Murders at Shaunavon’s Grand Hotel

On March 16, 1940, Mah Sai, a Chinese baker in Shaunavon, was playing solitaire in a sheltered corner of the Grand Hotel lobby when he witnessed the fatal shooting of RCMP Sergeant Arthur Julian Barker by Victor Richard Greenlay. As Mah Sai watched, Greenlay fired three shots at Sergeant Barker who was putting on his boots at the foot of the hotel stairs. The policeman crumpled to the floor with a groan, and the baker ran for his life. Mah Hop, the proprietor of the Grand Hotel, was another witness to the murder on that fateful Saturday night. When he heard what sounded like firecrackers, Mah Hop ran to see what was going on. When he reached the second step of the stairs, Greenlay ordered him to get back.  “I went back fast,” Mah Hop said later.

Two months later, on the identical spot in the lobby of the Grand Hotel where Sergeant Barker died, both Mah Hop and Mah Sai were stabbed and killed in a knife fight.

The Grand Hotel, Shaunavon’s third hotel, was built in 1929 under the ownership of Fred Mah and Mah Hop. The two-storey brick hotel with 38 guest rooms was the scene of three brutal murders before it was bought by George Baird and converted into an apartment building. The Grand Hotel received Municipal Heritage Designation in 1999.

The old Grand Hotel, now an apartment block in Shaunavon, 2003. Image source

Officer Down

Victor Richard Greenlay was the 30-year-old son of Colonel and Mrs. G.L. Greenlay, highly respected ranchers in the Climax district. An officer of the non-permanent militia, Victor was formally charged on March 18, 1940 with the murder of his friend, Sergeant Barker, RCMP veteran and cattle country investigator. Barker had been visiting Greenlay in his room at the Grand Hotel just prior to the shooting. 

Shortly after the murder, it became clear that Greenlay was insane, suffering from schizophrenia. Victor Van Allen, another rancher in the south country, testified at the coroner’s inquest on March 18^th that he took Greenlay to Shaunavon that Saturday afternoon. On the way into town, some of the things Greenlay said made Van Allen realize he was not “normal.” Greenlay told Van Allen that was going to Shaunavon to see Sergeant Barker because together they would be able to prevent the Canadian government from selling horses to France. Greenlay said he feared trouble was to break out, and that “within a week there will be troops in the saddle,” adding that “Christ will appear in Germany in the form of a woman, and will turn the forces against Germany.” 

Photo of Sergeant Barker from the Leader-Post, March 19, 1940.

When they arrived in town, Greenlay phoned Sergeant Barker at about 7 o’clock and asked him to come to his room at the Grand Hotel. Barker, his wife, Gladys and their son Kenneth walked downtown, and while his family went to the library, Barker visited with Greenlay in his hotel room.  According to his later testimony, during their visit Greenlay apparently asked the RCMP officer to intervene for him with a girlfriend, and Barker demurred. When Barker left Greenlay’s room around 9:00 PM, Greenlay said he “heard a voice tell me to go out and shoot the evil beast.” He headed down the hotel stairs where he saw said he saw that Barker was not a man, but “a devil,” and he pulled the trigger of his .38 revolver three times.

Click here to see Regina Leader-Post story

After the funeral service in Shaunavon, Barker’s body was transported by train to Regina, where he was interred in the cemetery of the RCMP barracks. “The body was placed in the baggage car,” the Regina Leader-Post reported on March 19th. “In the day coach was Victor Richard Greenlay, charged with the murder of Sergeant Barker, and in the third coach was Mrs. Barker and her son, Kenneth.”  Greenlay was found not guilty by reason of insanity and confined to a mental institution.

Bloody Night at the Grand Hotel

“Jack” Toy Ying, a young waiter in Shaunavon, was upset. He was so upset that on Friday, May 3, 1940 he called Constable Robert Roycroft of the Shaunavon police force. Toy Ying laid a charge against the Grand Hotel, apparently involving a woman. He asked Roycroft to remove the woman in question from the hotel, and to get her out of town. So, at about 10 PM, Toy Ying, accompanied by a nervous Constable Roycroft, went to the Grand Hotel and searchted all the rooms. The woman was not found. 

With the town policeman still in tow, an angry Toy Ying confronted Mah Hop, the owner of the hotel, in the lobby. Their argument started out quietly, and then Roycroft noticed that the lobby was slowly filling up with other Chinese men. All of a sudden, the crowd of men jumped Toy Ying. Arms and legs were flying. In the melee, Roycroft wrestled some of the men off Toy Ying, who then saw his chance, ran out of the hotel, and headed off down the street. Behind him, Toy Ying left two dead and two injured, all as a result of stab wounds from a weapon he had concealed in his coat pocket. Police arrested Toy Ying the next day in Admiral, 25 miles east of Shaunavon.

Dead were Mah Hop, the 50-year-old hotel owner, and Mah Sai, the 45-year-old town baker. Mah Sai died on the exact spot where he had watched Sergeant Barker die from his bullet wounds just eight weeks earlier.  Both men had wives and children in China; Mah Hop also had a son in Nova Scotia. Mah Sam was in serious condition in the Shaunavon hospital with deep gashes in his leg and arm. Mah Yok had a surface wound.

Funeral services for Mah Sai were held at the United Church in Shaunavon on May 6^th. Mah Hop’s son, Mah Tun of Antigonish, Nova Scotia, arrived the following day to take charge of his father’s funeral. Both men were buried in Hillcrest Cemetery near Shaunavon.

On May 16, 1940, Toy Ying was put on trial on two charges of murder. When defense counsel, C.H.J. Burrows, K.C., Regina, asked Mah Sam through an interpreter whether he knew the woman Toy Ying wanted removed from town, Mah Sam said he had seen her in a local café, but not in Mah Hop’s room. Three other Chinese witnesses denied any knowledge of the mystery woman.

Click here to see Regina Leader-Post story 

© Joan Champ 2011

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The Unlucky Landis Hotel

The Landis Hotel, c. 1915. Sign beside the door reads "Chautauqua."  Image source

Reading about all the people who once owned the now-demolished Landis Hotel really makes me want to learn more about them. There are stories in every hotel, but something tells me the stories in this one are truly compelling – and sometimes sad.

Gertrude and Noble Woodworth, n.d. Courtesy of their grandson, Michael Vasil.

The Woodworths

Noble and Gertrude Woodworth, originally from Nova Scotia, came to Saskatchewan (via Vancouver) in 1917 to try their luck a farming in the Landis area. As suitable land was not immediately available, they decided to run the Landis Hotel for a year. Built in 1909 by contractors Lee, Hope and Meldrome, the hotel had been in a slump since the start of Prohibition in 1915. To make matters worse, the Spanish Flu hit the village of Landis in the fall of 1918. An emergency influenza hospital was set up in the Landis Hotel. 

Hotel at the end of Main Street, n.d. Image source

Landis Hotel, 1913. From The Landis Record (1980)

The flu epidemic started in the trenches at the end of the First World War in May 1918.  It spread across the Atlantic as troops returned to Canadian ports in the late spring and early summer, and reached Saskatchewan on October 1, 1918. Infected soldiers bound for home disembarked from troop trains in Regina and from there, the flu spread rapidly throughout the province.  

Almost 4,000 Saskatchewan people died during the first three months of the epidemic, and the largest number of deaths occurred in villages (12.6 people out of 1,000). Landis was not spared. It was thought that the flu was brought to the community by troupe of Chautauqua performers. (A Chautauqua was a travelling summer fair featuring music, drama and educational lectures, popular across North America during the Teens and Twenties.) So severe was the epidemic that literally every household in the village and surrounding district was stricken. The Landis Record reports that schools and businesses were closed, “and it was difficult to find enough able-bodied people to tend the sick.” Several people from Landis and area died. The wife of the United Church minister, Mrs. Trevor Williams, died at age 30, leaving behind a daughter who was only a few months old. Four members of the Geary family succumbed to the flu, including Ted Geary, his wife and son.

The next year, the Woodworths moved to a quarter section of land on the outskirts of Landis. Their two room shack, with no conveniences and with straw and manure banked up around the foundation to keep the place warm in winter, was likely a welcome change to the sadness the couple witnessed in the Landis Hotel in the fall of 1918.

A page from the Landis Hotel guest register, c. 1917. "Guests without baggage will please pay in advance." Courtesy Michael Vasil.

Anna Haas (right) with her sister Clara.
From The Landis Record (1980)

Anna Haas

Anna Haas ran the Landis Hotel from 1919 to 1921. Anna, the eldest daughter of Adam and Mariana Haas, had immigrated to Canada from Galicia in 1900 when she was only a few months old. The family originally homesteaded in the area of Gimli, Manitoba, on Lake Winnipeg.  In 1918, when Anna was 18 years old and working in the garment industry in Winnipeg, her parents and siblings moved to Landis. Perhaps the family thought the operation of the village hotel would be a good opportunity for Anna, for she arrived by passenger train shortly afterwards.  Anna’s younger siblings lived at the hotel while they attended school in town. They helped her with some of the lighter chores like carrying wood and washing dishes. In 1921, Anna decided to return to Winnipeg, and then to Edmonton, where she worked for the G.W.G. Garment Company. Anna was “stricken with a mental disorder” in 1928. She was committed to the Weyburn Mental Hospital where she lived for 50 years, dying at the hospital in 1978 at 78 years old. She is buried in the Landis cemetery.

John and Mary Ann "Grannie" MacLeod in front of the hotel, c. 1940.
From The Landis Record (1980)

 

The MacLeods

John MacLeod his wife, Mary Ann, and their six children farmed near Lockwood, Saskatchewan for five years before taking over ownership of the Landis Hotel in 1923. The MacLeod family ran the hotel until 1961. John passed away in 1942, at which time his son Hector, who had been working in the hotel since 1930, bought the business. Mary Ann passed away in 1951. 

Woo Sing

The following year, Hector converted the dining room of the hotel into a café, and hired Woo Sing Kee from Rosetown to run it. Mr. Sing, as he was known, had a wife in China, but Canada’s restrictive immigration laws prevented him from bringing her to join him in Saskatchewan. Instead, he brought young Raymond Kwan from China to help him out. Raymond attended school in Landis when he wasn’t working at the hotel cafe. After Raymond left, Mr. Sing had Wing Woo and Wah Woo working with him in the café. The Chinese Immigration Act was finally repealed in 1947, but it wasn’t until 1958 that Mr. Sing’s wife joined him in Landis. Mr. Sing died two years later, in 1960. His wife continued to live in the Landis Hotel, with Wing Woo and Wah Woo looking after her until her death in 1968.

The empty Landis Hotel, March 2006.  Joan Champ photo

By 2006, the hotel was abandoned and empty – open to vandals and the elements – a real safety hazard. Its wooden exterior had been covered over with stucco at some point, painted in bright colours. At the back there were several small additions to the original structure – sheds, lean-tos and even a dog house, with doors everywhere. Looking around the place, one could not help but say, “If only these walls could talk....” The Landis Hotel was torn down a couple of years later.

Rear of the Landis Hotel, 2007. Image source

Rear of the Landis Hotel, 2007. Image source

© Joan Champ, 2011

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Chinese Hotel Owners: "Friends to All"

Chinese immigrants in Canada, c. 1900. Image source

“George Brennan built the first hotel and managed it until Prohibition came. When he could no longer get a license for the bar, he sold it to some Chinamen.” This line from Pennant’s history book describes a typical scenario. When Saskatchewan’s hotels hit hard times, the province’s small Chinese community stepped in to pick up the pieces, keeping those hotels in business. Many Saskatchewan hotels were owned and operated by Chinese throughout the Prohibition years of the teens and 1920s, and into the Depression of the 1930s. In his address to the annual convention of the Hotel Association of Saskatchewan in 1952, George G. Grant stated that, back in the early1930s, “the condition of hotels was desperate, and half the hotels were operated by Orientals.” (Saskatoon StarPhoenix, May 20, 1952, p. 3)

The “Chinamen” who bought the Pennant Hotel from George Brennan in 1916 were “Yock Yee, Yee On, Yee Kong, and Young Yenchew, better known to all as George, Doo Lu, Louie and Charlie.” Like many Chinese enterprises in small-town Saskatchewan, the Pennant Hotel was not, strictly speaking, a family business. Rather, it was run by several men – relatives or friends – who worked as partners. This was necessary because, from 1885 until well into the 20^th century, restrictive immigration laws prevented Chinese from bringing their wives and children to Canada. As a result, the Chinese Canadian community became a “bachelor society.” 

Chinese immigrants began arriving in what is now Saskatchewan in the late 1880s after the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Fleeing from mob violence in British Columbia, they tended to disperse into the new railroad towns of the prairies. In his book, Sweet and Sour; Life in Chinese Family Restaurants (2010), John Jung explains that, upon arriving in a community, Chinese had to find or develop forms of self-employment as a means of economic survival. Other forms of work such as railway construction were denied to them. “Lacking English language skills, having little money, and little experience,” Jung writes, “one of the few opportunities was in domestic work, typically considered ‘women’s work’. Thus, they started their own small businesses such as laundries, grocery stores, and restaurants often in areas where there were few other Chinese.” Some became cooks in small-town hotels where they learned the business. 

Chow Chow on right, with Robin Chow, n.d.

                       From A Link to Our Heritage: Lacadena and District (1989)

Chow Chow came to Lacadena in 1925 and built a hotel with eight guest rooms upstairs, and a very good café on the main floor.  According to Lacadena’s local history book, Chow was a generous, good-hearted businessman. “At Christmas time he always had a gift of chocolates or Christmas cake for every family,” the book recounts. “He provided service twenty-four hours a day if food was needed.”  Other members of the hotel staff were Wing Chow and a nephew, Ernie Chow, who attended school in Lacadena for a year or two. In 1947, Chow Chow's life changed when the Canadian government repealed the Chinese Immigration Act. His wife, son and two daughters were finally able to come from China to join him. He left Lacadena and moved to Vancouver where his wife helped him in a confectionery-café until he passed away from leukemia in 1972. 

The Wong Gin family of Herbert, 1940. Image Source

Wong Gin was a lucky man.  He came to Canada from China in 1908, and by 1913, he was the owner of the Tuxedo Café in Herbert, Saskatchewan. Thirteen years later, in 1926, he was the owner of the Tuxedo Hotel and Café, advertised as “The Best Hotel in Town – Ice Cream and Confectionary – Meals at All Hours – Clean Rooms and Best of Service.”  Wong Gin was also fortunate because his wife and family were not thousands of miles away in China. In 1927, he married Mae Yea of Riverhurst, Saskatchewan, and they had six children. Wong Gin was in competition with the Herbert Hotel owned by Mrs. E.M. Stephenson – “A Home Away From Home – Home Cooking – We Employ White Help Only.”  He must have been a naturalized Canadian, because in 1935, the year the province allowed the sale of beer by the glass, he bought the Herbert Hotel from Mrs. Stephenson and he was able to obtain a license to open a beer parlour – something many Chinese hotel owners were not permitted to do. Chinese were excluded because the law required that the applicant for a liquor license had to be a person who was entitled to vote. The Chinese in Saskatchewan did not receive the provincial franchise until 1947. In 1939, N.B. Williams, chairman of the Saskatchewan Liquor Board, stated that some liquor licenses had been granted to naturalized Chinese "who had long operated hotels in communities and were respected there." It was not, however, the board's policy to grant a license to naturalized Chinese "who had bought hotels after the former white owners had failed," Mr. Williams said. (Regina Leader-Post, Aug. 22, 1939, p. 9)

The Herbert Hotel in 1908.Image source

In 1945, Wong Gin sold the Herbert Hotel. He died in January 1960. The Herbert history (1987) records the following tribute:  “Wong had more than fulfilled the requirements of any citizen. As a pioneer he took an active part in building Herbert, for the well-being of his children and his neighbour’s children. He had helped to build on every project that needed volunteer labour – the school, hospital, skating rinks, curling rinks, exhibition grounds and Bible School. … One winter he even won a trophy in a farmers’ bonspiel.” The Gin family has continued to be active and involved in the Herbert community ever since.  

Edam Cafe and Hotel, n.d Image source

Charlie Chan arrived from China in 1910.  In 1915, Chan and a partner built a hotel on Main Street in Edam that, according to the Canada’s Historic Places web site, “was considered to be one of the most elegant establishments of its kind in the region.”  Chan’s business consisted of hotel, café and ice cream parlour. He eventually bought out his partner’s share in the Edam Café, and his family operated it until 1986. The two-storey, wood frame building, designated as a Municipal Heritage Property, was moved in 2003 from Main Street to the site of the Edam museum. 

Back in Pennant, Young Yenchew (aka Charlie) and Yok Yee (aka George), owners of the Pennant Hotel for many years, were considered “friends to all,” especially the children. The hotel café was a great place to meet for a 25-cent banana split, or an orange drink called “belly wash” for five cents. Charlie loved the sport of curling, and attended many bonspiels throughout the region. “When they left Pennant,” the history book reports, “a large crowd gathered at the Memorial Hall to say thank you for all the years of service to the community.” 

Once economic conditions improved during the war years of the 1940s, the number of Chinese hotel owners in the province dropped substantially.

© Joan Champ, 2011