Ab Gentles knew “when to hold them”. In 1904, in a smoke-filled attic room on James Street, he won the Kipling Hotel in a card game.
“Grandfather raised horses in Kincardine,” recounts Ab’s daughter Diane Gentles. “When Dad and his brother delivered them to Parry Sound, Dad got into a card game upstairs in the building we remember as the Victory.  The owner of the Kipling was losing. He gave Dad part of the hotel to stay in the game.  Dad and Uncle Chas went home and talked Grandfather into buying the other half.”
The Kipling operated on the same site at Champagne and Emily Streets under various names, for a century.  
Adrian Hayes’ book, “Parry Sound, Gateway to Northern Ontario” records that Dr .Thomas Smith Walton bought the Thomson House in 1892. Eight years later, it was sold as The Canada Atlantic Hotel to Sarah and Charles Alonzo Phillips.  They added turrets and balconies to the Spartan exterior, and built an elegant dining room, rotunda, and wood-panelled bar.
After Ab Gentles and his brother Charles acquired the hotel, they renamed it the Kipling, for Rudyard Kipling. It was a popular tourist hotel and local watering hole.
“When Bell telephone reached Parry Sound, the number 1 went to the Kip,” Dave Thomas recalls.  
The original hotel was destroyed in a winter fire, March 25, 1915.  It was rebuilt, much less grand, as a two storey building on the same footprint, and carried on for another 70 years.
Winter fires were a major risk for the early hotels in Parry Sound.  The Brunswick hotel was completely destroyed on February 2, 1961.   Fortunately, its name lives on at the same site, in the popular establishment hosted by the Painter family.  
First known as the Mansion House, it was an attractive centrepiece on the main street, with its all-round veranda and balcony.
In her book, History of Parry Sound, the Place and the People,  the late Aggie Wing wrote, “It was one of the oldest buildings in town,  built by Thomas Quinn…and owned successively by James McAvoy, Dalton Quinn, Charles Thompson, Mrs Alex Eagar, (who changed the name to the Brunswick) and  Alex Eagar.”  
My grandparents, in the seasonal change between winters in Toronto and their Carling Bay home, often packed their car and stayed in the Windsor Arms in Toronto, to get an early start.  Then, while they waited for open roads to Carling, they would stay at the Brunswick in Parry Sound.  By 1961, the Eagars’ improvements had revived a “white-tablecloth” dining room, and made a comfortable, updated hostelry, retaining the attractive façade and smaller balconies. But in the spring of 1961, there was no Brunswick Hotel.

Early on the Saturday morning of Thanksgiving weekend that same year, telephones rang all over town.  At our house, too, came the calls. 
“Have you heard? The Belvedere Hotel burned down.” 
“No!” What a shock.
It was an enormous fire, the 110-room frame hotel completely engulfed. Only the calm night prevented the fire from spreading out of control into the lovely Belvedere Hill houses, one of the neighbours recalled.
The hotel was known worldwide. The North Star reported a steady stream of international letters from readers and former guests, unbelieving and mourning its loss. 
William Beatty opened the Belvidere, as it was known, on July 1, 1883. It had set the style for the renowned northern Great Lakes hotels built later on high points of land with expansive views from airy rooms and wide verandas. By boat, and later by train, guests arrived from all over the world to experience Georgian Bay and the 30,000 Islands. Crowned heads, movie stars, politicians, business people, and travellers from every walk of life who had learned of this beautiful place came to enjoy it. 
Early Belvedere guests were active:  fishing, canoeing, hiking throughout the area. They had lawn bowling or croquet on the wide grass terrace across the road, later to relax on the veranda. After the mid-1940s, the lush Belvedere Lawn was dotted with colourful umbrella tables. From the main building across the road, underground pipes watered the grass. 
In the dining room, the fish was fresh from the Bay, the produce and meat from local farms, and the presentation elegant. In 1920, the seven-course dinner cost one dollar. 
Former resident Wilson Abraham has a 1948 letter from A. G. Peebles, manager, confirming his honeymoon arrangements.  The total weekly rate for the newlyweds was $87.50, for a room with private toilet, hot and cold running water, and three meals a day.
Parry Sound residents, our family included, enjoyed summer lunches and dinners in the bright dining room, along with the hotel guests.  
But on Thanksgiving weekend, 1961, it was a smoking ruin. 
Despite Dr. Michael Wheatley’s impassioned recommendations days later, both at the Chamber of Commerce and in the council chamber, for a municipal park, the property was sold for a home for the aged.  The cornerstone was laid on June 30, 1965.
The Belvedere was not the last of the Parry Sound landmark hotels to burn. 
The Kipling was beloved of its patrons, the neighbourhood pub for almost 100 years.  But fire caught up with the Kip on November 30, 1986 and it could not be saved.  It has not been rebuilt, and people still speak wistfully of the “old Kip” and the friends with whom they shared those good times.