The Orillia Spirit

An Illustrated History of Orillia

ByRandy Richmond

Foreword byJames A. "Pete" McGarvey

Published July 2017

Paperback

^$ 30.00

Description

2017 Orillia Museum of Art & History Award, Historical Publications and/or Research — Winner
The history of Orillia, told through the stories of its people, bringing to life the community’s heritage and significance.

The Orillia Spirit:

Muddling through Canada’s first, and hilarious, experiment with daylight savings time, Mayor “Daylight Bill” Frost had it.
Creating his own money and dreaming a drainage ditch would become a tourist attraction, Mayor Ben Johnson had it.
Taking his town’s electric company by force, Mayor J.B. Tudhope had it.
Inventing early forms of medicare and the first RVs, dreaming of universities and folk festivals, battling for decades over liquor and rinks, ordinary people had it.

Something about the place immortalized in Stephen Leacock’s classic Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town has always inspired its people to reach for their dreams. Turn-of-the-twentieth-century leaders coined the phrase “the Orillia Spirit” to describe their drive to make the town a social, moral, and economic leader of Canada. The results have been comic, tragic, and heroic, as shown in this colourful history of Orillia.

Reviews

How locally-generated power changed our community from a sleepy lumber village to a thriving industrial centre is an engrossing read — as entertaining as it is enlightening — in Randy Richmond’s The Orillia Spirit.

Packet & Times

Contributors

Randy Richmond

Randy Richmond is an award-winning journalist living in London, Ontario. He is the former editor of The Packet & Times in Orillia, where he wrote the first Orillia Spirit, married, and had three children. He is the coauthor of Colossal Canadian Failures 1 and 2, also published by Dundurn Press.

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James A. "Pete" McGarvey

James A. "Pete" McGarvey has spent nearly half a century in Ontario radio. In the 70s and 80s he was a commentator on Toronto's CKEY. When in 1957 McGarvey was named Orillia's Citizen of the Year for his efforts to preserve The Old Brewery Bay, the Orillia Packet and Times wrote "[He] patiently persevered in the long and difficult negotiations with a host of lawyers, owners, potential owners, advisers and hangers-on ... The lion's share of the credit must go to Pete McGarvey."

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Book Details

Paperback
July 2017
10x7 in
192 pp
9781459739604

ePub
July 2017
-
192 pp
9781459739611

ePub
July 2017
-
192 pp
9781459739628

The Orillia Spirit

An Illustrated History of Orillia

Description

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