About a 30-minute drive up Highway 99 from Pemberton, you’ll find the Birken House Bakery. And while the road is winding and occasionally bumpy, it’s a pilgrimage worth making.
It's been similarly rewarding for Eileen Keenan, the baker behind the bakery. Born on a farm in Ireland and a "recovering architect" specializing in energy-efficient buildings at a major Vancouver design firm, she now spends her days shaping loaves instead of libraries.
“Architecture and baking have more in common than you'd think,” Keenan told Pique. “Both are a blend of science and art. You follow certain rules, but there’s so much creativity, too.”
More than a decade back, Keenan and her late husband, Michael, purchased the Birken House—a farmhouse built in 1908, rumoured to have been a stagecoach stop on the historic Douglas Trail to the Cariboo Gold Fields. What started out as a weekend getaway to the Birkenhead Valley quickly turned into a more permanent move.
The bakery itself began humbly; Keenan baked loaves in the farmhouse as a hobby, as the building underwent much-needed renovations courtesy of her and her project-manager husband. In 2014, she made her premiere at the Pemberton Farmers' Market with somewhere around 20 or 30 loaves. Keenan sold out in 35 minutes.
"You can't leave if you've sold out. That's sort of a rule of farmers' markets." she said. "So my goal was to try and get to the end of the market with something left to sell."
Her sourdough, developed out of necessity into a three-day process to fit her Friday market and weekend bakery schedule, quickly became a local staple.
Demand grew, and another baker who’d been looking for a successor sold her equipment to Keenan. A welcome problem emerged: Keenan needed more space to bake. So, she looked to a machine workshop on the property, demolished it, and used some of that wood in the construction of a proper bakery. It was Keenan’s last architecture project.
The bakery she designed and built sits up the driveway from the renovated farmhouse. It’s got an Airbnb suite upstairs and gardens out back.
It’s part charming restoration, part personal resurrection. After the loss of her husband Michael to cancer at the beginning of the pandemic, Keenan wasn’t sure what came next. But the routine of breadmaking offered a lifeline.
“I always did the baking by myself, so I could go in there and everything was still the same; it hadn't changed," she recalled. "So, instead of heading to the house, I’d just think, ‘I'll just bake some more cinnamon buns.’”
The bakery is now open Saturdays and Sundays, from 9 a.m. until 2 p.m. Its offerings go beyond a wide variety of sourdough bread—from those cinnamon buns to granola to a dynamite rhubarb cordial.
Keenan grows many of her own greens and berries. And what she can’t produce at home, she tracks down through a tightly knit community of locals making Costco runs or hauling supplies up from the Lower Mainland.
That logistical dance is one of the lesser-known realities of running a rural bakery. Couriers don’t deliver reliably to Birken. There aren’t dairy farms nearby. And “life is a scramble to find avocados,” she remarked.
The Sunday “Tea in the Garden” events are a particular joy for Keenan and a crowd favourite. Held under a white canopy tent surrounded by flowers, the teas feature three-tiered trays of macarons, madeleines and cucumber sandwiches, served on vintage china donated by local seniors.
“People’s kids don’t want the china anymore,” Keenan said. “But we do, so all the seniors have donated to us, and we’ve made it a fancy thing.”
These gatherings are more than just fancy treats; they’re part of what Keenan sees as her larger mission: to help build community in a place where social connection can be hard to come by. Monthly pizza nights—featuring dough tossed in front of guests and pies baked in a wood-fired oven under the stars—offer another chance to mingle with residents.
"Everybody comes out and because we make [the pizza] to order, it sometimes takes a while to finish them,” Keenan said. “So you have time to just chit-chat with neighbours and get to know people.”
That sense of shared purpose is something Keenan carried with her since her days in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, where she volunteered weekly in the Carnegie Centre’s kitchen. That ethos continues in Birken. Her commercial kitchen is certified as a commissary space, so she’s renting it out to other emerging local food producers.
As she opens up her bakery for the year ahead, Keenan is thinking about what comes next.
“I’m 57,” she said. “I’m not going to do this forever.”
She's eyeing a shift toward small events and weddings, which could offer more flexibility—and the chance to spend a few summer weekends away with her partner, Steven—whom she affectionately refers to as the bakery and house’s “maintenance department.” The two are getting married this July in the garden behind the bakery. They’ll be joined by family and their two dogs, Hunter and Madra (meaning "dog," in Irish).
Running a bakery isn’t easy. And running one in a rural area is markedly more difficult.
Between the long hours, fickle supply chains, and challenges in tracking down qualified staff, it’s a life that demands perseverance and passion. But for Keenan, it's worth it—not just for the bread, but for what the bakery has become: a place where neighbours gather and strangers meet.
“I think there's sort of tough times ahead when it comes to climate change,” she said. “And humans are tremendous if they work together, but they'll only really work together if [they] know someone and they're your friend. So I think [we] need to build those community networks.”
Birken House Bakery runs on weekends from May until October. They’ll also be regulars at the Pemberton Farmers' Market on Fridays at the Downtown Community Barn. Be sure to check out their website, Facebook page and Instagram account for information on the menu and upcoming events.
