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This page last updated August 30, 2007
The familiar first view of Alexandra Lodge, as it looked to me in September, 2001, travelling east on the Trans Canada highway.
Update July, 2007: I drove by the Alexandra Lodge and it looks well maintained and lived in -- MK. Nice!
July 2004: ad in Langley Times: "8 1/2 acres, 7 bedroom, 12 mi. N of Yale, 1 mile Farser River front. $350,000. Historic Alexandra Lodge. 604 869-2975."
Note from Tyler Shepherd, 2004: "Hi! I saw your site on the Alexandra Lodge in the Fraser Canyon, and I do have a lot of information regarding the current state of the property. I may be able to send you a bunch of more current photos of the place, as I am going up there with a group of friends at the end of the month, and we will no doubt have some pictures. As for the ownership, my father, David Shepherd, has obtained the lodge from Dorine Hooper, and has a lot of plans to clean it up, renovate, and get it much more active. He currently lives in the lodge, and has redone the water system, plumbing, much of the interior, and the electrical work. If you would like, I could let him know, and then give you his phone number, so you might direct inquiries you receive his way. I look forward to hearing from you soon, as we share an interest in this lodge, it seems."
Photo by Leeanne Page, July 2004--the lodge occupied and cared for, at last. But apparently about to be resold.
The cemetery next to the lodge, photograph by Marilyn Roberts, 2005
There has been a roadhouse or lodge at Chapman's Bar in the Fraser Canyon since 1858, four years before the Cariboo Road opened and Joseph Trutch's workers completed the Alexandra Bridge nearby. The question is whether any portion of this building is the original (actually the second, 1864) roadhouse, which would make it one of the oldest and most historic buildings in B.C. The provincial government gave it a heritage designation in the early 1970s, but withdrew it a decade later when a subsequent review appeared to reveal that the building only dated from the 1920s--the highway era when auto tourism and long distance trucking began and the Fraser Canyon Road reopened along the old Cariboo Road route as a toll road. In the early 1980s, the provincial heritage branch dismissed the lodge as "only of local significance"--rather a death sentence as it has turned out, exacerbated by the loss of traffic on the Fraser Canyon highway due to the opening in 1986 of the Coquihalla highway (#5).
By 1864, two years after the Cariboo Road and Alexandra Bridge opened, Alexander went into partnership with Louis Waigland, who had purchased 32 acres beside the Cariboo Road above Chapman's Bar. They built a large, two-storey frame roadhouse there, an 1867 photograph of which (by Frederick Dally) survives in the BC Provincial Archives (the image number is A-03865 if the pathway in the link doesn't work).
Detail of the Frederick Dally photograph referred to above
The building had a simple fore-and-aft pitched roof with side gables, a central chimney and five windows along its front facade. Much of the original property was forfeited for CNR construction in the 1910s.
The current Alexandra Lodge has obviously been assembled from other buildings, some portion of which may be the 1864 roadhouse.
Old photographs confirm that the current building had "emerged" by the 1930s. The roofline and main floor of the northern half (minus a proposed dormer) reflect the 1926-1927 plans by Vancouver architect Willliam Frederick Gardiner, the front elevation of which is reproduced below, entitled "Proposed Hotel to be Erected at Chapmans, Fraser Canyon Highway, B.C. for The Cariboo Hotels Ltd." But the rest of the building is very different, including the main gable and the odd south-side wall--in the watercolour above, the strong vertical shadow below the peak of the gable indicates the difference in size between the front half and the rear half of the building--the front half is a few feet longer. Also note the differences between the porch structure as built, in the photos below, and the proposed hipped-roof one on the architect's elevation. Adding further confusion is the 1924 photo, which may be another building entirely on a slightly different site, since demolished. Possibly the entire W.F. Gardiner plan was built in the late 1920s, but the south side was destroyed by fire soon after construction.
The roadhouse, by the 1920s known as Alexandra Lodge due to its proximity to Alexandra Bridge, was moved in 1952 six feet from the road right-of-way by a highways department crew and placed onto a concrete foundation.
Correspondence from Peter Rowlands: Your delightful website was 'discovered' while researching a book about Pete Friesen, proprietor of Modern Building Movers, who moved Alexandra Lodge c1952 for the provincial highways department. Having got his start moving houses during the 1948 Fraser Valley Flood, Pete was contracted to relocate buildings to allow for improvements along the Fraser Canyon Road. He went on to become the acknowledged world leader in the field of structural moving - inventing the technology and supervising the relocation of Cape Hatteras Light, Newark NJ International Air Terminal, Gem and Shubert Theaters, Fairmount Hotel, railway stations, fire halls and 5000 various other buildings.
A photo in the collection of the Yale and District Historical Society, stating that this is the Alexandra Lodge in 1924, and that it was renovated in 1926-1927. The building in the distance is the Chapmans CNR station. This is probably the building referred to as "Chapman's House" and owned by a widow, Mrs. Alice McGirr.
A portion of the W. F. Gardiner plans for the proposed hotel at Chapman's Bar, c. 1926-1927.
A late-1930s postcard, photo by "Vipond." The building is much the same today, although the trees on the south (near) side are long gone. Also disappeared is the B-A gas station in the background, which deteriorated badly and suffered a collapsed roof from snowload in the early 1990s. Its ruins were burnt about 2000.
A postcard from the 1930s, photographer unknown. There are still scattered cabins behind the lodge, in one of which I stayed in 1992.
Note from David Pollock: The pipe smoking proprietress was Lily Clegg [Kathleen Lillian Clegg, 1893-1947] and she was the driving force behind the lodge in the 20s and 30s. Her husband [[Henry Bertram Clegg 1888-1942] had been injured in WW I and never fully recovered. The electric light at the lodge was a water driven unit installed by my Uncle Dave Laverock and his partner Jimmy Swan ( JB). Dave was astounded to see Mrs Clegg stirring soup with a cigarette ash over an inch long on the end of her cigarette . It is not known if she eventually dropped it in the soup, but she put on a good meal.
One very cold winter, she and Mr Clegg went to Vancouver. Whoever was left as caretaker was warned not to shut off the water to the generating plant as it would freeze. They did and it did. The penstalk was a four inch steel pipe, threaded together with couplings every ten feet. Mrs Clegg had the person responsible uncouple the steel pipe length by length and drag it into the little service garage where the generator was located and with a huge fire roaring in a barrel stove thawed it out length by length. It was then reassembled and the plant was restarted. I saw this generating plant when it was still operating in 1962. I am sure the unit (Pelton wheel and generator) is now in storage at the Saanich Artifacts museum. If not, the unit they have is a twin. JB Swan's brass tag is riveted to it.
Siska Lodge also had their own water powered lighting plant. Much larger than Alexandra's. It ran up to the time the lodge burned down in 64 or 65. I also saw it in operation as well as a number of others beginning at Bridal Falls Chalet and up as far as BigHorn or Shaw Springs. It has been many years (1962) since I first travelled the Fraser Canyon with my uncle but he remembered it well from the 1930s. We purchased the equipment from the Bridal Falls Chalet in 1963 and the wheel is still running on our farm outside Victoria on the site of the original Hudson Bay Mills (1848-56 ). My father's mother's family were the Finnertys who arrived in Victoria in 1862 and whose farm now forms part of the University of Victoria's campus. My grandfather M B Pollock made a number of trips into the Yukon over the Chilkoot pass between 1894 and 1898.
Note from Ada Stefanek: As a child back in the mid to late 50's, my parents and I would drive up the canyon (in the old Model T) to visit a former owner (possibly) of the Lodge. I remember going across the Alexandria Bridge and chugging up the hill to the Lodge. However, on reading the write up on the internet, I didn't come across the name "George Hood" anywhere as being a former owner. George used to work with my father in Vancouver on the street cars and according to my mom, bought the lodge and ran it for a while. Mom looked through her old photos and has a picture of George and my dad in front of the lodge taken in the late 50's. Ever heard of him ? Perhaps his tenure was to small to be noted.
Note from John Gulayets: I was on the internet and was looking up Spuzzum B.C and came across the lodge. My uncle George and Aunt Vera HOOD ran the lodge from around 52/53 till about 74 Uncle George died in 1972 and Aunt Vera died about 4 - 5 years later. I used to stay at the lodge every summer when I was a kid and used to pump gas for the cars and do little odd jobs. Cut the lawn. The water system was pretty cool and would break down occassionally and my dad would drive up and help fix it. Lots off good memories from there. Aunt Vera made good burgers and she was a phenomenal cook.
Photos from Ada Stefanek, Coquitlam, BC: left, camping in the Fraser Canyon, 1951; below left; her mother Margaret at the Alexandra Lodge, 1955; below, her father Harold Thomas on the left with George Hood at the lodge.
Anderson Brigade Trail
The remains of the Anderson Brigade Trail of 1848, used briefly by the Hudson's Bay Company, ascend the ridge behind the Alexandra Lodge.The trail began at Fort Yale, crossed the river at the narrows at Spuzzum and continued to Merritt. It was the first attempt post-contact to establish a route through the Canyon. Above the Alexandra Lodge site, the trail climbed a steep hill to Lake House and on to Fort Kamloops. Anderson's trail also connected to an Indian pack trail from Boston Bar to Merritt. The route was superseded after the 1849 season by the Hope to Tulameen brigade trail. Documented as a route to Fort Kamloops from 1847 to 1849, and later in 1858 and 1882 as a route to Boston Bar. The site of Lake House has not been found. An 1858 gold mining trail returns to the Canyon via 17 Mile Creek. (Lillooet-Fraser Heritage Resource Study. volume I, Heritage Conservation Branch, Province of BC, Ministry of Provincial Secretary and Government Services, 1980)
Much of the forest along the trail has been logged over the years, but the first seven kilometres, starting near Alexandra Lodge, is more or less untouched. The Summer, 1999 issue of the Heritage Society of BC newsletter reported on the efforts of Charlie Hou, a Burnaby secondary school history teacher, who had been taking his Grade 10 students on an overnight hike along the trail for several years, to have the trail designated by the provincial Archaeology Branch. Mr. Hou proposed provincial park status for the trail, but his efforts were not acted upon before the change of provincial government in 2001 (and the current provincial government, which is cutting all department budgets, is unlikely to act). However, the trail is reported under a "map reserve" status according to a Memorandum of Understanding between the Archaeology Branch and the Ministry of Forests; this could mean the preservation of a strip 100 metres wide on either side of the trail.
Please read the section on the Dewdney Trail for some background on A.C. Anderson and the Hudson's Bay Company brigade trails.* * *
Please also read the material on the Spuzzum Cafe, the Spuzzum Hotel and the Alexandra Bridge if you're interested in this area.
