P.A. residents share fondest memories after fire damages downtown A&W

(Submitted Video: Lance Petty)

By the time the sun was out, the fire was mostly contained but the building itself was heavily damaged and frozen over due to the water used to extinguish the fire and icy windchills that hovered in the air.

What’s left is something you might see in a post-apocalyptic Hollywood blockbuster.

(Prince Albert Fire Department/Facebook_

Within minutes of the fire breaking out, social media was flooded with people in shock over the news and also remembering their favourite moments of the restaurant.

“This makes me so sad! I had my first job here in 1988 and so many amazing memories were created here,” said one Facebook commenter.

“I remember we would go for a frosty root beer after a day of swimming at the memorial pool,” said another post. “As a teenager, we would cruise the drag, which was down Central and up First Avenue past the Dub a few times before pulling in for some fries. This was before Gateway Mall was there.”

“It was very disheartening to see,” said Tracy Pease who phoned into to Power99 to share her thoughts. Tracey’s first job was at the A&W’s old building when she was just 15 years old.

“What a huge loss for the downtown from both a historical and active business perspective,” said Rhonda Trusty with the Prince Albert Downtown Business Improvement District. “Our thoughts are with the owners, staff and patrons and for our community as a whole. The Downtown A & W is an iconic business location that has many happy family memories attached to it.”

(Power99/Facebook)

The fire on Wednesday morning came eerily close to the 57-year anniversary of another famous structure that caught fire at that same location.

The Astro Hotel formerly known as the Empress was destroyed in a blaze on Jan. 21, 1967, claiming the lives of two people. That hotel stood there since the early 1900s.

After the hotel was gone, local businessman Neil Bartlett decided to build an A&W at the location.

“The A&W originally was one of those car hop types of facilities where you’d pull your car in and the car hop would come out and take your order, go in and get it and bring it back to you on a tray that you would put on your car window,” said Fred Payton president of the Prince Albert Historical Society.

Payton not only had fond memories of the old A&W building but also with Bartlett himself who reached out to local youth at the time.

“I was a member of the Prince Albert Youth Council at the time, and occasionally when we would have dances on the weekend, we wouldn’t make enough money to pay for our bands, so we would have to go to the A&W and borrow money from Neil Bartlett,” he said. “Of course, there were no ATMs at the time. Then we’d go back on Monday and we pay Neil Bartlett back.”

While the extent of the damage is still not known, Payton said if the building is lost, it would be like losing another historical piece of Prince Albert.

“In our teen years, that was the place to go after the dance on Friday night or Saturday night,” he said. “That was the place to go and not only just to have something to eat and something to drink, but also to meet with your friends.”

He said that while the days of the car hop restaurant are long gone, the A&W was still a popular meeting spot, especially for seniors to have their morning coffee and chat about everything from politics to the weather and other happenings of the day.

Prince Albert police have said that, currently, the fire is not suspicious. The exact cause is still not known.

–With files from the Prince Albert Historical Society

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derek.craddock@pattisonmedia.com

by Derek Craddock

P.A. residents share fondest memories after fire damages downtown A&W

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