Episode 8: The Grand Trunk‘s Long Lost Algonquin Railway Hotels

Episode 8: The Grand Trunk's Long Lost Algonquin Railway Hotels

In the late 1800s, outdoor recreation in Ontario was just starting to become a ‘thing.’   Folks who lived in cities were anxious to escape their urban and industrial woes and reconnect with the wilderness. In 1905 the Grand Trunk Railway had just acquired J. R. Booth’s Canada Atlantic Railway, which in turn had merged with his Ottawa, Arnprior and Parry Sound Railway that ran through the southern end of Algonquin Park a few years earlier.

Charles Melville Hays, President of the Grand Trunk Railway, who went down with the Titanic in 1912, apparently had a passion for hotels in addition to railways. His view was that the best way to increase passenger traffic on his northern lines and take advantage of the growing interest in outdoors recreation was to establish hotels and well-appointed rustic resorts at certain key locations. Though most of his hotels were in big cities like Ottawa, Edmonton and Winnipeg, he established three along his newly acquired rail line that ran, as indicated previously, through the southern end of Algonquin Park. In 1908 the Highland Inn was built on Cache Lake and in 1912 Camp Nominigan was built on Smoke Lake and Camp Minnesing on Burnt Island Lake. Except for a series of outdoor sign boards at Cache Lake put up by the Friends of Algonquin Park in 2008 and a plaque hidden in the bush on Smoke Lake that was mounted there in 1969, there are few if any signs that any of these vacation paradises ever existed.  

In this episode, I’m going to try to bring each of them to life and share not just the lodges history, but hopefully give listeners a sense of what it must have been like to vacation there. Most of the content for this episode comes from two key sources. The first is the late Don Beauprie’s 2011 book called Destination Algonquin Park, Tracks to Cache Lake and the Highland Inn. Second is my own entitled, Nominigan and other Smoke Lake Jewels that was published in 2012. I’ve also posted photographs that I have on my Algonquin Park Heritage website for you to peruse at your leisure. Note that there is also a video version of this episode on my Algonquin Defining Moments YouTube channel. (https://youtu.be/5tXI2Wxj5iw)

Enjoy!!!