The Viability of Saskatchewan's Rural Hotels

Snowmobilers stop for a brew at the Pioneer Hotel in Wiseton (pop. 96), 2006. Joan Champ photo

While hotels are one of the oldest and most common forms of business enterprise in small-town Saskatchewan, today, in most cases, they are hotels in name only. They do not rely on room rental for revenue. The rural hotel business is all about the beverage room. The sale of alcohol – mainly beer – is the primary source of annual operating revenues – or at least it was until the introduction of video lottery terminals (VLTs) in 1993.

VLTs at the end of the bar, Delisle Hotel, May 2011. Joan Champ photo

Since the 1970s, beverage rooms have been continuously renovated. Steak pits and other amenities have been added, and a wide variety of entertainment – shuffleboard tables, pool tables, karaoke machines and live bands – have been featured in bars across the province. In 1993, the VLT program was introduced, providing an additional source of entertainment – and revenue – for liquor-permitted hotels in rural communities.

Typical rural hotel room

Up until recently, small-town hotels needed to have a minimum number of guest rooms in order to qualify for a liquor license. In 1987, according to Sean Kenny’s report on the viability of rural hotels for the Saskatchewan Liquor Board, licensed hotels in communities with less than 200 taxpayers had to have a minimum of seven rooms. Even at that, the hotels in these small towns had an occupancy rate of only 10 percent. Kenny estimated that only about two (2) percent of total rural hotel revenue came from the provision of accommodation. (Sean Kenny, “Viability Study of the Rural Hotel Industry in Saskatchewan; Project Report.” Regina: Saskatchewan Liquor Board, August 31, 1987, p.10)  

"Please go to bar next door for room rentals, thank you!" Sign in the lobby of the Delisle Hotel, May 2011. Joan Champ photo

 

On June 22, 1988, Graham Taylor, Saskatchewan’s Minister of Tourism and Small Business, told the Saskatchewan Legislature that he did not think it was necessary for rural hotels to have rooms. “The day of the rooms in the rural hotel, I think, in many cases has somewhat passed,” Taylor said, “and therefore it may be an advantage to hoteliers to not have it [the liquor license] tied entirely to rooms.” (Hansard, Saskatchewan Legislative Assembly, June 22, 1988) 

Room at the Delisle Hotel, May 2011. Joan Champ photo

As recently as 2009. the Saskatchewan Liquor and Gaming Authority’s “Commercial Liquor Permittee Policy Manual” stated that, to qualify for a beverage room license, a hotel in a rural community had to have a minimum of six guest rooms.  

On November 20, 2012, the Saskatchewan Party government unveiled sweeping changes to the provincial liquor laws and regulations that put rural hotels at risk. The list of 70 changes that came into effect in the spring of 2013 included the elimination of a minimum guest room requirement. In the words of Murray Mandryk, columnist for the Regina Leader-Post, “We're finally dispensing with the quaint prairie notion that only rural hotels with rooms (regardless of how dilapidated) should be allowed to sell off-sale.” (November 12, 2012) 

One of the 70 changes included “allowing strip-tease performances and wet clothing contests in adult-only liquor-permitted premises.” The first venue in the province to feature strip-tease entertainment was the bar in the hotel at Codette, a village 260 kilometres northeast of Saskatoon. After the first stripper show was held at the Codette Hotel and Bar on January 2, 2014, owner Bryan Baraniski told the Saskatoon StarPhoenix it was a success. “We had a full house. Everyone had a good time,” he said. “It’s just a different sort of entertainment. We used to bring in bands and now we’re bringing strippers instead of bands.”

Codette Hotel’s stripper shows were short-lived. On March 25, 2015, Brad Wall, Premier of Saskatchewan, announced that the government had made a mistake when it allowed licensed strip clubs in the province and reversed that decision. “If by this decision we have inadvertently allowed for even a marginal increase in the chance for human trafficking, it’s the wrong decision,” Wall told the Regina Leader-Post. 

Of greatest concern for rural hoteliers, however, was and is the new regulation that allows businesses other than hotels to obtain a license to operate off-sale liquor outlets. Of all the changes, this one has the most potential to cause the demise of small-town Saskatchewan hotels – businesses critical to many rural communities. Sustained largely by beverage room revenues including VLT income, most of Saskatchewan’s small-town hotels are now just a shadow of their former glory days.

Budget Rooms - Daily, Weekly, Monthly - at Melville's Waverley Hotel, June 2006. Joan Champ photo

 

© Joan Champ 2019

Hotel Fire Escapes

Many hotels once had covered balconies on upper floors and front verandas. As they were made of wood, however, they eventually became fire hazards and had to be removed. In their places, fire escapes were constructed. Some, like the Hafford Hotel, just had a hefty, knotted rope anchored by a metal ring near a window, long enough to reach the ground. Others had variations on stairways and ladders such as these, shown in my photos.

Commercial Hotel, Blaine Lake

Invermay Hotel

Royal Hotel, Weyburn

Royal Hotel, Strasbourg

Pennant Hotel

King George Hotel, Melville, 2006

King George Hotel, Melville, Feb. 17, 2010. Photo: Melville Advance

 “On the road, hotel fire exit locations were always implanted in my mind in the 50s after check-in.  I sometimes even checked to see if those doors really opened. ... There were guests, after lifting a couple too many in the beer parlour, who verified these escape routes." - Dave Anderson, To Get the Lights; A Memoir about Rural Electrification in Saskatchewan (2006)

© Joan Champ 2011

Melville's King George Hotel: Royal Heritage

King George Hotel, c. 1940. Source

Originally named the Windsor Hotel, the King George Hotel in Melville was built in 1909 by J. N. (Joseph Napoleon) Pomerleau. It was one of three hotels in the community. The 1916 Canada Census shows that Joseph Pomerleau, age 22, and Antoinette Pomerleau, age 20, (both single) were managing the hotel on Main Street. Twenty-four other people were living at the hotel that year, including the cook Won Yee, two waitresses, and two servants. Most of the hotel guests at the time of the 1916 census-taking were railway workers.

The hotel's name was changed to the King George in 1919. By 1921, proprietor J. E. Benwell had redecorated the hotel from top to bottom.

Regina Leader-Post, May 21, 1921.

 

Royal Visit of 1939

The hotel's name must have resonated during the Royal Visit of 1939. On June 3rd of that year, over 60,000 people thronged to Melville, population 3,000, to catch a glimpse of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. The visit was to be a ten-minute whistle-stop, but in view of the magnitude of the crowd, organizers agreed to stop for half an hour. Melville pulled out all the stops for the Royal Visit celebration. According to the Regina Leader-Post (June 5, 1939), the town staged one of its biggest sports days in history. "Concessionaires made money and the streets throbbed with loudspeaker advertising until after midnight," the newspaper stated. "Hotels and cafes were packed for hours, and at meal times hundreds jammed their way into them, demanding meals. Beer parlours had one of the biggest days of business since beer parlours came to Saskatchewan, one being reported as taking in $800 for the day."

Crowd waiting for the Royal Couple, CN station, Melville, 1939.

http://www.melvilleadvance.com/CN_Station_Restoration/CN_Station_Restoration.html

"Duke' Dutkowski of Hockey Fame

The hotel was sold by Jim Benwell in 1940 to a company headed by A. Borget. In 1941, guest rooms at the King George Hotel were renovated, with plumbing and new woodwork installed in each suite. On January 13, 1942, the Leader-Post reported that there had been a small fire in suite No. 9 in the northeast corner of the hotel. The fire department saved the building from destruction, and hotel manager "Duke" Dutkowski had carpenters on the job repairing the damage within a few hours.

"Duke" Dutkowski, player with Saskatoon Sheiks, 1922. Source

Laudus J. "Duke" Dutkowski had been a professional hockey player for more than a decade before becoming a hotel manager in August of 1940. He was profiled by the Leader-Post on May 16, 1945 while still operating the King George. Born in Regina in 1900, he started playing with the Saskatoon Crescents in 1921; then the Regina Captials until 1925; the Rosebuds in Portland, Oregon, and the Chicago Blackhawks throughout the 1920s; ending his career in 1934 with the New York Americans - the Big Apple's first professional hockey team. Dutkowski coached senior hockey in Regina before taking over management of the King George Hotel for Borget's company.

Concern for Comfort

George Zylich was the manager of the King George on July 19, 1948 when he was interviewed by the Leader-Post. Zylich had spent 13 years as a commercial traveller for the Scott Fruit Company, so he was particularly aware of the needs of the travelling salesmen who patronized his hotel. He said he spent most of his Sundays in his hotel's lobby getting better acquainted with the salesmen stopping over for the weekend. He made a point of familiarizing himself with their product lines, and when new men came into the territory, he was able to connect them with contacts. New to the hotel business, Zylich told the newspaper that he felt a hotel "must keep a new face." Things had to change around every so often to keep the place looking fresh and "homey." His firm had followed this principle, giving each guest room a different motif. He said people had dropped into the hotel between trains just to see the rooms which they had heard about.

A Modern-Day Hotel

By 2006, the three-storey hotel on Main Street had been through many upgrades and renovations. Stucco had been applied over the brick exterior. The 212-seat Windsor Tavern on the hotel’s main floor was open seven days a week. It had six video lottery terminals (VLTs), a dance floor, a DJ booth, a big screen TV and a Bose sound system valued at over $20,000. The tavern featured occasional live entertainment, and weekly specials such as “Sunday nine-ball tournaments, Wednesday Night Slow-Pitch BBQ in the beer patio, Friday Night "wing night" with tricycle races and more!” Ten guest rooms on the second floor, two of which were suites, had been modernized with full bathrooms, new windows and air conditioning. The hotel’s third floor had not been renovated in 2006.

The King George Hotel, Melville, 2006.  Joan Champ photo

The kitchen of the King George Hotel, Melville, 2006.

 

Destroyed by an Arsonist

On February 17, 2010, Melville's historic King George Hotel was destroyed by a suspicious fire that started in the kitchen. Several hundred people gathered to watch the firefighters battle the blaze. Hotel owner Sam Pervez, told the Leader-Post that, prior to the blaze, the updated bar had only been open for about three weeks and the restaurant was just days away from reopening. A resident of the landmark hotel, 63-year-old Roland St. Amand, pleaded guilty to setting the fire and was sentenced to three and a half years behind bars.

One of the on-lookers shot this video:  

Watch more video of Melville's main street before the hotel fire, August 2008: YouTube link     © Joan Champ, 2011