Clarke Muskoka Construction & Clarke Muskoka Realty
35 Years. 80 Builds. One Muskoka Family.
There is a road on the Joe River, winding through the pines along Carlingford Road, where a story began. Bob and Marnie Clarke first discovered the vacant Lake Joseph property in a way that now feels like family legend: after jumping out of a realtor’s boat to get a closer look, they purchased it that very afternoon. What followed was the beginning of a Muskoka life they had been working toward for years.
In the summer of 1991, shortly after the birth of their first daughter, Kelcie, Bob and Marnie moved into the Joe River cottage – a 1,400-square-foot Normerica post-and-beam retreat assembled largely by hand, without power, with family and friends raising it board by board through long Muskoka summers. It was the first Clarke build, and it became the family’s northern anchor, even as their permanent home and professional lives remained in the Greater Toronto Area for more than two decades.
Thirty-five years and 80 builds later, that same spirit still drives Clarke Muskoka Construction: the belief that a home is not simply a structure, but the beginning of a life. It is a milestone worth celebrating, and one that could only have been earned the way the Clarkes have always done things – one family, one property, one carefully considered build at a time.
Bob Clarke’s relationship with Muskoka did not begin at a building site. It began at a cottage dock, where a young man fell in love with both Marnie and the land her family summered on at Mary Lake. Weekends became the norm. The smell of pine sap and lake water, the particular quality of light on granite at dusk – these were not amenities. They were necessities. In 1987, at just 24 years old, Bob and Marnie borrowed $35,000 to purchase 2,000 feet of shoreline and 50 acres on Big Island, Lake Vernon. Within two years, he had subdivided it into seven lots, sold them all, and continued building toward the Muskoka future that would eventually define the family.
Before Muskoka became their full-time home, Bob and Marnie built, renovated, and refined their eye for property across the GTA. Married in 1986 – and celebrating 40 years this October – they lived in 11 different homes: six new-construction homes in Meadowvale, Erin Mills, and Sheridan Park, and five homes in the Princess Anne Manor area of Etobicoke. Every one of those homes was renovated, improved, and made their own, all while they were also building in Muskoka for themselves and others.
Until 2013, Bob’s full-time career was in sales and marketing in the military electronics field, while Marnie worked as a laboratory manager and visiting scientist in GTA primary schools. When their second daughter, Darby, went off to university, the timing was finally right. Bob and Marnie made the big move north, settling first full-time in Muskoka at Roberts Bay on Lake Joseph and committing fully to their real estate and construction careers.
The build at Carlingford Road was humble by the standards of the luxury estates Clarke Muskoka Construction would eventually be known for. But it was entirely theirs: conceived, raised, and lived in with the same hands-on devotion that has defined every Clarke project since. Over time, Bob and Marnie channelled that same restless energy into acquiring vacant lots and older cottages for renovation across the Big Three lakes, steadily building the portfolio of expertise, relationships, and reputation that Clarke Muskoka Construction carries today. As the company has grown, so has the team behind it. Clarke Muskoka Construction now includes an internal project management team of six and three local lead carpentry teams, supported by trusted local contractors and suppliers across every discipline: electricians, plumbers, tilers, masons, landscapers, roofers, painters, dock builders, material suppliers, and design groups.
Listening, understanding, and then executing a client’s vision is what makes Clarke Muskoka Construction so highly sought after. Bob and Marnie have built across the full spectrum of scale and style, from classic Muskoka vernacular rich in timber and stone to sleek contemporary builds that frame the lake like a living painting. Boathouses, renovations, and 8,000-square-foot luxury estates have all passed through their hands.
Marnie Clarke, an accomplished interior decorator, works with every client from conception to completion, guiding selections on flooring, millwork, surface materials, tile, and colour with the same care she brought to furnishing the family’s own properties. The result is never simply a cottage. It is an interior world that feels, from the first moment, as though it was always meant to be yours.
All aspects of the natural surroundings are taken into consideration with every build. Lake views, mature forest sightlines, and the magnificent outcroppings of Precambrian granite that define this landscape are not obstacles to be worked around; they are the canvas. It is that instinctive respect for the land, as much as any technical skill, that has made Clarke Muskoka Construction the builder of choice for families looking to call Muskoka their home away from home.
The Clarke legacy is not only written in timber and stone. It is carried forward in the people who share the name. Bob and Marnie have two daughters, Kelcie and Darby, and perhaps nowhere is the depth of the family’s Muskoka roots more evident than in Kelcie, who spent her earliest summers at the Joe River cottage and has chosen to plant her own life in the same landscape that shaped her parents. Now married and a mother herself, Kelcie is raising the next generation of Clarkes here, working alongside the family through Clarke Muskoka Realty & Clarke Muskoka Construction and building a life that is, in every sense, a continuation of everything Bob and Marnie began.
For Bob and Marnie, watching their grandbaby grow up in the shadow of those same pines is the truest measure of what 35 years of work has meant – not the number of builds, remarkable as 80 is, but the simple and profound fact that Muskoka is home. For them, for their children, and now for the generation that follows.
Clarke Muskoka Construction’s singular advantage has always been the breadth of its perspective.
As both builders and real estate professionals through Clarke Muskoka Realty, Bob and Marnie offer clients something rare in this market: a genuinely complete vision of what it means to find, acquire, design, build, and live in a Muskoka property. They have held every role in that story themselves. Some of today’s calls come from the children of clients for whom they built twenty years ago. Some come from families looking to pass something forward – a legacy property, a gathering place, the next chapter of a well-lived life. All of them come to Clarke Muskoka Construction for the same reason: it has not simply built in Muskoka. It has built Muskoka, one extraordinary home at a time.
Here’s to 35 years, and to all the builds yet to come.
