Corner Gas set now gone for good
Buildings of Canadian show reduced to rubble after years of falling into disrepair
ROULEAU, SASK.— It’s been years since the cameras have rolled at Corner Gas.
Years since Brent cracked wise with Hank from behind the store counter.
Years since Emma gave Oscar what for over a bottomless cup of coffee at the Ruby.
And in those years, the Saskatchewan prairie has slowly been reclaiming the television show’s set.
The walls had grown mouldy, the rodents had moved in and the building was sinking into the ground at a rate of more than two centimetres a year.
On Friday, heavy machinery moved in and reduced the old gas station to rubble.
“It was hard,” said Virginia Thompson, executive producer of the show. “That building: we have had so much laughter in that building and I think we have given so much laughter to the country out of that building.”
Corner Gas premiered Jan. 22, 2004 on CTV to 1.15 million viewers and maintained an average audience of 1.4 million viewers over its 107episode run. The series finale, on April13, 2009, set a record for a Canadian scripted TV series with 3.02 million viewers.
The Corner Gas station and neighbouring Ruby café were the centrepieces of the show and were built from scratch just outside the town of Rouleau, Sask., about a half-hour drive south of Regina.
The set became a destination for fans of Canadian television; a musthave selfie while road tripping in the southern Saskatchewan countryside.
But the buildings lacked a proper foundation and the land they were on was marshy. Poor structure made them impossible to move.
Safety was also a concern as fans would pry off pieces of the set to take home as souvenirs.
“It was built for five years and it was 13 years old,” Rouleau Mayor Grant Clarke said.
The production company would send someone in to fix things each year, but it became an impossible task, Thompson said.
Afull rebuild was too expensive and neither the town nor the production company owned the land, so the excavators moved in Friday and the set was down in seconds.
The town kept the demolition a secret for fear scavengers would move in beforehand and take what they could.
“It was quite a surprise to the people in the community,” Clarke said. “But I think everybody understood that it was not built for longevity.
The yellow, green and red sign out front will have a new home at the Western Development Museum in nearby Moose Jaw and Rouleau is developing a walking tour that will let fans see some other sites featured in the show.
Bell Media said the self-guided tour would include the original site of the gas station, downtown Dog River, Oscar and Emma’s house (played by Eric Peterson and Janet Wright), the grain elevator, water tower and Corner Gas character cut-outs to pose with for photos. Maps will be available at the town hall and at cornergas.com.
Whether those will be a bigger draw than the station, no one knows. The town hopes so. With files from Star staff