A treasured Pontiac institution is raising a glass to eight decades of bringing people together this month.
On Sept. 19, Gavan’s Hotel in Quyon is putting on a full day of live music to celebrate the anniversary, welcoming many of the venue’s longtime performers back to the stage.
Cal Cummings and Lorne Daly, Buddy McCann, Wayne Rostad, Jamie McMunn, Larry Chevrier, and of course, Gail Gavan, are just some of the names that will be entertaining over the course of the day.
Owner Jim Cain, who bought the business from Nick Matachuk in 2023, said he’s excited to be able to celebrate this milestone for the community landmark.
“There have been Cains in the Pontiac since the late 1800s, and for as long as both my dad and I have been growing up, Gavan’s has always been a critical piece of this community that’s important to us,” he said. “So to be able to celebrate it is pretty awesome.”
The founders of the hotel, Lennox and Marguerite (Meilleur) Gavan, bought the building in 1946, when it was still known as the Cobalt Hotel. Lennox was from Nichabau, and Marguerite from Desjardinsville, on Allumette Island. Five years after buying it, the entire building burned to the ground.
Joan Gavan, the oldest of the six kids in the family, recalls her father Lennox getting up on the roof to try and put out the flames with a hose until he realized it was too far gone.
“Then he had to abandon it and evacuate the family, and that’s how we ended up at the Legion taking our showers and baths and that stuff,” she said. Her family then rebuilt the whole thing “from a mud puddle”, as she put it.
Over the next three decades, the Gavan family expanded the building to include the Shamrock Lounge concert hall, and the hotel became a destination for people across the Ottawa Valley wanting to celebrate and take part in traditional country and Irish music.
Gail Gavan, the youngest of the kids, continued performing at the hotel after it was sold to Matachuk in 1983, and more recently to Cain.
For her, the story of how her family rebuilt the important gathering place after that fire is just one example in many decades of work that have gone into keeping the business alive.
“I know my mom and dad worked seven days a week, and it was not easy, and raised six kids in there at the same time. They could have given up many, many times, but they didn’t,” she said.
“It takes a lot of resilience, and persistence and faith and passion. [ . . . ] There’s so much that goes on that people have no clue. They want to walk in, have a drink , and have a good time. But it is quite an undertaking to keep any business going. So it’s good to try to support these places because they could close up so fast.”
She pointed to the fates of two other local community hubs as evidence of what is lost when one of these venues closes.
“The Douglas Hotel burnt and that family is still grieving because it was not just a hotel, it was a landmark, a community hub. It was the heart of a village,” she said.
“Same with the Chapeau hotel, Fred’s. When it burnt, it left a big hole in the village, for community interaction and getting together. Thanks to Nick Matachuk, and thanks to the Cains, it’s keeping a local Pontiac landmark going, so it’s pretty nice to see.”
The party kicks off at 1 p.m. on Sept. 19, with music from Gavan’s favourites Cal Cummings and Lorne Daley, and the night closes out with performances by Gail Gavan and Larry Chevrier.
