"Your Home on the Range:" The Commercial Hotel at Maple Creek

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Co-authored by Royce E. W. Pettyjohn, former Coordinator of Maple Creek's Main Street Program, now Park Manager at Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park

Maple Creek's oldest continually operated business, the Commercial Hotel, is truly a community treasure. Thanks to a group of new immigrants from the Philippines, this heritage hotel was recently restored to its former glory. Today's visitors can still get a sense of the hotel’s rich history as a result of the atmosphere and furnishings that have been preserved in the hotel lobby.

Marcelo Del Barrio, Jayson Catalasan, Ronald Del Barrio, and Noy Lim, hold a painting of the original hotel built in 1884/1885. Source

UPDATE: The Commercial Hotel closed in April 2017 and put up for sale. Click here for story.

  
Hotel on the Ranching Frontier

The original hotel c. 1885. Submitted photo.

Rasin sold the Commercial Hotel to Edward Fearon on August 18, 1890; Lot #4 was sold to James Baird on March 2, 1898. Fearon, who was elected to the Territorial Assembly in November of 1894, sold the hotel to John Henry Fleming on Christmas Eve 1896. A little over two years later, Fleming also acquired Lot #4 from Baird. 

Fleming was an American cowboy who had worked as a foreman on the Oxarart Ranch upon coming to Canada. He later had ranching interests in the Skull Creek area, was a partner in the Williamson & Fleming Store at Maple Creek in 1903 (now the Salvation Army Thrift Store). Canada’s 1901 census shows Fleming, age 36, living in the Commercial Hotel with his wife Mary and their two children. Hotel staff in 1901 consisted of two bartenders and four chambermaids. 

The Commercial Hotel’s only competition in Maple Creek during the 1880s and 1890s was the International Hotel, built by J. J. English in 1883 on the east corner of Jasper Street and Pacific Avenue (destroyed by fire in August 1896). Between 1902 and 1904, however, the Cypress Hotel, the Jasper Hotel and the Maple Leaf Hotel had all been constructed and the aging Commercial Hotel was no longer the establishment of choice in town. In A.M. Merton 1904 booklet called The New West Era he refers to the Commercial Hotel as a “dollar house” under the management of the Henderson-Downer system (which owned the Cypress Hotel). 

According to the Maple Creek News editor W.J. Redmond, it was around this time that Fleming decided to once again “make the Commercial the best hotel in town.” Around 1906 the original wooden Commercial Hotel structure was moved back on the lot and a large three-storey brick addition was constructed on the front of the hotel. This addition is represented today by the beverage room and everything above it. The location where the original wooden building was attached to the new brick addition is still visible at the back of the hotel.

The 1906 section of the Commercial Hotel. Submitted photo.

In 1910, Fleming sold the Commercial Hotel to Norman Robson., who immediately started to work on a second expansion. His addition to the east encroached onto Lot #4 and is represented today by the current lobby, dining room and everything above them. The new addition opened on August 30^th, 1911. The next day, the Maple Creek News provided the following account: 

"The new addition of the Commercial Hotel was put into commission yesterday and Maple Creekites have good reason to be proud of the Pacific Avenue hostelry. The ground floor is taken up by the rotunda and dining room. Both rooms are spacious, finished in golden oak, well lighted, and modern in every particular. New mission furniture in the dining room adds greatly to the attractiveness. The rotunda and the bar room have tile floors. Upstairs the new bedrooms have the advantages gained by plumbing and eight of them have baths in connection. The house now has 52 rooms and is steam heated throughout. The old rotunda is being overhauled and will be utilized for a pool and billiard room. The owner, Mr. N. L. Robson is to be congratulated upon the appearance of the Commercial, and it is more than likely that his efforts to keep the hotel up to the requirements of a growing town will be appreciated by the public."

The 1911 Canada census shows Norman Robson, age 30, living in the hotel, along with his wife Mable and six staff members. Four of the young women on the hotel staff worked in the dining room. Perhaps Lela, Miriam, Katie, and Lizzie served the splendid Christmas dinner in the hotel’s new dining room that year. The menu offered stewed oysters, shrimp patties, salmon, fillet of sole, ham with champagne sauce, duck, lamb, chicken, beef, turkey, goose, and every possible side dish. Countless desserts were served at the end of this sumptuous holiday feast that was topped off with port & sherry.

Unfortunately, the “new mission furniture in the dining room” referenced by the Maple Creek News did not survive to furnish today’s Commercial Hotel’s. However, the Commercial Hotel’s beautiful lobby furniture would have originally been in the circa 1885 wooden hotel structure. It would have then been reused in the lobby of the 1906 brick addition, and then again in the 1911 lobby where it remains to this day. The 1911 marble tile floor has also survived with very little loss over the course of the last 103 years.

On December 31, 1912, just over a year after opening the new addition, Robson sold the hotel to William McRoberts, Jeremiah McRoberts, Thomas Battell & William Battell, all from Moose Jaw. It appears that William McRoberts came to Maple Creek to oversee the consortium’s interests, while Jeremiah McRoberts went on to own and operate the Royal Hotel at Weyburn. The McRoberts brothers bought out both of the Battell brothers’ interests in the Commercial Hotel by September of 1917. 

Weathering Hard Times

It was during this time that Prohibition started in Saskatchewan. Click here to see blog post. This meant hard times for the hotel business. On June 10, 1919 Sophia Richardson & James Wilson bought the Commercial Hotel. After a struggle to keep the hotel afloat, Wilson lost his interest to the Land Securities Company of Canada Ltd. on March 30^, 1921. Nine months later, his partner Sophia bought out his interests from the security company. Unfortunately Sophia Richardson lost the Commercial Hotel to the Bank of Montreal on March 9, 1927. 

The former billiards room/beverage room was converted to house the bank's Maple Creek operations. The beer cooler currently used in the Commercial Hotel beverage room is said to have been the bank vault. The Bank of Montreal moved out of the Commercial Hotel in 1932, although the bank continued to hold the title to the hotel until 1945. This stands to reason, as this period spans the Great Depression and the Second World War years. Matt Fleming operated the Commercial Hotel between 1927 and 1945. It was Fleming who adopted the hotel's motto, "Your Home on the Range," around 1935.

Fire plan c. 1930 shows the hotel with all its original sections. Submitted image.

In the spring of 1940 the original section of the Commercial Hotel was torn down. Maple Creek News editor W. J. Redmond lamented the loss in a May editorial. It appears that by 1940 the original section of the hotel had fallen into disuse. Redmond wrote that “the old original log building, tucked away behind, has been gathering cobwebs and paying taxes to the Town without doing anything to justify its existence.” He stated that although “the accommodation didn’t amount to much, judged by present standards, [it] was O.K. in the days when men wore whiskers and drank their whiskey straight.”

The Commercial Hotel went through several owners between 1945 and the early 1970s. These owners included John “Scotty” MacLaren (1945); Hazen Bonser (1945 to 1947); Frederick, William and Alvin Ehnis (1947 to 1956); and Louis Liepert (1956 to 1973). Sometime during the 1960s additional hotel rooms were built in the original dining room space.

On July 31, 1973, Bent Sorensen bought the Commercial Hotel and embarked on a major renovation project. The dining room on the main floor was reintroduced by removing the hotel rooms that had been built in the space. The hotel’s street appearance was updated, and the rooms on the second floor were modernized so that they all had baths. The official opening of the newly renovated Commercial Hotel occurred on January 2, 1976, with Maple Creek’s Mayor Harrigan cutting the ribbon in the presence of several dignitaries. 

The modernization of the second floor rooms obliterated virtually all of the circa 1906 and 1911 features from that area of the building. However, the 1906 and 1911 doors, baseboards, mouldings, trim and burlap wainscoting on the third floor of the hotel all managed to survive.

After hotel ownership changed a few more times, Sam and Darlene Boychuck bought the Commercial Hotel in 1986. The Boychucks did an admirable job of ensuring that the heritage character of the old hotel remained intact. During the Town of Maple Creek’s Centennial of Incorporation celebrations in 2003, the significance of the Commercial Hotel to the history of the community was officially recognized on one the town’s commemorative centennial coins. The Boychucks have the distinction of being the longest owners of the hotel in its 120 year history. After 20 years, the couple sold the Commercial Hotel to Young Han Shin in 2006. The hotel was then sold to Chung Lee. 

Flood of 2010 and Aftermath

2010 flood; Commercial Hotel at upper right. Source

 
Lee continued to preserve the heritage features of the building; however he had the misfortune of owning the hotel at the time of the disastrous flood of 2010. The flood caused extensive damage to the lower levels of the hotel, forcing it to close for the first time in its long history. Lee struggled to recoup his losses and reopen the hotel, without success.

At the end of 2012, Lee sold the Commercial Hotel to a group of Filipino investors who had recently immigrated to Canada, settling in Maple Creek. The seven stakeholders – Noy and Marchelle Lim, Jayson and Alneena Catalasan and Agnes, Marcelo and Ronald Del Barrio – formed Licadel Hotel Group Ltd. and made big plans for the hotel. They began a rehabilitation of the century-plus heritage landmark. 

Noy Lim, a classically trained chef, told the Maple Creek News that the restoration of the hotel is a way for them to give back and thank the community for welcoming them as newcomers. “When we

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first arrived here in Maple Creek, the town really welcomed us with huge smiles and embraced us,” he said. “So it's not always that you're on the receiving end. You have to give something.”

The hotel had sat vacant for two years after the 2012 flood filled the basement and main floor with water. The Filipino group began by cleaning the entire building, stripping carpet and some walls. They then embarked on a complete upgrade of the hotel in an effort to bring it up to modern standards, while at the same time maintaining the integrity of its history. “We'll try to make it look as much like a Western-Victorian hotel as possible – not fancy, but like you're travelling back in time when you walk into the hotel,” Lim explained.

 For SWTV news story video (December 17, 2012), click here

The Town of Maple Creek designated the Commercial Hotel as a Municipal Heritage Property on February 26, 2013. Since then, the Maple Creek Main Street program and the Saskatchewan Heritage Foundation have assisted the Filipino investors in their efforts to restore the Commercial Hotel. 

Noy Lim and crew reviewing plans, March 2013. Source.

In the spring of 2013, the Maple Creek News reported that labourers were laying bricks along the building's exterior facade. Original bricks removed during repairs to the back of the hotel were reused on the front facade. “It made us quite happy,” said Lim. “The bricks are in quite good condition, so all we have to do is clean up the paint on the bricks to bring out the colour of the bricks again.” The biggest surprise was the discovery by construction workers of windows in the north wall of the bar which had been covered for 30 years. "The windows were the biggest surprise a few months ago," said Lim.

For SWTV news story video (July 6, 2013), click here

Reopened for Business

 

A rustic, saloon-style bar at the Commercial Hotel opened in the summer of 2013; the hotel itself reopened in December of that that year. In February 2014, the Licadel stakeholders were presented with Maple Creek’s Business of the Year award, as well as the award for excellence in heritage conservation. 

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“Your Home on the Range” for more than 130 years, the newly renovated Commercial Hotel now had 14 guest rooms (standard, superior, deluxe, and honeymoon suite), complete with Wi-Fi and continental breakfast. The dining room, which seated 50, featured specialty international cuisine prepared by Chef Noy Lim.

Noy Lim with Premier Brad Wall, October 2013. Source

Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall said that Lim and his partners in the Commercial Hotel are close friends of the whole province. After the flood of 2010, the Premier noted, everyone was convinced that it was closed for good. Licadel's team of seven, doing a lot of the work with their own hands, brought the hotel back to its former glory. “The Commercial Hotel takes you back to that era,” said Wall. “It’s a special place, a very special place.” 

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c. Joan Champ, 2014

 

Stripper Bar at the Codette Hotel: A Saskatchewan First

Photo from the Codette Hotel's Facebook page

NOTE:  As a historian, I have attempted to remain as objective as possible in the writing of this blog post. This article does not imply approval of strip-tease in Saskatchewan bars on my part.
 
As reported in an earlier blog post here, the Saskatchewan government recently made 70 changes to the provincial liquor laws. One of these changes, which came into effect on January 1, 2014, 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 reported to be the bar in a small-town hotel at Codette, a village near Nipawin, 260 kilometres northeast of Saskatoon. “I believe we are the first legal, licensed strip bar,” Bryan Baranski, co-owner of the newly renovated Codette Hotel, told paNOW.  “I know the younger guys are all excited about it in the area.” Source

The Codette Hotel was shut down for about two years. Baraniski, who already owned a hotel at Tobin Lake, was initially hesitant about buying the hotel in Codette. He and his partner kept a close eye on the liquor laws, and when the changes were announced in November of 2012, they made the decision to buy the hotel and turn it into a stripper bar.

Codette Hotel and Bar, corner of Railway Ave. and Centre St., c. 2010. Google Street View

Baraniski noted in media interviews that, because the hotel bar had been closed for a couple of years, there was no danger of upsetting existing customers with the new, exotic entertainment. Sources here and here. 

The first stripper show at the Codette Hotel and Bar was held on January 2, 2014. Baraniski brought in two strippers from Regina. The $10 cover charge included one drink. “We had a full house. Everyone had a good time,” he told the Saskatoon StarPhoenix regarding the inaugural performance at the old hotel. The bar was filled to its 90-seat capacity by 9 p.m., with customers coming from as far away as Prince Albert, 150 km southwest of the village. “It's just a different sort of entertainment,” Baraniski said. “We used to bring in bands and now we're bringing strippers instead of bands.” Source 

The Codette Hotel booked strippers from Regina thee nights every second weekend.Baraniski, who has been in the bar business for around 20 years, expected it would take a few months to determine if the shows are successful, or if they would be a short-lived novelty. “It will be good for the first couple of years and then I think it will kind of just go away by the wayside,” he predicted. Source 

Peeling Repealed 

On March 25, 2015, Brad Wall, Premier of Saskatchewan, announced that the province was taking back the part of the new liquor laws that allowed stripping in places where alcohol is served. 

"I'd like to confirm that I believe that the government of Saskatchewan made a mistake last year when we allowed licensed strip clubs in the province," Wall stated. "I made a mistake and so I'm announcing today that we're reversing that decision." Source

Don Verstraeten, owner of the Codette Hotel, expressed shock at Premier Wall's decision. “People make special trips - like we have bus loads of people coming in from all the little towns around because this is kind of the hub," he said in an interview. "It still hasn’t lost the original impact - it is still going great." Source

© Joan Champ, 2015

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Death at Weyburn’s Royal Hotel

Royal Hotel, c. 1910. Source

  

The 100-room Royal Hotel in Weyburn has been struck by misfortune several times since it was built in 1900, but none worse than the tragedy that occurred in 1917 – a tragedy that continues to defy understanding. On April 14^th of that year, two Saskatchewan doctors died within hours of each other from poisoning after drinking wood (methyl) alcohol. For more information, click here  and here.

On April 13th, Dr. Harry E. Hamill, a 32-year-old physician from Assiniboia brought one of his patients to the Weyburn hospital, and then checked into the Royal Hotel. There he met Dr. Neil Roy Stewart, 28 years old. Formerly practicing at Eastend, Saskatchewan, Stewart had recently served overseas as a medical officer for the 249^th Battalion during the First World War. That evening, as they sat having dinner in the hotel's café, the two doctors were overheard having a prolonged argument about the effects of wood alcohol on the human body. For some reason, the two decided to drink the stuff. Both died of poisoning in their respective rooms at the Royal several hours later. 

Dr. Hamill had obtained what was known as Columbian Spirits (methyl or wood alcohol) from the night nurse at the Weyburn hospital in the early morning hours of April 13^th, saying that it was for external application for his wife (who was at home in Assiniboia).

“A good deal of mystery surrounds the affair.” - Saskatoon Phoenix, April 16, 1917

That two trained physicians would take such a risk is astounding. In 1917, the effects of ingesting wood alcohol were well known to the medical community, and beyond. There had been hundreds of documented cases of poisoning resulting from drinking this substance. (For another account of deaths in Saskatchewan caused by drinking wood alcohol, see my blog post, "Tragedy at Blaine Lake: The Commercial Hotel" here.)  Several studies, including Dr. Casey A. Wood’s “Death and Blindness as a Result of Poisoning by Methyl or Wood, Alcohol, and its Various Preparations,”1906, clearly outlined the dangers of ingesting or inhaling wood alcohol. Read it here. (Article republished as a 15-page booklet in 1912 by the American Medical Association.) Symptoms included vomiting and loss of vision, followed by lapsing into a coma. Death occured within 24 hours. 

Wood alcohol was developed for a wide variety of industrial uses, including as a wood varnish. At the turn of the 20^th century, a refined grade of methyl alcohol was developed for therapeutic rubbing purposes. The purification process made the smell and taste more agreeable, but did not minimize the deadly effect of the poison. Manufacturers gave fancy names to the product, such as “Columbian Spirits,” Eagle Spirits,” or, for the lumbermen of the Northwest and Canada, the poetic designation of “Greenwood Spirits.” It did not help that the packaging of these products often resembled liquor bottles. 

The Doctors

Not much is known about the two doctors who drank, and died from, this poison. The newspapers reported that the jury "returned a plain verdict that the men came to their death from drinking wood alcohol with no qualification or comment as to whether the act was done with intent or unknowingly."  Source

Dr. Hamill and daughter Elsie, Colgate, 1913

Harry Hamill was born 29 March 1884 in Meaford, Ontario. He graduated from medical school at the University of Toronto in 1908, and married Pearl McLaughlin two years later. Dr. Hamill was the first resident doctor for the village of Colgate, Saskatchwan between 1912 and 1913. Harry and Pearl had a daughter, Elsie, born in Colgate in 1912. (Pearl went on to marry Harold Jenkins in 1922 and had another daughter, Patsy.) Source: Prairie Gold: R. M. of Lomond #37 [including Colgate SK], 1980, pp. 189, 414.

Dr. Neil Roy Stewart was born in 1889 in Emerson, Manitoba. He served as the physician at Eastend before enlisting in the Canadian Armed Forces on February 1, 1917, only a few months before his death. At the time of his enlistment, he named his next of kin as his father, W. B. Stewart of Weyburn. Unmarried, Dr. Sewart had practiced at Eastend. He went overseas for a very short time - perhaps only a month - as a medical officer during the First World War. According to the Eastend history book, Dr. Stewart had apparently been granted leave to return and "cover his own district." Source: Range Riders and Sodbusters, Eastend Historical Society, 1980. Stewart's military records do not shed any light on the reasons for his abrupt return to Canada from overseas. Source: Library and Archives Canada, RG 150, Accession 1992-93/166, Box 9320 - 40. 

A number of questions come to mind. Did Dr. Hamill and Dr. Stewart know each other before they met at the Royal Hotel on that fateful night? Why did Dr. Stewart return from WWI after such a short time overseas? Was the drinking of wood alcohol premeditated? Were the two men on a drinking binge, and if so, would the night nurse at the Weyburn hospital give a bottle of Columbian Spirits to a drunk doctor - ostensibly for his wife? Perhaps.  

The alcohol part is a bit easier to figure out. Prohibition was in full force in Saskatchewan in 1917. The only way to acquire booze was from a bootlegger (who often spiked his brew with wood alcohol), or by a doctor's prescription. If a physician was an alcoholic, or if he was battling other demons, wood alcohol might have been tempting, but surely he would have had access to safer sources of liquor through his profession.

History of the Royal Hotel

The first section of the Royal Hotel was under construction by William Fisher in August of 1900, when seven inches of rain flooded the town, leaving the building in ruins. The foundations were undermined by the flood waters, and the stone walls collapsed into the cellar. Fisher sold the ruins to to Dan Pretty who rebuilt the hotel on the same site. Source: Isabel Eaglesham, The Night the Cat Froze in the Oven; A History of Weyburn and Its People. Weyburn: Weyburn Review Ltd., 1963; 1970.

By February 1902, things were off to such a good start at the Royal Hotel that owners Tom Robinson and his brother-in-law Harry Walsh held a ball to celebrate. “The attractive dining room was specially prepared for dancing, being well lighted and having the floor waxed to perfection,” the Regina Leader reported. “An elegant repast was served at midnight and dancing kept up until daylight.”  It was deemed one of the most pleasing social events which had ever taken place in Weyburn. Source

Postcard of the Royal Hotel, c. 1910. Source

In 1912, the Royal Hotel’s future looked so bright that the McRoberts brothers, formerly of Moose Jaw, purchased it for the princely sum of $175,000. Source: Financial Post of Canada, November 30, 1912. The McRoberts had big plans for the Royal, only to have them dashed when Prohibition was introduced in 1915. When the Canada Census was taken in 1916, J. L. (Jerry) McRoberts and his wife Lucia (Lucy), ages 60 and 39 respectively, were living in the hotel along with their children Ruth (17) and Jerry Jr. (9). In spite of the devastating impact that Prohibition had on many Saskatchewan hotels, the Royal must have been doing alright, as, according to the census, it had fifteen staff members, including four chambermaids, two waitresses, two Chinese cooks, a waiter, a Japanese porter, two Japanese bell boys, a dishwasher, a cashier, and a bookkeeper.

The Governor General of Canada, Duke of Devonshire, visited Weyburn in September of 1918. Luncheon was served at the Royal Hotel where Lucy McRoberts was a “very gracious hostess.” Mrs. McRoberts sold the hotel to Wilbur Thompson, who then sold it to Alexander Mrygold and his three sons, Joseph (Joe) Mike and William (Bill) in 1948. The Mrygolds, natives of Austria, arrived in Weyburn in 1910. The family operated the Royal Hotel throughout the 1950s and 1960s, selling it in 1971 to Harry and Irene Winckless from Manitoba.

Royal Hotel, 1946. Everett Baker photo.  Source

The Mryglods spent a great deal of time and money renovating the Royal Hotel. In 1953, they completely remodeled the large lobby. The hotel was the largest in the city, with 100 rooms. In addition to hotel services, the Royal also housed 25 to 30 permanent residents in rooms and suites. A number of business places, including several oil exploration companies, had office space on the premises.  Source

Fire of 1954

Misfortune struck the Royal Hotel again in 1954 when a fire of unknown origin caused $146,000 damage. The fire occurred just as the Mrygolds were finishing a complete renovation project. Only two rooms in the entire hotel had not been rebuilt when the fire struck.  

The fire started in a room on the top floor of the 3-storey stone structure and spread quickly into the attic and from there throughout the entire building. Initially, hotel staff attempted to put out the fire with hoses stored in the hotel. Eventually, firefighters managed to extinguish the blaze, but not before four members of the volunteer fire brigade were injured in the seven-hour long battle against the flames. 

The Saskatoon StarPhoenix reported that, according to eyewitness Murphy Polsky, a travelling salesman from Winnipeg, "there was no panic when the fire broke out. There were few people in the building since many were attending an exhibition hockey game being played at the time. Mr. Polsky said he was just going back into the hotel when he saw a woman come down the stairs to give the alarm. He said this was the second time in a week that he had been staying at a hotel in Saskatchewan that had caught fire. He was registered at the Kings Hotel in Shaunavon last Thursday when he was routed from his bed by the blaze. ‘Once more,’ said the Winnipeg traveler, ‘and I’m going to quit.’" Source

Royal Hotel, 2006.  Joan Champ photo

 

Joan Champ photo, 2006

© Joan Champ, 2014

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