The Lodge at Métis Crossing

The Boutique Lodge is a cornerstone of an ambitious and ongoing project at Métis Crossing, a cultural interpretive site located in Smoky Lake, Alberta. The two-storey Lodge offers 40 guestrooms and plays an essential role in providing an authentic and immersive cultural experience for visitors of Métis Crossing. Wood was essential to achieving project objectives, offering a sustainable, comfortable, culturally and economically relevant structure that offers a specific aesthetic and sensory experience grounded in the history and culture of the area.

The presence of wood supports our vision of a space that is lovingly and carefully handcrafted and that feels comfortable, warm, and lived-in. The Lodge places a high value on the truth in materials and is designed to reflect how Métis people built and lived historically and how they continue to innovate in a contemporary context. No design element was deemed too insignificant; each detail was chosen with the aim of conveying a distinctly Métis cultural and historical character.

Many of the wood design choices, such as the dovetail joint and post-and-beam details, are reminiscent of the area’s original buildings, which include fur trade-era homesteads and trappers’ cabins. The Lodge’s feature stair was made with planks of 2 x 8 laminated eastern white pine. The pine provides a strong and stable base, and the large, imperfect cuts align with an overarching vision of a space that is warm, welcoming, and thoughtfully handcrafted.