Rosebud’s historic Mercantile still stands to serve

By Laureen F. Guenther Times Contributor

The Hamlet of Rosebud includes several buildings that are over 100 years old and still in use.
The Haskayne-Kenney Mercantile is one of those, and according to LaVerne Erickson, Rosebud resident and founder of Rosebud School of the Arts and Rosebud Theatre, the Mercantile is the oldest building in the community. The building was built in 1911, he said, and was the first store in the fledgling community.
As Rosebud grew, and the survey system for the hamlet was changed, it turned out the Mercantile was in the middle of Main Street.
“So the owner got several teams of horses and hooked up to the building and pulled the thing as far as they could, until it kind of jammed and they couldn’t back it up anymore,” Erickson said. “Look down Main Street (now). It doesn’t run straight like other Main Streets do.”
The Rosebud Mercantile was first operated by O.R. Hatton, who sold it to his son-in-law Henry Sutton. Jack Sangster took over the store in 1918 and operated it until 1934. According to the history book Akokiniskway: By the River of Many Roses, Sangster had a unique but effective, approach to resisting robbery, which was always a concern for businesses in small towns. Because robbers would often steal or blow up the safe in a store they wanted to rob, Sangster labeled his store’s safe with instructions about how to open it. Then he wrapped his cash in canvas sacks and hid them elsewhere.
Over the decades, the Mercantile was owned and operated by several other families until its last owners, Gordon and Evelyn Milgate. When Erickson was a boy, one of his first jobs was working for the Milgates in the Mercantile, unloading the weekly shipments of goods. When the Milgates closed the store, Erickson said, the family continued to use the building as the depot for their trucking company.
But by 1973, when Erickson had become a youth pastor in Calgary, although the Milgates still owned the Mercantile, the building was no longer in use. Erickson wanted to bring junior high youth to Rosebud for a weekend arts camp, and the Milgate family gave him permission to use the Mercantile. That weekend camp grew into the ongoing Rosebud Camp of the Arts, which evolved into Rosebud School of the Arts high school and then the post-secondary Rosebud School of the Arts it is now.
The Rosebud Mercantile has been used for many purposes, including classrooms, kitchen and eating areas, Rosebud School of the Arts gift shop, a conference center and Wild Horse Jack’s restaurant. After a significant expansion, in 2014, Richard and Lois Haskayne made a million-dollar donation to Rosebud School of the Arts, to pay off the mortgage. The building’s name was changed to the Haskayne-Kenney Mercantile.
In 2019, 108 years after it was first built, the main floor of the Haskayne-Kenny Mercantile houses the Rosebud Theatre Box Office, the kitchen and dining areas of the theatre, and the Rosebud County Goods and Co. gift shop. In the oldest sections of the building, the décor is comprised of items from the original Mercantile stores. The upper floor is used for classrooms and special events.