Discover Our Heritage

Here Today, Hopefully Here Tomorrow

BY QUENTIN GOODBODY

By the time this letter is published, the historic Dunsmuir Hotel in Vancouver will be gone. Demolition of the 116-year-old building, set to commence on January 17 and be completed by January 20, is necessitated because its owners neglected the building to the point where demolition became the only viable option to ensure public safety. Unfortunately, preserving heritage components, such as the façade, could not be done safely, resulting in a total loss to the heritage of Vancouver.

Think about parallels to what we have in Ladysmith. We take pride in the heritage character of our downtown area, which is a major attraction to visitors, movie makers and more. This character is significant due to the hotels built when the town was established in the very early 1900s.

We have been lucky that two of these iconic hotels — the Ladysmith Hotel (now housing Plantitude Restaurant) and the Temperance Hotel — were recently saved from collapse through the considerable effort, expense and sacrifice of their current owners. We owe them a significant debt of thanks.

The other hotels, including the Ladysmith Inn (New Western), Island Hotel, Jones Hotel and the Travellers Hotel, show signs of advanced age and deterioration and need attention.

The Ladysmith Hotel dodged a bullet last year when fire threatened to take hold. What a hole it would have made in the townscape if it had burned to the ground.

The Jones Hotel (aka the Black Nugget) needs TLC: a healthy stand of ivy is growing up the back of the building. The Travellers Hotel, famous for the swastikas in its brickwork façade (which predates abuse of the symbol by the Nazis), has been empty for years and, from the back, appears derelict. In the past, the Town spent significant dollars repointing the brick outer walls to ensure structural stability.

The Town of Ladysmith has identified the retention and revitalization of heritage properties as a community heritage and sustainability value, noting that this is especially important in the heritage downtown. While offering alternative compliance methods to facilitate the restoration and rehabilitation of heritage buildings, most, if not all, of our old hotel buildings have reached and arguably passed their “best before” date.

The buildings are in private hands, but it is in all our interests that at least their character is preserved. How can we ensure this?

It’s tricky. While the buildings are on the Ladysmith Heritage Register (some are on Canada’s Register of Historic Places), they lack legal protection. You can’t and don’t want to force private owners to spend money to preserve them, but you can offer incentives ... which requires planning. Ladysmith has a Heritage Strategic Plan, but it is outdated. Adopted in 2008 and supposed to be updated in 2012, the Town has yet to allocate resources for this purpose, despite urgings by concerned citizens these past years.

Some things are happening or, rather, they may be. The Island Hotel is slated for redevelopment; the owners intend to save the façade and replace the existing wooden building behind it with a backstepping new five-storey construction. Work was scheduled to commence in 2023 but has been deferred — for how long, we do not know. Hopefully, this project will come to fruition soon.

Plans were afoot several years ago for the Travellers to be redeveloped as a boutique hotel. Unfortunately, nothing has materialized. Do the current owners still have plans to redevelop the building? If not, maybe the Town would consider purchasing it, retaining the façade and outer brick walls and constructing a new Town Hall inside. The footprint appears big enough for civic requirements. Doing so would ensure retention of the heritage character and become a source of civic pride. Expensive? Yes ... but impossible?

During my time here, the Town of Ladysmith has had two mottos: “Heritage by the Sea,” followed by the current “A View to Sea.” Let’s not let it slide to “Nothing to See.”