Kent Karemaker traded in his tiny condo on the West Coast for a 36-room vacant hotel, with a leaky roof, in rural Saskatchewan — a move he believes may have saved his life.
The 44-year-old former government worker bought the dilapidated Grand Hotel in Shaunavon, which is about 280 kilometres southwest of Regina and has about 1,700 residents. He has ambitious plans to restore it.
“I knew this project was so huge and monumental that it would take me a long time to do it, and that’s a good thing,” Karemaker said, while giving CBC News a tour.
‘What is my purpose?’
Before the pandemic, Karemaker was living in a 400-square-foot condo in Victoria, writing press releases for the government and trying to manage his depression and anxiety.
Then, as COVID-19 turned the world upside down, his mental health deteriorated. He says as a single, gay man with no children and a job he didn’t love, he knew he needed an inspirational change in his life.
“Every day I found myself asking the question, ‘Why am I here? What is my purpose?'”
Kent Karemaker, 44, quit his job and sold his condo in Victoria, B.C., to restore the Grand Hotel in Shaunavon, Sask.. Karemaker says the project is helping him manage his depression and anxiety.
He’d always been interested in refinishing furniture and thought a house renovation might give him a healthy challenge. He checked real estate listings and settled on a $10,000 character house in the village of Frontier.
“The reason being, it was the cheapest house that I could find in Canada that I could pay for in cash that I felt looked like it was a worthy project,” he said.
Karemaker took a four-month leave from his job, moved to Saskatchewan, rolled up his sleeves and got to work. He loved it so much, he bought another old house. Then, while talking with local folks, he learned the story of the Grand Hotel in nearby Shaunavon.
The boom-time hotel was built in 1929, just before the stock market crash, and was the scene of a fire, a dynamite blast and three murders, according to a heritage walking tour of the town. It became apartments for a while, then sat vacant for more than four decades.
Karemaker had always considerd himself “a dreamer,” he said, but he didn’t seriously consider buying the hotel.
Not at first, anyway.
“If you’re not rich in Victoria or Vancouver, you’re very poor. And so the whole idea of restoring a hotel never would have entered my mind,” he said.
Then, his childhood best friend died of cancer.
That loss inspired Karemaker to quit his job, sell his condo, and move to Saskatchewan in 2022 to restore the Grand Hotel.
“I think, really, what the hotel has done for me is give me purpose,” he said. “I knew it would take me a long time to do it. And, and that’s a good thing because it’s a long-term goal and it’s a reason to keep going when you’re struggling with your mental health and finding reasons to keep here on the earth, you know?”
Karemaker was surprised the old hotel hadn’t burned down or been stripped for copper. “It’s kind of a miracle that it’s still standing today for a building to not only be unheated, but I replaced 32 panes of glass that were broken out, so it was basically just an open building for decades,” he said.
Jamie Mercer rented an apartment in the building when she was 17 years old and was the last person to live there before the building was closed in 1981.
“I was so young I didn’t realize it was creepy to live alone in that big ol’ building,” she said.
Mercer said it was “sad” to see it sit vacant for so long, but figured it would “cost a fortune” for someone to fix the boiler system and other issues. Like others in the town, she’s curious to see whether Karemaker can pull off the restoration and wishes him well.
YouTube videos and elbow grease
Karemaker, who works as a care aide in Shaunavon and generates some rental revenue from his other fixer-upper houses, saves money by doing most of the work himself, with guidance from YouTube videos.
He tapped into a grant from the Saskatchewan Heritage Foundation to replace the roof. But, he’s still up against major expenses, such as fixing electrical, buying a new boiler and purchasing mattresses.
The project, which he documents on Facebook, has become his passion.
“But if I’m having a bad day and the weight of the world just seems like too much, this project can feel like too much, too,” he said. “I look around at everything that needs to be done and I’m overwhelmed.
“And sometimes I can power through those days and I can get through it and I feel relieved by the end of the day having made progress.”
He expects the restoration project to take several years.