Chief Chiniki restaurant may be rebuilt after blaze
Just a day after fire burned Chief Chiniki restaurant to the ground, there is already talk of rebuilding the landmark cafe.
It took little time for flames to ravage what has been a hub for Morley reserve elders and mountain tourists alike since the 1980s.
“The restaurant was a gathering place for friends. It will be sadly missed,” said Chiniki administrator Shirley Ketterer.
“Rebuilding discussion begins tomorrow. Not sure if they will rebuild or not,” she said, adding the building was insured.
The damage is pegged at nearly $2 million.
Chief Chiniki restaurant was one of three buildings on the site owned by the Chiniki First Nation.
“The cause of the fire is indeterminate. We will be waiting a full report,” said Ketterer.
The rest stop, which sat along the Highway 133X interchange above the Trans Canada highway 50 kilometres west of Calgary, was destroyed by the fire.
“It’s a total loss,” said captain Lionel Crow of the Stoney Nakoda Fire Department. He said the fire started at the north side of the building.
Flames were first reported Tuesday around 12:30 a.m. and by the time the first fire truck arrived the blaze had spread to the restaurant’s roof.
Stephanie Holloway drove past the restaurant in the dark. When she returned 20 minutes later, she was watching flames licking the roof.
“The fire went really fast. We stood watching it for a while,” she said.
“I’m sad about it. For tourism, it was pretty good.”
Since it was built in the 1980s and named after Chief John Chiniki, the cafe had been a quiet gathering place for elders and reserve residents who stopped in for coffee and a hot meal.
“I always have a rest break on Saturday morning and have breakfast there,” said elder Irene Baptiste.
“I’m really sad — we’ve got no restaurant now.”
In the restaurant’s heyday, tourists and locals alike could order Native cuisine specialties, including trout, rabbit stew, deer burgers and buffalo-meat Indian tacos served on frybread.
But in recent times, although the buffalo burger and bannock remained, the menu adapted to serve a younger generation want- ing Chinese food, cheeseburgers and chicken fingers.
The loss of the cafe is hitting members of the Powderface family hard. It was their father’s dream of creating a special place in honour of Chief Chiniki, who died in 1906.
Chiniki, whose name was also spelled Chiniquay, was a signatory to Treaty 7 at Blackfoot Crossing in 1877. “I hope they rebuild it. Maybe it might bring the community together,” Myrna Powderface said.