John Grant discusses Thorah Island's past and the continuing pioneer spirit there with a number of anecdotes. He talks about how Beaverton is the ice fishing capital of Lake Simcoe as there are more departures from the Beaverton harbour than anywhere else. He discusses the ingenuity of ice hut construction, including one man who used the hut as his home and had to cut a hole out of one side to make room for his feet when he laid down to sleep. He also mentions how the Thorah Island harbour included a small store and post office, and how the first day issue of a stamp from that post office ended up being highly sought after. An archaeological dig was also established on one corner of the island where a settlement of native Canadians was discovered dating back to 2500 B.C. Additionally Keith Bissell, a teacher from Scarborough with ties to the island wrote the Ontario song often sung in elementary school. Only one person lives on the island during the winter in a three floor building that may have originally been intended to be a hotel, but never came to fruition after rail transportation began to dominate over water shipping. John also recalls a story of a couple who honeymooned on the island in 1935 in a small wooden hotel on Centre Rd. where there was no running water or electricity. Electricity didn't come to the island until approximately 1955 by underground cables from the point of Mara, rumoured to be a result of the vice-President of Ontario Hydro purchasing a cottage on the island. The first cottagers on the island were said to be three sisters with American husbands, and another early cottager was a shipbuilder by trade and thus built a cottage using dowel pins and dovetails, and no nails.
