'The strongest woman I knew': Family remembers Ethel Bell, co-founder of Three Valley Gap hotel

The co-founderof an iconic mountain tourist stop in B.C. has passed away.

Ethel Bell, who built the Three Valley Lake Chateau with her husband Gordonfrom the ground up starting in the 1950s, died last weekend at the age of 88.

Those whodrive on the Trans-Canada Highway just outside of Revelstoke, B.C.,will recognize thesprawling hotel with itsgiant red roof, Heritage Ghost Town, and antique car museum.

Ethel's daughter, Rene Bell-Bourget, describedher mother as "the strongest woman I knew."

"She was cleaning [the]rooms we took our laundry to Revelstoke andI just remember heavy bags of laundry that she could throw around easily," Bell-Bourget told CBC Radio West host Sarah Penton, adding that Bell also tended to other duties at the hotel including bookkeeping and scheduling.

Born in California on New Year's Day in 1934, Bell met her future husband in Revelstoke, B.C., during a visit to attend her grandfather's funeral.

They eventually settled in Regina, Sask., where Gordonconstructedmore than 800homes.

In 1959, they decided to start building on a property near the old town of Three Valley Gap, southwest of Revelstoke. The following yearthey openeda motel with seven rooms, a coffee shop, and a small museum.

While building the hotel, they would driveback and forth from Regina to Revelstoke on most weekends.

The family moved to Three Valley Gap permanently in 1964. The hotel was very much a family business.

"I started when I was three,"Bell-Bourget said. "So my two sisters and I, we danced the can-can on the stage and my brother George played the player piano for us and we sang a few songs," she said."It was an interesting childhood."

Gordon Bell died in November 2007, according to the hotel's website.

Bell-Bourget says the family plans to keep the hotel, which now has 200 rooms. The hospitalityindustry can be challenging, she says,but Belltaught her children the importance of keeping calm.

"I think she gave all of us that steadiness, that ability to overcome all of the the crazy that happens every day running a resort," Bell-Bourget said. "I think she instilled in all of us that there is not a reason to panic. You just stay steady, stay on course."