G. H. I. Hotels

Gainsborough

 

Crowd gathered outside the newly built Riverside Hotel, 1905. Source

Riverside Hotel, c. 1905. Source

 

Girvin

 

King Edward Hotel, c. 1912; built in 1907. Source

 

Glen Ewen

 

Imperial Hotel, 1908. Source

In 1907, George Reading "Tony" Wincott owned the Imperial Hotel in Glen Ewen. Born in England, Wincott came to Saskatchewan from Ontario in 1896. While working for a horse trader in Montana, it was said he looked like a Mexican to he was nicknamed Tony. While operating the Imperial Hotel, Wincott raised Saint Bernard dogs which won may prizes in shows across Canada. In December of 1908, he married Caroline Erickson who had worked in the dining room of the hotel. Their son George was born in the hotel in 1910. Their second son Alusym was born two years later.

Goodwater

 

Goodwater Hotel, c. 1910. Source

Mrs. Elizabeth (aka Betty Ann) McMickin built the hotel in Goodwater in 1910 when she was about 55 years old. (She may be one of the women shown in this photo, although they all appear to be fairly young.) Elizabeth and James McMicken, of Irish ancestry, came to Saskatchewan from Ontario, via Manitoba, in about 1905. They farmed in the Assiniboia district for several years. James and the six McMickin children moved to the United States at some point. In 1914, Elizabeth rented to hotel to Mr. and Mrs. Henry Foss and returned to the States where her husband was farming. After he died of smallpox in 1919, Elizabeth returned to Goodwater to operate the hotel again. Her son Hunter came with her. Her other two sons and three daughters remained in Montana. It was said that Mrs. McMickin was a very good cook, pastry being her specialty. Inn 1920, Hunter McMickin married Hild Bruning who worked in the hotel. In 1928, Mrs. McMickin sold the Goodwater Hotel and moved to California, where she died at the age of 95. Source

Gravelbourg

 

Hotel (probably the Cecil), c. 1920. Note the "honey wagon" at rear. Source

The Cecil Hotel was destroyed by fire in 1926. The owner, Mrs. Larochelle, had made a fire on the kitchen stove to heat some water to do some washing. She then went upstairs to clean rooms when she discovered the fire in the kitchen. She escaped the hotel with only her clothes. The hotel was reduced to ashes in about an hour's time. Source

Guernsey

 

Hotel Guernsey in background, n.d. Source

 

Gull Lake

 

The Lakeview and the Clarendon hotels, c. 1910. Source

Clarendon Hotel, 1915. Source

Lakeview Hotel, c. 1910.

The three-storey Lakeview hotel and the two-storey Clarendon Hotel were both built in 1906. The Lakeview, built by John Rushford, housed a bar, a barber shop, a dining room, and - for a short time - a branch of the Union Bank. Bert Jacobs built the Clarendon, which also had a bar. The Lakeview Hotel burned down in June of 1921 at 3:00 in the morning, half an hour after a dance had ended in the hall on the main floor of the hotel. Source

 

Hanley

 

Saskatchewan Hotel, c. 1910. Source

 

Saskatchewan Hotel, 1908, Source

The Saskatchewan Hotel in Hanley was built by John James Mitchell between 1905 and 1908. The hotel suffered from neglect during Prohibition years, but was revived under the ownership of Herbert G. Budd from 1928 to 1944. The third storey of this hotel was removed in 1970.

Hawarden

Hawarden Hotel on right, c. 1915. Source

John Van Leary built the hotel in Hawarden in 1909. It was origially called the Mary Edger Hotel. Van Leary died in 1910, and his wife Lena remarried Harry Crompton. Harry was killed overseas in 1916 while fighting with the Canadian Armed Forces during the First World War. Twice widowed, Lena continued to live in the Hawarden Hotel until 1956, when she went into a nursing home. She died in 1962 at age 92. The hotel building was sold to Mr.and Mrs. T. Riley in 1960, and burned down shortly afterwards.

Hazenmore

Vendome Hotel, c. 1912. source

Hughton

Hughton in about 1914. Source

Hughton Hotel, c 1915. Source

Imperial

Imperial Hotel, c. 1912. Source

The hotel in Imperial was built in 1910 by Harry Webster and Jack Davey. According to the Imperial local history book, the hotel was comfortable with carpet - green with pink cabbage roses - on the stairs and in the living room, and velvet curtains at the windows. There were challenges to operating the Imperial Hotel, including "boisterous and noisy railroad workers," inexperienced help, and, most troublesome, "the attractive, well-dressed ladies that seemed to appear at mealtime, climb the open stair, and draw a large male crowd in the evening." Source, p.375.

Ituna

Carlton Hotel, 1912. Source

The 40-room Carlton Hotel was built at Ituna in 1908 by either T. P. Jenner, a builder and contractor, or Frank X. Poitras, general merchant. This hotel was destroyed by fire in 1926.

©Joan Champ, 2015

Hotel Signs

My photos, taken on road trips throughout the province over the years.

Wynyard

Gull Lake

Fox Valley

Weyburn

Guernsey

Alvena

© Joan Champ, 2011

Prohibition: Hotel Bars Close Their Doors

From July 1, 1915 to 1924, Saskatchewan was dry. With the closure of 406 bars, 38 liquor dealers, and 12 clubs, it was estimated that liquor consumption in the province dropped by ninety percent. The number of convictions for drunkenness dropped from 2,970 cases in 1913 to 434 in 1918. When the bars closed down, however, so did many small-town hotels. “The hotelmen knew that without beverage revenue they could hardly hope to make ends meet,” writes H. G. Bowley in his 1957 history of the Hotels Association of Saskatchewan. “One of the cornerstones of the art of hospitality was to be removed, and they knew the whole structure of their industry would inevitably totter, and perhaps crash.” Indeed, hotels values in the province plummeted. Many hotel businesses never fully recovered from the blow of 1915. It may not be a coincidence that so many hotels burned down during the Prohibition years. 

The Lafrenieres. Footsteps in Time: Meota  (1980)

The last days of June 1915 before Prohibition came into effect were hectic ones for small-town Saskatchewan hotels. Prior to the closing of the bars on the July 1^st deadline, hotel owners were faced with the necessity of disposing of their stocks. There was a great rush to purchase liquor. At the Clarendon Hotel in Gull Lake, “more than one kerosene can, brought to town to be filled with coal oil, found its way home filled with liquid other than coal oil,” the town history (1989) reports. “Rye whiskey sold that afternoon of June 30^th at $1.00 per gallon and some sizeable stocks were laid in against the drought.”  That same day at the King Edward Hotel in Meota, Edward and Ferris Ann Lafreniere recalled that, prior to closing, “Anxious buyers filled the bar pushing and shoving. Money was thrown and bottles snatched in return. The doors finally closed and Ed and Ferris Ann literally swept the money from the floor with broom and dust pan. The following day the law moved in and destroyed the remaining stocks.” 

Closure and arson weren’t the only coping strategies used by Saskatchewan hotel owners when Prohibition hit. Charles Hitts sold the hotel at Griffin. “When the liquor licenses were rescinded it was hard to keep the commercial travelers over the weekends in the small places,” Griffin historian Mable Charlton writes (1967). “Although the menus were as good they went on to bigger places where there was more amusement.” The owner of the Imperial Hotel at Frobisher, John Klaholz, approached the town council in 1920 requesting that the sales of soft drinks, cigars and cigarettes be confined to the hotel to help make it pay – otherwise, he said, he would have to close it. Some hotel owners applied for government grants for the maintenance of public restrooms and reading rooms in their establishments. Unable to operate profitably, the Last Mountain Hotel at Strasbourg established a movie theatre on the second floor. Ice cream parlours often took the place of hotel bars. In 1916, F. A. Wright got a license to operate five pool tables in the Commercial Hotel in Herbert. Two years later, the Commercial Hotel was destroyed by fire.

Bootleg operations flourished in small-town Saskatchewan hotels during Prohibition. The thirsty traveler staying at the Arlington Hotel at Maryfield was usually able to satisfy his wants through the good graces of John Dodds, the proprietor. Dodds was caught on at least two occasions by a provincial liquor inspector, and paid the appropriate fines for his indiscretion. 

The Wilkie local history book provides the following account of a suspected bootlegging case at the Empire Hotel. On August 17, 1915, the Royal North West Mounted raided the hotel between 10 a.m. and noon. “In room No. 6, which was occupied by the hotel proprietor [W.H. Smith] and his wife, after a vigorous search was made, 28 bottles of liquor of various descriptions were found, the contents of two of which had been partially consumed. Upon being asked how this exceptionally large ‘private’ stock came to be on the premises, the defendant, during the hearing before Mr. T. A. Dinsley, J. P., stated that she had taken this liquor from the hotel cellars prior to the date upon which intoxicants had to be removed from the premises, July 1^st, and had secreted the bottles, unknown to her husband, in her trunk in which they were found. ... The room in which the liquor was found had been occupied exclusively as a private living room during the entire period that her husband had been proprietor of the house and that it had never been used as a guest chamber. … When the police commenced to search the trunk she told them that it only contained linen. When asked why she made this statement, she could give no reason. When asked why she had kept her husband in ignorance of the fact that she had a private stock she stated that had he known he would probably not have allowed her to retain it.” Verdict: Not guilty.

© Joan Champ, 2011