Squilax General store at 299 Trans-Canada Hwy, Chase.
Image Credit: SUBMITTED/ Valerie Walsh
February 21, 2023 - 2:00 AM
You might be surprised to discover the colourful history behind a small, brick building on the side of the Trans-Canada Highway in the Shuswap, and the imaginative hostel on the other side of it.
The front of the Squilax General Store and Hostel just east of Chase has an antiquated look with a worn out sign and chipped wooden door.
“People are curious about it for sure,” owner Blair Acton said. “Even when I have an open sign out they still think it is not open. Someone once took my aging dog thinking it was abandoned.”
Acton has owned the store and the hostel beside it since 1993 and operates the business along the Little Shuswap River in the spring, summer and fall.
Up until the onset of the COVID pandemic the little store was a hub for members of the community where she was running a mini market selling locally made produce and dry goods. In behind the store front, hidden from the highway, is a hostel where guests stay in old CN Rail cabooses.
“I spent years backpacking and working overseas so I wanted to open a hostel,” Acton said. “We obtained the cabooses in 1991 when they were no longer on the end of trains like they used to be. It is on a four-acre property that we don’t like to advertise as it is only for guest use.”
An adventure traveller with a YouTube channel created a video of his experience staying in a caboose. “Not only is the location on the river but the cabooses are still in original condition as they were when working for CN Rail,” he said in the video.
Recently local historian and author Jim Cooperman found old letters and documents from the Squilax General Store in an abandoned barn, which had been left there by his now deceased friend who had leased the store nearly four decades ago.
Cooperman detailed the history of the building that included a fire and a murder in its beginnings only to prosperity as a community hub and post office in the mid-1900s, in his blog Shuswap Passion.
"People are interested in the store, it was popular on my blog," he said. "That was in January when the weather was cold and I couldn't get out to do interviews for my new book. I'd found the old papers last fall and was amazed when I took a closer look at them."
Cooperman included old photos and an exchange of letters mostly between the district superintendent and the store owner and postmaster Mr. Cliff Herring, along with a list of names and occupations of local citizens receiving mail at the time.
According to Cooperman, most of the letters were about problems around the use of the catch post — where bags of outgoing mail were transferred to moving trains and incoming mail was tossed from them — getting damaged or lost. Those problems were resolved in 1947 when the train started stopping at the Squilax Station. Almost a decade later road improvements allowed mail to be moved by vehicles.
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The hostel is opening for the season on May 1, and Acton is considering reopening the store to use for community events.
She said the store is important to the local Secwepemc community that had great relationships with the store owners in the past. Members of the original family who owned the store still come by to visit once in a while.
You can find more information on the store and hostel here.
— This story was originally published Monday, Feb. 20, 2023.
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