Don is a consummate host; Ryan is friendly yet more reserved. Don smiles broadly with each statement he makes, and he takes the time to listen to questions. When he drifts off topic, he redirects his answers to the question that was originally asked. He was either born to welcome people to an establishment or he learned the skills of hosting during the decades he managed the inn.
“When things were quiet, people would come in and hug my wife,” Don says. “We never had an argument at work for thirty years. It was not quite so peaceful at home.”
“She was well liked,” Ryan adds. “She made sure to ask how you were doing. We still have people asking about both Don and Dorothea.” Running the business in the 1980s and 1990s was very different than in the 2000s. Don speaks of the friendship that his community and business developed with the locals, a predominantly First Nations community. Until 2015, the inn gave credit to regulars for gas and food, and in the 1980s and 1990s, there was a music school in the Shepherd’s Christian Society community and the inn hosted a weekly Friday night music-and-dinner event that ran for eleven years. The evening would start at five thirty and close down at a respectable nine o’clock at night.
“The first manager, his wife had a music school and they had a concert every night,” Don says. “People would call to ask, ‘Is the band playing tonight?’”
The inn didn’t sell alcohol and didn’t allow smoking in the restaurant.
“It was an illegal act [at that time], we didn’t care,” Don says. “One lady come in from Ontario with her daughter—when she found out she couldn’t have a cigarette with her pie, she was ready to hang me. I comped her pie.”
After the 1990s, the bus-tour and RV-caravan traffic slowed down, but the oil and gas industry boomed, and there was an increase in work crews travelling through the area. The recent downturn in the oil and gas industry is evident along the southern end of the Alaska Highway. From Dawson Creek to Buckinghorse River, lodges that became reliant on the industry have had a decline in business, and some have even closed completely.
The change in the inn’s customer base is reflected in the decision to convert the dining room—which is no longer needed to accommodate large groups—into a C-store.
“We’re still seeing some work crews, [but] 2016 is the slowest year we’ve had in a long time,” says Ryan. “Business as a whole is down about 35 percent because of change in the oil and gas industry.”
Don has a pragmatic way of looking at the unpredictability of a resource-based economy upon which the business has been partially dependant.
“Whenever it would go soft in the oil patch, we’d go down with it,” he says. “We’d cut back on our expenses. If you’re in business you have to be very aware of what’s going on around you, so you can match it and try to stay either even or ahead of it, but don’t get behind it, or down you go. It was pretty close some years.” He speaks as if imparting an important lesson to his successor.
Over the last thirty years, the Shepherd’s Inn has seen all kinds of travellers. In 2015 and 2016, there was an aged cyclist riding the length of the highway who has become a legend among the lodge owners.
“We had this one guy come through, he was riding his bike,” Don says. “He was over eighty years old. He sat at this table, he could hardly get his face over his breakfast bowl, he was that bent over from riding. His son was supporting him and he was riding to Vancouver. He stopped here overnight. He was quite a gentleman.”
Among the visitors is a whole subcategory of what Don calls “highway travellers in need.”
“In the past we’ve had to help a lot of people out—give out free rooms,” says Ryan. “In the last three weeks I’ve had about a dozen requests for free gas—people travelling the highway and running out of money.”
Sometimes people take advantage of the hosts’ generosity: one man asked Ryan to endorse a fraudulent cheque; a group of cyclists received a discount rate but then stole from the rooms. One time, a man’s car broke down in the parking lot; he promised to get it fixed but abandoned it instead. Don and Ryan can rattle off an endless list of minor irritations that they appear to accept as part of the price of doing business.
During 2015 and 2016, the society renovated the front of the motel, and there are plans to upgrade the rooms. “If business picks up, we want to upgrade our fuel system—get a canopy,” Ryan says. “Maybe start some more businesses for people in the community and go from there.”
A close community of people are dependent on the long-term viability of the Shepherd’s Inn, and the inn’s ability to adapt to the fluctuations and changes in clientele has served the business well. But it’s Don’s attitude toward the relationship between the business and the customer that offers insight into why the inn has grown and survived since the early 1980s. “You gotta know the pulse of your business,” he says, “in order for your customer to understand that pulse.”
Previous images: Korey Ollenberger and Lory Dille bought Pink Mountain Campsite and RV Park in 2000. The couple met in the mid-1990s when Lory was working as a cook at Mile 175 Buckinghorse River Lodge.
Previous images: Korey Ollenberger and Lory Dille also acquired Sikanni Chief (this page) in 2013. “[Pink Mountain] was really busy with the oil patch, the campers and everything,” says Lory. “We needed more space, plus there’s water wells [at Sikanni Chief] in the back, which benefited our trucking company.”
Mile 175 Buckinghorse River Lodge
The Buckinghorse River Bridge crosses over a narrow, whiskey-coloured body of water that travels west to east. Depending on the snowmelt, rainfall and time of year, it flows fast and high up the banks, or it’s the opposite. On a mowed grassy rise north of the bridge, on the west side of the highway, there are four signs: Bucking Horse River “Just Good Homestyle Food,” reads one, and below it, Buckinghorse River Lodge “Eat at the Buck” and Over 1,000 Truckers Can’t Be Wrong. To the right of an AFD cardlock sign, an automated fuelling depot that is accessed using a fuel card (like a credit card), is a For Sale notice.
Previous images: Vel and Howard Shannon have owned Buckinghorse River Lodge since the mid-1990s. Howard (pictured at bottom) swears that the lodge is only as popular as it is due to his wife’s cooking.
In 1999, Vel and Howard Shannon bought Mile 175 Buckinghorse River Lodge with Howard’s son, Lance, and his wife, Kim. Vel and Howard are now the sole proprietors. When they bought the lodge, it was in need of a lot of repairs. Although the Shannons have put a lot of time and money into renovations, Howard insists it’s the menu that really put the lodge on the map. “The lodge is as well known as it is because of Vel’s cooking,” Howard says. “It’s all her homemade recipes—that’s why people come back.” Over one thousand truckers can’t be wrong.
“For Sale” signs are a common sight along the Alaska Highway.
The Shannons took a roundabout route