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This page last updated March 8, 2008

The best remaining building in Spuzzum, now used as a private dwelling, was built as an inn or roadhouse and for many years was the hotel for Spuzzum. It stood across the street from the Spuzzum railway station--the "street" being the Cariboo Road, reopened in 1926 for vehicle traffic as part of the Trans Canada highway. Thus it was assured of a steady clientel. According to its cornerstone, it was built in 1923, probably in anticipation of the new highway (thanks to Joe Butler, current owner, for the information about the date). With its hipped roof and groupings of windows, it bears a strong resemblance to a cafe on the southern outskirts of Boston Bar--perhaps it was built at the same time by the same builder for, effectively, the same purpose. Cariboo Hotels Ltd. began work on a new Alexandra Lodge a few years later.

In the late 1940s, it was occupied entirely by Japanese-Canadians starting new lives following the end of their internment during the Second World War.

Charlotte Gyoba's parents, born of whom were Issei (Japanese-born), were interned in 1942 at the camp at New Denver, where Charlotte was born. Her father was a logger, a faller, who lived on Vancouver Island near Cumberland; her mother, already married, had come from Japan to join him in 1933. Early in 1942, the RCMP arrested her father at home at gunpoint, and ordered her mother with her three small children--one a newborn--to report to Hastings Park (the PNE) in Vancouver, the transshipment point for the internment camps in the Interior. Later in the war, the Gyoba family moved to the camp at Tashme (now the Sunshine Valley site near the Hope Slide on the Hope-Princeton highway), where Charlotte's brother Jim was born in 1945. They were planning to go back to Japan as part of the "repatriation" which started on May 31, 1946. (The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour and the subsequent declaration of war provided the justification to British Columbian [and western US] authorities to do what they had been trying to accomplish for years--get rid of people of Japanese ancestry from the coast. A campaign of intimidation began in April, 1945--six months before the end of the War--against Japanese-Canadians living in British Columbia with the intention of forcing them either to eastern Canada or "back" to Japan; 3,984 people eventually went to Japan, many of whom were Canadian-born. A recent novel, The Electrical Field, by Kerri Sakamoto, reflected on the experience of a Japanese-Canadian woman whose family moved to a small Ontario town following wartime internment in B.C. Read the Vancouver section for more background).

However, the Gyoba family, together with several other Japanese-Canadian families from the camps, decided to move to Spuzzum due to available jobs at a sawmill there (and because Spuzzum was outside the 100-mile exclusion radius from the coast). Some of them lived in the old hotel, probably paying rent to the Reynolds family who owned it. The Gyobas, with their five children, had two rooms. A large group of men, including the father of the Nikkei figure Roy Inouye, occupied the parlour. During their time there, they erected a bathhouse beside (to the left of) the hotel and a number of cabins, all now demolished. Other families lived in a row of at least a dozen tarpaper cabins that had been erected by Mr. Neville, the owner of the sawmill, down the road from the hotel. After the federal cabinet repealed its deportation order on January 24, 1947, and removed all restrictions on settlement, most of the Japanese-Canadian families left Spuzzum--after 1950, there were only three of them left in the village.

New Year's Day 1948--the Japanese men on the front steps of the Spuzzum Hotel

After some initial coolness, the newcomers were accepted into the community. Charlotte Gyoba became best friends with Bambi (Marion) McInnes, the native girl who lived down the street (in the house on the left of the watercolour below). The Gyobas became friendly with Spuzzum's most celebrated resident, the Nlaka'pamux woman Annie York, often giving her a ride into Hope for shopping. (Annie York [1904-1991], through publications including Spuzzum, Fraser Canyon Histories, 1808-1939, co-authored with Andrea Laforet [UBC Press, 1998], explained and recreated the history of her people, reflecting the transition her culture made from precontact ways through the years of the gold rush, the CPR and the arrival of the automobile.)

Around 1950 the lumber company closed, Charlotte's parents bought the small house to the north of the hotel which had been the lumber company's office and turned it into a home, then her father went to work for the CPR. The family eventually grew to seven children, all of whom attended the elementary school at the corner of 1st Avenue (still standing and leak-free, according to "Spuzzum Pete," who says its most recent use was as a party house). Charlotte's older sisters Elsie and Joyce worked through their highschool and university years in the coffee bar at the general store across the railway tracks.

August 1959--the Gyobas' house immediately to the north of the old hotel

1960--the same house following renovation. This is how it looked until recently, when after many years of abandonment it fell to bits.

 

The hotel about 1960, with the old porch removed

All photographs from Charlotte Gyoba's collection.

Note from Terumi Leinow: I am one of the many families who lived in Spuzzum --Charlotte Gyoba was a classmate of mine in the one-room schoolhouse in Spuzzum. I am part of the Oikawa family (there were two Oikawa families who lived there). My father Kengo, his wife, Shimako (who just celebrated her 90th birthday last weekend) and me, Dulce Terumi. My father's brother Keigo & Maikie had 4 children, George (who lives in Hope - and still owns property in Spuzzum), Mikiko, Ritsu and Hitomi (who live in Vancouver). It is interesting for me, who married an American and now lives in sunny California, that my past somehow erases itself behind me! Tashme, where I was born, no longer exists and Spuzzum where I spent part of my early childhood is slowly vanishing. I grew up with the name Dulce Oikawa for most of my life and reverted to my Japanese name Terumi when I moved to California. I have fond memories of the Spuzzum days, where all the families gathered at the bathhouse near the hotel and my father would piggyback me on his back as we returned to our cabin under the night stars. The local store was a treasure to us, and I recall my mother feeding the "hobos" that came by on the trains!

This is a watercolour I painted in 1992 of the old TransCanada highway at Spuzzum. The CPR track is on the right and the view looks northward; the current TransCanada highway is out of the picture on the left. The small cabin with the porch on the left is now in ruins, as is the cabin with the blue door visible between the large trees in the middle of the picture. The brown wall in the distance, to the left of the leftmost tree, is the side wall of the old hotel. The Gyobas' house was out of sight in the distance. Note from Miki Wilson: I used to live in Spuzzum with my grandparents. [In your picture] you can see some of the old hotel and Mr. Rockell's house.
 

Note from Irene Bjerky, who recently tried to buy the former hotel: Most of what I have is the former owners' info; apparently it was owned by a recluse for some years, who, it was found after his death, had the tool shed filled to the roof with beer cans he either drank or collected, I'm not sure which.

The next owners were a Dutch or German couple who apparently moved the kitchen from the downstairs to the upstairs; redid the plumbing and wiring, and added a really good airtight wood-burning stove (about 1994). Then the final owner that I tried to buy from was named John Butler, who lives in California, I think (have to look that up too); and the new owners that finally were able to buy the place are the owners of the Fort Hope Trading Post Antique store.

In any case, as you correctly stated, the place was built in 1923, and was a hotel first I think, but don't know for sure. It was a police station with a jail, for the BC Police (one of my relatives, Arthur Urquhart, was a member of the BC Police force in Spuzzum around that time; Andrea Laforet knows more about this). And, I can ask my mom more about when it was used during WWII in the internment camp years.

The house has seven decent sized bedrooms, four downstairs and three upstairs; two bathrooms; a very large living room downstairs (where the wood stove is), and a very large living room upstairs. The kitchen has a large pantry off of it. There are two medium-sized balconies, as you know, one fronting the access road (First Avenue), and one facing the large yard that borders the Trans Canada Highway. There are all kinds of fruit trees, garden stuff, and outbuildings on the property, with an elaborate sprinkler system. The water system comes from a small creek across the highway, part of the property ownership. The fruit trees have apples, pears, crabapples, and cherries, as far as I can remember, and there are various berry bushes in an enclosure. There is a garden shed, a tool shed, a greenhouse, and a woodshed. It is a wonderful place, and I desperately wanted to own it.