A blaze that obliterated a northern Manitoba landmark could be forever shrouded in mystery.
RCMP say the cause of the fire at Sherridon’s Hotel Cambrian remains undetermined a year and a half later.
“(Investigators were) unable to prove that a criminal act had taken place, as it may have been accidental,” said Sgt. Rob Lockhart, a Manitoba spokesperson for the Mounties.
Both the RCMP and the province’s Office of the Fire Commissioner investigated the fierce blaze.
The four-storey Hotel Cambrian was consumed by flames in the early morning hours of June 2, 2012. It had been vacant since the mid-1990s.
“It’s very sad because it’s a historical landmark for our community,” fire chief and lifelong Sherridon resident Debi Hatch told The Reminder after the fire. “You see it every day when you drive by.”
The hotel dated back to the 1920s or early ‘30s, when Sherridon become something of a boom town thanks to the Sherritt Gordon copper-zinc mine.
When it was constructed, the Hotel Cambrian was said to be the largest building in all of northern Manitoba.
The Sherritt Gordon mine closed for five years in the 1930s due to low metal prices, reopening in 1937 before closing for good in 1951.
While Sherridon then became a community in decline, the hotel remained open for business.
Bolstering business was the Puffy Lake gold mine that briefly operated near Sherridon in the late 1980s.
Even after Puffy Lake closed, the Hotel Cambrian would still operate in the summers, though it did not appear to do much business.
At one point there was talk of turning the building into a historical site, there was no funding available for upkeep.
A firefighter at the scene of the Hotel Cambrian fire in 2012.
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