Saskatchewan’s Hotel Bars Before Prohibition

Bar at the Fielding Hotel, 1915.  Glenbow Archives, NA-3853-23

"You have to be a certain type of person to look after a bar in a hotel, as you meet all kinds of people under the influence of liquor.”

     - Irene Lessard, Baldwinton Hotel

The hotel bar was a busy place in small-town Saskatchewan in the early 1900s. The Legislative Assembly of the North West Territories passed the Liquor License Ordinance of 1892.  For about $200, hotels could obtain a license which allowed them to sell liquor by the glass at the bar, as well as off-sale liquor (by which bottles could be taken out of the premises).   

License for the Beaver Hotel at Denholm, 1914.

From Western Development Museum,

WDM-1973-NB-5524

The typical Saskatchewan hotel in 1910 had a long, ornate wooden bar complete with a large mirror behind it, brass foot rails, and brass spittoons.  A sign over the beverage room door read, “Licensed to sell spirituous or fermented liquors.” These were stand-up bars for men only – there were no chairs. Over the bar, the bartender served lager beer, wine, brandy and gin, as well as soft drinks.  Whiskey sold for ten cents a glass.  

W. Laing behind the bar of the Grand Hotel at Moosomin, c. 1905.

From Moosomin Century One: Town and Country (1981)

 The hotel bars did a roaring trade. According to the Pense local history book (1982), the Carlton Hotel was built at a cost of about $48,000, and the original owner made $25,000 in a single year. “It had 30 rooms and for several years after it was built it was full every day. It also had a large bar, which on one picnic day sold $1,000 worth of liquor, the liquor being purchased by the carload.” The hotel at MacNutt stayed open on sports days. “It was on days such as this that we usually sold 500 to 600 bottles of liquor in one day,” Philip Schappert, the hotel bartender recalled.   

Prud'homme Hotel bar, n.d. Owner Joseph Marcotte on right.  Glenbow Archives, NA-3853-33

Things really got hopping on Saturdays.  Farmers who had to haul their grain for many miles stopped into the hotel to eat and quench their thirst after a hot and dusty journey “With families dispersed into the country stores to shop, visit friends, and exchange gossip,” James Gray writes in Booze (1974), “the farmers had the opportunity [to slip away for a drink] if they had the urge.” There were a few fights on Saturday nights at the hotels in those days.  T. L. Ferris described the scene for the Fielding history book (1984). “A Saturday night was quite different from anything you might see today,” he recalled. “There were no street lights in those days and only the hanging light on the wide north porch lit up the entrance to the bar. We’d see noisy drunks come reeling out and many a fight livened up our evenings.” A story is told about the North-West Hotel in Ceylon owned by William J. Coffron of a certain Irishman who had a few too many drinks and wanted to cause a disturbance. “Mr. Coffron got him upstairs and handcuffed him to the bedstead,” the Ceylon history book records (1980). “Before long, he was coming down the stairs carrying the bedstead with him.” At the Strasbourg Hotel, rumour had it that a fellow rode his horse in and shot up the bar.  Subsequent owners maintain that the bullets are still in the wall.  

Parkside Hotel bar, c. 1910.  From Follow the Spirit (1980)

Concern about the high rate of alcohol consumption led to the appearance of Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in Saskatchewan. Its primary objective was to combat the evils of whiskey. Pressure from the WCTU and the Banish-the-Bar movement resulted in an announcement by Premier Walter Scott in March, 1915 that all bars in Saskatchewan would be closed as of July 1, 1915.

© Joan Champ, 2011

Day-to-Day Hotel Operations

Ben and Sarah Cook on right, with Bradwell hotel staff, c. 1910.

Western Development Museum Library, 6-E-4

Running a small-town Saskatchewan hotel back in the early 1900s was hard work. The hotel staff usually consisted of at least two chambermaids and a cook who worked from morning ‘til night, cleaning the guest rooms, doing the laundry, and washing dishes. The maid's work day at the Herbert Hotel started at 6:00 a.m. and ended at 9:00 p.m. for which she was paid $10 per month, plus room and board. Charles Pratt, the porter at the Griffin Hotel, not only assisted hotel guests with their luggage; he also washed dishes, milked the two cows that supplied the milk for the hotel and did all the odd jobs. The Griffin Hotel’s upstairs maid also polished the silver and glassware and kept everything shining. 

Staff in the kitchen of the Frances Hotel at Midale, c. 1910. 

From Plowshares to Pumpjacks: R.M. of Cymri: Macoun, Midale, Halbrite (1984)

All members of the hotel owner’s family had to share in the work of running the hotel. Leo Buhler, whose parents owned the hotel in Fairlight, recalls, “One of the duties of the kids was to help with the housekeeping and at noon you had to take your turn at washing the dishes before going back to school. My sister, Irma, served as a waitress in the dining room when she was barely taller than the table tops.”  Henry, son of the owner of the Herbert Hotel, had jobs, too, “such as carrying wood and water to the hotel when needed, and carrying out ashes.  On Mondays he always had to skip school to turn the handle on the washing machine. … Henry also earned an extra dollar by teaching the Chinese cook how to speak English. ” 

The Ferrie family ran the hotel at Invermay for 28 years.  The four Ferrie boys worked shifts hauling great loads of wood to keep the hotel’s furnace running 24 hours a day during the winter months. As Ben Ferrie recalls in the Invermay local history book:  “The years in the Hotel were busy ones for all of the family. It was the boys’ job to fire the wood-burning furnace. This meant rising about three a.m. and again at six to stoke the furnace. … We were responsible for bringing in blocks of ice and snow to melt for the daily wash. … We hauled our drinking water from the town well… A familiar sight around town was our Scotch collie, Don, pulling the sleigh loaded with cans of water.”

Cutting ice on a river.  From Wikimedia Commons

Packing ice in the winter was quite an experience.  It was necessary to put up about 30 tons of ice to provide year-round cold storage for the hotel kitchen.  Hotel owners would often hire a farmer to cut the ice and haul it in with teams and a sleigh, which would take several days.   

Mrs. Rehaume, owner of the Pleasantdale Hotel,

did all the washing for the hotel using a washtub and scrub board. 

From Memories of the Past: History of Pleasantdale (1981)

Wash days – usually Mondays – were an ordeal, especially in winter. Washing bedding and clothes was often a two-day proposition. Water had to be hauled and then heated in tubs the night before. Start-up time was set for five or six a.m. and the laundry process quite often ran into the afternoon. The next day, one of the maids would run the clothes and sheets through a mangle, a machine used to wring water out of wet laundry.  Most hotels did not get running water until the 1940s or 1950s, so water had to be hauled from a well in the summer.  In the winter, hotels used melted ice and snow, or water that had been collected in rain barrels during the previous summer.

© Joan Champ, 2011