Lakeview Hotel and Original Waskesiu Lake Lodge

The Lakeview Hotel was built in 1930 and enlarged the next year. Over the years, it had many different owners, operators, and renovations which even added an underground parking garage at one point. For many years, the Owl’s Nest bar was the local hot spot for young people. In the 1980s Barb and Joe Krieg kept it open year round and hosted a special New Year’s Eve party with a buffet.

According to Joe’s tradition, people tossed their champagne glasses at midnight into the massive stone fireplace. Joe used the resulting melted glass as a free form sculpture on the breakfast buffet table the next day. Joe sold a spice that he used in his kitchen as Swiss Joe’s Seasoned Salt. It is still available for purchase today.

The Hotel was rebuilt into suites in 2015-17.

The Waskesiu Lodge was one of the first commercial accommodations constructed in the townsite and contained a dance hall, lunch counter, and store as well. It was enlarged in 1931 but was unfortunately lost to fire in 1954

with only the stone fireplace left standing.

“Original Waskesiu Lodge was a beautiful log structure with a huge stone fireplace. The Lodge consisted of a rotunda whose ceiling was the roof of the two story structure. Small rooms were on the second floor, opening off a balcony extending out over the rotunda. On the main level there was a frame structure added to the west side of the building divided into three or four rooms. On the east side, there was also a frame structure added to the building which housed the Madden’s Grocery. The grocery had a counter extending the north south length of the building, behind which merchandise was displayed on shelves. The competition between the only stores, Madden’s Grocery and the Arcade Store, was fierce.”

J.W.H. Sanderson, Q.C., Waskesiu Memories, Volume I, edited by Dorell Taylor

Lily (McKay) James wrote about working with her friend Blanche at the Lodge in 1931 in Waskesiu Memories Volume III.

“I was born in Duck Lake, Saskatchewan, in 1913. I was seventeen going on eighteen when I went to work up at Waskesiu Lodge. I think it was in May they opened. I went out there in June. They had this big summer resort place where in the middle of the Lodge building was a big dance hall. On the left hand side was a grocery store and a post office all combined….On the right side, in the dining room, they had about six booths along the wall and the cook, he had his kitchen at the back there. In the afternoon we’d take orders for the people. They didn’t serve big meals. It was mostly maybe toast or bran muffins, blueberry muffins, butter tarts—that sort of thing—that they served. Well, if they were busy in the restaurant we’d be working in there and when we weren’t busy then from there we’d go over and work in the grocery store.

"They used to have 'Jitney Dances' at night, five cents a dance. So Blanche and I’d be selling tickets as the people were going in. I had one cash register and she had the other. In order to dance you had to have a ticket. The guy on the inside would collect the tickets each dance. People even used to come, want us to dance. So, I would let Blanche go dance with them and I’d take over her cash register or she for me. We had a lot of fun. There would be a live band playing any kind of music you wanted of that time. It was good.”

The joys and challenges of wildlife guests

Memories of Waskesiu Lodge

(These memories are by Harold Madden, son of Edward Madden, the original owner of the Waskesiu Lodge, and written in 1990 in cooperation with Harold's son Wayne. Contributed to the Museum in 2025.

The following are excerpts. Click on the button for the complete memoir.)

Throughout the whole summer, bears were plentiful. Of course, due to the way garbage was handled in those days, they were in every garbage can right behind the place and didn't think twice of knocking a screen through and coming right into the kitchen if they smelled food. So there were different times they entered the kitchen area to obtain food. If you happened to have set a tent up any place, you had to be careful it wasn't in one of their walkways because they would just walk in one side and out the other side. That even happened down on the main campground where it was laid out as a campground. Everybody fed the bears.

There were deer. In the early days up there, you didn't have poser, so anything kept cold, even ice cream, was kept cold by ice. You had to pack your ice cream in salt with ice tamped around it. When you drained that, all the water that came out of there was salty. The deer and all the wild animals woud come up to the at general area, where that water would run off, as a salt lick. There were always deer around there. There were also moose and elk.

Then of course, before the tourists came in and after the tourists left, the foxes would come in. There wouldn't be too many of them when there were masses of tourists, but when there were just a few individuals, they would come around all the time.

You always had a major problem with squirrels. They could find any kind of hole to get into the place and, of course, if stuff wasn't fully protected, they would stock them selves up on groceries.

One time, we had a cook whose specialty was tarts. He was making these tarts and looked around and thought there were an awful lot missing. He started looking around. Here the squirrels had been coming in when he wasn't looking, grabbed the tarts, ran up the log walls, and up to the open beams in the kitchen. They had them all stacked up. There were dozens of them up there.

In the fall of the year, we had to take all the bedding, mattresses and stuff like that and stack them up. For the mattresses, we had this wire cage that we used to put over top of them. Pillows and blankets were stored in our glass show cases in the store to keep them from the squirrels and mice that would come in during the winter months. Tents had to be protected as well.

Memories of Waskesiu Lodge

Lakeview Hotel and Original Waskesiu Lake Lodge

The joys and challenges of wildlife guests

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