Severn Lodge

The Hotel

Severn Lodge sits at the very southern end of Muskoka on Gloucester Pool, a quiet bay of the Severn River system that connects through the Trent-Severn Waterway to Georgian Bay. The property is ninety minutes from Toronto by car, slightly closer than the JW Marriott on Lake Rosseau, and the lodge has been operating in something like its present form since the early twentieth century. The grounds are small and tightly composed, twenty acres of pine and granite shoreline with a single sand beach and a deepwater dock that handles the lodge's own small fleet of pontoon and water-ski boats.

Accommodations are split across five small waterfront lodges, the Algonquin (two rooms), the Maples (four rooms), the Muskoka Pines (three rooms), the Lakeshore (ten rooms), and the Waters Edge (four rooms), plus a handful of standalone cottages set back from the lake. Every room has a private outside entrance and a direct view of Gloucester Pool, the standard category is a comfortable forty square metres with a queen bed and a separate seating area, and family sized rooms with divided sleeping zones and two-bedroom suites cover larger groups. The interiors are traditional Canadian summer resort, pine, plaid, wicker, refreshed rather than redesigned, with consistent maintenance and very clean bathrooms.

The dining room runs a genuine American Plan, three meals a day included in the rate, with a daily-changing menu of plated dinners and a buffet for breakfast and lunch. The kitchen runs on a small disciplined repertoire, soups and salads, grilled fish from Georgian Bay, roasted meats, classic Canadian desserts, and the food is consistently better than the format usually delivers because the chef has been in the kitchen for over fifteen years. A licensed lounge serves cocktails and Ontario wines in the evening; there is no bar scene to speak of. The activity programme covers water-skiing, tubing, sailing, kayaking, tennis, a small kids' camp in July and August, and a daily afternoon cocktail cruise on the lodge pontoon.

What Severn Lodge offers, and what almost no other Muskoka resort still delivers at this scale, is the traditional Ontario summer family compound, twenty-three rooms, a meal plan, an activity programme, and a single operating family that has owned the property for over thirty years. The trade is that the format reads as old-fashioned, the technology is basic, the WiFi is functional but not strong, and there is no spa, no pool (the lake is the swimming), and no Michelin ambitions in the dining room. For a family who want exactly that holiday format, including parents who took the same trip as children, Severn Lodge is the cleanest answer in the lakes.

Best Occasion Fit

Practical Information

Also Great in Muskoka