Violence in Small-Town Hotels

Illustration by Eric Deschamps, 2003 Image source

My friend Ruth asked me when I was going to post an article about barroom brawls and other violent incidents that occasionally happen in small-town Saskatchewan hotels. Here's a sampling of some of the sad and sordid stories I've come across in my research.

Murder-Suicide at the Commercial Hotel 

The bodies of A. Willis Armstrong and his wife Hannah, owners of the Commercial Hotel in Blaine Lake, were found by their daughter Dorothy in their living quarters at the hotel on June 20, 1925. Mrs. Armstrong had a bullet hole behind her right ear. Her husband had shot her with a .45 calibre revolver and then turned the gun on himself.   

The Commercial Hotel in Blaine Lake, 1919.  Nicholas F. Zbitnoff photo Image source

The coroner’s jury concluded that the tragedy was caused by the effects of homebrew obtained from a bootlegger. “Being of the opinion that the late A. W. Armstrong might have kept sober and thus refrained from committing this awful crime … we feel that public opinion demands a searching investigation into the matter of the source of homebrew in this district….  Should the investigation bring to light the party or parties who supplied the homebrew to the late Mr. Armstrong, we ask that they should be prosecuted.”  “Home Brew is Death’s Cause, Opines Jury,” June 23, 1935, p. 1.   Click to read full story

Dorothy and her brother Leslie (about 10 years old) went to live with relatives in St. Catherines, Ontario. 

Jealousy at the White Fox Hotel

At 9:10 PM on April 10, 1959, White Fox hotel keeper Albert Boscher was shot dead by Frank Schoenburger. Albert left behind his wife, Isabel and their five children, Jeanine, Denis, Anita, Rita, and Terry. Mrs. Edith Schoenburger, estranged wife of the killer, was severely wounded during the incident. She had been living and working at the White Fox Hotel. She and Boscher, her employer, were sitting together in the hotel dining room when her husband, a labourer in town, burst in and shot them both with a heavy calibre rifle.

John Wankel, an engineer boarding at the hotel, was sitting in the hotel lobby reading the paper when he saw Schoenburger walk in carrying a rifle. Wankel said the man ripped out the wires of a pay telephone, and then disappeared into the hotel dining room.

Boscher was shot first. As Mrs. Schoenburger struggled with her husband for possession of the gun it fired again, shattering her right arm. “That wasn’t meant for you, Edith,” Schoenburger said after the bullet struck his wife. Her arm later had to be amputated above the elbow.

L. J. Vickers was drinking beer in the hotel beer parlour at about 9:00 PM when he heard the sound of gunshots. Vickers opened the door between the beer parlour and the hotel lobby only to run smack into Schoenburger who was carrying a rifle. “Get out of here or I will shoot you, too,” Schoenburger said. “Accused Seen Carrying Rifle,” Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, October 30, 1959 

The killer then disappeared into the bush surrounding the village of White Fox. RCMP searched unsuccessfully for him all night. At 645 the next day, a nervous and haggard Schoenburger turned himself in to the RCMP at Nipawin, saying he couldn’t remember anything about the night before. He denied knowledge of having killed a man and asked to see his wife.

Testifying in court in November, 1959, Schoenburger described a week of drinking in beer parlours and of hearing insinuations involving his wife and Boscher before the night of the shooting. On November 6^th, he was found guilty of murder and sentenced to be hanged on January 26, 1960 at the provincial jail in Prince Albert. The hanging was delayed when an appeal was launched.

Over 30 grounds for appeal were listed by defense lawyer D. L. Tennant of Melfort during a two-day hearing in February 1960. Schoenburger’s conviction was quashed on appeal, and a second trial was opened in June, presided over by Mr. Justice Stewart McKercher.

During the retrial, Mrs. Schoenburger described her 22-year marriage, during which her husband would go on drinking binges that lasted several days. He would do things during these binges that he could not remember later. Eventually, Mrs. Schoenburger left her husband and went to live in the White Fox Hotel, where she also worked. Her husband had tried to get her to stop working at the hotel, mainly because of the rumours about her and her employer, Mr. Boscher. “Pitiful Tale is Related,” Regina Leader-Post, June 20, 1960:   

Frank Schoenburger was convicted of manslaughter for the murder of Albert Boscher on April 10, 1959, and sentenced by Judge McKercher to eleven years in the Prince Albert Penitentiary. Click here  and here and here to read more.

Fight at the Pennant Hotel 

21-year-old William Zeller of the Pennant area was charged and found guilty of stabbing and wounding Arlyn Jamieson, 29, of Cabri during a fight outside the Pennant Hotel.  Jamieson had been drinking in the bar for almost eight hours prior to the fight, and had consumed at least twelve drinks. 

The trouble started when Jamieson repeatedly used an accent to pronounce the name of Zeller’s brother Raymond, who was sitting at the same table. Zeller became angry, and after about three quarters of an hour they went outside to fight. The men wrestled on the ground in front of the hotel and Jamieson was quickly pinned to the ground by Zeller, who had been in the hotel for about two hours. After being allowed back on his feet, Jamieson wanted to continue fighting. Zeller pulled out a knife and said "I’m going to get you, boy." He cut Jamieson on his left forearm, his chin and his left armpit. Zeller testified that he pulled out the knife because he wanted to scare Jamieson away from the hotel, where he was "being a nuisance.” “Men Sentenced in Swift Current,” Leader-Post, June 10, 1980, p. 20 Click here for full story

“I Think I’ve Killed My Wife” 

Arthur Charles Colton, 63-year-old owner of the Village Inn hotel in Candiac, was charged with the second-degree murder of his wife, Doris Colton, 54, on August 29, 1981. He later told the RCMP he “just grabbed a goddam knife and let her have it.” 

Colton and his wife had been arguing and fighting during the early morning hours. She left their bedroom in the hotel for a while but came back again and started arguing all over again. Colton finally got out of bed and found his wife in the hotel bar pouring another drink. That’s when he "went nuts" and grabbed the knife. 

A transcript of a taped telephone conversation quotes the caller as saying, "RCMP, this is the Village Inn at Candiac, ah, better send the police down here and an ambulance. I think I’ve killed my wife." The caller went on to explain, "Well, I, she’s been drunk all night and she just kept on pestering and pestering. And I got so god dam mad that I just, well, I lost my temper. And I think I stabbed her to death." 

Shirley Fayant of Lebret, a guest at the hotel, testified she discovered the body on the floor of the beverage room in the middle of the night. She had been sleeping but got up and went into the nearby beverage room in search of a washroom. When she saw Mrs. Colton's body, Fayant backed into the kitchen and found Colton there, holding the telephone receiver in his lap. "Officer Says Man Told Police He ‘Let Wife Have It’ With Knife,” Regina Leader-Post, June 19, 1982, p. A5 Click here to read full story

Death at the Broadview Hotel Bar 

Matthew Troy McKay, age 18, was stabbed to death during a barroom brawl at the Broadview Hotel on the night of October 30, 2009.  Jordan Lee Taypotat, 20, received severe lacerations to his face during the same incident. McKay was from the Ochapowace First Nation, while Taypotat is from the Kahkewistahaw First Nation, both in the Broadview area. An argument apparently broke out which got out of hand. A 20-year-old man turned himself into the Broadview RCMP detachment a few days later. Click here and here to read more.

Broadview Hotel.  Image from Google Street View, 2011

 

© Joan Champ 2011

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

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