Diana Pedersen, “The Morton House at Shawnigan Lake,” An Angler’s Paradise: Sportfishing and Settler Society on Vancouver Island, 1860s-1920s (blog), February 3, 2017
- Shawnigan Lake Museum
- Sep 16
- 8 min read
Posted by Diana Pedersen in Cowichan South Island
Ed Note: Photos enhanced by Google AI Studio
The completion of the E&N Railway line and the opening of Charles Morton’s hotel in 1886 turned Shawnigan Lake into a popular destination for Victoria anglers and weekend excursions.
In 1886, English emigrant Charles Morton brought his business acumen and experience as an hotelier, acquired in Victoria and the Yale District, to Shawnigan Lake.
In establishing the Morton House beside the track of the newly completed E&N Railway, he turned Shawnigan Lake into a destination for Victoria sportsmen and weekend excursionists.
His success hinged on his understanding of the needs of sportsmen and the symbiotic relationship between hotels and railways. The Morton House, with boat rentals and excellent bar service, was the first stop on the line after leaving Esquimalt. Until Morton’s death in 1891, Victoria anglers were among his best customers.
When Charles Morton died in 1891, according to Victoria’s Daily Colonist, he was a popular and respected hotel keeper and businessman and “one of the oldest pioneers” in the province. According to his death certificate, he was born about 1830 in Jersey in the Channel Islands. Nothing else is known about his early life but it seems likely that he was one of the many 19th-century English “gentlemen”— with some education and refinement but no land and limited prospects—who emigrated to the colonies.
In 1862, at the age of 32, Morton arrived in British Columbia at the height of the great influx of settlers drawn by news of the Cariboo Gold Rush. He spent his first decade in the colony in the Yale District and acquired enough money to buy a hotel in Victoria.
In 1872 he purchased the Angel Hotel on Langley Street, just off Bastion Square. He ran the Angel for just over a year and sold it in 1873 to Frederick and Harriet Carne. Under their management, it became a well-known temperance hotel, but Charles Morton, who owned several hotels over the course of his life, always claimed that his hotels served the best liquors, wines, and cigars.
Apparently Morton was well regardedin Victoria, and he was elected as a municipal councillor in 1873. Councillor Morton also held the office of Noble Grand of the Victoria Lodge of Odd Fellows. On February 18, 1874, he published a letter to the electors of the city, agreeing to stand as a candidate for election to the House of Commons and explaining his position on the Terms of Union. In 1875, Morton was Chairman of the BC Towing & Transportation Co. Ltd., arranging for the steamers Grappler and Beaver to tow vessels to Nanaimo and Burrard Inlet.
By 1878, he was a commission stockbroker, with an office opposite the Angel Hotel, and a member of the BC Mining Stock Board.
In the early 1880s, Morton was back in the Yale District. On March 10, 1880, his plan to build a first-class hotel, the Emory House, was announced in the Colonist. Emory City, on the Fraser River three miles south of Yale, was experiencing a building boom as the expected location of the Canadian Pacific Railway’s western terminus.
Morton’s plan must have fallen through when the CPR decided to establish its terminus at Yale instead and Emory City’s boom collapsed. The 1881 census found Charles Morton, occupation “oil manufacturer,” in the Yale-Hope sub-district in the company of Napoleon Fitz Stubbs, occupation “gentleman”; they were the only English residents in a boarding establishment for Chinese merchants.
On June 18, 1881, the Colonist enthusiastically endorsed Morton’s newest plan: “Mr. Charles Morton,agentleman of large experience as a host and of great popularity in Victoria and elsewhere,has leased Mr. John Murray’s premises near Spence’s Bridge, and will open a first-class hotel there on the 1st of next month.”
Given the “geniality and amiability” of its host, the Colonist expected the new Morton House to be “a credit to the province.”
For almost two years, until March 1883, Morton operated his hotel, with its excellent location at the junction of the Nicola and Cariboo Roads and a few minutes’ walk from the Spence’s Bridge railway station.
Morton then returned to Victoria and took a break from hotel management. On February 12, 1884, the Colonist reported “that Mr. Charles Morton has opened handsome stock of staple and fancy stationery in the store formerly known as Chadwick’s on Government street adjoining London House.”
Morton also imported books, cutlery, fancy goods, and “all newspapers and periodicals,” taking orders for shipment to the Mainland. In July 1884, he was elected as a new member of the BC Board of Trade. But the business was not a success and on July 18, 1885, the Colonist announced an auction of stationers’ supplies and fancy goods. “Very general regret is expressed that Mr. Charles Morton has been compelled by the state of his health and dull times to make an assignment. His friends are hopeful that he will be enabled to arrange satisfactorily and resume business.”
After this interlude in Victoria, Morton must have been looking around for his next financial venture.
With the impending completion of Vancouver Island’s Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway line, he made a shrewd calculation that there was opportunity to be had for someone who knew the hotel business.
On August 13, 1886, Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald drove the last spike of the E&N at Mile 25, east of Shawnigan Lake. At the age of 55, Charles Morton launched his final business venture, purchasing premises on the lake that had been occupied by A.E. McKay, engineer for the railway company, and announcing his plan “to meet and supply the wants of the very large and ever increasing number of excursionists and general traveling public, who are now patronizing the Esquimalt and Nanaimo railway.”
Morton’s hotel opened on November 20, 1886, and on December 22, the Colonist noted that it was already becoming a popular resort. “The proprietor, Mr. C. Morton, has just begun building an addition of 50 x 30 feet, which he expects to have ready for the early spring business.”
Charles Morton, who must have had a sense of humour, once again named his modest establishment the Morton House.
Occasionally mentioned in the Colonist was the famous luxury hotel on Union Square in New York City also called the Morton House (1868-1903). At Shawnigan Lake, locals and visitors alike would have appreciated the joke.
Until Charles Morton opened the Morton House, Shawnigan Lake was largely inaccessible to Victoria anglers; the railway was critical to the success of the new hotel. The 28-mile journey from Victoria to Shawnigan Lake on the new E&N line took one hour and twenty minutes.
Advertisements for Morton’s hotel proclaimed that all trains stopped right outside the door and that this was the first station on the line for refreshments; ten-minute stops allowed passengers the opportunity to refresh themselves at the well-stocked bar of the Morton House.
Morton sought the patronage of travellers and excursionists but he clearly recognized that Victoria sportsmen would also be important to the success of his establishment.
As it happened, his offer of splendid opportunities for trout fishing was well timed. Since the 1860s, Prospect Lake had been the favourite destination of Victoria trout anglers, but by the early 1880s, a controversy raged in the Colonist about the over fishing of that lake due to the use of salmon roe as bait and greedy anglers taking huge bags of even the smallest fish. With the opening of the E&N line and Morton’s hotel, most of the weekend angling traffic from Victoria shifted from Prospect Lake to Shawnigan Lake.
To launch the first summer season of the Morton House, Charles Morton organized a Good Friday excursion from Victoria to Shawnigan Lake, successfully negotiating with the railway company for special reduced fares. The event on April 8, 1887, was well promoted in the Colonist, with the promise of rifle shooting, boating, and dancing on the new 100 ft. x 80 ft. covered pavilion, for which Morton had engaged the Queen City Brass Band. The day’s centrepiece was to be a “grand angling competition for prizes amounting to $25.00, to be given by Charles Morton.”
On April 10, the Colonist published a report of the delightful excursion. The day dawned clear and bright and two trains, each carrying 150 passengers, left Esquimalt at 7:20 AM and 9:20 AM, with all aboard determined to make the most of their holiday. On arrival at the lake, the available boats were immediately rented by the anglers. The other guests enjoyed the luncheon and dancing, and no doubt the bar service, provided by their “thoughtful and courteous” host.
A very interesting part of the proceedings was that which brought the day’s sports to a close. This was the arrival on shore of the rival fishermen with the day’s catch. Master Frye, son of Mr. Geo. Frye, of the custom house, with four dozen speckled beauties, tipped the scales at 19 pounds, and carried off the first prize of $12 and the honors of champion fisherman of Shawnigan, whatever they are worth. Mr. H.B. Cameron, who had struck a smaller school, corralled the second prize of $8, for the greatest number of fish, while Mr. A. Ferguson, who had landed a 1¼ pounder, laid claim to the prize of $5 for the largest trout.
After a bracing day in the “pure mountain air,” the two trains loaded with pleasure-seekers arrived back at Esquimalt at 5:00 PM and 7:00 PM. During Charles Morton’s tenure at the Morton House, these annual Good Friday excursions to “Shinnanigan” became a popular Victoria tradition.
After the opening of the Morton House, short reports on the fishing at Shawnigan Lake appeared regularly in the Colonist. On April 10, 1888, it was noted that Mr. W. Christie had had “great luck at Shawnigan on Sunday and Monday.
He fished in the brook running out of the lake on Sunday, where the trout were very plentiful, and caught over fifty, averaging in weight from 1¼ lbs. down.
On Monday he killed twenty-five fine fish in the lake on the opposite shore from the hotel. Bait was used, but Mr.Christie thinks the trout will take the fly, as they were frequently ‘rising’ in the brook.”
Christie concluded that “the Morton House … is a first-class hostelry, and sportsmen are treated there right royally.”
Ten days later, on April 20, the Colonist reported: “Montague Troup, Dr. J.D. Helmcken, James Hutcheson and son returned from Shawnigan Lake by the E. & N. railway yesterday afternoon. The gentlemen report first rate sport, fishing in the river.
They each had heavy baskets of fine trout caught principally with bait, although some were taken with the fly. The weather at the lake was beautiful and the accommodation at the Morton House first class.” Part of the appeal of Shawnigan Lake for Victoria anglers was the hospitality at the Morton House.
But anglers also appreciated the convenient train trip that allowed them to transport their catch back to Victoria in a special car loaded with anglers and fish. On Sunday, March 31, 1889, shortly after the opening of the fishing season, the Colonist observed: “The trout fishing in Shawnigan Lake continues to attract dozens of anglers every day, all anxious to throw in a line. Yesterday over twenty-five city people were out, and returned home in the evening with strings of every size, from two fish to a hundred.”
On January 2, 1891, only four years after he opened his hotel at Shawnigan Lake, Charles Morton was suddenly taken ill.
To get him to St Joseph’s Hospital in Victoria, friends put him on the noon train from Nanaimo but he died en route before the train reached Goldstream. A coroner’s inquest in Victoria, reported in the Colonist, determined that the 60-year-old Morton “came to his death by reason of a clot of blood upon the heart.”
He had no family in the city but, since he was popular with Victoria residents and respected as one of the city’s pioneers, his funeral was largely attended. Morton was actively involved with both the St. George’s Society and the Pioneer Society, with the latter handling his funeral arrangements.
Members of both societies turned out in force for the procession from the Pioneer Hall on Broad Street to Christ Church Cathedral. Most likely, his friends placed a wooden tablet, long since lost to time and weather, at his mow unmarked grace (A36 E30) under a large monkey puzzle tree at Ross Bay Cemetery.
After Charles Morton’s death, his hotel reopened under new management and remained popular with Victoria residents; Charles Morton’s hotel was purchased in 1891 by George Koenig and his first wife, Mary Ann. She died the following year from complications of childbirth.
Koenig married Anna, his second wife, later in 1892. After his death in 1902, Anna Koenig ran the hotel for many years. She changed her name to Anna Kingsley in 1916 at the height of the wartime anti-German hysteria. She died in 1948.
Koenig’s Hotel was renovated and expanded in 1897, destroyed by fire in 1901, and replaced by the new and larger Shawnigan Lake Hotel in 1902. The above photograph, taken by Victoria photographer Richard Maynard in 1895, shows Koenig’s Hotel before the expansion of 1897, still looking as it did during its tenure as the Morton House.
A cropped version of the same photograph, shown below, reveals a smaller attached structure that was probably the original house occupied by A.E. McKay,
and an expanse of roof behind the hotel that likely covered the dance pavillion built by Charles Morton.*
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