Two days before the Thanksgiving long weekend, I received an excited call from Thomas, a Seattle buddy who was working on a project in Greenwood, BC.  We reconnoitered on my heritage-referenced design scheme for The Reading Grounds in Mahone Bay back in the mid-1990s.  Within 36 hours, I was whisked by Air Canada across the continent to survey Greenwood’s heritage buildings from the turn of the 19^th century for possible redevelopment.  Jet-lagged, I was welcomed at the original Windsor Saloon by Mayor Colleen Lang and a host of crony historians.  Just like our own South Shore pubs, Saturday night musical entertainment filled the room with local colour.  The next day Thomas and I met the mayor at the Greenwood museum (www.greenwoodmuseum.com) for a personalized tour through the history of  “the smallest town in Canada,” featuring copper ore, Victorian buildings, WWII Japanese internment, and recent film production where Greenwood was transformed into the Pacific Northwest island town featured in the film “Snow Falling on Cedars.”  (Always check with your local museum first to find heritage information about your own home or commercial building.)  For me, the Greenwood museum highlight was the historical re-creation of a room from the Windsor hotel.  Walls and flooring from one of the original saloon bedrooms sharply contrasted with the juxtaposed newspaper-lined walls that housed the Japanese bunk-bed-style cots—that’s another story. 

With approximately 600 residents, Greenwood, BC is about the same size as Mahone Bay, NS.  The main street of both towns is a highway 3, lined with heritage buildings.  Re-using these buildings is a compromise between building codes and heritage society edicts—true enough!  While touring the debris of the Greenwood Inn née Windsor Saloon, Thomas and I discussed the parameters of redevelopment.  With my own building in Mahone Bay, The Reading Grounds, the heritage features of the original pharmacy were used as a point of reference.  Luckily, the Settler’s Museum in Mahone Bay had a small collection of photographs that were used to recreate the face of the building.  On the interior, pharmacy drawers along one wall inspired the rest of the newly aged display shelving along the walls, while a few remaining 24-inch wainscoting boards were converted into long tables.  History referenced but not slavishly reproduced.  I suggested the same approach for the Windsor Saloon.  Some original floor-cloth pieces remain as well as wallpaper samples.  Luckily, the woodwork is mostly in good condition, if a bit painted over.  The plan would be to return the rooms into a boarding house environment with new en-suites.  Breakfast would be served in the upstairs lobby overlooking Copper Street.  When we began a discussion of the amenities of the rooms, I flashed back to a pre-hurricane party that we attended a few Sundays ago.  At the party, a friend related how she turned her home into a B&B establishment.  She entered a bedroom, sat on the bed, and proclaimed to herself, “Now, I have just woken up at the Ritz in London.  What do I need?”  Brilliant, I thought to myself while standing amongst the ruins of the Windsor.  That’s just the right approach when making a bedroom more of a hotel experience.  And thus our discussion began…