Loss of iconic Grand Union Hotel in Athabasca to fire 'shock' to community

Historic Alberta hotel destroyed The Grand Union Hotel in Athabasca was destroyed by fire last week. David Ewasuk has the story.

The Grand Union Hotel in Athabasca was more than just a place for visitors to stay when visiting the central Alberta town.

Although in recent years it had become a derelict property, the 110-year-old landmark served as a community hub, said town archivist Margaret Anderson.

"It was a place where our history was kept in a sense because of the comings and goings for so many years," Anderson told CTV News Edmonton.

"There was a huge community in terms of the coffee culture there in the cafe, and live bands and music and that sort of thing in the bar, even going for breakfast in the cafe."

The hotel is no more.

The structure caught fire just after dawn on July 23, with several emergency crews fighting the blaze and keeping it from spreading to adjacent buildings. By mid-morning, the fire had spread to the roof, Anderson said. The hotel collapsed later that day.

It stood at the northern end of the old Athabasca Trail — a path from Fort Edmonton that had been carved out of the muskeg by the Hudson's Bay Company in the late 19th Century — for 110 years.

Mayor Robert Balay said he was "shocked" at the destruction of the three-storey structure that sat prominently on the corner of 50 Street and 50 Avenue across the road from the historic train station that opened in December 1912, a year before the Grand Union did.

"No matter which way you come into town, from which direction, here's this building has been there for (almost) 111 years, and now it's gone," Balay told CTV News Edmonton.

"That's a bit of a shock and a disappointment for that regard."

Fire at the hotel 111 years before had resulted in it being rebuilt just four months after the original wood-framed one — which predated 1912's arrival of the Canadian Northern Railway by a few years — burned down along with much of the downtown core.

The brick-faced replacement opened in January 1914. According to Alberta's Heritage Resources Management Information System (HeRMIS), the new hotel included 50 rooms, a cafe, a tavern, a billiard room, a bowling alley, a writing room and centralized steam heating.

The building also served as the home of several medical practices, including a dentist.

Although the hotel had gone through a number of alterations over the years — "subject to insensitive alterations that have affected its historic architectural significance," according to HeRMIS — it still retained some of its character, including the restoration of the original brick exterior in 2003.

"We had another fire when Home Hardware burned down across from the train station ... and that wasn't nearly as overwhelming as this," Anderson said.

"It's still really difficult to process the sense of loss that losing the hotel has given all of us."

Balay said the town had recently come to an agreement with the Grand Union's owner on back taxes, and although the town doesn't own the property, he's hopeful something new and just as prominent will replace it.

"I don't think that the town was wanting to necessarily take over the operation of the building; that's why we worked with the owner in order to come to an agreement, so that he would do that," Balay said.

"In looking at it now, that's an iconic building to lose, but I think now there's an opportunity for the community to have a say, and when and what goes there, possibly that we put something there that 111 years from now will be considered iconic as well."

With files from CTV News Edmonton's Marek Tkach