The property in photographs

Two acres. Two houses. One west-facing dock.

Four seasons of photographs from our 2-acre lakefront estate on Shawnigan Lake — the dock, the kitchen, the cottage, the sauna, and the weddings on the lawn.

The 60-foot cedar dock running west into Shawnigan Lake, with the sandy private beach in the foreground

01 — The dock and the beach

Sixty feet of cedar pointing at the sunset.

The dock is sixty feet of cedar running west into the lake, deep enough at the end to dive off without checking. We rebuilt it in 2022. It points at the sunset, which is the reason most of the wedding ceremonies happen out there.

The beach is real sand, not the gravel most Vancouver Island lake properties have to settle for — it slopes gently for the first ten feet, which is the swim-out cove kids and dogs use first. Lake water hits 22°C by late July and peaks at 24°C in late August.

The Lakeside House kitchen with the Lacanche induction range and double ovens

02 — Inside the Lakeside House

Six bedrooms. The kitchen everyone ends up in.

Six bedrooms, four-and-a-half baths, sleeps 14. The great room is the room you'll spend the most time in: Lacanche induction range with double ovens in the kitchen, a sectional facing the lake, and a fireplace that runs from October to May.

The master is on the main floor with a king bed, a lake view, and a soaker tub in the ensuite. Other bedrooms are upstairs and downstairs, sized for a mix of couples and bunked kids. The deck wraps the lake side — that's where most dinners end up.

The Cottage living room with the woodstove and cedar shingles

03 — The Cottage

Two bedrooms under a stand of cedars.

Two bedrooms, two baths, sleeps 4. Cedar-shingled, set back from the main house under a stand of cedars. It has its own kitchen and its own woodstove and is quieter at night than the Lakeside House because the trees absorb the sound off the water.

Couples who book it for a romantic weekend tend to keep to themselves. Families who rent the whole property put grandparents in here so they get a real night of sleep.

The cedar Finnish sauna with the Harvia stove

04 — Sauna, hot tub, courts

90°C in forty minutes. Twelve paces to the lake.

The Finnish sauna is cedar with a proper Harvia stove — 90°C in about forty minutes from cold start. It's twelve paces from the lake door, which is the right distance for the cold-plunge run that makes the whole thing work.

The hot tub is a six-person on the lakeside deck, angled for sunset. The pickleball court is regulation size and lives at the back of the property next to the lawn — where families default to when the kids run out of beach.

The Lakeside House at golden hour, west-facing, mid-August

05 — Sunsets in August

The colour holds for twenty minutes after the sun drops.

West-facing matters here. The sun drops behind the ridge across the lake somewhere between 8:30 and 9pm in July and August, and the colour holds for another twenty minutes.

We've watched four wedding seasons of golden-hour ceremonies. The water flattens off after about 7pm most evenings — that's when the wakeboarders quit and the loons take over.

A wedding ceremony on the lawn at Shawnigan Retreats

06 — Wedding ceremonies

Fifty seated. Four ceremony locations.

We host up to fifty seated for ceremony, seventy standing for reception. Four ceremony locations on the property: the cedar dock structure, the sandy private beach, a forest cedar grove behind the cottage, and the lakeside lawn.

Most couples pick the dock for the ceremony and the lawn for dinner. The great room is the rain plan — we've moved exactly two ceremonies inside in four seasons. The wedding photographs in this gallery are by guests' photographers, used with permission.