MR J.E. COLSON
From the Renfrew Mercury
1925
Mr. J.E. Colson, manager of Hotel Renfrew, is Canadian-born of Canadian parents. He entered upon the stage of life in the city of Guelph, where the Ontario Agricultural College is and where the first president of Hotel Renfrew Co., Mr. W.E. Smallfield, now makes his home. Growing up there, Mr. Colson just naturally became interested in baseball, for Guelph is one of the leading baseball burghs of Ontario and is today completing a $25,000 field. Nineteen years ago Mr. Colson left Wellington county for Algonquin Park, where he took the management of Highland Inn, one of Ontario’s best known tourist homes. After a stay there of five years he accepted an offer of the management of Hotel Renfrew, which under the dual direction of himself and Mrs. Colson grew in popularity. Coming in the fall of 1914, Mr. Colson remained here for two years, then went to Peterborough. After doing business in the Electric City for one year he made the purchase of a summer hotel at Joe Lake in Algonquin Park, which he still owns. He returned to Renfrew in 1920.
Manager now of one of the best known hotels of the province, he is one of Ontario’s most widely known hotelmen. The travelling public regard him as an efficient manager of an excellent hotel – an outstanding hotel for a town. It is a hotel which, opening in 1914 with 40 bedrooms, was soon enlarged, and rooms now number 60, some of them having accommodation for more than one lodger. Frequently every room is occupied, with an overflow into improvised bedrooms. Mr. Colson’s “better half” also comes from Guelph, and has always been a big help to him in his management of “houses of public entertainment.”
“The management of Hotel Renfrew is no sinecure and Mr. Colson is a busy man, but he takes from leisure hours, time enough to serve as people’s warden of St Paul’s church, president of Renfrew curling club and president of Renfrew baseball club. Efficiency is made his watchword in all these relations. In the summer he is a frequent umpire at baseball matches, to which work he brings long experience on the diamond. When a player in Guelph his favorite position was second base. He holds membership in the Renfrew Rotary Club, and is a member of that particularly active committee, namely, that having to do with crippled children.”
Hunting and fishing are a hobby with Mr. Colson, and motoring counts him among its votaries.
For a bigger and better Renfrew, he thinks that as the years go on we can give more and more thanks to the tourist business for an inflow of money. This business, he says, is improving here right along. He has noticed it particularly in the last year or two, as the roads grow better. Naturally he is interested in the tourist trade, not only because manager of a good hotel on a provincial highway, but on account of being connected with a tourist hotel in Algonquin Park. Mr. Colson feels that it would be helpful to this town, likewise beneficial to the whole province, if there were a through road from Ottawa to Algonquin Park, a road making a circuit of that great national playground.