Cameo Beach Dance Pavillion, Fenelon Falls

By Tom Wilkinson

Originally Published in the Fenelon Falls Gazette, September 26, 1990

Many a relationship was made there, while toes tapped and bodies bobbed on the dance floor of the old Cameo Dance Hall in Fenelon Falls.  While Fenelon Falls area resident Jim Marshall doesn’t remember when it was originally built, he knows the history of the building after his father purchased it in 1945.“I think someone had renovated it into a dance hall and then they bought it,” Mr. Marshall said in a recent interview.

His father, Jack Marshall, was well known throughout the area as a performer, particularly with his Jack Marshall Dance Band. Mr. Marshall and his band played in places like Lindsay, Peterborough and Port Hope. Jim Marshall says his dad arrived in Canada from England when he was six years old, living in the Peterborough area. He said his father’s musical career started in approximately 1929. “My mother was born down the Glenarm Road,” he said. “For 25 years, my father played the organ at the church at Sturgeon Point,” he commented. Jack Marshall also performed regularly at the American Hotel in Peterborough (now the Red Dog Tavern) over a span of nearly 20 years.

But when Mr. Marshall bought the Cameo Dance Hall, it was time to settle down. “Once Dad had the dance hall, he didn’t travel around too much, except in the off season,” he said. One thing the younger Marshall remembers well about the dance hall, which is now King’s Marina [more recently That Place on Cameron], is how well waxed the dance floor was. “All I remember is that the dance floor was really slippery. Every time I ran across it, I slipped and hit the back of my head.”

He says the Cameo Dance Hall used to be the place to go on the weekend in Fenelon Falls. Mr. Marshall’s uncle, Cliff Moffatt, built a home near the highway, at the front of the property on Highway 35A [Now Road 8/Helen Street]. That home eventually became the Cameo Tea Room.

“The dance hall was operated from May to September,” Mr. Marshall said. “A lot of people in the area met their future wives or husbands there.” He said that regular dances were held on Saturday nights at the Cameo, and people could come out and listen to what he calls “canned music” during the week. “A real good crowd was 500 people,” Mr. Marshall said. “I used to clean up on Sundays.” With his sister, Mary, he would pick up pennies and nickels that had been dropped on the floor. “Dad had a type of music that people would come to listen to,” Mr. Marshall said. He and his wife own Marshall’s Shell on Lindsay Street in Fenelon Falls [since demolished, more recently the site of the Barn & Bunkie] and he says that many customers come in who still remember the dance hall. Visitors to the dance hall were a mix of tourists and local residents, he said. “I would say 50 percent would be cottage people and 50 percent local people,” he said. Mr. Marshall said that although there were huge crowds sometimes at the dance hall, he said rules were strict bad behaviour was not tolerated.

Another attraction at the site of the Cameo was cabins the Marshall had for tourists to rent. “With the cabins, they would be full all through the summer,” he said. Many fishermen came to stay there while trying their luck on the local waterways. Mr. Marshall said that his parents sold the Cameo a couple of times after the 1950s, but ownership kept returning to them. He added that the Fenelon Falls Rotary Club used to meet at the dance hall when it was in business. “We’ve had people comment they used to hear the music across the lake in their cottages,” he said. “Mr. Marshall said there’s never been a replacement to the Cameo Dance Hall in Fenelon Falls. He said rock and roll was part of the reason the dance hall was eventually sold to become King’s Marina. “They were sad to see it go,” Mr. Marshall said about the closing of the dance hall. “The last thing I remember in the dance hall was that they had a Wurlitzer Juke Box and had the Crickets on at 78 RPM. Jack Marshall continued performing after the sale of the dance hall, right up until the time of his death in 1984.