Ray Parry has a personal connection with the building containing the Cona Hostel that was ravaged by fire on Saturday morning.
His late father, Ray Sr., owned the building from 1953 to the early-70s, as well as the Anderton Arms apartments next door.
“There’s a lot of history there for me,” said Parry, 70. “I lived in there many years myself. It was sad to see the building go up like that.
“It was a heritage building,” Parry added. “During the war it was a first aid station…It’s an old building. I swear to God it was haunted, too.”
He recalls his grandfather planting the fir trees beside the hostel “when they were six inches high.”
Ray Sr. ran the Parry Sheet Metal roofing company on the ground floor of the building. The family lived upstairs.
“My dad owned all that property along the river. He was a well-respected businessperson in the Valley here. He owned Comox Builders at one time.”
In the 1950s, Parry said his father helped renovate the building that turned into the hostel.
“It was the McPhee hardware store, originally. It was on Fifth Street, and they moved it to that location. It had a peak roof on it. My dad was a roofer, so he chopped the roof off and made it flat.”
Local historian Ian Kennedy said the building was constructed in 1895, and is the oldest one in Courtenay. The original Joseph McPhee and Sons store was moved onto Anderton from Union Street when the new McPhee Block was built on Union (Fifth) Street in 1913, Kennedy added.