It’s almost 9 p.m. when we arrive in Elora, and the village is festooned with twinkly lights against a sky as soft and dark as a velvet jewel box. “Where *are* we?” my 11-year-old son asks from the back seat of the car with a mixture of enchantment and confusion, as if we’d taken the 401 to Narnia.
We’re in what Group of Seven artist A.J Casson once declared “Ontario’s prettiest village.” The stuff of storybooks or Hollywood sound stages, Elora is a dream of a town just 1.5 hours’ drive from Toronto. Downtown, a darling knot of streetlets is embroidered with a creperie, a fromagerie, a pottery studio and a restaurant called The Friendly Society (which could also serve as the town’s slogan). It feels like the Cotswolds of Toronto.
Like that English idyll, a new generation of luxury-loving purveyors has moved into this quaint hamlet. In particular, jeweller-turned-hotelier Kat Florence — a sixth-generation Elorian whose given name is Kristy Hillis — is bringing big-city pleasures such as Michelin pastry chefs, Rolls-Royce joyrides and Veuve Clicquot cocktail hours to her self-named hotel.
We check into the Kat Florence hotel’s Diamond House, a (gem)stone’s throw from the main building of four plush suites. Dating back to 1840 and formerly the town’s bakery, it feels like a cross between the two homes in Nancy Meyers’ 2006 rom-com “The Holiday,” with all the cosy bucolica of the Cotswolds cottage (limestone walls, soaking tubs and a cast-iron fireplace) and all the airy expansiveness of the L.A. mansion (sun-welcoming skylights, heated terrazzo floors and automated blackout blinds).
A storybook setting
The next morning, my husband, son and I wake up to the sound of gentle tapping on our front door. The place feels so poetic that I wonder if Peter Rabbit’s be-aproned mother is lolloping on our doorstep. It turns out to be our concierge delivering a wicker basket heaped with oven-gilded French pastries from the resident pastry chef, Marc Collyer — he also hand-churns his own butter, infusing it with local honey. Collyer spent 15 years working at the Michelin-starred Manor House in, yes, the Cotswolds before moving to Elora for love: Collyer was betrothed to the town florist.
Kat Florence herself grew up on a farm in nearby Belwood. “It was a storybook childhood. My evenings and weekends were spent wandering the Elora gorge,” she said. “We would just roam, and have campfires. I remember so much freedom.” She and her friends played amongst the town’s limestone ruins — abandoned wooden toy and handmade-soap factories. Even the wreckage here sounds wholesome.
But like so many adventurous storybook protagonists, Florence was drawn to the wider world. She decamped to Australia for teacher’s college, later moving to Bangkok, where she apprenticed with a Dutch jewelry designer and met her now husband, gem-hunter Don Kogen. In 2014, she launched Kat Florence Jewels. “I wanted to cut stones differently,” she said. Gems sold at auction were valued for their weight, like gold, not for their design or beauty. “I wanted to give respect back to the stones,” she explained.
Rescuing pieces of history
This philosophy was exactly how she approached restoring the 1848 structure that was once the Commercial Hotel. “The building was made of limestone. And I felt a deep sadness seeing it just sitting there, rotting,” Florence said.
When she moved back to Elora with Kogan and their daughters during COVID, she learned that developers were set on turning the property into a Holiday Inn. The couple resolved to rescue the building — which also housed the Gorge Cinema, Canada’s oldest continuously operating repertory theatre — and snapped it up for $1.8 million. (The theatre, still under renovations, is slated to reopen in 2027.)
While the hotel is undoubtedly glamorizing the Elora landscape, Florence is careful to tread lightly, seeing it as a sort of architectural stewardship. “It’s not about me changing anything or making it better. I wanted to restore the building. I wanted to take care of the old, just as I would a stone,” she said.
Each of the suites in the main building is named after a stone, and the spaces are layered with linens, silks and metals in soothing palettes. “When people are surrounded by natural materials, they react differently, their nervous system calms,” Florence said.
Extraordinary service, too, bestows a certain serenity. After our breakfast delivery, a masseuse arrives to offer me a La Mer-infused 60-minute Swedish massage — this is included in every guest’s stay, the nightly fee for which starts around $1,200. “Since you’re coming to my hometown, I wanted to create a space where people could feel as if they were coming back to themselves,” said Florence. I’m not sure I’ve returned to myself so much as I have — thrillingly — completely left myself behind. Within 12 hours here, I’ve become the kind of person who casually uses phrases like “my concierge,” “our chauffeur” and “is our Rolls here?”
Leaving the Diamond House for any reason is less than ideal but we do when our chauffeur pulls up in the hotel Rolls-Royce to take us on a country drive. Traversing the ribbons of empty road, past biscuit-hued limestone buildings and pristine fields by purring luxury British vehicle is delightful, if somewhat disorienting.
Afterwards, we continue our excursion on foot, wandering through Victoria Park under skies as blue as a paraiba (Florence’s favourite gem). My son, who is going through an orchestral phase, remarks: “If this town was an instrument, it would be a glockenspiel.” It’s true, there is something crystalline and deeply nostalgic about it. I feel entirely at home and ready to immerse into country life, as if I could learn to tap maple trees and make my own Bircher muesli.
This fantasy is interrupted when we meet a local, a charming chiropractor, on his picturesque commute through the park. He asks us where we’re from and when we tell him, he responds: “We’ve spent time in Toronto,” then pauses a beat too long. “We like Elora.” So do we. I get the sense that the locals had reservations about the influx of luxury at first, concerned that Florence might be trying to change Elora, but many now seem pleased that she’s bringing in tourism in a way that feels discreet and protective of its spirit.
Culinary delights and surprises
That evening, we are treated — as all KF hotel guests are — to a multi-course feast at neighbouring Tony’s Sourdough Pizzeria. Florence met its chef, Anthony Bish, in Bangkok, and as a devotee of his pies, she invited him to move to Elora. One does not expect to meet a master pizzaiolo from Bangkok in a small Ontario village, but I’m learning to expect the unexpected here. Bish makes his sourdough starter from local heritage grains, and spent months searching for the perfect wild oregano (which has notes of za’atar and mint) for his margarita, which he dresses with confit garlic and a blend of Stanislas and Bianco tomatoes.
The result, emerging bubbling and blistered with a flawlessly leopard-spotted crust, is so superb I wonder if it would be excessive to drive 90 minutes out of the city to pick up pizza. I ask Bish what he loves most about his craft. “I love how volatile it is,” he says. “The sourdough is always changing, so is the size of the flame. I love the struggle of it.”
What I love here is the absence of struggle — the deep sleep in the plush Au Lit-outfitted beds; the open-air soaks in the hot tub by the gas fire pit. There’s also a Gaggenau designer stove, should the mood to cook strike (it does not), and multiple bathrooms, each the size of my bedroom in Toronto. Not to mention the eminent politesse of the townspeople. Even Patches, a well-known calico cat, greets us with mayoral charm when we stroll the neighbourhood. (If someone told me that Patches actually was the mayor of Elora, I’d hardly be surprised.)
Soon, though, reality and personal struggle return: It’s time to check out and drive back home to ourselves.
Olivia Stren stayed as a guest of Kat Florence Hotel, which did not review or approve this article.
