It’s Day 243 of my virtual Drive-In-a-Day Odyssey, (I’m 2/3 of the way through!), and my 18th in Ontario. It took an hour and a quarter to drive from Havelock to the Mustang Drive-In, a few miles west of Picton.

The Mustang opened as the Picton Drive-In in April 1956. It changed its name to the Mustang around 1970, give or take a year or two. It was a single screen with room for about 350 cars.

The modern story of the Mustang is the story of Paul Peterson. As detailed in a wonderful, long article in the National Post, Peterson was working as a counsellor for young offenders and youth in crisis. While driving with his wife in the summer of 1988, took a shortcut. The couple saw the neglected drive-in – “the word ‘abandoned’ would be appropriate,” he said while telling this story – and noticed it was for sale. Peterson pulled over and said to his wife, “Wow, that’d be cool, let’s buy it.”

Peterson said he knew nothing about running a drive-in, and he had a lot of work to do. He had to spruce up the place physically, and he had to change its clientele. “The drive-in Paul inherited, to hear him tell it, was a regular Gomorrah.” After seeing the problem for himself, he took out an ad in the Picton Gazette stating, “The Mustang Drive-In now has a zero tolerance policy for alcohol.” The throng of partiers left, and after a good while, families began to return a few at a time.

The Mustang added a second screen in 2004 and digital projectors around 2015. “We’re digital now,” Peterson told the Toronto Star that year. “That’s changed. That means we’re poor. But really, it’s the same. Lots of fun.”

It takes a character to build a drive-in of character. Based on recent photos, they added the Mustang name to the screen tower less than 10 years ago. The ticket booth is a repurposed city bus. And there’s the honking ritual. As the Post put it, one night Peterson “stood in front of a lot full of cars with a microphone in his hand and said, ‘Look, you’re going to honk at me anyway, so you might as well do it now.’ The place erupted like a wedding convoy. ‘They did it and they loved it,’ Paul told me. ‘Every night since then we’ve honked. It was kismet.’”

Miles Today / Total: 60 / 28207 (rounded to the nearest mile)

Movie Showing / Total Active Nights: The Nut Job 2 / 157

Nearby Restaurant: Unlike me, the Crepe Escape spells the name of that delicate pastry with a circumflex over the first e. That attention to detail illustrates how serious these folks are to dishing it up right. I enjoyed a ham and cheese crepe for lunch, followed by a chocolate and blueberries crepe for dessert. I saved some of it to nibble on while I watched the movie.

Where I Virtually Stayed: Picton is the kind of place with historic lodging reflecting its long history. I’m not sure how long the Picton Harbour Inn has been around, but it’s being nicely renovated and offers a price closer to my budget for this odyssey. My top-floor queen room had a comfy bed and good wifi, plus a great view of the harbor.

Only in Picton: In the middle of Picton, halfway between a Dollar Store and a Tim Hortons, is the Un Gallery, a store with “Affordable Art that everyone can enjoy!” It offers paintings, jewelry, sculpture, and lots of other stuff, mostly from eastern Canadian artists. The selection changes often, but it’s always eccentric, quirky and fun.

Next stop: Kingston Family FunWorld, Kingston ON.

It’s Day 239 of my virtual Drive-In-a-Day Odyssey, and my 14th in Ontario. Swinging around Lake Simcoe, it took just over an hour to drive from the township of Oro-Medonte to the Stardust Drive-In Theatre in the former village of Sharon just north of the town of Newmarket. Sharon is now part of the municipality of the Town of East Gwillimbury. Few things make me feel more out of place then trying to figure out the cities and stuff up here.

The Stardust began its life in 1955 as the North York Drive In Theatre. According to a 2000 Toronto Star article captured here (PDF), “the theatre isn’t even close to North York any more. Political boundaries moved, but the theatre didn’t.” (I tell you, this system of shifting townships and stuff is making me crazy. But I digress.)

That Star article said that Clifford Murrell’s dad built the North York when Clifford was 18. (The Motion Picture Almanac lists the owner back then as C.E. Murrell.) They had added two more screens in the 1980s and were considering adding a fourth.

Clifford was 71 years old in 2013 when the North York announced via Facebook that it wouldn’t be opening that season. “Unfortunately due to development and changes to digital film we are unable to continue the tradition this year,” the post said. I wrote about that sad story at the time.

I didn’t notice that a month or two later, in swooped Premier Theatres, who bought the place, upgraded the projection system, and renamed it the Stardust Drive-In Newmarket. Chris Bilinski told YorkRegion.com his company leased the property, and wouldn’t be investing as much as for the properties it owns. “Are you going to put chandeliers up in a house you rent?” he said. “It will be a better looking drive-in than what it was, but we don’t own the property, so we can’t invest crazily.”

And that’s where we are now. YorkRegion.com ran another article on the Stardust earlier this month, describing the experience through the eyes of a young father having to sit through my pick for worst film of the year. “Finally, the utterly forgettable Emoji movie came on, the script of which must have been dreamed up in some ad manager’s office. But even though the movie was bad, we were still outside under the stars with a full moon hovering behind our screen.”

The YouTube video of the day is an interesting fisheye lens view of the Stardust. The twilight shots of the screen are especially colorful.

Miles Today / Total: 38 / 28010 (rounded to the nearest mile)

Movie Showing / Total Active Nights: The Hitman’s Bodyguard / 153

Nearby Restaurant: Always on the lookout for unusual cuisine, I was happy to stumble onto The Goulash House. They put a Hungarian spin on their menu, but I recognized the “cooked smoked pork hock” on the menu for the Schweinshaxe that it was. So nice to find one of my favorite dishes, no matter what they call it.

Where I Virtually Stayed: The closest hotels are in Newmarket, and I chose the Best Western Voyageur Place Hotel, across the street from the Upper Canada Mall. My queen bed room had a mini-fridge and wifi, my two essentials. There’s a restaurant on site, which makes it easier to pay for breakfast, but the place is literally surrounded on four sides by Tim Hortons, and I’m glad to have an excuse to get coffee and a donut there.

Only in Sharon: The Sharon Temple is an open-air museum of eight distinctive heritage buildings and dwellings. According to Wikipedia, it was constructed between 1825 and 1832 by the “Children of Peace”, a sect led by former Quaker David Willson on whose property it was built. The Sharon Temple Museum Society says the group was “instrumental in the fight for true democracy in Canada.”

Next stop: Lindsay Twin Drive-In Theatre, Lindsay ON.

Flickr photo by Cory Doctorow, author of
Pirate Cinema and several other fine novels

It’s Day 237 of my virtual Drive-In-a-Day Odyssey, and my 12th in Ontario. It took just a bit over an hour to drive from Midland to the Muskoka Drive-In, about a mile northeast of Gravenhurst ON. It’s hard to tell distances with all those kilometers they use up here.

The Muskoka is yet another drive-in with its origins well separated from anything on the internet. Several online sources say that it opened in 1952, and at least one says it operated continuously ever since. My almanacs verify that it was there in 1953, although they lose track of it in the 1970s. That doesn’t prove anything; I know of other uncounted drive-ins, though it’s unusual for those folks to lose one if it didn’t actually close.

What makes this place probably unique is that the screen is made of cement and is built on top of a giant granite boulder. The drive-in’s slogan is “Meet You at the rock!” They claim that some of the playground equipment in front of the screen is also original, and the surrounding forest on three sides helps keep the ambient light down.

From the internet’s perspective, the Muskoka sprang into being with William Alexander. According to the Huntsville Forester, Alexander acquired the place in 2008. “Unlike (other theatres), this drive-in really has a heart and a soul,” he said. “When you go there, with the grassy ramps, with the trees surrounding it, and that screen on the giant rock, it’s got character. And it’s unlike any other drive-in that I’ve ever experienced.”

In 2014, Alexander launched an online fundraiser on Fundrazr.com. He spoke with City TV’s Breakfast Television while he was working as a grip on the dog-saves-Christmas movie Shelby, starring Chevy Chase and Tom Arnold. “We’re marching forward very proudly because the drive-in for many years was allowed to run down, and we’ve taken over the last five years, we’ve been building it back up again,” he said. “Last year, we have a phenomenal year, but it just wasn’t enough to get us over the hump because there were so many slow years in rebuilding the brand of the drive-in.” That fundraiser fell short, but Alexander had told CTV News Barrie that he needed to buy a digital projector regardless of the outcome. “So it’s either you upgrade or fall by the wayside.”

Taking advantage of the capabilities of that new equipment, Alexander is still running the show. In June 2017, he helped a patron pop the question with a special video before the movie. She said yes.

There’s a decent YouTube video of the Muskoka from 2012, but it’s really more of an ad for Ford, so I put it down here.

I love the setting at the Muskoka, but I can’t say as much for this night’s movie. My second viewing of The Nut Job 2 was at least one too many.

Miles Today / Total: 56 / 27929 (rounded to the nearest mile)

Movie Showing / Total Active Nights: The Nut Job 2 / 151

Nearby Restaurant: First there’s the Sawdust City Brewery, with an amazing raspberry radler. In its parking lot, if you’re as lucky as me, is the Grillicious Gourmet Food Truck. A great burger and hand-cut fries sound pedestrian, but out of the food truck, they tasted marvelous. Or maybe that was the beer talking.

Where I Virtually Stayed: It’s a bit touristy and not at all inexpensive, but the Residence Inn Gravenhurst Muskoka Wharf is very, very nice. Each room has a full kitchen, rewarding someone who stays for a week more than just one night. Breakfast has everything anyone would need. And most noteworthy are the views of Muskoka Bay. I really wish I could stay longer.

Only in Gravenhurst: The inappropriately sized furniture week continues. The world’s largest Muskoka chair is another feature of the Sawdust City Brewery parking lot, as captured by photos on Roadside America. The chair is 21 feet high by 16 feet wide and painted bright yellow. It was built in 2010 to replace one destroyed by a tornado.

Next stop: Sunset Barrie Drive-In Theatre, Oro-Medonte ON.