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appealing Anglo-Canadian Leather
Company.
Under that name, Shaw happily and
unstintingly fostered formation of the
Anglo-Canadian Concert Band from
talented musicians at his Huntsville
tannery, poor immigrants from Italy with
familiar but battered instruments. He
bought them swank uniforms and
expensive new instruments. He himself
played rst coronet. He imported talent,
including top clarinettist E.A. Wall Sr.
from Chicago. He landed pre-eminent
American band leader Herbert L. Clarke
with a ve-year $75,000 (present value,
$2,850,000) contract.
Besides conducting, renowned
composer Clarke wrote many pieces while
living in Huntsville, including Lake of
Bays, Twilight Dreams, Lavinia in honour
of Shaw’s wife and Helen for his
granddaughter. Clarke’s march Bigwin,
played during the band’s acclaimed
performance at 1919’s CNE grandstand
show in Toronto, was part of the resort’s
prelaunch publicity. Huntsville’s Anglo-
Canadian Band became internationally
renowned, thanks to radio broadcasts across
Canada and as far south as Miami – another
way C.O. Shaw was putting Muskoka on the
map. To everyone’s delight but nobody’s
surprise, next year music by the Anglo-
Canadian Concert Band drifted across Lake of
Bays from Bigwin Inn.
Shaw’s inuence extended with his
economic and political power. His tanneries
in Huntsville and Bracebridge, steadily
generating wealth, provided a $70,000 yearly
payroll – by far Muskoka’s largest – for Anglo-
Canadian’s 150 employees. Funds owed to
suppliers, municipal coers (once taxes began
to be paid), the treasuries of railway companies
and the pockets of teamsters. He meshed
municipal government and local industry. He
got himself elected to Huntsville council.
Exemplifying what “hands-on” management
means, relentlessly energetic Shaw was a hard-
driving, can-do American engineer and
entrepreneur with good taste, musical talent
and a touch of class.
With his Anglo-Canadian tanneries well
anchored in the global leather business, and
his Anglo-Canadian Concert Band bringing
pleasure and renown, C.O. Shaw next
advanced into the transportation and
accommodation businesses.
In 1905, he gained control of Huntsville
and Lake of Bays Navigation Company,
backed by nancial resources from his high
production tanneries. Its steam era eet of
inland ships and railway at the Portage
dominated transport throughout Huntsville’s
hinterland.
In 1907, he learned all about resorts when
assisting the Canadian Railway News
Company build its upscale $195,000 WaWa
Hotel on the east side of Lake of Bays. Shaw’s
involvement was key, given his transportation
monopoly between Huntsville’s train station
and Lake of Bays resorts.
In 1910, he contemplated his integrated
transport system and the continuously
escalating success of numerous Lake of Bays
resorts – Gouldie House, Hotel Britannia,
Ronville Lodge, Iroquois Hotel, Ganoseyo,
Port Cunnington Lodge, New Moon Lodge,
Burlmarie House, Langton House, White
House and Point Pleasant – and envisaged
tying all these elements together more
eectively by a trophy destination: a
spectacular tourist hotel of his own.
In 1911, he bought the largest island
in the lake, Bigwin, mid-channel in the
northern part of the lake and special to
the Ojibwe people for its communal life,
sacred for its three burial grounds. e
only way eager guests and all their
luggage could arrive would be on one of
Shaw’s steamers.
e redevelopment of Patmore House
lodge as Hotel Britannia particularly
captivated Shaw by its artful integrity of
design. Britannia’s owner, omas J.
White, introduced C.O. to his architect,
John Wilson, a fellow resident of
Collingwood. Already Simcoe County’s
top architect, Wilson was rapidly
becoming one of Canada’s pre-eminent
designers.
And the magic began. e visionary
civil engineer and innovative architect
mirrored each other as they shared ideas
and outlooks. Shaw described his vision
for Bigwin Inn – its bold nature, extensive
use of space, a complete community like
he’d created in Cheboygan, and direct
and continuing expression of Bigwin Island’s
Aboriginal importance. Receptive Wilson
oered ideas for turning this dream into
reality.
Having lived most of his life along the
45th parallel in Dexter, Cheboygan and
Huntsville, Shaw knew what a northern
hinterland style required, and so did Wilson.
ey’d use local materials – wood, stone,
gravel from the Tapley farm. ey’d honour
Indigenous people. ey’d pioneer with steel
reinforced concrete, mortar, huge spaces,
large wood beams and extensive masonry
using Muskoka rock – blending diverse but
complementary designs. Together they
opened a new chapter in Canadian
architecture and North American resort life.
Once underway, Bigwin came in for
derision as Toronto dailies mocked the idea of
such a high-end resort in the province’s
backwaters. Following the Toronto Star’s cue,
locals gleefully dubbed the monumental but
languishing project “Shaw’s Folly.”
Construction dragged not only because of
new uses of special materials. Shaw’s
unprecedented standards, Wilson’s innovative
Photograph: Douglas Graham McTaggart Collection
Ample supplies of pure spring water (100,000 gallons) for
Bigwin Inn’s extensive operations came from this water
tower but the source of the springs themselves, high on an
island, remains a mystery.
Fall/Winter 2020 UNIQUE MUSKOKA 41
