Egremont Hotel
BP 1.0: Hidden Gem Tavern at the Egremont Hotel, Egremont Alberta. Visited in July 2022 & the very first stop for the Beer Parlour Project. Team: Rob, Chris & Connie. Cameras used: 4×5″ Ebony Film, Canon 70D & Panasonic GX85.
It begins. Presenting the very first location visited in a special series planned long ago and after a few false starts, here it became reality. The concept is simple: the Team drops by small town old-school hotel pubs (a dying breed, by the way) to chat with locals, soak up the ambience, and capture a little Canadiana. It’s the people and their stories shared at the local watering hole, with images captured on digital and film.
It’s a group of photographers, completely green in this style of work, jumping in blindly. Not fearlessly, but reserved and yet quietly confident. We know we’re on to something here and this becomes both a driving force and teacher. We’ll stumble, trip and sometimes fall, but we’ll make it work.
The Egremont Hotel in Egremont Alberta, a bit north of Edmonton, holds title as BP #1. We’re at the Hidden Gems Tavern: the beers are cold, the burgers amazing and No-Shirt Alvin had us in stitches. His stories and insights were hilarious.
Alvin is obliged to cover up when in the tavern, but otherwise most of the year is sans any top clothing. Locals run an informal pool when he’ll finally don something with sleeves and it’s usually not until well into fall.
The Egremont Hotel is from the 1940s and an old history books shows it’s little different in appearance today than when built. It’s fairly typical of the era and rather utilitarian in form. Yet to those with a thirst it’s something beautiful and inside it holds many lifetime’s worth of memories. We hope to capture a few.
Egremont dates back to about 1908, but didn’t really spring to life until the railway line up to Fort McMurray came through in 1912. Today it has a population of about four dozen. The Egremont Hotel used to be the centrepiece of a vibrant downtown but now it’s the last business remaining. A general store, lumber yard, pool hall, garage, cafe, and hardware all could be found on this same street, but they’re all gone even if some of the old buildings remain.
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