A rare and rustic roadhouse Resilient restaurateur knows his prime cuts, whether firing up the band or the steakhouse grill By: David Sanderson Posted: 12:38 PM CDT Friday, Aug. 8, 2025 Last Modified: 8:38 AM CDT Saturday, Aug. 9, 2025 Updates

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 08/08/2025 (230 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

STEAD — Winnipeg radio personality Tyler Carr spent a weekend earlier this summer at Glamping InStead, an off-grid, eco-friendly facility situated 45 minutes north of the city near Stead, the so-called “sod capital” of Manitoba.

Carr, a morning-show host at Energy 106, and his partner Mitch were curious about area attractions. Among the must-sees suggested to them by their host was the Stead Ranch Steak House, a rustic, 60-seat restaurant-and-bar that operates out of a converted barn on Stead Road, close to Provincial Trunk Highway 12.

“The minute we drove up, I was like, ‘Mitch, I have to make a video,’” says Carr, who moonlights as a digital creator.

“Everybody likes to overuse the term ‘hidden gem’ but without a doubt, the steakhouse immediately struck me as a hidden gem in our province.”

Well, so much for hidden. Since its release on various social media platforms, Carr’s 36-second spot, which shows him and Mitch diving into steak, ribs, onion rings and fries against a backdrop of barn-wood walls adorned with cowboy boots, Stetsons and cattle skulls, has garnered over a million views.

Comments have poured in from across the country, the majority being along the lines of “Need to try!” and “I think a steak is in my future.”

“It’s sometimes hard as a content creator because you’re expected to love everything,” says Carr, who also gave the resto’s home-baked peach crumble a thumbs-up.

“But the truth of the matter is I wasn’t paid to go there, we paid for our own meals and I made a video simply because of how much we enjoyed ourselves. It was just an authentic good time.”

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“This is what Montana’s (BBQ & Bar) wishes it looked like,” chuckles owner Robert West, settling into an upholstered booth in the Stead Ranch Steak House’s saloon area, steps away from a raised stage populated with speakers, microphone stands and a full drum kit.

West, whose long grey locks and beard would make members of hirsute Texas trio ZZ Top green with envy, laughs again, commenting, “How long have you got?” when asked whatever possessed him to open an eating spot/watering hole in, by his own admission, the middle of nowhere?

The 74-year-old was born in Saskatoon. He moved to Calgary along with his mother, step-father and three half-siblings at an early age.

He wasn’t exactly an angel growing up, he states matter-of-factly, a set of circumstances that resulted in him being transferred to a reform school in Innisfail, Alta., 110 kilometres away.

“I got out when I was 16. They drove me to the bus and told me my mother was going to meet me at the other end, only when I got there, she wasn’t anywhere to be found,” he goes on.

“I ended up getting a job as a busboy at the Trade Winds Motor Hotel. Later I headed to Vancouver, before hitchhiking to Toronto in, I wanna say, 1967.”

During his spell in Innisfail, West taught himself how to play guitar. He was well-versed on the instrument by the time he reached Toronto, which led to opportunities to jam with bands booked at the nightclub where he worked in the kitchen.

One of those groups was the Hawks, who achieved global success in 1968 after changing their name to the Band, ahead of the release of their debut album Music From Big Pink.

West eventually became a professional musician himself. Under the banner Bob E. Lee West and the Mainstreet Band, he toured incessantly, delivering his brand of country-rock in bars and clubs across Western Canada and as far north as Alaska.

He commonly rubbed shoulders with the likes of Ian Tyson and Prairie Oyster, and his greatest success occurred in 1988 when he won a Catch a Rising Star award for the single This Old Freight Train, recorded at Calgary’s Smooth Rock Studios.

By the early ’90s West was ready for a change. He’d long dreamed of running a bar of his own and after being introduced to the late Ross Kennedy, a Winnipegger who owned multiple hotels during a decades-long career, he and his then-wife Amy went to work for Kennedy.

Together they managed the Travelling Inn in Arborg, followed by the Lockport Inn Hotel on Henderson Highway and finally the 44-room Balmoral Hotel on Cumberland Avenue in Winnipeg, which is now the Pimicikamak Wellness Centre.

In 2002 West spotted a listing for a 160-acre property in Stead that came with a two-storey, 1,700-square-foot home, as well as a century-old barn that had definitely seen better days.

He and Amy spent close to two years converting the weed-infested structure into the Stead Ranch Steak House.

The couple operated the steakhouse five days a week from 2004 until 2012, at which point West felt he needed a break.

He returned to his original calling of music, a move that ultimately led to recording a full-length album, The Tree, which was nominated for best country CD at the 2015 Indigenous Music Awards ceremony, which was part of the Manito Ahbee Festival.

(West, whose great-grandmother was Cree, showed off his deep baritone on the disc’s 12 tracks, particularly the lead single A Dangerous Game, about murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls.)

West, since divorced, announced the restaurant’s return in February 2016.

“We want to offer a full night of entertainment,” he told a reporter from the Beausejour Clipper Weekly, noting he intended to add “performer” to his long list of duties there.

“You start with dinner and drinks and end with dancing to a live band.”

That formula proved successful, except the enterprise was forced to shutter once again in the summer of 2019 after West, who was also raising quarter-horses with his new wife Joanne, suffered a debilitating injury while out for a ride with two of his steeds.

“At the time I had three horses: a little girl, her daddy, a two-eyed jack stallion, and her mom, a two-eyed jack mare,” he explains.

“That day we were going up a ridge in the wagon, the two older ones pulling me along, when we came upon a big buck who’d been in the area for years.

“The horses had seen him before but for whatever reason they shied, and away we went, over the ridge, rolling the wagon.”

The buggy’s drop pole came down on the male horse’s back, killing him instantly. The mare suffered a broken leg, but somehow managed to remove herself from her rig and return to the homestead.

Sensing something was obviously amiss, West’s wife and employees set out to determine what had happened.

“It turned out I’d broken my neck, and had crushed my legs and pelvis,” West continues. “I was flown to HSC, then to Toronto, where I stayed in bed for almost a year, pretty much paralyzed.”

West credits the nearby South Beach Casino for assisting in his rehabilitation. For months after returning home, he was granted access to the resort’s indoor swimming pool.

Finally, despite a pronounced limp, he reopened the restaurant in 2023 with the assistance of Joanne.

While he is no longer involved with the cooking end of things — he has trouble standing for long durations — he stays busy accepting reservations and greeting regulars who make the trek from Winnipeg, Selkirk, Lac du Bonnet and the Grand Beach area.

“We also get a lot of Americans in the winter months who come up for the ice fishing,” he adds, mentioning the locale, which is presently open four nights a week year-round, Thursday to Sunday, was utilized in the filming of Road of Iniquity, a 2018 flick produced by Cree actor and former Member of Parliament Tina Keeper.

West is also writing and recording again. This month he’ll head into the studio to put the finishing touches to his latest project, which will include a Johnny Cash-like ode titled Ten-pound Ball (Hanging off a Two-foot Chain).

As for retirement plans, West says if he has his druthers, he won’t be going anywhere, any time soon.

“Hey, I’m only 74. I’ll have long enough to rest when I’m in the ground, for good.”

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca

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