Take a trip down Memory Lane to a unique tourist stop that attracted visitors from throughout the land
Postcard Memories is a weekly series of historic postcard views and photos submitted by Marcel Rousseau. Some were previously published by the Orillia Museum of Art and History and in the book Postcard Memories Orillia.
Tom Hill’s hot dog stand and gas station at 80 Colborne Street West was built in the 1920s. Hill collected all kinds of old broken bottles, china, crockery, glass plates and mugs and pressed these broken pieces into wet concrete blocks, thus creating a unique-looking tourist stop for those travelling north from Toronto.
Colborne Street was Highway 11 at that time, the main road to cottage country, and Tom Hill’s Ready-O Restaurant was a favourite stop for thousands of Canadian and American visitors.
For years, Hill ran witty ads in the weekly Orillia newspaper. In February 1926 “from my fish house near Thorah island” he writes: "As Tom Hill stands on Thorah’s shore , where Champlain camped long years before, there seems to pass before his eye, a vision of the days gone by, when Hurons fished with skill and deft, now Tom Hill takes what fish they left”. In a similar ad, “from my igloo on Thorah island” he says: “So many whitefish caught by Tom Hill, the water is falling”. “Fish is good brain food and a lot of people in Orillia need it badly”.
Tom Hill’s jest and his extraordinary restaurant served him well over the years, and his descendants are still in business, presently operating the popular Hill’s Maple Leaf Restaurant in Orillia on Memorial Avenue.
