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MIDLAND , just east along the bay from Penetanguishene, has suffered badly from recurrent recession, losing its engineering plants in the 1930s, its shipyards in 1957 and much of its flour-mill capacity in 1967. But it has bounced back, shrugging off these setbacks with the help of provincial and federal grants, and nowadays the town has a sprightly air, its main drag - King Street - an amenable parade of shops and cafes with the occasional mural to brighten up the sturdy brick buildings. Efforts to cash in on the tourist industry have included the construction of a marina and the redevelopment of the harbourfront, where sightseeing cruises of the Thirty Thousand Islands that necklace Georgian Bay leave from May to October (1-4 daily; $15; reservations on tel 705/549-3388). Sooner or later, every schoolkid in Midland gets taken to the Huronia Museum and Huron Indian Village (May-Dec daily 9am-5/6pm; Jan-April daily 9am-5pm, but phone to confirm times on tel 705/526-2844 or 1-800/263-7745; $6), a twenty-minute walk south of the harbour along King Street. Highlights of the museum include a large number of Huron artefacts and a series of photos tracing the pioneer settlement of Midland. The adjacent Indian Village is a replica of a sixteenth-century Huron settlement, its high palisade encircling storage pits, drying racks, a sweat bath, a medicine man's lodge and two long houses. These characteristic Huron constructions, with their bark-covered walls of cedar poles bent to form a protective arch, contain tiers of rough wooden bunks draped with furs, whilst herbs, fish, skins and tobacco hang from the roof to dry. It's all very interesting and feels surprisingly authentic, but still lags far behind the comparable section of Sainte-Marie among the Hurons up the road.
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