Vita Hotel celebrates 80 years

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This article was published 18/08/2016 (2807 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If the Vita Hotel was married, it would receive gifts made of oak this year, because 2016 marks 80 years in business for the RM of Stuartburn establishment.

For the hotel’s anniversary, owner Shirley Mistelbacher delved through the hotel’s old land titles in Winnipeg to establish a timeline.

Mistelbacher found the hotel was established in 1936 by Fedora Bodnarchuk. Somewhere between 1936 and 1940, the original Vita Hotel building burned down, though no one seems to know exactly what year, she said. The hotel building, as it currently stands, was built in 1940.

Since its establishment, the Vita Hotel has had about 13 people hold the land title to the property with the most recent being Mistelbacher, who took over in 2001.

Mistelbacher said she was interested in the hotel because her mother, Mary Kischuk, worked at the Vita Hotel for about 25 years between 1973 and 2013.

“She kept saying, ‘well, why don’t you buy it? You’d do [well] and I’ll teach you how to cook,’” said Mistelbacher. “And that’s exactly what she did.”

Mistelbacher ran the hotel with her sister before she retired. Now she runs the hotel with her partner, William Smith.

Mistelbacher was raised in Vita and left as a teenager, but she returned to the town as adult for one reason: the previous owner was thinking of tearing down the hotel.

“I came back for the simple fact that [the previous owner] Vita Properties was going to close it down. After 25 years, he said that was enough. I thought, coming from this area, I’d like to see it stay open and build it up again,” said Mistelbacher.

The hotel, located at 109 Main Street North in Vita, has seven rooms and one live-in suite available for rent. The hotel also has a restaurant, bar, and vendor.

To celebrate the anniversary, the Vita Hotel is having an outdoor event Saturday from 11 a.m. to 2 a.m. Live entertainment will run throughout the day. Admission is $5. Children ages 10 and under are free. Dinner, which will be served from 4:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., costs $12. There will be beer gardens on site.