With what almost seems the kind of motivated enthusiasm one hears in some political debates, heritage advocate Victor Snow is ready to take on anyone, professional or otherwise, who would deign to suggest razing the Stanton Hotel, a 149-year-old structure on Airport Road.

In an interview Wednesday, Mr. Snow drew a mental picture of an under-populated pre-Confederation Mulmur Township with stagecoaches roaring up to the Stanton Hotel entrance, while other travellers approached on horseback and on foot.

Stage coaches and long-distance riders in this part of North America? Yes, back in the days when there were enough hotels in Orangeville and Shelburne for imbibers to stagger out of one and fall into another, there were 11 in Orangeville and five in Shelburne. At one point, there were nine hotels in Mulmur, and nine more on the trails between the two towns, for a grand total of 34 in all.

Among the 34, according to the heritage report, the Stanton is the lone survivor. But that isn’t why it’s of special significance.

“The pre-Confederation Stanton Hotel is the most important asset in Mulmur Township, more important as the only surviving hotel of the period in Dufferin County and extremely important to the Province of Ontario as a very rare surviving Georgian Hotel of heavy hewn timber frame construction, a ‘stopping place’ for stage coaches, wagons, those on horseback and even early settlers travelling by foot,” reads the introduction to Mr. Snow’s report.

Also unusual, the hotel is built into a bank with two sides of the basement above grade and fully functional as a tavern, says the report. As well, everything about the building “conforms to Georgian symmetry.”

Photos from the interior suggest elegance unusual for a semi-wilderness establishment. Little seems to be known of events inside and around the hotel in pioneering days of the 19th century, but a lot is known of its first owner, Win Hand, who within a few years of establishing the Stanton, went on to own and/or operate various other hotels in Dufferin and who served as a police constable and bailiff – with a measure of notoriety.

One court report, copied from the Orangeville Sun of March 15, 1877, has Constable Hand as first on the docket. “Win Hand had been playing rather roughly on Fair Day about the physically (sic) of Mr. C.R. Scott who took the fun as a Constable assault. The presiding Justices took the same view and fined Win Hand $4.00 + $3.00 costs.”

It’s unlikely that anything got out of hand in the Stanton Hotel tavern while Mr. Hand was owner. He was apparently a towering giant of a man who liked to mix it up at the drop of a hat, and Mr. Snow regards his existence as part of the county’s heritage.

Why would the Stanton be imperilled a century and half after its construction? Dufferin County purchased the former hotel and an adjacent property with a view to demolishing it to improve sight lines at Airport Road and 5 Sideroad.

Mulmur’s heritage committee and township council reacted by moving to designate the building a Heritage one. The committee suggested alternatives to demolition, the preferred one apparently to move it south to the county museum and restore it to its original splendour.

On Tuesday, the county’s Public Works Committee “received” a 43-page final heritage presentation and generally agreed not to oppose a move of the building.

Should some structural engineer suggest the building is not worth saving, Mr. Snow is prepared to take issue strongly.

In his words: “I must protest if any