The First Steak Pit in Saskatchewan: Maryfield’s Arlington Hotel

Maryfield's Arlington Hotel, September 2012. Source

In 1976, Reg and Louise Dlouhy, along with Louise’s brother Ivan Findlay, bought the Arlington Hotel in Maryfield. One year later, they opened what is reported to be the first steak pit in Saskatchewan -- some say the first in Canada. Whatever the case, the steak pit proved to be a major attraction for Maryfield, which is located between Moosomin and the Manitoba border in the southeastern part of the province.

The Dlouhys had spent many years on the road, touring with the Regina-based band, Gene Dlouhy and His Swingin’ Canadians. Click here to hear the band's song, Drinking Wine,released in 1964.Throughout the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s, Reg played saxophone with his brother Gene, who played trumpet. In 1970, the band moved to Calgary. They were in the process of moving to Las Vegas when Reg suffered a heart attack. Since Louise was from Maryfield, the couple decided to move there with their three children and get into the hotel business. 

Bartender at the Arlington Hotel, Maryfield, July 18, 1978. Regina Leader-Post.

“I think it was the travelling we did, and our association with supper clubs that gave us the necessary insight into the business,” Reg explained to the Regina Leader-Post in July 1978. “We have seen some beautiful places, and some that weren’t so nice. And we have taken the best of all of them and tried to mold it into our own district.” That same month, the Dlouhys served their 5,000^th steak in the eight months since they opened the steak pit.

Louise Dlouhy watching a customer grill his steaks. Regina Leader-Post, July 18, 1978.

The Dlouhys bought their beef from the Co-op in Brandon, Manitoba. “We never freeze the steaks – well, they aren’t around long enough to be frozen,” Reg told the newspaper. Customers could pick and cook their own steaks on a natural gas grill. The only food that came out of the kitchen was salad, a potato, and bread to accompany the steak.

History of the Arlington Hotel

The Arlington Hotel at Maryfield, c1912.  Source

Built in 1906, the three-story Arlington Hotel on the corner of Main Street and Assiniboine Avenue in Maryfield, Saskatchewan, featured an attractive front porch and second-floor balcony. The hotel had a ballroom, a dining room, and – of course – a bar.

Oluf Olson and his wife Dolly did their best to make their hotel guests comfortable. The bar in particular was very hospitable. In 1910, Olson was fined $50 plus court costs for keeping the bar open after hours. The Canada census shows that, in 1911, the hotel was a thriving business. In addition to the Olson family, the hotel had 18 registered “lodgers,” four chambermaids, two Scottish porters, two telephone operators, an Irish bartender, and a Chinese cook all residing within its walls.

When Prohibition began on July 1, 1915, Maryfield’s Arlington Hotel managed to stay open for business under the ownership of James Anderson. All the beautiful fixtures in the barroom – the gleaming brass and the long, polished wood bar, were removed and replaced by a pool room. Operating a hotel during Prohibition had its challenges. Without bars, hotel values plummeted.. In 1919, John Dodds purchased the Arlington Hotel and under his watch, the thirsty traveller was able to satisfy his wants. The town’s local history reports, “Mr. Dodds … was caught on at least two occasions by a [provincial] liquor inspector and paid the appropriate fines for his indiscretion.”

John James (J. J.) Harris and his wife Florence owned and operated the Arlington Hotel from 1922 to 1944. In 1935, when the Saskatchewan government finally permitted the sale of beer by the glass, Harris applied for a liquor license. A “local option vote” was held in Maryfield and the vote passed by a margin of only six votes – 79 to 73. The Arlington Hotel was able to serve beer once again.

Fire Destroys the Hotel 

 

One evening in late February 1945, Falmer and Louise Skallerup were preparing dinner for the Arlington’s guests. They had purchased the hotel in 1944 and were run off their feet. It was the first day of the biggest men’s curling bonspiel that Maryfield had ever hosted, and the hotel was full. At about 4:30 p.m., a fire broke out in the kitchen. Thanks to Mrs. Skallerup, all the hotel occupants were alerted and got out of the building safely – just as the fire swept up the stairwell, engulfing the entire building in flames. Firemen from Moosomin, 30 miles away, raced their pumper truck to Maryfield where townspeople had formed a bucket brigade to try and save the hotel. By the time the firemen arrived, the flames had destroyed the hotel and were threatening nearby buildings. Despite the disaster, the men’s bonspiel went ahead, with the curlers accommodated in a temporary dormitory set up at the Maryfield auditorium.

 Out of the Ashes, Into a Steak Pit

The Arlington Hotel was rebuilt a year after the fire and still stands in Maryfield today. When the Dlouys bought it, they completely remodeled the building, reducing the number of guest rooms from thirteen to nine in order to accommodate their family of five.

 

Maryfield's Arlington Hotel, 2009. Google Maps

Today, Chilly's Pub & Steak Pit in the Arlington Hotel still features cook-your-own steaks accompanied by salad, garlic bread and baked potato. Apparently, the chicken wings and ribs are also very good.

 

© Joan Champ, 2018. 

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