Icon of an ‘incredibly wild’ past finds a home on Hay River’s horizon

Back when the Hay River Hotel was still operational on the town’s Vale Island, it had a bar called the Zoo.

How did you know you were at the Zoo? A massive wooden sign, approximately five feet in diameter and over a foot thick.

On Sunday, the Hay River Museum Society hoisted that sign onto the top of a 20-foot post during a volunteer thank-you barbecue, preserving a slice of the town’s past.

“A couple years before the Zoo and the hotel complex closed down, some young men decided they would steal the Zoo sign from off the front of the building. They succeeded, but it was by sheer good luck that they didn’t hurt themselves,” explained Judy West-Pratt, seasonal manager of the heritage centre run by the society.

West-Pratt said the owner of the Zoo refused to put the sign up again after that, because he was scared someone would try to steal it a second time and get hurt. Instead, he donated it to the museum society. The Zoo closed in 2005.

Similarly worried about keeping people safe, the society decided to place the sign high up and out of reach. The sign’s new location means it overlooks the Hay River, so anyone coming into town by the river will be able to see it.

Tom Lakusta, chairman of the museum society, said the sign was made in the 1950s when the bar opened and has been refurbished by the society. The Zoo itself was made from logs imported from British Columbia.

For decades, said Lakusta, the Zoo was the place to be. The town’s severe 1963 flood moved a lot of the businesses on Vale Island to New Town, but the bar stayed open in Old Town.

“It was just a real funky old bar,” he said, “with the old wooden bar there … lots of pictures of patrons on the wall and things like that.”

“For a great many years, the Zoo was the main, most famous bar in all of the Northwest Territories,” said West-Pratt.

“The crew would come in on the boat … you could see them dock and do all of their stuff, and then all of the crew would be heading straight up to the Zoo.”

West-Pratt said there weren’t a lot of rules at the Zoo. If you couldn’t find a stool, you were welcome to bring in your own. As legend goes, a man once brought his horse inside the bar.

“It was an incredibly wild, fun place,” she said.

“If you could imagine the most fun possible, that’s what I hear from people when they talk about the Zoo. They will get a big grin on their face – but when I ask the story, they look at their feet, and then they look back and say, ‘can’t tell.’”

The Hay River Hotel complex was slated for demolition in 2019, but the contractor carrying out the work determined a section of the building could be saved and donated to the museum society.

That part of the building was meant to act as an exhibit at the heritage centre but, when the main heritage centre was hit by the 2022 flood, the salvaged building became the temporary heritage centre instead.

Work is still ongoing to reopen the main building. In the meantime, the section of the Hay River Hotel is being used to house about 10 percent of the society’s artifacts, which are changed out now and then.

There are also plenty of outdoor tactile artifacts. The idea is people can walk around a park-like setting with the opportunity to see and touch some of Hay River’s history.

Between Covid-19, the flood and last year’s two wildfire evacuations, Hay River has had a rough couple of years, but that hasn’t stopped the heritage centre’s volunteers from showing up.

They’ve donated their time, money and skills to keeping the heritage centre up and running.

From spring cleaning to moving artifacts to donating lumber, more than 125 Hay River residents and businesses are estimated to have helped in some way.