The Ol’ Frontier Restaurant in Revelstoke, B.C., burned to the ground early Saturday morning.
The Western saloon-themed restaurant built with mostly wood hadn’t been open since 2017, but rooms in the attached motel were nearly at capacity the night of the fire.
At around 12:30 a.m, guest Andrea Dunlop woke to banging on her door. She thought she heard someone yelling, “Fire!”
“I went outside and you could see the flames coming up over the top of the motel,” she said.
People were running around, says guest Janet Evans, who described the parking lot as “chaotic.”
“Obviously when you wake from a dead sleep to something like that, panic sets in,” she said.
After taking in the scene, Dunlop decided to return to her room for the night, which was at the far side of the fire.
“There was nowhere to go, all the hotels were full. It’s pouring rain. We’re soaking wet, it’s freezing cold,” she said.
Evans and her daughter, Ashley, decided to spend the night in their truck, in a parking lot away from the fire.
Along with road-side travellers, four Frontier staff live in the motel, as well as “two or three long-term guests,” says Matt Singh, who’s been the owner for 26 years.
Singh rents out rooms nightly, and he’s kept the same rate for the past decades. He doesn’t raise the price in the winter, when accommodations are in higher demand in the ski town.
Along with the motel and now destroyed restaurant, the complex — on the corner of Highway 1 and Highway 23, roughly 195 kilometres northeast of Kelowna — includes a gas station and store.
One of Singh’s staff who lives in the motel called him at 12:20 Saturday morning to tell him it was on fire.
When Singh arrived on scene he saw it was “not good.”
He describes huge flames coming from the restaurant, “licking up against the motel.”
Singh thinks it could have been worse if it hadn’t been for Revelstoke’s aerial platform fire truck, which shoots a large stream of water high into the air.
“I think that’s what saved the motel. It was able to get over top of it,” Singh says.
In a release, the Revelstoke Fire Department says no one was injured in the fire, and the cause isn’t suspicious but under investigation.
Seven rooms closest to the fire remain closed, and the power remains off. Singh says an electrician will come Monday to assess the situation, and the power may go back on at that time. The doors and windows need to be replaced, but Singh says, “it’s not too bad.”
The night after the fire, the rooms that remain open were at capacity.
Along with providing a low rate in a town facing the same affordability crisis as the rest of the province, Singh provided four rooms last winter to Community Connections Revelstoke Society, which runs the emergency shelter. He hopes to do the same this winter.
As for the restaurant itself, Singh is sad to see it go.
“It was a really cool building, actually,” he said, adding it was built with timber harvested in the area by local craftsmen.
Many people in Revelstoke and the surrounding area are sharing photos and memories of the ‘Ol Frontier from when it was a popular, affordable family restaurant.