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UER Forum > Archived Canada: Alberta / BC > Barnet Hotel (Viewed 345 times)
catnip 


Location: Coquitlam




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Barnet Hotel
< on 6/22/2005 7:43 PM >
Posted on Forum:
 
The old Barnet Hotel sits boarded up waiting for Demolition Crews... I found this story in the local paper that talks about the history of it... thought some might find it interesting.....

Glory days of Barnet Hotel recalled

By Lynn Easton - Staff Reporter

Eighty-year-old Bert Hergott points out a couple of squatters climbing the fire escape of the ailing and abandoned Barnet Hotel and chuckles to his friend Keiji Kawase.

"Looks like you've got new tenants," he jokes, and the two enjoy the bittersweet memory of a time when he and Kawase did indeed welcome tenants and hotel guests as owner/operators of the Barnet, when it opened in 1964.

The two put in 14-hour days, six days a week for almost a decade to make a success of a business many told them would never make it.

Their stories of the early days of the now-vacant Barnet Hotel conjure up images of parking lots jammed with big American cars full of families, couples and union men filling a brick-red building on the corner of Barnet Highway and Clarke Road.

That was back in the days when a child like Kawase's three-year-old daughter Naomi could wait in the coffee shop alone with her Shirley Temple, wait for her parents and watch the world go by.

"That was a different time," says the now-grown Naomi. "It was wonderful."

As the two survey their once-cherished hotel, Hergott looks up at the squatters on the fire escape and remembers the day the Port Moody inspector wouldn't give them a permit to open until they put in smoked-glass windows under the fire escape in case patrons could see up the skirts of fleeing hotel guests.

Hergott shakes his head and laughs heartily at the memory of the prudish inspector.

He knows what became of his beloved pub when it was turned into a popular strip joint in later years, but he doesn't find the irony humorous.

"We were never a sin bar," Hergott says earnestly. "There's no need for that. You don't have to operate like that to make money - not even today."

He may be right.

The two seem as if they are just itching to get back inside the place and make a go of it. Itching to show people their ideas are not just the old-fashioned fancy of former owners.

"We could still take that building and make a go of it," a quiet Kawase later confides whimsically. "It would make money in no time."

He admits that he laments the shape the building is now in.

How could he not?

As a young man he took over the 25-room hotel, banquet hall, lounge and coffee shop, half-finished in mid-1964, and proceeded to put up the walls and the plumbing and do the electrical work - almost single-handedly.

He set his sights on building a bar when he sold his Interior sawmill business in the early 1960s.

With a little money in his pocket and a little experience pulling beers at a Salmon Arm beer parlour, he was ready to start out on his own.

He saw there would be lots of growth around the then-small village of Port Moody and knew he'd found the spot.

"It took about a year to finish," he says modestly.

But his work wasn't over. He had to fight the local council as well as other hotel owners, who thought there were already too many hotels and bars in Port Moody and wanted to keep him out of the business.

Kawase went straight to the attorney general and was soon pulling beers in his own flourishing hotel.

His friend Hergott came on board the next year and the two held most jobs from accountant to cook to keep their business afloat.

"We worked 14 hours a day and we're still friends. Now that's what you call friendship," Hergott says.

Kawase grins while his gregarious longtime buddy regales all who will listen with stories of their exploits.

"Keiji, do you remember the lady who liked ashtrays?" Hergott asks with a guffaw and tears of laughter in his eyes.

Kawase nods and waits for the story he's heard before.

Hergott tells of a well-to-do woman who would come in every Friday night with her husband and pocket dirty ashtrays as souvenirs.

Never one to turn customers away, Hergott gently confronted the woman by urging her to take the dirty ashtrays out of her purse and come up to the bar for some brand new ones.

"She was back the next week with 14 people at her table," Hergott says triumphantly.

"And her sister came in later saying she heard of the place from her sister who sent her an ashtray."

Other customers spring to mind, including longterm residents who would hole up for weeks or months. The two begin to remember names, faces, even room numbers.

There was the guy who liked to play his violin in his room late at night after a few beers.

The guy who used his one phone call from jail outside a logging camp up north to ask Kawase to send him $50.

The dozens of working men who couldn't pay their rent but promised - and did - send Kawase the money when work picked up.

"I never got burned by any of them," he says proudly. Before he's finished, Hergott quickly begins to add to his friend's words again.

"The key is to treat somebody as a friend," he says.

"That's what these hotel owners today forget. That's how you get loyalty."


www.atvtrips.ca
PoT. 


Location: Vancouver Area, BC
Gender: Male


What? I'm not supposed to be here?

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Re: Barnet Hotel
<Reply # 1 on 6/22/2005 8:53 PM >
Posted on Forum: UER Forum
 
I drive by there pretty frequently. It looks like they've been gutting it for the last couple of months. I wonder when they're actually demoing the place.

Cheers!
-PoT
[last edit 6/22/2005 10:23 PM by PoT. - edited 1 times]

Jester 


Location: Vancouver,B.C. Canada
Gender: Male


Always just out of sight...

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Re: Barnet Hotel
<Reply # 2 on 6/22/2005 9:59 PM >
Posted on Forum:
 
It's closed down ?

I dunno about that, but I do know it has some of the skankiest strippers ever dancing there.

See...


38806.jpg (39 kb, 640x480)
click to view




Boy, I wish us wraiths explored places... but we're all talk ;)



It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.
PoT. 


Location: Vancouver Area, BC
Gender: Male


What? I'm not supposed to be here?

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Re: Barnet Hotel
<Reply # 3 on 6/22/2005 10:18 PM >
Posted on Forum: UER Forum
 
Cute pic... I see the dancers have improved since I was last there

Cheers!
-PoT


[last edit 6/22/2005 10:18 PM by PoT. - edited 1 times]

catnip 


Location: Coquitlam




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Re: Barnet Hotel
<Reply # 4 on 6/22/2005 10:19 PM >
Posted on Forum:
 
hahaha sweet..... I guess we will have to anxiously wait for the webpage updates....

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Soggy 


Gender: Male




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Re: Barnet Hotel
<Reply # 5 on 6/23/2005 4:09 PM >
Posted on Forum: UER Forum
 
I also drive by it every day... Been wanting to check it out, though looked pretty boarded up from the car. Nice to see you guys made it in Jester, not too surprised

Jester 


Location: Vancouver,B.C. Canada
Gender: Male


Always just out of sight...

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Re: Barnet Hotel
<Reply # 6 on 6/23/2005 4:17 PM >
Posted on Forum:
 
It will be in an upcoming update, probably the one following the two teasers I have on the front page now. So, give it a few weeks and it will be up there... hopefully.

It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.
SteamPunk 


Location: Sailing the seas of sleaze.




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Re: Barnet Hotel
<Reply # 7 on 6/30/2005 1:38 AM >
Posted on Forum:
 
A mini mall may be going in, or so i have heard. I have been $H!tfaced there many times. I have seen the inside already, so it wouldn't be all that much fun.


[last edit 6/30/2005 1:39 AM by SteamPunk - edited 1 times]

I used to be with it, but then they changed what it was. Now what I'm with isn't it, and what's it seems weird and scary to me, and it'll happen to you, too!
catnip 


Location: Coquitlam




Send Private Message | Send Email | Atvtrips.CA
Re: Barnet Hotel
<Reply # 8 on 7/11/2005 2:49 PM >
Posted on Forum:
 
They started tearing it down.. there was only about 1/3 of it standing this weekend....

www.atvtrips.ca
PoT. 


Location: Vancouver Area, BC
Gender: Male


What? I'm not supposed to be here?

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Re: Barnet Hotel
<Reply # 9 on 7/13/2005 7:04 PM >
Posted on Forum: UER Forum
 
Well... It's all down now, it merely a couple of piles of rubble.. Drove by there about 10:30 this morning...

Cheers!
-PoT

UER Forum > Archived Canada: Alberta / BC > Barnet Hotel (Viewed 345 times)



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