Meet the Makers: The Rosebud Country Inn
Part of Badlands Eats, our series on the people who feed you, host you, and make you feel at home across Canada's Badlands.
Some places you remember for what you did there. Rosebud you remember for how you felt.
In a town of 101 people, about 99 km from Calgary, Betty-Jane and Ken have spent the better part of two decades doing one thing very well: making people feel like they belong. "I like challenges," BJ says. "I like to see what can be done when everyone else says it can't be." Running a bed and breakfast in a village this size, for seventeen years, is exactly that kind of challenge. She has met it one warm welcome at a time.
The Rosebud Country Inn was built in 1995 and first opened its doors in 1996. Today it holds ten guest rooms, each with a private ensuite, and every stay begins with a full hot breakfast made fresh that morning. When the Pie Shoppe & Eatery is open, the menu is honest and simple: homemade soups, fresh sandwiches, and desserts that people plan their whole day around.
Especially the pie.
"I think pie is a sense of warmth, particularly when they're homemade," BJ says. "Sometimes it's hard to cut into them because they look so nice." That is the spirit of the place in a single sentence. Nothing here is rushed, nothing is mass produced, and everything is made to be shared.
There is a sign hanging in the inn that BJ found years ago in a little shop in London, Ontario. She is not the one who will tell you what it says. But she will tell you that most guests point to it and say the same thing: that's exactly what happens here. "People need a sense of belonging," she says. "In this crazy world, people love to know that someone cares for them."
Rosebud makes that easy. The inn sits just steps from the Rosebud Theatre, where performances from the Rosebud School of the Arts and visiting artists fill the calendar through the year. Drumheller is about 35 km up the road, home to the Royal Tyrrell Museum, the Badlands Amphitheatre, and the Atlas Coal Mine. Come for a show, come for the hoodoos, come for a slow prairie morning. Then come back to a table where someone has saved you a slice.
"I'm so blessed by the people I've met through this inn," BJ says. "Unbelievably blessed."
We think the feeling runs both ways.
Plan your visit
The Rosebud Country Inn is a featured stop on the Badlands Eats journey through Canada's Badlands. There are plenty more places to eat, stay, and linger a little longer:
Discover the Rosebud Country Inn
Explore the full Badlands Eats guide
Follow the Dig In itinerary, a three-day food trail through Drumheller, Kneehill County, Rosebud, and Brooks
In partnership with
We acknowledge that what we call Alberta is the traditional and ancestral territory of many peoples, presently subject to Treaties 6, 7, and 8. We acknowledge the many First Nations, Métis and Inuit who have lived in and cared for these lands for generations. We make this acknowledgement as an act of reconciliation and gratitude to those whose territory we reside on or are visiting.