The Place:
Pat may have been just showing off when he commissioned this building, but if he was, we are now happy that he did, as this is the most highly "decorated" building in Nelson's downtown core. Its façade is more worthy of a church than a butcher shop.
This was, indeed, a butcher shop and meat storage facility for the first decades of its life. As well, it housed such diverse enterprises as confectioneries and banks.
Description
The Burns Building is a highly decorative rectangular masonry building with arched doorways and windows and a prominent cornice located on Baker Street in the downtown area of Nelson, B.C.
Value
The Burns Block is important for its historical and aesthetic values.
Designed for Patrick Burns, a Western Canada cattle entrepreneur, the building served as the Kootenay headquarters for the P. Burns Company and housed one of the most comprehensive butcher shops in Canada. It is an example of the importance of business development in the city which was becoming prosperous through the mining industry and a regional centre. It is an example of the provision of businesses and services to meet consumer needs in areas of the province which were developing through railways, mining, shipping and other industries at the turn of the twentieth century; two stores on ground floor included Wallace & Miller and P. Burns & Co.
The building is important for its architectural design attributed to A.E. Hodgins and Alexander Carrie, both of whom were architects of note in Nelson during this time period. Its impressive Italianate design and use of materials is suitable for a company headquarters, while at the same time, the building was practically designed to facilitate retail through its attractive storefront, and storage appropriate for a butcher and meat shop, with a purpose built cold storage facility designed by Francis Rattenbury located on the second floor.
The building is notable for its use of materials and exterior detailing. Marble for the building was supplied by the West Kootenay Brick and Lime Company; other materials include ordinary brick,
pressed brick and terra cotta. Ornamental details of note include decorative terra cotta panels, decorative window panels, and ornate cornice, while over the entranceway is the date stone with sculpted steer head, an obvious reference to Burns’ business.
From Nelson Heritage Register, 2011, number 57, page 91
The Person:
Senator Patrick Burns, settler, rancher, businessman, and politician, was born July 6, 1856 near Oshawa, Upper Canada. He died February 24, 1937 in Calgary, Alberta.
Very successful as an entrepreneur, Burns grew wealthy in the beef industry in the late 1800s and early 1900s, beginning as a cattle buyer in 1885. In 1887 he was contracted to supply meat to Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) camps during the construction of various railways in Canada and the US. He established a mobile slaughterhouse, following the camps as they progressed cross country. In 1890 he opened his first slaughterhouse in Calgary, near the Elbow River. Shortly after, he began to expand into mining areas of British Columbia, eventually constructing retail outlets in mining camps as each appeared, like mushrooms, on the landscape of the southern interior. When the Klondike Gold Rush took hold in 1897 Burns was there to supply meat to the hungry miners.
To assure a steady supply of meat for his slaughterhouses and butcher shops, Burns started a cattle ranch southeast of
Olds, AB. By 1904 the ranch held between 20,000 and 30,000 head of cattle and in 1898 Burns diversified into mutton and pork. In 1902 Burns bought the ranch of William Roper Hull, at Fish Creek, just south of Calgary, enlarging the property from 4,000 to about 12,500 acres and building a feedlot for 5,000 head of cattle. Continuing to expand, by the beginning of World War I, Burns controlled more than 400,000 acres.
In 1905 Burns incorporated as P. Burns and Company, which, in 1909, would become P. Burns and Company Limited. In the next few years he built packing houses in Edmonton, Vancouver, Regina, Prince Albert, SK., Winnipeg, and Seattle, as well as export agencies in London, Liverpool, and Yokohama, Japan.
In 1927 Burns purchased the famous
Bar U Ranch, now a National Historic Site, and the neighbouring Flying E, both in the foothills of Southern Alberta. In 1928 P. Burns and Company Limited was sold to the Dominion Securities Corporation of Toronto, with Burns retaining the ranching properties consisting of 300,000 acres of deeded and leased land and 25,000 head of cattle.
Though spectacularly successful in the beef industry, Burns was less successful in other ventures, such as a creamery in Seattle, mining ventures in Rossland and other British Columbia coal towns and a coalmine near Sheep Creek, AB.
The community-spirited action for which he is probably best known is the organizational and financial backing he provided together with Archibald James McLean, A. E. Cross, and George Lane – the “big four” cattlemen – for the first Calgary Stampede held from 2 to 5 Sept. 1912. The Stampede has grown to become "
The Greatest Outdoor Show On Earth".
His support of this inaugural event, a rodeo and frontier-days presentation, was just one of Burns’s numerous public-spirited deeds. When a rockslide devastated the mining community of Frank (Alta) on 29 April 1903, he offered aid before anyone else. After the town of Fernie, B.C., was wiped out by fire some five years later, he sent its citizens a freight car of food. During World War I he and his company contributed $50,000 to equip the Legion of Frontiersmen.
First offered a seat by the Liberal Government in the Senate in 1923, Burns refused because of his heavy workload. When the seat was re offered in 1931 it was accepted as Burns was then closer to retiremant. He sat as an independent.
The appointment was announced on 4 July during Calgary’s huge celebration of his approaching 75th birthday. Some 750 guests attended a banquet, including “more prominent citizens, nationally known government officials, agriculturalists, heads of industrial enterprises, artists and journalists than ever gathered at a similar event of this kind in the west.” Conservative prime minister Richard Bedford Bennett*, a personal friend despite Burns’s Liberal leanings and his one-time solicitor in Calgary, was unable to attend but he sent a congratulatory message. It was read before the audience along with telegrams from Governor General Lord Bessborough and the Prince of Wales, who had bought the E.P. Ranch next to Burns’s Bar U. A 3,000-pound birthday cake was distributed to some 15,000 people.
Burns suffered a stroke in 1935 and died in 1937, less than six months after his son. He was buried in St Mary’s Cemetery in Calgary.
Burns was as generous at his death as he had been in his life. Among the beneficiaries named in his will were the Lacombe Home, the Salvation Army, the Children’s Shelter of Calgary, the widows and orphans of men in the city’s police force and fire department, the Roman Catholic bishop of Calgary, the Collège Saint-François-Xavier in Edmonton, the Navy League of Canada, the Canadian Red Cross Society, the Junior Red Cross, the British Empire Service League, the Canadian Legion’s tuberculosis section, the 103rd Regiment (Calgary Highlanders), the Boy Scouts Association in Alberta, and the Southern Alberta Pioneers’ and Old Timers’ Association.
Quoted material is from Biographi Canada
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