How Not To Run A B&B: A Woman's True Memoir

by Bobby Hutchinson

  Soon skiers from all over the world traveled to Fernie to experience the abundance of long, steep fall-line skiing off the ridgelines, and there was a slow but steadily increasing spillover to Sparwood, twenty minutes north down Highway No. 3. Locals had almost stopped wearing tee shirts that said, Where The Hell is Sparwood.

  I had always known where Sparwood was. For me, it was home, the place where I was born.

  My grandfather came here from Scotland with his sixteen year old bride in 1898. He got a job in the coal mine, and settled. Here my father and his seven brothers and sisters were born. I was born here, and my brother Ole and my sister Karen. I even came back to the Valley to have my own first son, Dan. All my sons spent their summers here with my mom and dad, welcome respites from the troubled life they led in the city with their father, their stepfather and me.

  My families roots go as deep in this valley as the seams of coal in the mountains.

  My father lived his entire adult life in the house he and my mother built, a few thousand meters from his parents’ house where he was born. He was buried in the graveyard across from the trailer park where my middle son lived until he married Lisa. My mother lies beside my dad.

  She died more recently, and soon afterwards, my brother’s wife, Gerry, joined them, a shock to us all because she was vibrant and young. She was fond of saying, Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

  My brother Ole was devastated when the rare blood disease killed her in two weeks. Unlike me, my brother and sister mated for life.

  Ole and I were close in spirit, but hundreds of miles distant in reality. Both my sister Karen and my brother had married locals and never left the Valley. Their children had settled there, as had numerous cousins.

  Two of my sons, Dave and Rob, had moved back to Sparwood with their wives. I was the renegade, the prodigal, the City Girl who lived Away. At eighteen I’d married and moved, returning only for visits that increasingly centered around weddings and funerals. In my heart of hearts, I never dreamed I’d go back to the Valley on any sort of permanent basis. It wasn’t that I didn’t love it there, I did. It was and would always be my heart’s home, but I needed a larger venue in which to grow—or so I’d always thought, until my most recent visit.

  It was a sunny afternoon in June.

  My daughter in law, Lisa, and I were driving aimlessly around the Valley in a last ditch attempt to put my tired grandbabies to sleep. We’d wound down a hill to the bridge that crossed the Elk River.

  There was a clear view of the idyllic riverside acreage where my cousin Tommy lived in a long, low white house. A huge red barn and other outbuildings sprawled across the five acres, all of it river frontage, all of it treed.

  “That place has been for sale for a while now,” Lisa commented. “Somebody’s missing a bet, it would make a perfect fishing lodge. The Elk is becoming famous for inland salmon. Fly fishermen are starting to come from everywhere to fish here, and they need places to launch their boats, somewhere to stay. That house is huge, Tommy’s done lots of renovating and he’s gone first class all the way. It would make a perfect lodge. And the barn could be used to store float boats and maybe house a place where fishermen could come and buy bait.”

  “What’s it listed for?”

  “Five hundred thousand. Nobody here will pay that for it, though. Tommy’s dreaming.”

  “Why is he selling?”

  “Erna’s not well, and she’s never liked it there. She’d rather be in town.”

  And in that instant, the rest of my life came clear to me. I would sell my house in Vancouver, buy Tommy’s place and be the Queen of the Elk. Well, considering my age, maybe the Queen Mother.

  Real estate in Vancouver was at an all time high. My modest house would probably sell in the low seven hundred thousands. I could pay off my mortgage, buy Tommy’s acreage and have some left over for renovations. I would be mortgage free, and I’d have more rooms to rent than I had in Vancouver, with a built in clientele. I would be free once and for all of my crippling money worries. I wouldn’t have to write three books a year.

  But I’d have to give up the Blue Collar, just when I’d established a steady clientele. I’d leave behind the Lost Boys, my garden, my writing studio, Dan and his family, my small circle of friends.

  I’d lose my anonymity: I was related to half of Sparwood, and the other half had attended writing seminars I’d put on for the local library. I was a minor celebrity in my home town, the first and only Sparwood High graduate to succeed as a novelist. I’d be closely watched and reported on every time I farted.

  On the other hand, I wouldn’t have Louie and Sam to contend with every day. Louie had become more and more difficult, appearing at my door sometimes seven or eight times a day, phoning me repeatedly if, God help me, I ignored the doorbell and hid in my room to escape him.

  He brought me gifts, flowers from my own garden, small kitchen things he didn’t use, lottery tickets with his name scrawled across them—if we won, he’d tell me ad nauseum, we’d fly to England. He had a cousin in England and he wanted to see her before he died.

  Poor man. I had compassion for him, but the daily strain of living next door to him was wearing me down. He made me promise a dozen times a week that if anything happened to him, I would adopt Sam.

  That promise was my worst nightmare. The rotten cat had grown meaner with age, hissing at me when I squirted him with a water bottle to try and prevent yet another smelly deposit in my garden, then giving me what I was certain were gloating looks from the safety of Louie’s arms.

  He’d sneaked in my house countless times and used his claws on the furniture. I’d caught him sleeping in the guest bedrooms, on the beds, which meant washing the duvet covers to rid them of hair and cat odor. Sadly, I wouldn’t miss Sam and Louie at all.

  But there was the monumental physical effort required for moving. I had a four bedroom house full of furniture, a studio filled with electronic equipment, and a three bedroom furnished suite to dismantle. The very thought of packing up all that stuff gave me a sick headache, but then I reminded myself that I didn’t have to pack it all in one day. I could work on just one box at a time.

  Most of this flashed through my mind in the time it took to put the babies to sleep in the car that afternoon.

  That evening, I went to see my cousin Tommy. Just to look, I told myself, even though part of me knew I’d already made up my mind.

  He showed me his lovely house. It was spacious and beautifully renovated from the original farmhouse, with expensive appliances, old cedar floors underneath wall to wall carpet, three bedrooms and two baths up and enormous potential in the semi finished dance hall sized area down.

  Granted, it had a few oddities, like the huge hot tub that had never been used, squatting smack in the middle of the massive living room. Why, I asked, hadn’t it ever been filled?

  “Erna doesn’t want the mess,” Tommy explained.

  That made sense. Erna was a fanatically clean housekeeper.

  “Your water’s sulfur.” I could smell it the moment I walked thru the back door.

  “There’s a water purifier.” Tommy took me to inspect it. It was in a large, immaculate room where the electrical panels and other controls were, and it looked a bit like the control center in 2001, A Space Odyssey. Without Hal.

  There was electric baseboard heating throughout the house, but the major source of heat was a huge burner in the barn which gobbled up six foot lengths of logs and sent hot water coursing through the pipes in the house.

  That gave me pause, because when it was minus 35 Celsius, I knew I would have to trek out to the barn to restock the burner. And there was the problem of the logs—they arrived as full length trees and Tommy cut them up. I’d have to hire someone to do that for me, or learn to use a power saw.

  “The burner only needs refueling once every twenty four hours,” Tommy assured me. “And the house is well insulated, it stays really warm. We’re blood, I’ll come and cut up log
s for you.”

  I looked around with an eye to running a lodge, and there was no doubt the house was eminently suitable. The location was the major asset. The land sloped gently down to the river, and weeping willows lined the banks. I had visions of waking up in the morning to the sound of the water and the birds.

  I’d have to put in bedrooms and another bathroom downstairs, but there was potential for at least eight spacious bedrooms. And the rough plumbing was in place. The view of the river was breathtaking from the front windows, which spanned the entire width of the house. There was a three car garage that could be subdivided into a studio, also overlooking the water. In my enthusiasm for the house, I forgot to take a look at the barn.

  I knew that Tommy, who distrusted lawyers and real estate agents, did everything on a handshake, and before I left we came to an agreement on price and shook hands on the deal.

  “When will you be moving out?” I knew he was going to build. I hoped he wouldn’t say immediately, because I had to close down the Blue Collar and sell my Vancouver house, which could take time.

  “I’m not sure yet. I hope to start construction on my new house this fall.”

  It was July. I did some quick calculations in my head. “So next summer would work for possession?”

  “Sure. Next summer.”

  And before I could quite catch up with myself, the deal was done. Of course I’d have to hire a surveyor, have a professional check out Tommy’s house, get things legally in writing. But basically, it was a done deal.

  I wanted to. I didn’t want to. I was afraid. I was excited. Change and growth go hand in hand, but change is terrifying. A wise man once counseled, Shift from fear to curiosity.

  That day, in that valley where I was born, fear was a raging dragon within me, but the curious part of me knew that coming home was not only right, but inevitable.

  As Mary Oliver writes in her poem, The Journey:

  One day you finally knew what you had to do and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice---

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  It was already late enough, and a wild night,

  And the road full of branches and stones.

  But little by little, as you left their voices behind,

  The stars began to burn through their sheets of clouds,

  And there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own.

  Mary Oliver, The Journey

  Back in the city, I had a crisis of indecision every single morning at two a.m.

  What was I doing, leaving my well-established B&B to move to the back of beyond? How did I know fishermen would find me? And what the hell did I know about fishing, or float boats, or bait? What if it cost me much more than I anticipated to have Tommy’s house renovated? What if I couldn’t sell mine for the amount I needed?

  And most pressing of all, when would Tommy give me a firm moving date? I’d called him several times, but couldn’t pin him down. He hadn’t even started building his new house.

  The Lost Boys figured I’d temporarily gone totally berserk and went AWOL until I came to my senses, all except Eric, who pointed out reasonably enough that real estate was rising, I could eventually make much more money if I waited, say, five years. I was beginning to think that’s how long it would take Tommy to build a house and move into it.

  My lawyer daughter-in-law was appalled. She warned that if I made this foolish move, I’d never be able to buy back into the Vancouver real estate market. She’d grown up in Sparwood. She reminded me of the long, cold winters, the lack of shopping. “You’ll have to drive to Calgary to even go to Ikea. The closest Costco is two hours away, and you practically live at Costco. You’re going to get there and find out you want to come back, and it’ll be too late.”

  My guests, most of whom were now regulars, begged me to stay. They loved it at the Blue Collar, where would they go if I closed down? Why did I think I needed to move?

  Only my two best friends, Pat and Bev, quietly advised me to follow that insistent voice deep inside which was urging me, in the face of almost everything logical, to move to Sparwood. They’d miss me, but in our mutual search for integrity, peace, joy and some meaning to this shmozzle, they felt I needed to pay heed to what my spirit was telling me.

  “Trust your intuition,” they urged. “You are the only one who knows what’s right for you.”

  It was the same advice we’d given each other through three divorces, Pat’s near marriage to Forbes, (which Bev and I suspected might be disastrous. Pat came to her senses in the nick of time.) There was Bev’s decision to quit nursing and take up shiatsu massage—she’s since gone back to nursing part time--and that time I went to Mexico on a holiday with Ron and fell madly in love with Roberto, the hotel manager. I used up a dozen phone cards that time, calling Pat and Bev at all hours of the day and night, because Ron threatened suicide before he flew home alone, and Roberto turned out to be not just alcoholic, but high on good quality pot most of the time. Still, he was a beautiful man, and I’ve never been sorry.

  There was also that time I rode a pedal bike over the Pyrenees with a broken wrist, following a man I soon labeled Attila the Hun. I’d honestly believed a still, small voice was sending me on a pilgrimage. And in retrospect, it was.

  So sometimes intuition wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, but through every misadventure, our friendship never faltered, and somehow we came through each crises stronger, wiser, and with our funny bones not only intact but raised to another level.

  Regardless, I talked to a real estate agent, just to get an idea what was what. The news was good and bad.

  Real estate was at an all time high, and my west side address was bonus. The garden and the studio were hot selling points, but in order to reap the full benefit of a top end sale, the house, a robin’s egg blue, needed a coat of paint. The front stairway needed replacing. (I found myself wishing Donnie had gotten around to that before I dumped him.)

  No matter how popular the Blue Collar had become, I couldn’t sell the place as a business because I’d never had a legal license to operate a B&B. In my own defense, I’d tried hard to be legal, meticulously putting in fire extinguishers, metal waste baskets, locks on the upstairs windows, baseboard lighting that led to the bathrooms, stupid maps on the back of every door clearly showing fire escape routes. There were only two—out the window, or down the stairs, and you’d have to be seriously challenged not to figure that out.

  But the Vancouver by laws also insisted I had to have two parking spaces on site in order to qualify for a license, and that killed the deal. It meant tearing down the studio and filling in the pond in the back garden, then covering Mavis’s prize day lilies with cement and knocking a hole in my lovely red fence. I wasn’t prepared to go to those lengths. I was fairly certain it would push Mavis over the edge into full blown psychosis.

  I also knew that unless someone lodged a complaint, the city didn’t bother closing down unlicensed B&Bs. Besides Louie and Sammy, I had the best neighbors in the world. They minded their business and turned a blind eye to mine, so I’d blithely operated the Blue Collar for five years on the shady side of the law.

  Meanwhile, the summer was half over, and I guessed that summer was the prime time for selling, if I was going to, with my garden in full bloom. I was increasingly restless. I’d made the decision to move to Sparwood, and I wanted to get on with it.

  At two a.m. one morning, I asked myself if I’d still move if I took Tommy out of the picture. I made a list of my other reasons for moving.

  Finances were at the top, with the promise of earning a living running a fishing camp and not having to write.

  My Sparwood family was next. They wanted me with them, and they’d been over the top enthusiastic and supportive and encouraging and eager.

  And less rational but most insistent of all was the ever growing conviction in my gut that this was what I was meant to do at this point in my life, whether I knew exactly why or not. I kept reminding
myself that we never know what anything is for. The urge to go home was becoming stronger with each day that passed.

  But I didn’t have Tommy’s house to move into, and it didn’t look as if it was going to happen anytime soon. And then an idea came to me in one of my freak-out sessions.

  Compared to real estate prices in Vancouver, houses in Sparwood were still dirt cheap. Maybe I could buy a fixer upper of a house right now, hire my son David, who wasn’t working at the moment, to renovate it with me, and then sell it at a profit in a year or whenever Tommy finally made a move.

  Chances were good I’d make money on the deal—Fernie ski hill was gradually pushing local property prices up. But it would mean two major moves instead of one.

  Well, if I moved once, I could do it again, using my theory that the more a person did something, the better they became at doing it. Even if it embodied their worst nightmare. Moving was not my favorite pastime.

  So I drove to Sparwood the following weekend and bought a house in an afternoon. It was fifty five years old, ten years younger than me. It was a one story, solidly built structure with a large but unfinished basement.

  There was a long porch at the back that could be enclosed to become a studio. The location was perfect, right in town. It needed a lot of upgrading, but the basement had high ceilings and the potential for three bedrooms, common area, and bath. There were another three bedrooms and bath on the main floor, although the bathroom needed renovating.

  The lot was large, with six big pines bordering the front sidewalk. There was a pathetic looking lawn, overgrown and patchy. The back garden had a garage and no garden or fence. The space had been converted to a gravel parking lot, open to the alley.

  Needs landscaping, I marked on my to-do list with remarkable constraint.