Reston House - A Spot to Remember

Cadet Corps marching on Main Street in about 1914 With Reston House in the background

A mostly forgotten building on Main Street is the focus of this blog post, Reston House. I noticed its prominent sign on a few street scenes from the postcard collection of the Olenicks and have consulted the first Trails Along the Pipestone history book and a clipping from a 1973 Reston Recorder but would love any other information or memories about the building.

A man named Alex Robertson was born in Clayton in Lanark County, Ontario in 1872 and first headed west with a harvest excursion in 1895. Page 599 of the history book says six bachelors including Alex built a shack with bunks and spent the winter in Reston in 1898. This would have likely spurred him to use his carpentry skills to build a larger boarding house, which became known as the Reston House on the northeast corner of Fourth Street and Second Avenue. It was a brick veneered 2 storey building and later had a wood addition on the back. Owners in the early years included John M. Elliot, ? Mathers, Alfred Seep , George Chapman and Andy Sutton. Nightly and weekly room rates were available. By Mr. Seep’s time, the rates for room and board were $6.00 a week. Meal tickets were available at 20 meals for $4.00. Besides the private rooms, an area in the attic called "The Ram’s Pasture" held cots for overflow use. The June 1906 census lists 37 boarders under head hotel keeper John M. Elliott. They were all single men in their 20’s in Reston, likely here for railway work as agricultural labourers would live on the farms.  This was the first year that The Peanut line was opened so the town of Reston was booming with these workers.

 

Thanks to Shirley Bulloch for this photo of Reston House from her family collection. 

Richard (Dick) V. Cusack was a long running owner, beginning his tenure after serving in the war in 1919.  He is listed on the 1921 Canadian Census at the Reston boarding house with his brother Henry. Barbara Low was listed as one of the servants at the hotel but in 1922, she also became Richard’s bride. Barbara (known as Babbs) and her sister Helen (Nellie) had left Scotland and joined their brother William Low and his wife Mary Ann in Canada in 1920.  Dick and Babbs raised 2 daughters and ran the hotel for many years. Richard was also a barber and set up his chair in the hotel lobby. It was during his ownership that the hotel had a basement put under it to replace of the large stones that the building sat on previously. After Dick's death in 1959, Babbs lived with her sister Helen Low in a house east of the hotel, perhaps one you can see down the street scene below. This house is now on the McPherson farm south of Reston.  Their great-niece Brenda Ellis-Anderson remembers a talking budgie bird and wrap around verandah from visiting them there.  

The interior has been described to me as having a large lobby where you first walked in from the west. A big open stairway led from the lobby to the 18 rooms above. A center hall led back from the lobby to the pool room which was on the north side at the back. This was the same room that became the beverage room in 1947 when a vote allowed Reston to be “wet”. The pool tables were then moved across to Berry’s Barber Shop to make room. Down the hall was also a dining room with 2 large tables and a separate kitchen. The lobby was used as a venue for travelling salesman to show their wares, a gathering spot for visiting, checkers (also known as draughts), music and other entertainers.  There were doors out the north and south side as well as the main entrance on the west.  The picture below looks like a sunroom built over the front porch - a warm place on a summer day I imagine.  

Go Kart Racers on Main Street about 1950 - Sandy and Raymond White with the "Red Rocket"

After the Cusacks, John Bonder  and later Ed and Rita Gulas owned and ran the hotel. The later couple were active members of the community, and entrepreneurs.  Ed was an avid hunter and his albino mounted deer head was legendary.  Rita’s mother was instrumental in helping with the hotel and the  children - Greg, Barb, Lydia and Brenda - especially when Rita became ill with cancer.  

 

In December of 1962, ten lots were sold to Ed Gulas along #2 highway for $1 per lot. The building of the a new modern Reston Motor Hotel meant the old building was no longer needed. The grand opening of Gulas’s new venture was held on February 17, 1966. The old unused building slowly deteriorated until it was finally torn down in the winter of 1973. The Rest'n Inn continues to welcome travelers and locals today. 

The corner of Main Street and Second Avenue was a prime location and Dr. Samuel Cleo built the Aurora Building in that spot in the late 1970's.  Dr. Cleto arrived in Reston on October 1, 1972 and practiced his profession for the next two decades plus. The corner was home to the Credit Union from 1977 until they moved to their new building in 1995. A new district library was created at the east end of the Aurora building. It moved from its temporary location in the old rest room building in the spring of 1977. Over the years, the Aurora Building also housed the doctor office, a hair salon, the nursery school and my sister-in-law Wilma's scrapbooking and craft store. It is now the commercial kitchen for Patti Cakes and has apartments in the back. 

 Correction, additions, photos and memories of Reston House or any other special spots in Reston are welcome at ssimms@escape.ca .