The Ol’ Frontier Restaurant in Revelstoke, BC, burned to the ground early Saturday morning.
The western saloon-style restaurant, built mostly of wood, had not been open since 2017, but on the night of the fire, the rooms in the attached motel were almost fully occupied.
At around 12:30 a.m., guest Andrea Dunlop was awakened by a knock on her door. She thought she heard someone shouting “Fire!”
“I went outside and you could see the flames rising above the roof of the motel,” she said.
People were running around, said guest Janet Evans, who described the parking lot as “chaotic.”
“When you wake up from a deep sleep and experience something like this, you naturally panic,” she said.
After taking in the scene, Dunlop decided to return to her room, which was on the side facing away from the fire, for the night.
“We couldn’t go anywhere, all the hotels were fully booked. It’s pouring with 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.
In addition to travelers who have strayed from the road, the motel is home to four Frontier employees and “two or three long-term guests,” says Matt Singh, the owner for 26 years.
Singh rents rooms by the night and has kept the price the same for decades. He doesn’t raise the price in winter, when demand for accommodation is higher in the ski resort.
In addition to the motel and the now-destroyed restaurant, the complex – at the corner of Highway 1 and Highway 23, about 195 kilometers northeast of Kelowna – includes a gas station and a store.
One of Singh’s co-workers, who lives at the motel, called him at 12:20 on Saturday morning and told him there was a fire.
When Singh arrived on the scene, he saw that it was “not good.”
He describes how huge flames shot out of the restaurant and “licked up toward the motel.”
Singh believes it could have been worse if it weren’t for the Revelstoke fire truck and its hydraulic lift, which shoots a large jet of water high into the air.
“I think that’s what saved the motel. It was able to get through it,” Singh says.
In a press release, the Revelstoke Fire Department stated that no one was injured in the fire and that there are no suspected injuries, but the cause of the fire is under investigation.
Seven rooms near the fire are still closed and the power is still off. Singh says an electrician will come on Monday to assess the situation and then the power can be turned back on. The doors and windows need to be replaced, but Singh says, “It’s not that bad.”
The night after the fire, the rooms that were still open were fully occupied.
In addition to offering a low rate in a city facing the same affordability crisis as the rest of the province, Singh also made four rooms available last winter to the Community Connections Revelstoke Society, which runs the shelter. He hopes to do the same this winter.
As for the restaurant itself, Singh is sad that it is closing.
“It was actually a really cool building,” he said, adding that it was built by local craftsmen from locally harvested wood.
Many people in Revelstoke and the surrounding area share photos and memories of Ol Frontier from when it was a popular and inexpensive family restaurant.
