It all started with a flash of the old Smith Falls Mariners Inn. I wish I could give you some profound historical reason for this sudden memory, but the truth is much simpler. Every time I drive across the bridge in Smiths Falls, I look over at that hotel beside the Rideau River and wonder what is happening there. Is it open? Closed? Who stayed there? What was it called before? And, most importantly, why does every old building seem to have at least three names and a story nobody has completely finished telling?
So, naturally, I went down another history rabbit hole and this one led straight to Centre Street. That particular street has had quite a long invested career. Long before tourists arrived with suitcases and motel keys, the area was part of the industrial heart of Smiths Falls. The Rideau waterway was the great transportation advantage, bringing boats, workers, merchants and raw materials through the community. The canal and river were reshaped during the 19th century to support navigation, milling and commerce. It was a busy place, and I suspect very few people stood beside the water saying, “What a lovely quiet little spot.”
Quiet was not really the point- the industry was. The Smiths Falls Malleable Iron Works at 39–41 Centre Street was part of the town’s manufacturing story, while Frost Wood and Co. occupied properties at 49 and 57 Centre Street. Lumber was serious business in those days. There were mills, machinery, workers, shipments and enough industrial activity to remind everyone that Smiths Falls was a town where things were actually made. Today we walk into a store, pick something off a shelf and pay for it. Back then, someone had to make the thing, load it, transport it and probably argue about the price of the item before it ever reached a customer.
The Rideau system added another layer to the story as the waterway was not simply something pleasant to look at from a bridge. It was infrastructure, and it moved people and goods and connected Smiths Falls to a much larger transportation network. The waterfront helped shape the community long before anyone thought of putting a hotel there. Then the times changed. By the middle of the 20th century, manufacturing was no longer the only game in town. The automobile was becoming king, tourism was growing, and the Rideau Canal was attracting visitors who wanted to enjoy the scenery without sleeping in a tent while mosquitoes conducted a personal blood-drive. That was the world into which 33 Centre Street was born.
A building appeared at 33 Centre Street in 1967, when modern motels were becoming part of the new Canadian landscape. It was designed for a different era—a time when people travelled by car, expected parking close to the door and considered a comfortable hotel room a considerable improvement over arguing with a tent zipper. The original hotel was the Tops Motor Hotel, a five-storey building with 72 rooms. And then, just one year later, things became considerably more interesting.
In 1968, the federal government-supported Tops Motor Hotel was sold to *Carousel Inns Ltd. David Coia, the company’s general manager, announced that the changeover was effective immediately. The Tops was now the Carousel Inn, and apparently, 72 rooms didn’t have enough excitement. Plans were announced for a three-storey addition containing another 40 rooms, along with a marina, more seminar and banquet rooms, and cabaret-style entertainment. It was the 1960s version of “location, location, location”—except the location came with boats, locks, tourists and enough history to fill several matchbooks.
This was no longer simply a place where Dad could pull the station wagon into a parking spot and ask whether the room had two beds.The Carousel was aiming for the full experience, and it already had an unusual relationship with the federal government. The hotel made headlines in October 1968 when the government was criticized for spending approximately $250,000 a year renting the top two floors for a civil-servant training course. The weekly accommodation bill was $4,940 for 38 people, with another $10,676 spent on furnishings. The government also rented ground-floor facilities, including the bar. Now think about that for a moment. There were Government employees upstairs learning how to be better civil servants while the bar was downstairs, presumably waiting patiently for their return. It was, perhaps, one of the more Canadian arrangements in local history: bureaucracy above, beverages below.
The Carousel was certainly ambitious and that proposed expansion would have given it another 40 rooms and additional facilities, making it much more than a roadside motel. Its location helped, as it sat beside the Rideau waterway, close to the locks and within a landscape already filled with history. But the building’s story did not stop with the Carousel, and eventually the name changed again. The Carousel Inn became the Mariner’s Inn, a name that seemed almost inevitable for a hotel sitting beside the canal. If you are going to operate a hotel beside the Rideau, you might as well give it a name that suggests boats, vacations and people who own more boat shoes than necessary.
The Mariners Inn became familiar to generations of local residents and visitors, as it was not simply a place for travellers. Hotels become part of a community in ways that have very little to do with their original purpose. People met there and celebrated, ate, and had weddings and functions there. Someone else probably had a business meeting there and spent the entire time wondering when lunch was. That is exactly how buildings become landmarks. Some had memories of having a wedding reception there in 1972— with a roast beef dinner and all the trimmings cost $5.95 a plate. Then others lived just at the end of Centre Street, and swam in that pool whenever the lifeguard conveniently developed selective eyesight. Others also enjoyed plenty of great bands in the lounge and danced as they say till the cows came home.
The property is now known as the Econo Lodge and has had quite a journey for one address. From industrial Centre Street, surrounded by factories, foundries and lumber operations, to a modern motor hotel, then the Tops, the Carousel, the Mariner’s Inn and eventually the Econo Lodge. Eventually, Rob Roy’s Pub & Restaurant became part of the property’s story, giving locals another reason to visit even when they weren’t checking into a room.
The building changed because Smiths Falls changed, and that may be the most interesting part of the whole story. Centre Street once represented the industrial muscle of the community. The sound of machinery, the movement of lumber and the activity of the canal were all part of everyday life. By the 1960s, however, the economy and the way people travelled were changing. Tourism and automobiles were creating new opportunities, and a hotel beside the Rideau was perfectly positioned to take advantage of them.
The building itself became a sort of historical chameleon. It adapted when travellers needed rooms, and it provided accommodation. When tourists wanted a marina, there were plans for one. When government employees needed somewhere to stay during training, the government rented floors. When locals wanted a place to eat or have a drink, there was a restaurant and bar. As the needs of the community changed, the property found new uses again, now including emergency and transitional accommodation in more recent years.
That is the thing about old buildings. We tend to think of them as fixed objects and they aren’t. They are more like people as they have careers, reinvent themselves and they occasionally change names. They have good years and difficult years, and they become fashionable, then unfashionable, and then somehow fashionable again. They collect stories from everyone who passes through amd 33 Centre Street certainly collected its share.
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