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28 hotel rooms, bu nary a one to rent

COALMONT — This town once had seven churches and now it can barely support a single bar room, which makes you wonder how far downhill is down for 2 town of

20,000 people.

At this time of year the bar room is the only functioning por- tion of the imposing, three-storey Coa!mont Hotel. In the middle of a weckday afternoon the staff number two, Dwight Picul and his wife Marianne. Customers number zero.

-*There are only 79 people still living here,’ reports Marianne. “But of course it changes in summer, we g0 up to a population of maybe 400 around here.’’

Of the off-season population she reports 16 are children, some of whom are bused to Princeton for school and others to nearby Tulameen. Tulameen is almost as deserted as Coalmont but has re- tained enough humans to qualify for a school with Grades 1 to 3.

Dwight suggests that Marianne has miscounted the children, there are only 14 because a family with two kids moved away. She says yes but there’s been one new baby in Coalmont so the count of 15 is fair.

Why are Dwight and Marianne here? Why have they run this hotel for six years?

It isn’t the money, it’s the charm. Soon after taking over the hotel operation, Marianne wrote her mother “I have finally found the town for me; only four stop signs and they're all on the same corner.”’

Near Stop Sign Junction is a large sign that reads:

“COALMONT POPULATION: Varies IN- DUSTRY: None CHIEF SPORTS: Sleeping and Day Dreaming CLIMATE: Hot Cold Wet Dry at Various Times

COALMONT CAFE AND

STORE Welcomes You and Wiil Be Delighted to Serve You.”

Until last year there was another line added to the welcome which read ‘Provided You Are Lucky Enough to Find Us In.”

This has deen removed because nobody is ever again going to be lucky enough to find the pro- prietors in. The cafe and store is closed, like all the other stores, churches, jails, brothels, gas pumps and biacksmith shops.

The hotel has six or eight cans of beans and a few other groceries available to the hopelessly im-

Paul st. Pierre

provident traveller, but that’s all.

There is no cafe, although it is expected that a portion of the hotel’s ground floor will be used for one during tourist season, which is May 25 to Thanksgiving.

There are also no rooms avail- able at the Coalmont Hotel. All those on the third floor were shut in 1931 when an explosion in the town’s coal mine killed 45 miners, a catastrophe that put the great Blakeburn mine into decline and, in 1940, death. .

The second-floor rooms were put off-bounds by government in- spectors a few years ago because of one shortcoming or another.

“Occasionally if somebody has too much to drink in the bar, I put him to bed upstairs in one of those rooms, but that’s so he won't kill himeelf driving back to Princeton,’’ says Dwight. ‘‘We don’t charge anything for that service.””

At the moment not only is no- body drinking too much at the bar, nobody is drinking anything. Marianne takes the opportunity to offer a tour of the rooms on the second floor, some of which have the 1922 wallpaper. .

‘*The women’s rooms are on the right of the stairs and the men’s rooms on the left,”’ she points out.

**What about married people or other people who weren’t married but were friendly instead?”

**We don’t know, but they got together somehow. When Liz Brown ran the hotel in the ’30s

Arrests made in WV purse thefts

TWO WOMEN face charges after a West Vancouver Police in- vestigation into a rash of purse thefts resulted in arrests April 23.

By Michael Becker News Reporter

Lower Mainland police are cur- rently investigating a string of purses purloincd from schools

’ throughout North and West Van-

couver, Vancouver and Rich- mond.

The boosted purses often con- tained credit cards and cheques.

The arrests came when an employee of the Park Royal South Royal Bank branch tipped off police about the (wo suspects, The make of the vehicle used by the two was noted and passed on to police.

Police alerted loca! schools to be on the lookout for the suspects, who were then spotted at Pauline Johnson Elementary

School.

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Their car, a yellow 1974 Ford Maverick, was pulled over by police in the 1800-block of Marine Drive.

Police subsequently recovered credit cards taken earlier that day from a purse stolen at Highlands Community School in North Van- couver,

A five-year-old boy and a three-year-old girl, the children of one of the suspects, have been apprehended by police and placed in the custody of a relative.

Rhonda Beth Gaynor, 26, of New Westminster, faces three charges of theft under $1,000, two charges of uttering a forged document, two charges of posses- sion of a stolen credit card, and a narcotic possession charge.

Police found there were out standing warrants in effect for the arrest of Gaynor by police in Vancouver, Coquitlam and Port Moody.

Colleen Agnus Sinclair, 31, of Richmond, is charged with possession of a narcotic.

PAULITICS & PERSPECTIVES

she was noted for tying cowbells under the springs of beds which she rented to newlyweds.””

And what do the 79 inhabitants of Coalmont do now?

Well, as you might expect that newborn baby is doing damn all, but the older kids have good tines in this lovely, good natured little corner of the great Otter Valley, beside the rusting tracks of the abandoned Kettle Valley rail line. Here, everybody looks out for one another and the idea of childresi being in danger from molesters or murderers is as remote as the far side of the moon.

Of the adults, some are retired and tend their gardens. Some, who hold four-days-on and four- days-off jubs, work in Vancouver, which is now only three hours driving time distant. At Ieast one old-timer still makes some doilars panning gold in the nearby creeks. Others just get along, somehow. Land is cheap and so are old houses. The hotel itself is up for sale, cheap.

And although the commercial life of Coalmont is almost extinct there is, in nearby Tulameen, a year-round grocery store called the Trading Post, known to locals as West Tulameen Mali. But never mind Tulameen. This is a day for sitting in Coalmont Hotel, waiting to see if a customer turns up.

Unique ideas —

Day

Friday, May 3, 1991 - North Shore News ~ 9 THE DESIRABLE TRADES ARE AT: Mercedes-Benz

es evrth hove

See North Shore News Classified Automotive this issue. |

1375 MARINE DR,N.VAN. _984-9351

FOR SALE BY POSTING 12 RESIDENTIAL BUILDING LOTS

THE CORPORATION OF THE DISTRICT OF NORTH VANCOUVER

7 Cul-de-sac Lots - Hixon Place/Hixon Court Minimum Acceptable Price $153,000

Indian River -

Braemar - § Lots - Dempsey Road

Minimum Acceptable Price $175,000-$180,000

Seaied bids will be accepted until 2:00 p.m. Friday, May 10, 1991. .

Bid packages must be picked up at the District Land Department, 355 West Queens Road, North Vancouver, B.C. V7N 2K6. For further information, telephone Mr. Neil Carlisle at 987-7131.

THE HIGHEST OR ANY OFFER WILL NOT NECESSARILY BE ACCEPTED.

and innovative gift

3 perfect for Mother's & Father’s Day

Sale Ends May 5th/91

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only at th

obby Dazzier

| ILE T ETE

e Park Royal South location