purchased from ...

      Brian Baker describes his experiences as a youth at Killyleagh school, which had a mostly Irish student body. His teacher was Mrs. Lillian Prince, and he had to walk over 2 km to school through summer and winter. He remembers how many of the girls had to warm themselves from ...

      Brian Baker describes the changing wildlife of Innisfil, as well as cattle farmers dealing with predators. The Cookstown outlet mall is located on a former swamp where he recalls hearing timber wolves and explains that though the timber wolves are gone, there are still small brush wolves in the area ...

      Margaret Baker describes the changing landscape of Innisfil from new housing developments to the way the beach has changed. She mentions the difference between the lots formerly owned by two Goodfellow brothers on the 8th and 9th lines where one has changed into a new housing development, leaving little trace ...