Other Writing by Danny Bereza...

THE ROYAL HOTEL

by Danny Bereza

There was something enticing about that old, historic Atlin building. As I stood before it I could see that it was aged, the wood tinder-dry and the paint peeling as it sat in mute testimony of an exotic time gone by. What struck me first was the quiet. Cars could be whizzing by, crunching gravel beneath their tires; chatting people could saunter along the boardwalk, laughing or talking intimately; an airplane could fly by, its propeller ripping through the sky; but the building would remain silent. There was nobody inside, the windows were all shuttered and the doors locked tightly. A large, fading sign above the main entrance read, Royal Hotel. A FOR SALE sign, also fading, languished nearby, tacked high up on the wall as if to keep the children from tearing it down.

“What secrets lie inside”? I thought. “When was it built and by who?” “Did anybody die inside and was anybody born within its walls?” “What stories could it tell me?”

I walked around it, peering through the old windows that were stained and warped with age. With my nose pressed up against the glass I could smell the building. It had the must of age mixed with cedar and old paint heated by the warm summer sun. I saw nothing due to the dark within. It was a large structure for such a small town. The only building that seemed to be bigger was the White Pass Hotel down by the waterfront, also abandoned for many years.

“I wonder how I can get in to see what’s inside.” I thought. “Maybe there is someone in town who has the key.”

After a little bit of detective work I found out that Margaret Turner had the key. She agreed to let me look inside and graciously opened the door for me. She was in charge of selling the building and opened the main door with a mock flare, bowing deeply at the waist.

While my eyes grew accustomed to the dark interior excitement tingled my skin. I smelled the air again. It was a bit stale but not unpleasant. There was also a hint of engine oil and rubber almost as if I was standing in a service station bay. I was standing in the main lobby looking straight ahead at a large snooker table filled with dishes and cutlery that had been stacked carefully and covered with a white sheet. A large staircase led to the top floor where twenty-five bedrooms were located. On my left was a small office with a huge safe dominating the room? I walked over to it and tried to open it but it was shut, its secrets locked inside.

There was a door a door in the back of the office which led to what looked like a general store. There were two long show-cases with glass that was rippled and hazy with age. In the cases were several items of miner’s clothing and tools that had, at one time, been offered for sale. There were old cans of oil and a couple of tires sitting on a shelf, accounting for the smell I noticed on entering the hotel. In an adjoining room a butcher store had been operating but was now closed. The only remaining pieces of equipment were a large, wooden butcher block with the top concaved in after many years of service and a manually operated meat slicing machine.

Upstairs a long hallway ushered me to twenty-five silent guest rooms. In several of the rooms there were beds with mattresses and brass headboards and white porcelain washbowls and water pitchers sitting on top of four-drawer dressers.

I fell in love with that old hotel. I had fantasies of buying it and rebuilding it to its original glory; a gold rush hotel with all its history and warmth but with modern guest rooms complete with running water and telephones. But I didn’t have enough money to buy it. Herman and Doris Peterson paid me well to fly a Beaver for them but I had almost no money in the bank and the job was only good for the summer float season.

I contacted my cousin, Jack Ainsworth, and told him about the hotel. My enthusiastic description about the spell of the North, the enchantment of the still-operating gold mines in the area and the potential for tourism convinced Jack. He and his friend, Harvey Grigg, anted up a third of the money each and we bought it. In 1966 we paid $1600.00 total for the hotel, which included three city lots. Excitedly I painted a sign, 1967 CENTENNIAL RESTORATION, in honour of the coming one-hundredth anniversary of Canadian Confederation and banged it up where the FOR SALE sign had been attached.

Walking through the hotel I once again came to the huge safe. It was locked and I didn’t have the combination. Nobody in town knew it either so I pondered for many days how to open it. There was a locksmith in Whitehorse but it would have probably cost a lot of money to get him down to Atlin.

In the meantime I wanted to find out how much it would cost to restore the hotel. I had worked for Bob Campbell who owned Campbell Lumber in Whitehorse so I phoned him and asked him what he thought it would cost to rebuild the building. Bob, who knew the hotel, told me that it would cost around $200,000.00, including bed linen and wine glasses. Dejectedly I realized that there was no way the three of us could afford to restore it. I was only making about $1000.00 per month and I doubt if Jack and Harvey were making any more.

The summer of ’66 flew by and the hotel stayed empty except for me who would walk its rooms enjoying the history and trying to find a way to open the safe. I tried all sorts of combinations including listening for the clicks as the dial turned. Nothing worked. One day I had the idea to look for the combination on the wall and the door frame. Within seconds I found it and excitedly wound the dial until the door opened. Inside there were literally dozens of old mining claims from the gold rush period. They were in perfect shape albeit invalid. I packed them in a box and put them in a friend’s basement for storage. Unfortunately, a couple of years later someone cleaned the basement and burned them, thinking that they were junk.

At the end of the float season I bid farewell to Herman and Doris and went about the business of becoming an airline pilot. Before I left Dr. Maynard Miller, a geologist who was instrumental in starting the Atlin Museum, asked me what I planned to do with all the artefacts that were still in the hotel. I told him that I was going to leave them inside the building but he talked me into putting them into the fledgling museum where they would be safe. “You can take them back any time you want,” he said. Several years later I visited the museum but nobody remembered were the artefacts came from so they still remain in the museum.

Jack, Harvey and I still wanted to fix up the hotel but just didn’t have the funds. Around 1970 I received a letter from the Fire Department saying that the building had become a fire hazard so it had to be fixed up or destroyed. With no time nor money we sold it to Walter Klasner from Atlin who tore it down and used the wood to build cabins. Many years later we sold the land to a couple from Juneau who built a big, beautiful log house it.

Over the years I’ve regretted selling the building to be torn down. If we had somehow managed to fix it up enough that it wouldn’t have been a fire hazard one of Atlin’s premier historic buildings would still be standing.

At this site you can find out more about The Big Dipper Route, learn about the author, read an extract, see photos and a map of where the events of the story take place, as well as order your copy!