Skip to main content
Go back

Cascade Hotel – The Rise and Fall of a Tourism Empire

Black and white photograph of the Cascade hotel. The three-storey wooden hotel is located at the top of a steep cliff. The cliff is covered with a forest of spruce and white birch trees. At the foot of the cliff is the rocky beach of Metis. Between the bottom of the cliff and the beginning of the beach there is a small boathouse and changing cabins. Both buildings are made of wood.

Photograph

Cascade Hotel and beach, Little Metis, 1915

Wm. Notman & Son

McCord Stewart Museum

The Cascade Hotel was one of the best-known of the Metis hotels. It was one of the many properties in Metis that belonged to the Macnider family.

The Quebec Morning Chronicle described the Cascade Hotel’s features in 1895:

…clean and well situated, the beds are comfortable, and the table is universally admitted to be very good. Hot, fresh and salt water baths may also be had every day at a very moderate price. With a bowling alley, the popular hotel would be as complete and enjoyable as any tourist can wish for. Its peculiar and central situation, the excellence of its management together with the kindness and attention of its popular manager will no doubt increase the number of its customers every year.

Owner Sam Macnider was a tourism entrepreneur, fashioning a tourism empire on his family property. Observing the number of Montreal families eager to have their own summer home, he signed them up to long-term leases to finance the construction of “Cascade cottages” on Beach Road and Skid Row. He transformed part of the Macnider farm into a golf course – it took the name Cascade to emphasize its connection to the hotel and the brook that traversed the property.

The Cascade Hotel advertised in Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto. Its services included “thoroughly trained saddle horse and riding lessons by appointment”. It was one of the hotel’s horses that brought a tragic end to Macnider’s life and his tourism businesses. He was kicked in the head by a horse in 1924 and died a few days later.