Strathcona Hotel

by Brownie Gibson from Green Branches & Fallen Leaves

In 1900, the Strathcona Hotel was built at what was then known as Gilesville (after an early settler). For the following enlightening information concerning the hotel, we are greatly indebted to the Provincial Archivist, Mr. Willard Ireland, who did a painstaking job of research.

Contrary to popular belief, the hotel did not start as a C.P.R. Hotel. In 1900 the Shawnigan Lake Hotel Company Limited was incorporated with head office inVictoria. The directors were a group of well-known Victoria business men: George L. Courtney, traffic manager of the E. & N. Railway; Edgar Crow Baker, retired navigating lieutenant, R.N.; Otto H. Weller, furniture manufacturer; Harry McAdoo Grahame, real estate, insurance and finance; and Frederick B. Pemberton, financial and insurance agent.

Courtney served as president, and J. S. Floyd, auditor of the E. & N. Railway, was secretary treasurer. In the list of shareholders in 1901 there appear such names as James Dunsmuir, railway director, Charles E. Pooley, and the Shawnigan Lake Lumber Company.

A ninety-nine year lease of the site of Strathcona Lodge was obtained from the E. &

N. and the hotel was built for an approximate sum of $15,000.

On May 13, 1900, the Daily Colonist reported that it would be opened “in a few days” under the management of W. E. Green, of Nanaimo, and that it had been most appropriately christened the “Strathcona.” It seems likely that this reference, while of course perpetuating the name of Lord Strathcona, is more specifically to Strathcona’s Horse, the force of mounted rifles recruited in the west by Lord Strathcona for service in the South African war, and which a number of Victorians, including Capt. T. F. Pooley, son of Charles Pooley, had joined.

But on May 15, 1900, the Colonist reported that “the hotel had burned at its birth.” The work of reconstruction began immediately with the same contractor and the same plans and on September 19, 1900, the Strathcona Hotel was formally opened to the public.

In 1903 the Strathcona Hotel was sold to Mrs. Josephine E. Work of the Burdette House in Victoria. Mrs. Work ran the Strathcona Hotel for six years until 1909, when she is reported to have sold it to Vancouver people. (Mrs. Work later established the celebrated Klitsa Lodge at Sproat Lake).

The “Vancouver people” mentioned in reports may be identified as Miss Jean Mollison who formed a company along with Helen Mary Patterson and Jessie Cancellor, known as “Mollison Sisters Limited” for the purpose of taking over Strathcona Lodge.

Nothing more was heard of the old Shawnigan Lake Hotel Company Limited and it was dissolved in 1912. The 1913 directory carries an illustrated advertisement of the Lodge, “Proprietor, the Mollison Sisters Ltd., Herbert Cancellor, Mgr.," but by 1917, according to the directory of Victoria, he was managing the Brentwood Hotel.

According to information gained locally, Mr. C. W. Lonsdale was a manager of Strathcona Lodge just prior to his founding of the Shawnigan Lake School in 1916.

Presumably, therefore, it was in 1916-17 that the Lodge was taken over by the C.P.R., for the 1918 directory lists it as “Strathcona Lodge, C.P.R. Hotel System.” Nothing more was heard of the Mollison Sisters until 1919, when they informed the Registrar of Companies that the Company was no longer in existence.

According to the 1920 directory, Strathcona Lodge was taken over at that time by M. A. Wylde, who operated the hotel until 1927, when he sold it to Miss M. Gildea, who established The Strathcona Lodge School for Girls on the premises.

Today the site is St John's Academy School.