From a butcher shop to a successful restaurant, a 92-year-old Black Diamond building continues to stand the test of time.
The community’s first mayor, John Blakeman Sr., built the two-storey building at 115 Government Road in Black Diamond’s downtown in 1928 as a butcher stop and residence.
According to the local history book, In the Light of the Flares, Blakeman came to Canada from England in 1913 during which time he rented a butcher shop and pool hall when the community of Black Diamond boasted just five buildings.
Blakeman’s son John “Jack” joined his father the following year when business owner Eric Butler left to fight in the First World War.
According to the book, father and son delivered fresh meat when the weather was cool and corned beef in the summer using a horse and buggy.
The following year, Blakeman rented and purchased land to raise crops to feed pigs and cattle to supply the butcher business.
After Jack returned to England to join the British Army, leaving his dad to carry on the butcher business alone, the butcher shop and pool hall burned down and Blakeman operated the butcher shop out of the Black Diamond General store for a time.
An icehouse at the back of the building was used to keep the meat cool. It was stocked with large blocks of ice that were cut from the Sheep River in the winter and stored under mounds of sawdust to provide refrigeration in the summer, according to In the Light of the Flares.
Business boomed as the community grew, particularly during the oil boom when meat deliveries were made to cook houses at oil company camps, the history book states.
Blakeman operated his own butcher shop from 1928 until 1934. In 1935 he returned to England to spend his retirement.
According to In the Light of the Flares, the building was then converted to Tina Rust’s Beauty Shop before it was used as a residence for many years.
Michael Kingston, who purchased the building 17 years ago, said it was a very high profile liquor store before he bought it and made it into a restaurant. Before that it was an office for oil services companies.
At the turn of the century, the building served as a movie set for the 2003 made-for-TV movie Burn: The Robert Wraight Story.
While going through old papers for the building, Kingston said he discovered another interesting fact about the building: “When I looked at the title it was owned by the Blakemans and then it went back to the queen,” he said. “I don’t know why.”
While converting the building into a café, Kingston found some of the original windows had been boarded up over the years and discovered that the frame was made from the toughest wood he’s come across.
The two by four frame is made from what he thinks are very old fir trees.
“When you try to drill through those things they’re like concrete,” he said. “It’s almost like it’s petrified. When we were trying to run electrical through those two-by-fours it was crazy.”
Today, the building serves as The Westwood, a bustling restaurant, while the upper level houses Kingston’s real estate office.
“It hadn’t been used in forever,” he said. “When I got it and renovated it we fixed the stairs to make them to code and it was a mess up there. It had been an old storage space.”
