• Recent Updates
• Colpoy's Bay
  • Colpoy's Bay Introduction
  • Spragge's Hill
  • The Kalbfleisch House
  • The Kalbfleisch Dock
  • The Kalbfleisch Marina
  • Whicher's Sawmill
  • The Wrecks Near Whicher's Mill
  • Frame's Falls and John Wood's Grist Mill
  • Albemarle Street
  • Hughenden and Whicher's Store
  • The Community Hall
  • The Forest Home Hotel
  • The Colpoy's Bay Schoolhouse
  • The Colpoy's Bay Church
  • Edgehill Cemetery
  • Colpoy's Bay From the Air
  • A Glimpse of the Past
• Wiarton
  • Berford Street
  • Berford St. Part 2
  • Berford St. Part 3
  • Wiarton Harbour
  • Bluewater Beach
  • Caframo Ltd. and Wiarton Cement Works
  • Wiarton Beet Sugar Factory
  • Wiarton's Hotels
  • Wiarton's Schools
  • Wiarton's Banks
  • Grand Trunk Railway Station
  • The Wiarton Fish House
  • The Wiarton Fish Hatchery
  • Wiarton's Berford Theatre
  • The Wiarton Woolen Mills
  • Wiarton's Furniture Industry
  • Wiarton's Hospital
  • Wiarton's War Memorial
  • Wiarton's Town Hall
  • Wiarton's Newspapers
  • Wiarton's Grist & Flour Mills
  • Wiarton's Sawmill Industry
  • Wiarton's Gateway
• Connecting Passages
  (Links)
• Present-day Map
  of Colpoy's Bay
• Colpoy's Bay
  Lot Map (1870)
• 
  Wiarton Timeline
• Present-day Map
  of Wiarton
• Bibliography
• About the Author



• Site Map
  (use if menu doesn't work)


Have you been to Colpoy's Bay or Wiarton?

• Tell me your impressions!

The Forest Home Hotel

The first hotel in Colpoy's Bay village appears to have been built around 1870 by John Shackelton. Known as Shackelton's Hotel, the structure stood on the southernmost lot on the east side of Albemarle Street (near the government wharf, just north up the street from where Mallory Beach Road now runs - See lot map in the menu at the right of the screen). After perhaps ten years, this hotel burned down and was replaced with another building named The Royal Hotel. This second hotel also burned down likely about 1888. Unfortunately, I have yet to see any surviving photographs of these earliest hotels.

In about 1889, John's son James expanded his year-old home on lot 3 (further north up the east side of Albemarle Street, just beyond where the tennis court now lies) to create the Forest Home Hotel, also known as the Mansion House Hotel. The Shackeltons ran the establishment until May 1896 when E. Sprowel took over. Unfortunately, by the time the Sprowels left in 1904 the hotel had earned a reputation for rowdiness, at one point losing its liquor license and narrowly escaping closure at the hands of a village petition. The Bryan family were the final family to run the Forest Home as a hotel, acting as proprietors from 1904 until about 1918 when James Cunningham, former town blacksmith, converted his old home into a community hall and moved one lot north into the Forest Home. Figure 11A shows the Forest Home hotel about 1927 and a similar view from 2023 where the site is now populated by trees.

The Forest Home served as the Cunningham's home for ten years until they left the village in 1928, at which time CE Whicher Ltd. bought the building and rented it out as a house. In the end, the former Forest Home hotel took the same fate as its predecessors, burning to the ground in 1934 under somewhat dubious circumstances. (See Figure 11B)

Postcards From the Bay was launched April 14, 2000

Visit Wiarton.ca