Ghost Pictures – Kingsville

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• I love good mysteries. Found this little bit about the Lakeshore. It's about halfway down the article. It's not much, but....

  http://mettawas-end-bed-and-breakfast.com/history

• After the Good Friday church services, a group of us would meet here for lunch, it was the perfect place. We did see it go downhill as the years went by, then one day, we all met & it was closed!!

• Forgot to mention, this would have been in the early to mid 1990's

• The Lakeshore is on the site of Hiram Walker's Mettawa Hotel:

  http://www.walkervilletimes.com/26/to-the-mettawas.html

• More information on the Mettawas and the Lakeshore:

  http://divisionoftime.ca/?p=452

• The Walkerville Times link is nice but outside of their transcriptions of older stuff they aren't always accurate. Albert Kahn designed Kingsville station? he wouldve been 19. Another page on their site about Kahn lists him as apprentice at age 23. Don't think he was leading the design on prestige project buildings as a teenager. Walkerville Times is good for the documents, just read everything from there with a big grain of salt.
  not sure but the water tower mightve been for Hodge Tobacco originally? There was a whole building beside/underneath it that is still partially there in the foundation and underneath of it.

• At one time, Kingsville had as many as 15 tobacco companies. The industry got its start in the early 1800s and was comprised of flue-cured and burley products. In 1909 the federal government establish a tobacco research facility in Harrow which is now known as the Harrow Research Centre. In the 1920s blue mould (a fungal disease) forced the flue-cured industry to relocate to sandy soils further east (Norfolk county). In due time, the government opened a tobacco researh substation in Delhi.
  The Hodge Tobacco Company purchased the Essex Tobacco Company in about 1923. By 1951-1952 there remained but three tobacco companies in Kingsville, the Hodge Company, Consolidated Leaf and MacDonald Leaf. The Hodge Company was in turn purchased by the MacDonald Leaf Company in 1969 and the Hodge name was discontinued. MacDonald Leaf closed its doors in 1973. I believe Action Hobbies now occupies one of these plants or warehouses.
  Most of this information comes from "Kingsville 1790-2000 A Stroll Through Time" by the Kingsville-Gosfield Heritage Society.

• My family lived and worked there from 1951 to 1973. It was the site of the original Mettawas, the Casino at the west was still used until the mid 60s the annex was the only other original structure other than the Casino [ never used for gambling] the section in between had been destroyed by fire in the early part of the century. The terrazza dance floor is still there on the west of the property. We have many old pictures of this old grand resort. View point Wineries in Colchester rebuilt a scaled down version of the Casino as there sales building, very impressive, worth the visit.
  The Walker family summer cottage was across the street known as Birchlee estate, now a retirement home. The building in the background is currently the Kings Landing and was a tourist home and resturaunt since the turn of the century. The property originally was several hundred acres and Lakeside Park was part of it as well as the old train station.The books mentioned are excellent and recomend to any one interested in history of Kingsville or Hiram Walkers. It was in it's day one of the largest resorts in North America

• The Lakeshore sign is now gone. It had to go to make room for parking for the newly planned lakefront park.

• Steve, you mentionned in your comment that the terraza dance floor is still there on the west of the property... where would that be today? I'm a relatively new addition to Kingsville; we bought what most know as the Clark house on Main Street West in 2010. I'm very interested in Kingsville's rich history.