Ymir, BC - Hotel Ymir

Old Saloon - Biker Bar - Art Gallery?

Here's the thing about Ymir. 

If you're just driving through, you might think that it is a little nothing pit stop in between Nelson and America. A one-horse town with a hotel, a few stores and a handful of cute little homes nestled in some pretty mountains. 

But tiny towns in the Kootenays aren't like that - they're different from what you can imagine small towns are like elsewhere. 

Like, the stereotypical idea of small towns is that they're conservative, out of touch, isolated, bad gas station coffee, nothing to do and no one to see. 

When you stop in a small town in the Kootenays, however, you're not going to find Van Houtte coffee pods filling up the carafes at the coffee station. There'll be a sign offering organic fair trade coffee from non-conflict countries. You'll see an old hippy in her sixties hitchhiking on the side of the road with grey dreadlocks down to her ankles. You'll find a retirement home with an irreverent name and a cheeky sign flipping the bird. 

I Was a Slocan Valley Hippie for the FBI

Having grown up in Rossland, and with a musician Dad that lived his whole life in the West Kootenays and played at every venue in every town in the land, we got to explore a lot of these little places. 

Over the years you sort of collect adventures that sound like a magical lie: visiting the glass house, driving past the scrapyard with the metal dinosaur made out of old gears, the sand dunes in the trees on the side of the road, the stretch of highway that inexplicably has neckties tied around every electrical pole, the bus graveyard in the woods. There are a million little weird hidden gems all over the place that, I think, make the West Kootenays different and special. 

One of my favourite adventures me and my dad took in recent years, was driving to Ymir on a whim after visiting Nelson for the day. 

"We should go to Ymir. I wanna show you something," my dad says. 

I have nothing to do, I'm on break from school, my sole purpose is to spend time with Pops, and if I'm honest, at this point in life it's been a minute since we've gone on a good old fashioned Dad Adventure. 

I'm immediately in. 

It's only like a 20-25 minute drive down Highway 6 to get there from Nelson, and it's a beautiful Fall day. I'm curious what this little detour is all about, and about ten minutes into our drive my dad starts to tell me. 

A few months ago, his band were invited to play a gig at the Hotel Ymir. They'd played there years before when it was a rough and tumble biker bar - I'm talking tire marks burned on the hardwood floors from the smoke shows the bikers used to do in the main bar type of rough. They played one gig there in the 80s and that was enough - never again. 

"So what changed?" I asked. 

"There's a new owner - German guy - and he's really done something interesting with the place..."

He sort of trailed off and wouldn't go into any further details regardless of my prodding.

"It'll ruin the surprise!"

I'm so curious at this point, I can't help but be relieved when I start to see small houses pop up and we start to see the beginnings of the town through the trees. 

We pull up in front of this old, white, clapboard building. It's the biggest structure in town, and so far I'm unimpressed. It looks like it hasn't seen an update in about 50 years, but even though my internal judge-o-meter is firing on all cylinders, I know my dad wouldn't take me somewhere and be so cagey about details if it wasn't at least going to be interesting.

Built in 1896, it's the oldest continually operating Hotel/Inn in the Kootenays.

Boy, was I right. 

Every single wall and surface was covered in art. I mean like indigenous carvings, sweeping landscapes with farmers harvesting mystery crops, palm trees against turquoise waters. But also clear depictions of Vancouver Island, mountains here in the Kootenays, rushing rivers through steep wooded passes. Art is actually absolutely everywhere. 

But the bones of the hotel are still very there - the furniture hasn't really been updated in quite some time. and things do look a little mismatched. But the sheer volume of artwork is so overwhelming, it's instantly wondrous to behold. 

I was so confused. What were all of these original paintings and carvings from what appears to be all over the world, doing in an old biker bar in Ymir of all places? 

"He bought it to house his art!" my dad says proudly with a smile. 

Hans Wilking bought the Hotel Ymir in 2005. Born in Germany, he lived for 45 years on Vancouver Island, running a plant nursery in Duncan. He's been collecting art his whole life, and purchased the works of some of the most famous Canadain artists, many of whom were based on the Island and who he had befriended along the way. When he retired, he needed somewhere to house it all and came across the Hotel Ymir. 

Here are some of the artists in cluded in Hans' collection: 

Norval Morriseau
CM RCA, also known as Copper Thunderbird, was an Indigenous Canadian artist from the Bingwi Neyaashi Anishinaabek First Nation. He is widely regarded as the grandfather of contemporary Indigenous art in Canada

Edward John Hughes
CM OBC RCA was a Canadian painter, known for his images of the land and sea in British Columbia. 

Allan W Edwards
He was noted for the interior design work he did for large scale hotels and produced paintings for the rooms. In 1977 he played a key roll in the resurgence of the Federation of Canadian Artists and organized and instructed its art classes for over a decade.  

Joseph Plaskett
OC RCA was a Canadian painter famous for still life paintings. In 2001 he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada for his “excellence in the field of visual art”.

Andrew W. Wooldridge
Based in Victoria, he enjoyed a long and successful 40-year career as a professional painter, ever appreciative of doing the work he loved best. He lived and exhibited in England, Israel and Australia before visiting BC in 1984, and becoming a proud Canadian in 1987. 

John H. Dyson
Born in England in 1910. He showed up in Vancouver in the 1940's and was active in the 50's and 60's art scene. He exhibited work in the 1949 Stanley Park in Pictures exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

Agnes Veronica Ketter Warren
A contemporary of Emily Carr, Warren studied at the Vancouver School of Art from 1927 to 1928 and at the University of Saskatchewan from 1930 to 1934. She became a member of the Royal Society of Arts in London, England in the early 1950’s.

We took a tour of some of the rooms and talked to the woman working there a little about how this all came to be. We stayed for a hot beverage and looked around a bit more before thanking her and and heading back to the car. I had a big smile on my face the whole time because this was the perfect Dad Adventure in one of the most unique places on the planet. 

BC you absolute legend. Never change.