MAPLE CREEK, Sask. — The history of a century-old landmark in Maple Creek is the story of a community bringing back its western heritage.
Tina Cresswell, co-owner of the Star Cafe and Grill in Maple Creek, said her building has deep ties to the community.
“It’s going back to your roots and finding the culture and celebrating that culture,” she said.
Constructed in the late 1890s, the two-storey fieldstone building originally started its life as the Medical Hall, a pharmacy with living quarters upstairs.
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Around 1926, the Beesley family moved in and operated Beesley’s Groceria and later, Beesley’s Dual Service Groceria.
The store was sold in 1979 and closed about two years later.
Past renovations included eliminating the middle wall and digging a basement. The walls were covered with wood panelling and a drop ceiling was installed, as well as fluorescent lights, indoor-outdoor carpeting and single pane aluminum windows.
In 1987, Gene Lee purchased the building and started the Star Cafe. An addition was built for the kitchen and more living quarters were added on the second floor.
Run down and under hard times, the building and business came on the market in 2006, at which time Cresswell and husband, Dave Turner, purchased it.
“Gene Lee was going to close the restaurant and sell the building and we jumped on it because it’s a heritage building and we’re very much in the heritage business,” said Cresswell.
That was when they embraced their journey into the past so they would have a future in Maple Creek.
While stripping down the insides, they found the original V-groove on the walls and ceilings. Most of the door frames were still intact, as well as the original red and green transom front windows.
Cresswell remembers the day their son-in-law asked them to see what lay behind the back wall.
“They’d already found so much that he figured there would be a great find there,” she said.
Behind the pink insulation was the original stone wall with all the headers over the doors and the frost protectors.
“They’re all 115-year-old fir.”
A wooden replica of a long bar was added, built using a photograph of the original bar from the old Commercial Hotel in town.
“I think it makes a statement and sets the tone for the restaurant.”
Engineers had to delicately jack up the interior, which had sunk about six inches in the middle.
“After the (Maple Creek) flood in 2010, the same engineer came in to look at the building and said if we had not done that, the building would have caved in through the middle and it would have been lost to the community,” she said.
“It’s been through the wars and it’s out through the other side now. I believe it will last for another 100 years.”
The Star Cafe and Grill opened in 2007 and soon started getting good reviews.
Cresswell and Turner are at the forefront of a burgeoning heritage movement in Maple Creek.
Royce Pettyjohn, manager of community and economic development/mainstream development co-ordinator for Maple Creek, said there hadn’t been heritage conservation in a commercial building in downtown Maple Creek prior to their project.
