Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

The road to Rosel's restaurant

The award-winning restaurant known to many as Rosel's was a well-known restaurant that was owned and operated by Wilfred and Rosel Vogt from 1981 to 1997.
EXTRAcol-nadalin.18_1192018.jpg
Rosel and Wilfred Vogt for Kathy Nadalin column. Jan 11 2018

The award-winning restaurant known to many as Rosel's was a well-known restaurant that was owned and operated by Wilfred and Rosel Vogt from 1981 to 1997. They carried on in the business for 16 years when finally, they had to retire due to health reasons. Here is their story in a large nutshell.

Wilfred Vogt was born in 1931 in the northwestern province of Westphalia, Germany. After his schooling in Germany, he decided that he wanted to leave Germany and see the world; he had his heart set on going to Australia. It was at this point in time that his story really began.

Rosel Weissbrodt was born in 1936 in Sylesia in the southeastern part of Germany; she was one of eight children.

Rosel was nine years old when the war was over. She remembers that the times were tough and many families including her own headed to West Germany on foot looking for a better life. To make a long and historical story short, her family just happened to arrive near the same area where Wilfred and his family lived. Time went by and it turns out that both families were eventually living in the same building.

Rosel laughed and said, "When I first set eyes on Wilfred I marked him as my husband right off. He had such a beautiful head of thick curly hair and he was so very handsome. To tell you the truth Wilfred never even looked at me but I soon changed that."

Wilfred interjected and with a smile and a playful twinkle in his eyes said, "She was nothing but a nuisance to me, in fact she was the queen of torture."

Rosel explained, "I was only 13 and still in pigtails; Wilfred had such a succession of girlfriends that he never even noticed me. I secretly made it my mandate to make sure that none of them gave him a second look. It never dawned on me that he was 18 and I was still a little girl. Over the next five years I have to admit that I did torture those girlfriends.

"The one that irked me the most was the girl he went out with and I saw that they both had matching bikes. I kept flattening her tires when they weren't looking and after awhile I was forced to put goat turds in her bike's leather tool pouch."

Rosel told me many funny stories and I could see the accuracy in Wilfred's assessment of her.

"This went on for five years," said Wilfred. "I finally noticed her when she was 15. I decided that she had been such a nuisance (and she still is) that if I can't fight her I might as well join her and I asked her out. For some reason that seemed to settle her down because 62 years later we are still together."

Rosel quickly reminded Wilfred how the marriage proposal came about. She said, "He wasn't even romantic about it.

"He had always wanted to leave Germany after high school and go to Australia but they were not accepting single males saying they had to many of them already. Then one day out of the blue he said we should get married so that he could go to Australia. I got upset and bluntly reminded him that he only wanted to marry me so that he could get a passport to Australia so I refused on those grounds and he went to Canada instead.

"We carried on a long-distance romance over the ocean for the next two years. He returned to Germany, we got married and one year later Wilfred and I and our newborn baby left for Canada. The rest is history."

The young couple arrived in Montreal by boat. Wilfred wanted to be a farmer in Saskatchewan but fortunately a friend who had a nephew in Prince George mentioned all the work opportunities out west. His friend put him in touch with his nephew Hugh Glazier and they headed west.

They arrived in Prince George in 1963 with everything they owned in their station wagon. Hugh Glazier and his two partners Hans Roine and Donny Doyle owned and operated Clear Lake Sawmills. They hired Wilfred and he worked for the company for the next 27 years out in the Blackwater Road area just beyond West Lake.

During that time Rosel was a stay-at-home mom with four children. They lived in the sawmill camp, the children went to school at Baldy Hughes and Rosel started a badly needed commissary in the camp.

Now she was forced to learn to drive and get a driver's license in order to take the kids to school.

Rosel said, "It wasn't easy but I did it. Wilfred made me practice parking between a big grader and an even bigger caterpillar hoping that I wouldn't hit them.

"We lived in the camp for seven years; I drove the kids to their schools at Baldy Hughes, Beaverly and later Vanway and eventually school bus service started.

"We built our first home in Parkridge. I studied to become a real estate sales person and I sold houses for the next ten years.

"We purchased our first restaurant - the Hidden Valley Restaurant - in the Nicholson Centre and changed the name to Rosel's restaurant. To be completely honest we had no idea about how to run a restaurant. We just knew that we wanted our own business. Mary Waller and I did some catering together at the time so we understood the cooking side of the restaurant business.

"I took seminars offered by the restaurant association to learn the business and that was what saved us. The most important thing that I learned was the three L's - location, location, location and to know your customers and then give them what they want and what no one else has to offer them."

Their next problem was the 22 per cent interest rates of the mid 80s. Businesses were closing left and right and soon they had very few lunch clients and business was slow.

With her real estate background, they searched for a new location and to make a long story short they settled on Dr. Carl Ewert's house on Vancouver Street which was built in 1916. The house became the home of Hubert King of Wilson, King and Company in 1946. It had been rented out for years and needed a lot of work. With the help of architect Trelle Morrow and with the approval of previous owner Hubert King they renovated and the house became Rosel's Restaurant in 1985.

Now that they had the renovation plans, they needed some capital assistance. They went to their banker and asked for a loan and they were promptly refused. Their banker explained that they were not lending money to restaurants and told them to come back again once they were operating. This was an insult but the bank actually did them a favor by not financing them at the high interest rates of over 22 per cent.

Rosel took on the job of talking to all the contractors and, with the advice of their accountant, she convinced those that could to take shares in the business in lieu of their work and paid the rest in in cash.

Rosel said' "That was a summer of nerves of steel. We did it and we got started. Our greatest satisfaction was operating without the banks' help.

"It wasn't long and we were packed for lunch and dinner. It was wonderful and soon our clients were making reservations.

"I'll never forget the day that our banker walked in to our restaurant. We had no table for him, not even a chair. I felt like yodeling. That same afternoon the banker phoned us and offered us a mortgage.

"We took on the mortgage and by 1991 we expanded again and doubled the restaurant by adding a banquet room. With that the City of Prince George wanted us to let them designate our building as a heritage site with no benefits because it didn't really qualify as a heritage site.

"We declined because of no benefits to us and the many development restrictions that went along with the new classification. We did promise not to destroy the heritage character of the building which was a difficult promise to keep. Once again, we called on architect Trelle Morrow, we expanded and everyone was happy."

During the expansion discussions with the bank, Wilfred and Rosel wanted to add an upstairs apartment with a skylight. The bank refused on the grounds that it was too expensive and the skylight was extravagant. The city also said no because of the height restrictions that were in place.

They reapplied and asked for an owner lounge upstairs and it was approved: they built it complete with a skylight.

Rosel said, "We also wanted a basement and they said no to that as well but we did that work, too."

Wilfred and Rosel closed the restaurant in 1997 due to serious health issues for both of them. They sold the building which has since been changed to a medical specialist building. I found this to be most interesting because the building was originally the home of Dr. Carl Ewert, the city's Medical Health Officer who lived there until he retired in 1946. Now his former home is a medical building.

Rosel's Restaurant was awarded the Prince George Chamber of Commerce Business Person of the Year award in 1991 and the Prince George Chamber of Commerce Business Excellence Award for Customer Service in 1996.

Rosel was awarded the Commemorative Medal for the 125 Anniversary of the Confederation in 1992 in recognition of her significant contribution to compatriots, community and to Canada.

Wilfred and Rosel had four children; Martina (Murry), Peter (Karen), Andrew (Cheryl) and Steffen (Kathy) who in turn gave them 11 grandchildren and four great grandchildren with one more on the way.

In conclusion, both Wilfred and Rosel both wanted to say; "Thank you to all our faithful guests over the years. You were all fantastic and we know that we could not have done it without all of you."

Rosel said, "After the restaurant ,we thankfully recovered from our health issues and we started a bed and breakfast in our home. We operated at a much slower pace and we loved the opportunity to meet more great people.

"In retrospect I would not change anything in my life and especially the restaurant years because my life has been full of wonderful people."