An ode as Dawson Creek loses its symbolic refuge

It had the musty allure of untold trysts and sideways encounters, experienced amidst the rampage of a community’s evolution.

Like a flashing beacon in the nearly endless trudge of a long northern winter, it brought people together, occasionally set the site where others were torn apart and it was the hot centre of Dawson Creek for decades. It would have seemed gaudy on the outside if it weren’t so brilliantly unique.

The Alaska Hotel – refuge at the start, or the end, of the Alaska Highway.

Its time as a refuge for the exhausted traveler, their eyes and minds cudgeled by the bounce, roll and grind that was the Alaska Highway, was long past when it burst into flames Friday, Sept. 14. The colourful centre of Dawson Creek crackled and died through the night, leaving weekend onlookers to contemplate what was. The adjacent Brass Scissors Hair Salon was also razed in the fierce blaze, battled through the night by the Dawson Creek Fire Department.

Some may question the hoodoo surrounding the block on which the Alaska sat, just 55 paces from Mile Zero of the Alaska Highway, in the centre of Dawson Creek (population 11,500). In April of 2011 Wildcat Video, adjacent to the Alaska, burned to the ground. All that remains on the block is the informative Mile Zero information centre and museum, which provides a swift glimpse into how this friendly Peace Country city came to be.

A true land portal to far northern B.C., Yukon and Alaska – Dawson began as an agricultural community that burst to life in 1942 when the panic was on to build a road connecting the southern portion of North America to Alaska, in order to repel a potential Imperial Japanese Army invasion.

In its heyday, the Alaska was, according to a sign that hung in an upstairs hallway, “The spirit of northern adventure combined with the charm of a Paris café.”

Alaska Highway workers would line up around the block in order to receive their daily two-beer allotment.

The Alaska was Dawson’s longest-serving business and its beer parlor received the first liquor licence in the Peace River Country.

Its colourful façade re-launched a period of renewal for the Alaska in 1987/88, when it had a bustling restaurant as well as a jam-packed bar, that offered live music up to its tragic end in 2012.

In its final years, hindered by the decline in bar business the province-over, the Alaska underwent a slow decay.

Its upstairs rooms, once lavish refuge for the weary and weather-worn traveler or businessman, became pseudo halfway home rooms for Dawson Creek’s poorest, welcomed in by owners Heidy and Charles Kux-Kardos, who rented and owned the Alaska for four decades.

Up the narrow staircase from the street-level front bar (Dew Drop Inn), by old photos and art works depicting Dawson’s and the world’s past, one came to a musty hallway. In a room next to the front street, through a door ajar, a hardened soul sat hunched forward in a chair, scratching his chin and staring vacantly out the window, adding pained soul to a building drenched in the splash and spatter of time’s spirited passage. It could have been Winnipeg’s North End or Vancouver’s East Hastings. But still it was refuge, for some.

“Hi Crow, how are you doing?” Charles asks.

“Good, you?” Crow replies, not taking his eyes from the window. Below the window a radiator ticked and groaned.

Charles explained they “try as much as possible to rent out to welfare (recipients).”

While the old café was the charm, the heart of the Alaska was always its bar, decorated entirely by the happenchance happenings of a place populated by passersby and character-laden regulars who called it home.

One could see nattily attired professionals seated near stale, boozy-stench wretches, while on one side of the bar a man played piano, badly, and another spoke into an antique telephone, perhaps to one of the myriad of spirits that surely hung around the Alaska.

Because it was, more than anything, to me, anyway, a catchment basin for the blood, sweat and tears that roll off the grinding wheel of life.

Many Dawson Creek residents bemoaned the fallen state of the old hotel. I never knew her as anything else. Fact is, I only visited the place three times and drove past in another, in 1987, yet it left an impression on me. When I returned to Dawson next, in 2009, the Alaska was the only thing I remembered about the city. I also remember thinking how I wished I could have stopped for one.

Inside, I was reminded of countless old bars – all exuding their own uniqueness and soul. For East Kootenay readers, it was like a second cousin cross between the old and long gone Lakeside Inn in Invermere and the National in Radium, with brushings of the still existing Whitehouse Hotel in Windermere, the Moyie Pub, the Byng and The Fernie Hotel. And yet, it was nothing like them. Its history was completely different, as was its demise.

The first time I really visited Dawson Creek was to attend the funeral of one of the community’s most loved citizens, Edna Mcphail. Following the service at the Dawson Creek Art Gallery, situated in an old grain elevator (Edna’s doing), we walked across to the Alaska, past the empty space where the Dawson Hotel once stood.

It was what I expected, upon walking in. It was just murky enough, with lots of dark wood and room to move, with seating areas fit for thrashing and howling at the moon. Tables and booths were carved, with time-worn finish from the scratches of countless boozy encounters; photos of old cars, bikes, plaques, sayings and old stories.

Behind the old bar were one, two and five dollar bills, with names scribbled in half-pissed wriggles, dating back to the mid 1970s – including one we stapled up on our second visit a year later, when we received a tour of the building by Charles, who said he reckoned there was about $2,000 stapled to the walls.

“There was some question as to whether we should took it down. Heidy wanted to take it down and I said I always wanted to be surrounded by money,” Charles related.

Carrie and I captured a variety of images of the Alaska, which we wish to share in honour of it, as a thank you to Charles and Heidy for that fascinating glimpse into the midst of Dawson Creek’s past and to share a little bit more to be included into the history of it, to be preserved moving forward.

Dawson Creek, like all northern communities, shares a close and a tight bond that people in cities in the south cannot fathom. The north is a place where a cold night will kill you deader than dead in less time than it takes a southerner to make and consume a macchiato. People seem to be more open and accepting in the north; friendlier, if you will. They take one another in and help one another out.

The Alaska was a symbol of that spirit, even if she ran down in her old age the last few years.

Sorrowfully lost in the fire was a beautiful collection of antiques, art, literature and other fascinating curiosities.

“The shock is slowly wearing off and reality is kicking in at 4 a.m. While nobody was hurt thank God, we lost absolutely everything… All the antiques and paintings, all personal files of our family and all business files,” wrote Heidy Kux-Kardos on her Facebook page.
“We feel for our staff and entertainers who lost their jobs. Now an entire city block in downtown Dawson Creek sits empty and will take decades to rebuild, since nobody seems to want to build but rather be next to Wal-mart and other box stores on the outskirts of town.”

Dawson Creek artist Tyson Mowat added a poem to her page:
you’d always been there
but you asked me to come home
I didn’t know what to think
though I knew we’d both grown

you left before my return
and everyone who told me were liars
but there wasn’t anything I could do
memories ran through like a man on fire

I’ll raise my empty glass to you
though it can no longer be filled
memories that do drop in
can be poured from the still.”

Here’s to The Alaska. Another great one bites the dust.

Cheers

And we leave the final word to Charles, his words echoing the spirit of the place he has just lost.

Deluxe Evolutionary Society

Once upon a time, there has been and still is, an above board underground.
Open conspiracy, invisibly visible, to the naked rose-tinted eye.
Two or more, committed to a common goal; recognition of a moving and improving
Human Land. Imagination’s figment, yet as real as the image on a still
pond of the Human Family. Shattered over and over again by huge rocks
and experience mountains tumbling from nowhere and everywhere,
disrupting the calmness and clarity of vision. A beautiful
dream…miraculous mind eclipse of infinitely functional Utopian Nature.
Old as hills ideal but no patent, not imprisoned in form…Free… Like
twilight and eternity, slipping through fingers and lingering at a point just
past the end of the nose. Wonderful, Splendiferous Society with Laws so
genuine they cannot be disobeyed; where might is not the only right.
Fear & Oppression – No! No!
Showmanship & magic – Yes! Yes! Serendipity!
Members want perfection, shoot for distant stars, points where paralell
lines meet and opposites reconcile. Human hearts understanding; intellect
and emotion flowing together affirming the intrinsic value of life.
Truth in the guise of honesty.
Love wearing the cloak of integrity are forces as inevitable as inevitable
coincidences. Flowers yield to the morning sun…winter crosses the frontier
into Spring… changes from within without war for the better. Like
mushroom spores welling up and floating creation… Many realities, tears,
and laughter, action, and reflection…
On stage… Paradox Theatre.
Initiation, once begun.
Never ending…love and luck. – By Charles E. Kux-Kardos

Ian Cobb/e-KNOW

With photos by Carrie Schafer/Through My Eyes Photography

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