The history

Cataract Hall

The history of this building is far from complete, but here is the best version we’ve been able to put together. The initial hotel rose in 1855, and occupied the back part of the structure, which you can see has been built of thick stone walls. This was either a small way station in itself, or the stabling area of a wooden structure built exactly on this spot.

The earliest name for the Inn was the Glen House, which was first in use around 1880, and which stuck until 1916. The hotel sat at the top of the road which led down to the railway tracks, which is the driveway now immediately opposite the red telephone booth outside Cataract Hall.

 The Georgian-style brick building was added onto the first foundations around 1875 and it is virtually unchanged from the day it was built, which makes this one of the most uncompromised historic structures in southern Ontario.

Competition in Cataract came in the form of the Junction House Hotel, built on the CPR line at the bottom of the hill by the McEnaney Family, which dominated this hamlet for four generations – good Irish Catholics who had emigrated here in the early 1840s, after the potato famine in Ireland.

 The hotel opened at what was called Cataract Junction, and became famous for serving meals around the clock, being a watering hole and, some have said, providing excellent female companionship. Railway travel was quite expensive at the time, but it was all the rage and Cataract was an important traffic centre, especially given the booming quarry trade in the area that had attracted 400 men to good jobs.

Then came the Temperance Movement, and many communities voted to go dry. The Junction House fell victim to this, and closed in the years before the First World War. It sat vacant for a couple of decades, and was demolished in a “bee” sometime during the Depression. Little remains of the hotel today, except the fish pond that for years stood in front of it.

The Credit River around the turn of the century was a great trout fishing stream, which attracted fishermen from great distances. In 1891, when there was no refrigeration, it was a fisher’s habit to keep the fish held in fresh water, and then transfer them into this pond in front of the hotel, while they went inside for some liquid refreshment.

The fish pond is hand-carved from a solid piece of limestone about 5 feet by 3 feet by 4 feet high. There is a painting of Cataract done by a native artist, Chief Beaver, in 1899 that shows the Junction House with a fresh stream of water flowing down the embankment, supplying a steady supply to the stone container.

The fish pond now sits outside Cataract Hall. It is inscribed 1891, with the initials of Frank McEnaney and his wife Ellen – an unusual thing 120 years ago - for a wife to receive such recognition in a business venture.

Frank and Ellen were married in the summer of that year, so the fish pond might have been a wedding present. After all, what else could a bride possibly ask for?

At the Glen House, the Temperance Movement foisted on Canada by the God-fearing hordes affected the proprietor, William Glen, immensely as the liquor licences were withdrawn. Around 1912, two McEnaney sisters, Mary and Kate, bought this building and turned it into a village grocery store and post office.

The main room still sported its enormous horseshoe-shaped bar, and it made a fine store and community centre. Cataract was still dry, but it was possible for a few years to get liquor by ordering it by the case from Montreal.

It seems that during the winter months, when colds and flues were prevalent, the prohibitionist Protestants in town would start feeling like a drink – just for medicinal purposes, of course – and a topic of discussion at the store was whether or not their non-prohibitionist Catholic neighbours should given them any.

The building served as a store and post office until just after the Second World War, when the McEnaney sisters departed this earth and willed the place to the Catholic Church in Orangeville.

 Carl Valk bought the building from the church, and reestablished it as a hotel and bar, but a short two years later, the area was voted dry once again, and the former Glen House was abandoned.

 In 1952 when the empty building was purchased by a young couple – Jack and May Denreyer. They paid $8,000 and moved in with their five children, fixed the place up and opened it as a snack bar named after the giant wooden horseshoe-shaped table in the main room, which had served so well in the past as a bar. The Horseshoe Inn also featured six or seven guest rooms on the second floor, which came to be very popular with hikers and travelers, despite the fact there was only one bathroom. Unknown to the Denreyers at the time they bought the  place, it used to be the home of a bootlegger during the dry years, and they were awakened a few times in the middle of the night by people standing out on Cataract Road yelling, “Let us in. We want beer!”

During extensive renovations spanning 2009-11, the building was largely gutted, restored, updated and turned into a spectacular single-family home. The grounds were rehabilitated and landscaped, and an attached three-vehicle garage added. The building was completed with all new windows, mechanical systems, new kitchen and five new bathrooms.

Cataract Hall stands as an icon of Canadian heritage, ready for the next 150 years.