Wawa Hotel

The Wawa Hotel was a large summer resort hotel located at Norway Point on Lake of Bays, in Ontario, Canada. Constructed in 1908, it was entirely destroyed by a fire on August 19th, 1923. The name "Wawa" is a native Canadian word for "wild goose".

The land on which the Wawa was later built was originally thickly wooded; First Nations groups knew and likely camped in the area, as evidenced by an arrowhead found on the point itself. In the late 1870s there was already a small community with a church, a schoolhouse and a post office in the area. Around this time, the site of the later Wawa Hotel was cleared and settled by John Wilson Robertson, a coal merchant from Edinburgh, and his family. As other farmers in the region also discovered, the Robertsons found the land to be challenging to work, as the soil consisted primarily of sand with many stones and little humus.

By the turn of the 20th century, the main economy of the area had begun to transition from farming to tourism. With steamboats and the Portage Railway of the Huntsville and Lake of Bays Transportation Company connecting Lake of Bays to the Grand Trunk Railway, access from the larger cities of southern Ontario became much easier. As this transition continued, more and more hotels and private cottages continued to spring up. Mrs. Elizabeth Robertson (née Forest) hosted the first guests in her house at the future site of the Wawa around this time, and continued to do so until the land was purchased from her by the Canadian Railway News Company in order to build the Wawa.

Built in 1908, the Wawa hotel was a wooden structure consisting of a three story centre block flanked by a pair of two story wings. The centre block was capped by a five story tower featuring a powerful electric searchlight (a novelty at the time) and housed the main rotunda and a dining room with capacity for 300 people. The wings had rooms on two floors, with the entire hotel having a total 153 rooms. The accommodations were considered luxurious at the time, with hot and cold running water in every room, electric light throughout the hotel, and many rooms featuring en suite bathrooms. The rooms, the majority of which were 4.3 m x 4.9 m (14 feet x 16 feet), were said to be larger than average for similar summer hotels. Numerous activities were available to the guests, such as sailing, canoeing, swimming, tennis, baseball, football, bowls and quoits.

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