Hotel Ymir & an Amazing Art Collection

On Sunday morning in Nelson, after raining hard all night, it continued to rain. Bob and I had looked at the distance we had to travel to get to St. Paul for his disc golf tournament the following Saturday. Unless we wanted to simply drive like heck, we decided we should leave a day early. We had planned to do a serious hike in Kootenai Glacier Provincial Park, but a check of the website revealed that it was still snowed in.

We decided to provision ourselves for the next week and headed off to the local Safeway. When we returned we met Helen and Bill driving off in the opposite direction. We discovered that Helen had left her tennis shoes in our car, so after we hooked up Snoopy we went looking for them. We thought they might have gone to mass, so went past the Catholic Church in Nelson. They weren't there. So, we headed off.

As we were driving south on BC Highway 3, we saw a sign from Ymir (pronounced Eemir) and remembered that Helen and Bill wanted to look at an old hotel there. We turned off, found the hotel and saw their rig parked across the street.

We went looking for them, but couldn't find them. Finally, they appeared out of the bottom of this hotel. Helen knew the man who owned the hotel (he used to own a nursery near Duncan, B.C.). HansWilking, 76, from near Bremen Germany is a very serious art collector. He bought the hotel because he was looking for a large house in which to display his collection. The hotel is crammed with art on every surface, all original. No smoking allowed and it is protected by all sorts of video cameras. Every room has art on all the walls, the dining room is filled with art from the Polynesian islands. It turns out that he is an expert on Hawaiian art, and has served as an expert witness in various forged art trials. His taste is really good and his pictures are loaned to major museums all over the US. He has met all sorts of famous folks, including Jaqueline Onnasis who was a real fan of Richard Priest (Hans has the largest collection of Richard Priest paintings in the world, over 250). After we looked at the collection in the hotel, we were admiring a black and white picture by a modern NY painter (he collected a lot of modern art) and Hans commented that he had three more paintings by the same artist in Salmo.

Off we went to Salmo to see the rest of his collection. He bought the Knights of Pithias Hall there and it is filled with his painting, even on the ceiling. The three large black paintings on the left wall in this painting are of from that artist. The wall is covered with Richard Priest paintings. Hans is the white-haired gentleman in the red and black coat in the foreground. In and amongst the paintings are floor lamps, chairs, and bedspreads from the hotel. However, the place is all climate controlled and protected by the same kind of security. The collection is apparently worth millions and he's also a very wealthy man, though a real curmudgeon (very few people like him). He's hard of hearing, but a real character. He likes to talk and it was difficult to get away.

If you are ever in southern BC, you should go to the Hotel Ymir (rooms with shared bath $29/night, $39/night for rooms with a private bath). Ymir itself was a mining town and is along a river with great trout fishing.

The top painting is the original of the mural in Chemainus. The bottom photo was simply of a painting I liked, sitting on the floor. An amazing place.