Canada House · The House
Built from Canada itself
One thousand logs, five hundred hands, three years — and a record no one else holds.
Canada House · The House
One thousand logs, five hundred hands, three years — and a record no one else holds.
The name
Because the country is literally in its bones. Eastern white pine from Ontario and Québec. Douglas fir from British Columbia. Pink granite from the Canadian Shield it stands on, and white quartz from the La Cloche Mountains next door. When it opened on the shore of Georgian Bay in June 2019, it became the world's largest log-built structure — 34,000 square feet of gathering space raised the old way, log on log.
Five halls, eight meeting rooms, a steakhouse and a waterfront terrace under one roof.
White pine and Douglas fir, each 18 to 24 inches thick, from three provinces.
Employed from design through completion, 2016 to 2019.
Plus an estimated 15,000 hours of masonry in granite and quartz.
Hauled from Sudbury to raise the site above the shore.
The grounds were replanted as generously as they were built.
The build
Killarney Mountain Lodge starts its transformation. That May, a fire destroys sixteen guest rooms under construction — the project rebuilds and pushes on.
Designed by R. Tomè & Associates with log structure design by Murray Arnott Design and engineering by Strik, Baldinelli, Moniz — more than five hundred workers raise the great halls beside the channel.
The doors open on the world's largest log-built structure — a convention centre, steakhouse and gathering place for the village of Killarney.
Weddings, boardrooms, brunches and birthdays — the house does what it was built for, every week of the season.
The art
Original paintings by Ojibwe artist James Simon Mishibinijima — whose luminous La Cloche landscapes carry the same hills the Group of Seven painted — hang throughout the house. The meeting rooms themselves are named for local legends, so even the door plates tell Killarney's story.
“We visited the world's largest log-built structure.”
— Sudbury.com, on Canada House
A building like this isn't rented so much as borrowed — for an evening, a weekend, a once-in-a-lifetime. The question is only what you'll gather for.