A Historic Fraser Canyon Hotel Faces Down a Wildfire

Shirley MacKinnon was celebrating the finishing touches on her bathroom renovation when the first fire started in early July. She took a photo of the ornate flamingo wallpaper now gracing her wall; all the while, the fledgling Brunswick Creek wildfire was inching towards the communities of North Bend and Boston Bar, 15 kilometres to the north.

“Love our final finishes in the bathroom. Ken is an amazing renovator,” Shirley wrote in a post on the Facebook page for the Alexandra Lodge, the historic Fraser Canyon roadhouse in which she and her husband, Ken MacKinnon, live.

“We are safe from the fire. It is heading up Canyon but many are evacuated from North Bend Boston Bar. Thanks for reaching out,” she wrote. “We are working on the main floor and exterior work will start soon. Will post again soon.”

She did not post again soon. Within days the Boston Bar First Nation and the Nooaitch Indian Band had issued evacuation orders for their communities. A week later, Boston Bar itself was evacuated and the MacKinnons found themselves, and the Alexandra Lodge, a critical stopping and storage point for friends evacuating to the south.

“We were storing people's vehicles and a lot of things here for them,” Shirley said. “It was considered a safe place back then.”

Then, on July 21, the Anderson Creek wildfire started and Alexandra Lodge was safe no longer.

A house with history

For more than 150 years, Alexandra Lodge has been a fixture for people travelling through the Fraser Canyon.

Built on the Tikwalus Trail in 1858, the lodge began its life as a simple whitewashed roadhouse. Renovations over the years turned the building into a two-storey hotel, and by the 1920s it had stopped hosting gold seekers and started welcoming automobile travellers along the newly opened toll road.

Alexandra Lodge reached its hospitality peak in the 1930s, when it welcomed King Prajadhipok of Siam (now Thailand) to its rooms. But it would face a gradual decline over the decades that followed.

After the proprietress’s death in 1947, the lodge began to lose its lustre. In 1952, it was moved back a few feet from its original foundation to accommodate the new Trans-Canada Highway. Although it was awarded a heritage designation in the 1970s, dwindling tourism on the Fraser Canyon route meant it never made the money its owners needed. It passed from owner to owner, eventually falling into disrepair.

Then, Shirley and Ken found it.

Like many Fraser Canyon travellers and B.C. history buffs, Shirley had long loved the lodge, and its colourful past. With Ken’s retirement on the horizon, the couple decided to buy the property, move up from Maple Ridge to the Fraser Canyon and restore the lodge to some of its former glory. They started living on the property in 2021 and began restorations. The goal was to make the upstairs livable and comfortable, while turning much of the bottom floor into a museum dedicated to the lodge's history.

In the five years since, they have uncovered what they believe are the walls of the original roadhouse, renovated the upstairs into a livable condition, installed new hardwood flooring throughout the building and papered their bathroom in 1930s-era wallpaper.

They’ve also found their own community — something the couple didn’t quite expect. Over the years, many people have stopped by the lodge to learn about the MacKinnons’ efforts to restore the place. They have received donated items from the lodge’s history, offers of free renovation assistance, and many professions of support and friendship from people both in person and online.

“There was nothing about living in the canyon that is the way we thought it would be like,” Shirley said. It included the friendships, she said. It also included the wildfires.

A canyon of fire

When Shirley and Ken moved to Alexandra Lodge in 2021, the village of Lytton had just recently been destroyed. Wildfires continued to spread across the province that summer. But although the couple saw smoke, ash and even embers end up on their property, the lodge was never truly in jeopardy.

This year is different. The Brunswick Creek wildfire and a related blaze that it sparked on the opposite side of the Fraser River threatened their friends and distant neighbours, and kept the MacKinnons focused on how they could support their community. When the Anderson Creek fire emerged and then merged with the Brunswick Creek wildfire complex on July 21, the couple had to evacuate with no warning.

“We had no alert,” Shirley said. “We had no prep time. We had to go straight into our vehicles with whatever we could grab.”

They were able to return the same day, as the evacuation order was downgraded to an alert for their property. But the future is uncertain. They have since been busy packing up what they can, trying to preserve both their own personal possessions and the few donated mementos from the lodge’s past. Their belongings are being held by friends in Chilliwack and Hope until the wildfire burns out.

But they can’t move the lodge itself, or the history held in the wooden boards of the building.

Ken has done what he can to protect the building — installing a gravity-fed sprinkler system that will shower a gallon of water on the lodge every second. If they get the notice to leave, Ken can switch it on and hope that water and the wildfire structure protection team working throughout the canyon will be enough.

For now, Ken and Shirley are sitting on their front porch, watching the day meld into night over the Fraser Canyon forests.

“It's rained quite a bit today, so we're quite happy with that,” Shirley said, talking with The Tyee on July 28. The clouds were low over the mountainside, and to the north, where the edge of the fire is nearing Hells Gate, there is blue sky.

While she spoke on the phone, a parade of fire trucks passed south along the highway in front of their house. Firefighters from Chilliwack, Deep Creek and other local fire departments were heading back from Boston Bar for a shift change. It happens multiple times a day, Shirley said, although it’s been getting less busy as the edge of the fire has moved away from the town. She’s also seen repair trucks from BC Hydro, Telus and other service providers heading to the area.

Everything, however, is still uncertain — both for the MacKinnons’ friends in Boston Bar and for the Alexandra Lodge. As of July 29, the fire was still seven kilometres away from their home, and the MacKinnons hadn’t been evacuated. But that could change at any time. And if it does, Ken said, there are only two possible outcomes.

“There's only two scenarios,” Ken said. “One, we come back and the lodge is here. And when we come back and there is no lodge.”

If Alexandra Lodge remains after the fire, the couple will proceed with their renovations as planned: replacing the weeping tiles and gutters on the outside of the house and transforming a suite into a pottery studio for Shirley.

If the lodge is gone? It opens up an avenue for Ken to rebuild the original roadhouse that stood on the property more than 150 years ago.

“Even if it burns, we're still trying to be optimistic and hoping that this property will continue on,” Shirley said. Ken’s idea to rebuild the original little white roadhouse helped give them a focus for if the worst should happen.

Both are confident their sprinklers and the BC Wildfire Service structure protection teams will save the lodge if the fire crosses their property. But if the wildfire does destroy the building, the property will remain — as will the history, and community, the MacKinnons are determined to preserve.