“Don’t drive by, not every time. Stop for a second look. Look around. Take a breath. It’s later than you think.” These are the words of the late Cam Fuller (1963-2018), a long-time columnist for the Saskatoon StarPhoenix, written shortly after a fire destroyed the hotel in Kyle on May 16, 2018. “There’s a lesson for me in the Kyle Hotel fire,” Fuller mused. Perhaps there is a lesson there for all of us.
On May 14, 2018, Fuller was driving along Highway 4 between Swift Current and Rosetown. For some reason – a reporter’s curiosity perhaps – he decided to stop for lunch in Kyle, a town he had passed by on that stretch of highway many times. He knew about the statue of the 12,000-year-old woolly mammoth, unearthed at Kyle during highway construction in the 1960s.
“And then,” Fuller wrote, “I can’t even say why, I take a picture of the hotel on the corner — ‘Suites with kitchens, daily, weekly and monthly rates’ — a plain white stucco building with a sign advertising ice for sale, the lettering on the word ‘ICE’ topped by snow.” Two days later, he was shocked to learn that the Kyle Hotel was gone – destroyed by fire – “72 years of history gone in 90 minutes.”
“New Hotel is Opened at Kyle,” the headline read in the Dec. 31, 1940 issue of the Regina Leader-Post. “The owners, Hesla Bros., have spared no expense in making this one of the most comfortable hostelries in the province,” the story reads. The hotel had 15 guest rooms, a dining room, and a beer parlour.
Roy and Henry Hesla, sons of Thor and Thea Hesla from Norway, were born in Outlook and grew up on the family farm near Kyle. Roy was the owner/proprietor of the Kyle Hotel for 20 years before moving with his family to Penticton, B.C., in 1968. The dining room at the hotel was managed by Mr. and Mrs. O. Anderson during the 1960s.
On Oct. 17, 1964, a bulldozer operated by a road construction crew unearthed the biggest thing ever to hit Kyle – rare fossils of a woolly mammoth determined to be about 12,000 years old. That fall, about 20,000 people, including archaeologists, newspaper reporters and curious spectators flooded into the small town of approximately 500 people. It must have been great time for business at the Kyle Hotel. In 1981, “Wally” the Woolly Mammoth was erected across the street from the hotel as a roadside attraction to commemorate the find. The bones of the woolly mammoth are now housed at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum in Regina.
Shortly before it burned down, the Kyle Hotel offered five two-bedroom suites, four modern rooms, and 12 semi-modern rooms – meaning they only had “the basics.” Catering mainly to hunters, the hotel featured a coin-operated laundry, movie rentals, and a walk-in fridge/freezer for game. In addition to beer and spirits, the hotel beverage room had a steak pit, takeout food from the Kyle Cafe, VLTs and offsale.
After the fire had reduced the Kyle Hotel to ashes, the town’s mayor, Doug Barker. told the Leader-Post the hotel had been a mainstay of the community.
“At six o’clock in the morning, the men always went down there for coffee,” he said. “Then at 10 o’clock the women all took over.”
Long-time Kyle resident and business owner, Wanda Brown, told the newspaper that its destruction was “a terrible blow” to the community. “It’s a meeting place. It’s a gathering place,” she said. “When I was young … that’s where we were all so excited to have our first legal drink.”
So, next time you’re driving past a small town, heed the words of Cam Fuller. Stop in and take a look around. You never know what you’ll find. Or when it might be too late.
