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P

alomino Road runs between Route 329 and Route 117, joining Lac Brūlé to Lake Manitou in Ste-Agathe. It is a long gravel road fenced for some distance, and there is a lovely old farmhouse at one of its curves. The Commission de toponymie has no information on its naming, but many people remember the Lodge. For forty years it was a busy hotel with riding and skiing and it was instrumental in bringing a lot of families to the Laurentians.

The property once belonged to Melasippe Giroux, a farmer among the many who eked out a living in the hills between the two big lakes. His farm bordered a smaller lake that bears his name today. The Giroux family hung on until 1908, fully 16 years into the real estate boom that began with the railroad and saw almost every farm in the area change hands. Giroux sold to Morris Ryan, the owner of a Montreal dry cleaning business. Ryan had no reason to believe that the land would ever be farmed viably. With open, stony fields rising from the shore of tiny Lac Giroux to treed hilltops, the farm had never been able to provide more than subsistence. The frost-free season is short, only reliable for about 80 days and the evenings are generally cool. Ryan bought the property just to have a country retreat, a gentleman's farm. Over the next twenty years, he would sell off and buy back pieces, wanting to share his bucolic getaway but not quite sure how to do it. Little could he foresee the day his son-in-law Henry would come looking for a new start in life on this run-down rocky farm.

Henry Kaufmann was a driven man who worked his way to a tidy fortune during his twenties and early thirties. One of nine children, he would not apply himself academically and so was apprenticed to learn carpentry. Having received payment in some shares, he soon discovered that trading in them could be much more lucrative than carpentry, and he took to his new career with the determination of a skilled labourer. Despite his hard work, he was not prepared for what happened on that fateful Friday in October 1929 when his wealth simply ceased to exist. Henry was 34 years old and had to start over.

His father-in-law received him at the farm and assigned him the challenge of using his carpentry skills to build a log house. He disappeared into the bush and built one. Ryan was probably thinking that they could sell the house, and that Kaufmann could build another. They were trying to figure out some way to create a livelihood on the barren farm that Giroux had abandoned. All that they had used it for until then was riding horses. The Depression was not a good time for real estate, though. Instead, Kaufmann built a lodge, and Ryan and he arranged with the Rabiners of Montreal to run it for them.

In those days, Montrealers came to small lodges in the country for their holidays and they had the choice of many hotels and inns, each with a special feature. The ones on the shores of large lakes could offer boating, canoeing and swimming. Lac Giroux was not really large enough to do much boating, but the Ryans had horses and miles of trails.

When Rabiner left to set up his own hotel, Kaufmann, undaunted, built an even larger lodge and a huge stable. He depended on hardworking employees, and he drove them hard. One who stood by him for many years was Arnold, a World War One British cavalryman. Arnold looked after the stables, and guests remember him as a character. He knew the horses and he loved Dalmatians. These he raised on his own, letting them breed with no more than the detached interest that a farmer might take in his farm dogs.

In the early part of the century, riding was a major recreational activity in the Laurentians, predating skiing and water sports, and it only grudgingly gave way to skiing through the 1930's and 40's. During that period, Arnold's stables had over a dozen horses and the trails to go with them. Kaufmann had a particular love for palominos and so he named the hotel Palomino Lodge. Palomino horses are not a breed, but simply a distinct golden colour. Breeding two palominos will give you a white horse; a palomino and a sorrel will produce the palomino colt with the 14 carat gold colouring and the white mane and tail.

Among the many guests received at the Lodge was Lorne Greene, who later became famous as the father in the television series Bonanza. The Lodge also housed Princess Elizabeth's retinue in the early '50's when she visited Canada prior to her ascension to the throne.

Henry Kaufmann and Berenice Ryan ran the lodge until they sold it to one of their regular guests, Sam Steinberg, in 1956, and while the Kaufmanns never had children, in a sense the Lodge stayed in the family, as Henry's nephew had married the daughter of the new owner. Henry, though, went back to the stock market. He and Berenice moved back to Montreal where they were involved in many charities and they left their estate to a foundation established in their names.

Palomino Lodge became a retreat for Steinberg's employees until the 1980's, at which time it was acquired by the Apostles of Infinite Love. The new owners let the property run down and over the years the fields and roads were abandoned to the woods. The building achieved some notoriety again in the 1990's when kids accidentally set fire to the old lodge, and with the road gone, local residents watched as water bombers skimmed the surface of nearby Lac Brūlé and doused the flames. It has changed hands several times and the buildings are now gone and the farm and horses are only fading memories. Today it is a vacant parcel of land fronting on Palomino Road.

Thanks to Elliott Kaufmann and Robert Levine for sharing their memories.
Special thanks to Sheila Eskenazi

Joseph Graham has written a book that features a select number of stories of Laurentian places and how they got their names. To learn more, click here.

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This material may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the written permission of the author. © Joseph Graham