Lake of Bays: A Lake Worth Knowing

If you own on Lake of Bays, or you're thinking about it, here's something most people don't realize right away: you're not just buying a property on a lake. You're stepping into a place with more history than it lets on in a summer afternoon.

I've spent enough seasons on this water to know that everyone who loves Lake of Bays has their own version of it. Their own quiet bay where the light hits just right. Their own story about why this particular lake, out of every lake in Muskoka, is the one that got them. I have mine too. And if you're newer here, or still dreaming about your first summer, I want to share some of what makes this place matter—not just to us now, but to everyone who found their way here before we did.

When Getting Here Was an Adventure

Most people floating on this lake have no idea they're drifting over one of the most remarkable tourism stories Muskoka ever had.

In the early 1900s, reaching Lake of Bays wasn't casual. You took a steamship across Peninsula Lake, then transferred onto an actual narrow-gauge train—the Portage Flyer—for a mile-and-a-bit ride between the two lakes. Then you boarded a second steamship for the final leg. The Portage Flyer became legendary, one of the smallest commercial railways ever built. For more than fifty years, it carried mail, tourists and cargo on what was someone's actual commute. You can still see the original engine at Muskoka Heritage Place in Huntsville. It's impossibly small, and it makes you realize what people were willing to endure for a lake vacation. They were willing to do it because of what was waiting.

Bigwin: The Lake's Golden Era

The Bigwin Inn opened on Bigwin Island in 1920, and for three decades it was where you went if you mattered. Clark Gable came. Carole Lombard came. Ernest Hemingway spent summers here. Princess Juliana of the Netherlands stayed at the resort. The Rockefeller family knew the place. It wasn't just a hotel—it was a destination, the kind of place that made you understand why someone would endure a steamship and a toy train just to get there.
The original inn closed in 1966, but Bigwin's story didn't end. Today the island is home to a private golf club with a Doug Carrick championship course that consistently ranks among Canada's finest. The waitlist tells you everything about how much the place still matters. The glamour evolved, but it never left.

The Resorts Nobody Talks About Anymore

Here's what most people—even longtime owners—don't know. Bigwin wasn't the only grand resort this lake ever held.
At Norway Point stood the Wawa Hotel, a hundred-room resort that opened in 1908. The dining hall could seat 250 guests, which was extraordinary for its time. In August of 1923, it burned to the ground in a fire that people still remember. The site later became little more than a dock where a small steamer ferried guests onward to Bigwin.

The Britannia Hotel had its own story—a grand summer resort that became a year-round destination before it closed its doors in 1973. Of the lake's three great resorts, only Bigwin's spirit truly carried forward into what came next. The Wawa and the Britannia live on mostly in old photographs and family memories now, but they were every bit as much a part of what made this lake a destination as Bigwin ever was.

The Ships That Still Haunt the Water

No lake with this kind of history gets away without a few ghost stories, and Lake of Bays has two genuinely good ones.
The first is the SS Bigwin. She started life in 1910 not as a ferry at all, but as a private yacht built by Polson Iron Works in Toronto for an American named James Kuhn, who named her Ella Marie after his wife. About fifteen years later, she found her way here and spent the next forty-five years as the ferry carrying guests out to the inn. Clark Gable stood on her deck. Louis Armstrong. Winston Churchill. Greta Garbo. When the inn closed, she was left to rot quietly for two decades.

 Then in 1991, a group of volunteers raised her. After years of painstaking restoration, she set sail again in 2012, looking much as she did in her glory days. She still cruises the lake through the Lake of Bays Marine Museum. You can actually step onto her, stand on the very deck where those names once stood. That's rare—most history you can only read about.

The second is the SS Iroquois. Hers is a quieter story. Launched in 1907, she made daily rounds of the lake with her sister ship, the Mohawk Belle, stopping at community docks to drop off passengers, mail and luggage in an era before roads made any of that simple. Eventually she came to rest at the bottom of South Portage Bay. For years afterward, her bow could still be seen breaking the surface at the right water levels—a strange, quiet landmark for anyone who knew to look for it. 

Next time you're passing Portage Bay at South Portage, remember you're passing by a small piece of the lake's working history, still resting below.

What the Lake Offers Now

Beyond the history—and the history matters, it shapes how a place feels—Lake of Bays has a personality that's distinctly its own within Muskoka. It's more understated than the Big Three, with a shoreline long enough and varied enough to hold a huge range of experiences within a single lake.

There are quiet, protected bays where the water stays calm even on a windy afternoon. Perfect for an early morning coffee on the dock without a ripple in sight. There are stretches of open water dramatic enough for anyone who dreamed about big-lake views, rocky points that catch the last light of the day, quiet channels perfect for a slow canoe paddle where the loudest sound is your own paddle dipping into the water.

Locals know which boat launches get busy on an August long weekend and which stay quiet all summer. Which little bay warms up first in late spring. Which general store has the good butter tarts. None of this is written down anywhere. It's the kind of knowledge that gets passed dock to dock, from people who've spent enough summers here to have earned it.

Why This Matters If You're Considering the Lake

If you're new to Lake of Bays, or you're thinking about making your first summer here, understand that you're not just buying a dock and a view. You're buying into a place with genuine depth—not just water, but story. Character. The kind of thing that makes a lake feel like home instead of just a property.

Take a slow boat tour around Bigwin Island and picture both eras at once. Take a cruise on the restored SS Bigwin if you get the chance and stand on the very deck where history stood. Idle through South Portage Bay and see if you can spot where the Iroquois still rests. Ask a longtime neighbour about the lake's history—most have a story that's never made it into any brochure.

And if you get there, visit the Portage Flyer's original engine at Muskoka Heritage Place. It puts the whole scale of what this lake once meant to people into real perspective.

A Lake Worth More Than What Most People See

I never get tired of this lake, and I don't think I ever will. It has a history most cottage lakes in Ontario simply can't match. A personality distinctly its own. Corners that still feel like secrets even after all these years.

If you have a favourite piece of Lake of Bays history I haven't mentioned, I'd genuinely love to hear it. This lake has more stories than any one person could ever collect alone.