Landmark Building
BELLEVUE CAFE
2438-213 Street, Bellevue / Hillcrest
Built By: Joe Mah
Built in 1917
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The Bellevue Cafe built in 1917 by Joe Mah became famous as the scene of a shootout between police and train robbers in August of 1920. Mah had emigrated from Canton in China in about 1908. He first lived on Vancouver Island but the following year moved to Bellevue, where he opened a restaurant. This was a small shed-roofed wood frame structure with clapboard siding. The cafe was burnt down in the fire of 1917 and Mah was one of many business men forced to rebuild their premises. The Bellevue Cafe remained in the hands of the Mah family until 1975. It is a long rectangular two storey wood frame structure with a boomtown facade.
As the Canadian Pacific Railway No. 63 wound it way through the Crowsnest Pass on August 2, 1920, it was held up by three men who believed that Emilio Picariello the well-known bootlegger of the Pass was on Board with a large sum of cash. The three thieves, George Arkoff, Tom Bassoff and Alex Auloff, were mistaken and only collected about $300 before making their escape. Two of them were apprehended in Bellevue five days later.
As the Calgary Herald later reported, “two unkempt unshaven men hurried with furtive glances,” past the bank and went on to a small Chinese cafe “where odours of fried potatoes onion and cabbage struggled for supremacy on the summer air.” When they entered they sat down in one of the booth and called for immediate service. In the meantime the police had been alerted that “two desperate looking characters answering the description of the bandits were in the cafe.”
When the police officer Frewin, Usher and Bailey arrived to arrest them pandemonium broke loose a shots were fired. Usher died just inside the door of the cafe and Bailey was killed as he came from the back of the building on hearing gunfire. One of the bandits, Arkoff, died as he staggered out of the Bellevue cafe. Bassoff escaped but was finally captured after an extensive manhunt and was subsequently hanged. Auloff managed to elude justice for several years but was finally captured in Butte, Montana and sentenced to life in prison. Bullet holes partly filled with putty were still visible during the 1920 in one of the booths.
In December 1989, this building was designated a Registered Historic Resource. The original clapboard siding and window detail of the Bellevue Cafe's front elevation were reconstructed in 1990 by the Alberta Main Street Programme.
The Landmark Buildings and Places Database draws on the series of walking and/or driving tour booklets produced by Alberta Culture (now Alberta Culture and Community Spirit). The Heritage Community Foundation gratefully acknowledges the support of the Ministry through permission to reprint these materials online. Extracted from Crowsnest Pass Historical Driving Tour: Bellevue and Hillcrest. Alberta Culture and Multiculturalism, The Crowsnest Pass Ecomuseum Trust, and the Coal Association of Canada, 1990, with permission from Alberta Culture and Community Spirit. Visit the Alberta Culture and Community Spirit for more information.