New Brunswick’s Evandale Inn

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This article was published 22/06/2002 (8687 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

EVANDALE, N.B. — Standing as a welcome mat to this tiny riverside community southeast of Fredericton, the 113-year-old Evandale Inn beckons travellers with its promise of peace and relaxation.

Back in the days when the Saint John River served as a main highway, the community of Evandale thrived and the country inn on its banks was the favoured stop for a night’s rest.

Today, the structure looks much the same, but the only constant on the water is the 10-car ferry, most often unfilled, that moves vehicles back and forth on the channel from Kars to Evandale. Usually the passengers of the three-minute boat trip are families taking a leisurely drive, couples escaping for a weekend at the inn or residents making their way home.

There’s no grocery store — not even a general store — as is more common in rural New Brunswick. There’s no post office, and the inn’s rooms have no phones or TVs.

Innkeeper Chris Durrnian says it’s the silence and the inn’s history that entices guests.

In summer, the Evandale’s lush grounds become the romantic backdrop for wedding pictures and its bay windows the setting for vacationers writing a letter back home as they sit surrounded by antique furniture.

Chris and Trish Durrnian bought what is often referred to as the Eveleigh in 1996 when it was being auctioned off in a mortgage sale. While the structure of the 1889 building was sound, it needed to be restored inside and out to return it to its original image.

100 years ago

Well over 100 years ago, the Vanwart family settled on the banks of what was then known as Willow Grove. Enchanted by the river and landscape, the Loyalist family which had travelled from Long Island, N.Y., after the revolutionary war, staked their claim on the land.

They farmed the fields and built their home large enough to serve as an inn, all the while raising 17 children. The Vanwarts operated a private ferry, collecting tolls from people looking for their own little piece of riverside heaven.

But in 1953, the once-thriving area in and around Evandale was dealt a death blow when 22,000 families were forced to move after the land was expropriated for Canadian Forces Base Gagetown.

“That was the beginning of the end for all the communities along the river here,” Durrnian says, adding that the base border is just eight kilometres behind his property. “This is one of the communities that became a ghost town. Stores were boarded up, but the reputation of the hotel was too strong for it to die.”

Pristine surroundings

While many visitors come for the pristine surroundings and lack of commercialism, others are lured by the inn’s history, he says. “It never ceases to amaze me the people who come here just to see the place again. Often their grandparents brought them here, and now they want to share it with their own children or grandchildren.”

When the Vanwarts constructed the building, they named it Evandale House, possibly after Lord Evandale, a character in Sir Walter Scott’s Old Mortality.

In 1945, Saint John restaurateur Arthur Eveleigh and his wife Laura purchased the estate and transformed it to suit contemporary styles of the day. The Eveleighs had many high-profile friends from the Boston area who became regular guests.

“It was very fashionable for these people to leave the city and spend months at a time here on the river,” Durrnian says. “It became a retreat for very influential people of the day.”

Then in 1975, the Eveleighs sold to the Arris family, English immigrants who maintained the Eveleigh Hotel name. The inn changed hands briefly when an ex-Mountie fell in love with the property. His ownership lasted only a year.

When the Durrnians opened the doors to their restored Victorian country inn, Laura Eveleigh, a widow now living in a Moncton nursing home, was the first person to sign the guest book.

While Durrnian admits he isn’t getting rich as an innkeeper, he says there’s no better place to raise his four-year-old son.

“I, like most people, had memories of this place and I couldn’t see it closed to the public,” he says, adding that two other bidders at the auction planned to transform the estate into a retirement home.

“We are quite literally in the middle of nowhere, but there’s no place more beautiful than this.”

The Evandale Inn has eight rooms, from a master suite with a double Jacuzzi for $199 per night to simpler rooms for $79. It operates from May to October, and offers a complete menu.

— Moncton Times and Transcript