Ernie and Cathy Pasch were commuting almost two hours every day to their jobs in Renfrew when the opportunity came up to take over the hotel in Ladysmith. That was 25 years ago.

At the time, the property belonged to Greg and Sylvie Bretzlaff, so they rented it for the first year.

“When we were going into the second year, we had done some renovations, so we said, ‘You know what, we need to be owning this property,’” Cathy said. So, they bought it and have been running it ever since.

“We thought we could make it go, although a lot of people said that we were crazy. We gave it a shot and here we are 25 years later, still going wide open, super busy,” Ernie said.

Cathy, a Crawford originally from Campbell’s Bay, grew up down the road in Charteris.

“We didn’t have any restaurant background, but we both worked with people,” Cathy said. “And I learned a lot from Barbara Cruickshank and Bonnie Richardson, they were two of my mentors.”

Ernie was born and raised in Ladysmith. His uncle Theo Bretzlaff built the hotel in 1918.

“In 1930, a log drive was on big time up the Picanoc, which is above Otter Lake, so the guys were stopping here, this was the half-way point. It was originally two storeys and Theo needed more rooms to board these guys on their way up. He actually put the third storey up on top. This is amazing because we’re talking 1930, and he did that all by hand with a bunch of his friends. There are 15 rooms up there,” Ernie said.

As for the future, the hotel is for sale.

“We’re hoping we can sell to someone who has the same vision we had and can keep it going the way we did, but you don’t know,” Cathy said.

“The community needs this, we’ve always been very busy, we’ve done many, many fundraisers for the community, and we’re hoping the people who take over will keep it running the same way,” Ernie added.

As Ernie describes it, future prospects are good.

“The area is really expanding with cottagers, especially with the municipality having 22 lakes just in this area, so there’s more and more people moving up here,” he said. “Now we have high-speed fibre here, people can work from home.

“And, you know what, people just want to get out: ‘Let’s go and have a beer and some wings, and say g’day,’” he said.

“People come from all over, and they meet people from all over. This is a destination.”

Cathy and Ernie Pasch celebrated 25 years at Ladysmith Hotel on Saturday.

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