The SS Bigwin

Meanwhile, on Lake of Bays — just north of Lake Muskoka, deeper into the Shield — a Michigan entrepreneur named Charles Shaw was building something extraordinary. Shaw, who owned the Huntsville Tannery and had deep business ties to the region, had begun construction of the Bigwin Inn on Bigwin Island in 1910. The Great War and its labour shortages stretched the project to a full decade, but when the Inn finally opened in 1920, it was unlike anything Ontario had seen: a sprawling resort with hundreds of rooms and a dance hall large enough for 1,000. It quickly became the biggest summer destination in eastern North America and the largest inn in the British Commonwealth.

Shaw — who had built the Inn partly out of frustration after the rival Wawa Hotel overbooked his private suite despite his financial backing — needed a vessel grand enough to match his ambitions. When the Ella Mary became available — Kuhn having fallen into financial difficulty — the Huntsville, Lake of Bays and Lake Simcoe Navigation Company purchased the vessel for $3,500. What followed was one of the most remarkable feats of inland marine logistics in the region's history: the Ella Mary travelled by rail to Huntsville, was towed to North Portage, and hauled by steam winch to South Portage on Lake of Bays — arriving on June 22, 1925.

On July 4, 1925, she was officially rechristened the SS Bigwin — named for the island, the inn, and Chief Joseph Big Wind, the Ojibway leader for whom Bigwin Island itself was named. Her primary route would run from Norway Point on the mainland south shore, where guests arrived after traveling by rail to Huntsville, across the open water to Bigwin Island and the grand resort waiting on the far shore.

That crossing was no mere transit. It was a transformation. The city fell away with every passing moment. By the time passengers stepped onto the Bigwin Inn dock, they had been carried not just across a lake, but into another world entirely — one of clean air, dark water, loon calls at dusk, and the particular silence that only the Canadian north can offer.

Through the 1920s and into the decades that followed, the SS Bigwin settled into the rhythm of lake life. She was not glamorous in the way the great ocean liners were glamorous. Her beauty was quieter, more practical — the beauty of a thing perfectly suited to its place.

She carried the mail. She carried groceries and building supplies to island cottagers who had no other way to receive them. She carried families to summer dances at the Bigwin Inn, children to swimming lessons, ministers to Sunday services at island chapels. In winter, when the lake froze solid, she rested — but come spring, the whistle would sound again across the bay, and the season would begin anew.

The Bigwin Inn's guest list read like a who's who of the twentieth century. Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, Ernest Hemingway, H.G. Wells, and the Rockefellers all made the crossing to Bigwin Island. Princess Juliana of the Netherlands stayed during the war years. Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker summered there. And the great Big Band leaders — Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Guy Lombardo, Louis Armstrong, and Tommy Dorsey — filled the Inn's legendary dance hall, which could hold over a thousand guests. Heads of the great motor companies, provincial premiers, and society figures from across North America sailed these same waters, drawn by the Inn's reputation as the finest summer destination in eastern North America.

The steamships of Lake of Bays were part of a larger story — one that played out on lakes across Ontario and Quebec. From Muskoka to the Kawarthas, from the Rideau to the Ottawa Valley, steamships were the connective tissue of a country still finding its shape. They linked communities that the railroad couldn't quite reach. They made possible a way of life that depended entirely on the water.

Lake of Bays itself was home to a small fleet of working vessels. The Iroquois, the Mohawk Belle, and others all served the lake at various points. But the SS Bigwin was the hardest worker for the Inn — ferrying guests, celebrities, and supplies to Bigwin Island for four decades, and the one the community ultimately refused to let go.

In 1999, a man named Jeff Gabura — recently moved to the Lake of Bays area — saw the SS Bigwin sitting in that field in Dwight and decided she had to sail again. The restoration began, as these things often do, with one person who simply couldn't accept the alternative. Gabura rallied a community of cottagers and locals, history lovers and craftspeople. They looked at the SS Bigwin and saw not a relic, but a responsibility.

Restoration work began in earnest in 2002 at a property in Port Cunnington. In 2004, the Lake of Bays Marine Museum and Navigation Society purchased the old Clayton property in Dorset as a permanent home for the ship and the growing collection of maritime artifacts that told the broader story of the lake. The work had found its base.

The work was painstaking. Thousands of hours went into detective work alone — tracing ownership history through archival records, finding authentic materials, locating original equipment. The hull was inspected, repaired, and reinforced. The original steam systems were replaced with modern electric propulsion — batteries and a diesel-electric generator that would give the Bigwin another century on the water while letting passengers experience the lake in near-silence. The woodwork was restored by hand, matching the original joinery as closely as possible. Every decision balanced historical authenticity with modern safety requirements.

On November 17, 2012, the SS Bigwin sailed again for the first time. For everyone who had worked on the restoration — and for the community that had watched and waited — it was a moment that transcended the mechanical. A ship that had been underwater, that had sat in a field, that had been given up for dead by nearly everyone, was moving under her own power across Lake of Bays. The following year, in 2013, she was officially relaunched for public cruises, earning full Transport Canada certification — the highest standard for passenger vessels in this country.

Today, the SS Bigwin carries up to 30 passengers on heritage cruises that depart from Dorset and Dwight. Her quiet electric propulsion lets you hear what matters — the water against the hull, the call of a loon across the bay, the narrated stories that make this stretch of water unlike any other in Canada. Alongside the ship, the Lake of Bays Marine Museum preserves the broader story of the region's maritime heritage: the navigation charts, the photographs, the tools and artifacts of the steamship age.

The SS Bigwin is more than a tourist attraction. She is a registered Canadian heritage vessel, operated by the Lake of Bays Marine Museum & Navigation Society — a Registered Canadian Charity dedicated to ensuring that the stories of this waterway, and the people who shaped it, are preserved for generations to come. When you step aboard, you're not just taking a cruise. You're continuing a tradition that began in 1910, when a wooden-hulled steamship first slid into the water at the Polson Iron Works in Toronto and began a journey that would carry her — and her stories — across more than a century.