Railway & Main: Small-Town Saskatchewan Hotels: Billy Coffron

North West Hotel in Ceylon, 1912. Source

For a couple of years during the Roaring Twenties, a decade before Bonnie and Clyde and John Dillinger, gangs of bank robbers terrorized small towns along the Saskatchewan-Montana border. The son of the owner of the North West Hotel in Ceylon, Saskatchewan, is reputed to have been a member of one of these gangs.

Billy Coffron, aka "Little Billy." Salt Lake Telegram, Dec. 6, 1923

On September 26, 1922, Billy Coffron, son of William J. Coffron and his wife Catherine (Cassie), was very likely one of the gang of bandits that blew open the vault of the Bank of Montreal in Ceylon, making off with $7,000 in cash, securities and bonds. According to Ceylon’s local history book, Builders of a Great Land (1980), the bank robbers had hopped into a get-away car, fired a rifle into the air “as a parting shot of glee and triumph,” and sped south through the Big Muddy and down into the United States.

Illustration by Don Anderson from James Gray, "Cops and Robbers in the Roaring Twenties," Windsor Star, May 10, 1975.

After building and operating a couple of hotels in Minnesota, the Coffrons moved to Ceylon district of Saskatchewan in 1907 and filed on a homestead which was operated by 19-year-old Billy. Located 110 km due south of Regina, Ceylon had its beginnings – like most prairie towns – with the construction of the railway through the district in 1910. Seeing an opportunity, the Coffrons moved to Ceylon in 1911 and built the North West Hotel on the corner of Main Street and 1^st Avenue, across the street from the Bank of Montreal. The $25,000 hotel opened on the evening of December 25, 1911; the following day, it burned to the ground.

Fire at the North West Hotel, December 26, 1911. From Builders of a Great Land (1980)

The fire started in a small building next door to the hotel and spread quickly. There was no firefighting equipment in Ceylon, so little could be done to battle the blaze. “People do strange things in times of excitement and this was evident the day of the fire,” Ceylon’s history book, Builders of a Great Land, states, “Townspeople and hotel occupants carried bedding and mattresses down the stairs and threw china basins and pitchers out of the windows to the frozen ground below.” Mildred Stephenson, the first baby born in the newly incorporated village, was born in the hotel the night of the fire. The Stephenson family lived in the hotel, where Mr. Stephenson worked. Mrs. Stephenson went into labour just as the hotel was being consumed by flames. She was moved into a little shack behind the hotel which was sprayed with water to keep it from burning while Mildred was being born.

Coffron rebuilt the North West Hotel in 1912 on the same foundation. It had 47 rooms. He and Cassie ran and excellent dining room and the bar was always busy. A story is told about a certain Irishman who had a few too many drinks at the hotel bar and was creating a disturbance. “Mr. Coffron got him upstairs and handcuffed him to the bedstead,” the history book recounts. “Before long, he was coming down the stairs carrying the bedstead with him.”

William Coffron (far right) at the bar of the first North West Hotel, 1911. From Builders of a Great Land (1980)

Lobby of the North West Hotel, 1912. From Builders of a Great Land (1980)

Bill and Cassie Coffron, n.d.

In an attempt to curtail incidents such as this, the government of Saskatchewan introduced Prohibition in 1915. The bar of the North West Hotel in Ceylon was closed, and in its place the Coffrons set up the town’s first movie theatre. There was no money to be made without the bar, however, so, according to the town’s history book, the hotel was temporarily sold to “the Bromptons” who used the hotel as a cover for bootlegging during Prohibition. This was, in fact, the infamous Bronfman family which built its huge fortune from the liquor business during Prohibition.

The Bronfmans had a string of “boozoriums” or liquor supply depots in communities along the Saskatchewan-North Dakota border from which American customers could purchase liquor. Because Ceylon was located 50 km north of the border, a boozorium was operated in the town – quite likely out of the North West Hotel. Whiskey from the Bronfman family’s distillery in Yorkton was shipped to safe storage in Ceylon and other border towns. Under cover of night, well-armed men in big cars arrived to haul the booze south along well-worn trails to U.S. customers.

Booze begat violence. On September 27, 1922, the residents of Ceylon were awakened by the explosion that opened the Bank of Montreal's vault to the gang of thieves. One theory was that the thieves knew the bank’s vault would contain the proceeds of the boozorium. Billy Coffron, who often hung out at his parents’ hotel across the street from the bank, may have had some inside information. According to James Gray’s book, The Roar of the Twenties (1975), “The Ceylon robbery was especially noteworthy because the robbers not only took off with all the cash on hand, they took a large folder filled with promissory notes, mortgages, and sundry other securities for debt. It was the greatest single debt adjustment act in Saskatchewan history for it reduced the indebtedness of the entire community to zero.”

On November 28, 1923 at Havre, Montana, detectives employed by several bankers' associations arrested Billy Coffron, Roy Hauger, and "Doc" Walkup, all from Ceylon. The three Canadians were charged with robbing the Bank of Montreal in Ceylong and the Union Bank at Moosomin in 1922; a bank at Dollard, Saskatchewan in 1923; and several banks in the States. According to the Regina Leader-Post, Billy's mother travelled to Havre in early December and secured counsel for her son's trial. She must have found sharp defense lawyers, for on July 15, 1924, the Leader-Post reported that Billy had been freed on all charges and was returning home to Ceylon. He claimed that he had been railroaded by the police.

The 1926 Canada census shows Billy Coffron residing on the family homestead near Ceylon. His parents were still operating the North West Hotel in town. They sold the hotel, which still stands today on the corner of Main and 1^st, in 1927.