History of the Lakeview Hotel

Prospectors O'Brien and Doyle constructed the town's first hotel in 1898 at the corner of Broadway Ave. and Mackey Street and called it the Balmoral Hotel after Queen Victoria's summer palace in Scotland. The well patroned hotel boasted a 40 foot plate glass mirror and a mahogany bar. During Wawa's early frontier days, the third storey of the Hotel was dynamited by a lumberjack and a horse crashed through the bar floor while trying to escape from the merciless black flies.
The hub of the town, the hotel was renovated and rebuilt by Alex Rahal in the early 1930's and renamed the Lakeview. Purchased by Amie Breton in 1935, the Lakeview received  a second facelift with the addition of a glass verandah. On Palm Sunday, 1944, townspeople watched in horror as their beloved Lakeview burned to the ground. By the fall the present Lakeview was constructed. Nick Perkovich purchased in 1949. Enlarged and remodeled the Lakeview stood as the only hotel in Wawa until the Trans-Canada Highway opened Wawa's doors to the rest of the world in the fall of 1960. The Hotel was known as The Jewel of the North.
Centrally located in the community, the Lakeview was one of the largest buildings in Wawa, and as a result, housed a number of different businesses, community services and facilities. They included a pharmacy, payroll distribution of Algoma Ore Division, and the Royal Bank.