#1 - Grand Trunk Railway Muskoka Lodge - frame and image ca1901 - hung in station waiting room

#2 - GTR Postcard of same print above

Notes about Frame / Lodge

ROYAL MUSKOKA HOTEL

The Royal Muskoka Island, connected by bridge to the mainland, is in Lake Rosseau near Juddhaven.
On this island the Navigation Company built the luxury Royal Muskoka Hotel in 1901 as an adjunet to the steamships.

Life at the hotel was quite formal; men wore white flannels and blue coats, the early black shoes giving way to fashionable white.
Dancing several nights a week attracted the social set from around the lake. There was a short but lovely nine-hole golf course.
The Muskoka Lakes Association held its regattas for some years.

A prominent Toronto doctor, who transferred his practice to Muskoka in the summer,
used to go up to the Royal Muskoka by boat every evening at 5 o'clock to spend the night, enabling the hotel to claim a resident doctor.

A financial burden from the beginning, it was impossible to operate at a profit, particularly in view of the short summer season,
and more so after the Bigwin resort was opened in 1920. After the hotel was destroyed by fire in 1952,
the island was divided into cottage lots and is a vacation-home community today.

In 1905, four years after it was built, A.P. Cockburn, the founder of the navigation company, died in his Toronto home at the age of 68.

The Grand Trunk Railway was a strong promoter of steamship travel on the Muskoka Lakes,
hence the picture was a promotional item for selling inter-line tickets to any destination on the lakes.

(Years ago I restored the frame - it was badly damaged and the GTR System text had almost faded out. There were multiple stains
on the print itself which a dried teabag, suggested by an artist friend, helped to clean up. The picture frame store nearby cut the
matting and glass to make the image stand out.)