Royal Windsor Lodge
The Royal Windsor Lodge , formerly known as Nipigon Lodge , is now a group of hunting and fishing lodges on the Canadian Nipigon Sea in the north of the province of Ontario , about 120 km north of Thunder Bay . The facility, known as the Lodge , is located on Highway 11 on Orient Bay. It dates back to 1914 and has a number of historically valuable buildings.
Founded in 1914 by the nature lovers ("conservationists") Glen Chamberlain Jr. and his wife Muriel as a "fishing lodge" with the name Nipigon Lodge , some of the current buildings, including parts of the interior, date back to the 1920s. They were built for the Canadian National Railway as luxury accommodation for invited guests who traveled to Orient Bay to fish for trout at the lodge .
Entomologists soon became interested in the numerous dragonflies , as did nature lovers in general. The nearby Virgin Falls, the portage there and other natural beauties contributed to this. At the same time, the forest, which had largely been cleared since the 1890s and fell victim to fires, was allowed to recover.
In 1922 you could stay there from $ 3.50 , but the lodge was mostly only open from mid-June to mid-September. Around 1931 it was able to accommodate around 40 guests, most of whom came by train. As early as the 1930s, automobiles increasingly replaced the railroad among lodge visitors.
Because Prince Arthur , the Governor General of Canada , and Prince Edward , the future Duke of Windsor , stayed there in 1916 and 1919, the lodge was given its current name. The railroad was still owned by the Scotsman Neil McDougall. In 1940 a short film about the Nipigon Lodge was made. Don Gapen was the owner in the late 1940s.
In 1973 a fire destroyed a significant part of the facility, which Art and Olga Jalkanen (* 1927 - 12 December 2017), local outfitters and anglers, bought in 1975. The cabins, which are now over 100 years old, had survived the fire, the new owners built a new house and extended the opening times from May 1st to October 20th. Decades after the closure of the local rail link, the tracks were removed in 2010. From now on the owners only operated as a “Resort and Trailer Park”. Olga Jalkanen died in 2017 after her husband had been different a decade earlier.
literature
- Bob Berg: Spotlighting Mom-and-Pop Resorts: Royal Windsor , in: Lake Superior Magazine, Aug. 7, 2011.
supporting documents
- ↑ The Timber Producer (1992), p. 32.
- ↑ International Railway Journal 23-24 (1915), p. 12.
- ↑ The Canadian Entomologist, 56-57 (1924), p. 171.
- ↑ The Dominion of Canada , Baedeker 1922, p. 267.
- ↑ Official Guide of the Railways and Steam Navigation Lines of the United States, Porto Rico, Canada, Mexico and Cuba , National Railway Publication Company, 1931, p. 1203.
- ↑ Canadian National Magazine, 15 (1929), p. 42.
- ^ Sound and Silent Motion Pictures , American Museum of Natural History. Department of Education, 1940, p. 52.