Bienfait Hotel: Mute Witness to Troubled Times

Bienfait Hotel, June 2006.  Joan Champ photo

Bienfait, a coal-mining town in southeastern Saskatchewan, has seen more than its share of trouble and the Bienfait hotel stood in mute witness to it all. 

1915 map of Bienfait showing location of the hotel. Image source

In 1904, the Canadian Pacific Railway opened Bienfait Mines Ltd. ten miles north of the US border near Estevan. Soon, other coal mines were opened in the area. Miner’s cottages, stores and other buildings were built near the mines, and the CPR built its Bienfait railway station in 1905. The King Edward Hotel was built on the corner of Railway and Main in 1907 by Fitzsimmons & Sons. By 1911, Albert Rogers was the hotel keeper, followed by Gordon White.  Because he owned it for so many years, the two-storey wood frame building with its lovely white verandah became unofficially known as White’s Hotel. 

White advertised the King Edward Hotel as “the best equipped village hotel in Saskatchewan.”  The hotel featured Simmons beds, Slumber King springs throughout, hot soft-water baths at all times, four  first-class billiard tables, three bowling alleys, a first-class two-chair barber-shop, and electrical refrigeration. According to Stephen L. Endicott, historian of the Bienfait miner’s struggles, by the 1930s the village elite – including mine managers, office staff, and pit bosses – “gathered at the bar for smoking, relaxation, and socializing and took their privileged standing for granted.” (Stephen L. Endicott, Bienfait; The SK Miner’s Struggle of ’31, 2002, p. 12)

Madoff Murder

In 1915 when the province went dry, bootlegging became Bienfait’s main industry. Harry Bronfman and his brothers set up a boozorium in the town called the Bienfait Export Liquor Company. By 1920, the boozorium, which looked from the outside like a drug store, stocked hundreds of cases of expensive Canadian and imported liquors – rye, gin, rum and scotch – all of which was sold to American buyers from across the border. “All we handled was $100 or $1,000 bills,” said Harry Zellickson, a farmer from Hirsch who managed the Bienfait boozorium. “We made about $10,000 to $20,000 a day.” (As quoted in Heather Robertson, Grass Roots, 1973, p. 249) The boozorium later became Alex Ronyk’s pool hall.

Dutch Shultz

There are stories about Al Capone and other gangsters from Chicago spending time in Bienfait.  Dutch Shultz (real name– Arthur S. Flegenheimer) apparently spent a week in White's King Edward Hotel in early August, 1922. It is said that he was sent by Capone to meet with Paul Matoff, brother-in-law of Sam and Harry Bronfman regarding liquor trade connections between the Bronfmans and Capone. There is even a story that Capone came to Bienfait and met the Bronfmans at White's Hotel. Source

Paul Matoff was shot and killed on October 4, 1922 in the telegrapher’s office of the CPR station – directly across the street from White’s hotel. While his men were loading bottles into the back of a rum runner’s truck, Matoff was inside counting the money.  Suddenly, the barrel of a sawed-off shotgun smashed through the station window, firing point-blank into Matoff’s back. $6,000 and Matoff’s diamond tiepin or ring were stolen. Source

Miner's Labour Struggles

In the summer of 1920, P. M. Christopher, organizer for the One Big Union, came to Bienfait to address a mass meeting of miners from various mines in the district.  On June 30^th, a vigilante group representing the coal mine operators broke into Christopher’s room at the King Edward Hotel in the middle of the night and kidnapped him. They drove him across the US border and told him that if he ever returned he’d be tarred and feathered. Click here for full story in the Regina Morning Leader.

A decade later, the Depression hit, knocking the bottom out of Bienfait’s economy. The price of coal fell, wages were cut, and many miners were laid off. The pressures of unemployment and the resulting poverty led to the coal miners’ strike in and around Bienfait in the fall of 1931. On September 29^th, miners and their families travelled in trucks to Estevan for a parade demonstration against the mining companies. Three miners, Julian Gryshko, Peter Markunas, and Nick Nargan, were shot and killed by the RCMP when they attacked a miners' parade in the streets of Estevan that day. Many more were wounded despite the fact that it was a peaceful demonstration that included women and children. 

RCMP during the miner's demonstration at Estevan, 1931. Source

The tragic melee was over in an hour. The miners and their families fled back to Bienfait in their trucks, where, in the Bienfait Café, Wing Wong performed first aid on the injured. Immediately afterwards, 90 fully armed RCMP descended on Bienfait where they patrolled the town night and day for two weeks in an attempt to break the strike and destroy the union. (For a full account of this event, see Endicott's book, Bienfait: The Saskatchewan Miner's Strike of '31 [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002.)

Postcard showing the King Edward Hotel in the early 1950s. Image source

Shenanigans in the Seventies

Wilf Gardiner (centre) with his father, son and wife, c. 1955. Image source

In 1971, J. W. (Wilf) Gardiner, son of former premier of Saskatchewan James G. (Jimmy) Gardiner, bought the Coalfields Hotel (the former King George Hotel) in Bienfait from Mrs. Ann Sichello.  “I bought the hotel because I love Saskatchewan’s small towns,” Gardiner said, “and because this part of the country has always been in my heart. My father Jimmy Gardiner taught school at Frobisher, just east of Bienfait, when he first came to western Canada. Besides that I am told the Coalfields Hotel … is one of the best small-town hotels in the province.”Click here for full story in Regina Leader-Post, p. 2.  Gardiner changed the hotel’s name to the Plainsman, and remodelled a section of the hotel as living quarters for his family, wife Marg and their son and daughters.

Gardiner spent seven years – three consecutive terms – as a Liberal MLA for Melville. He was defeated in the 1967 election. In 1970, Premier Ross Thatcher appointed Gardiner as the chairman of the Saskatchewan Homecoming ’71 celebrations. In March of 1971, Thatcher fired Gardiner because of a dispute over Homecoming funding policy. Gardiner fought back, calling for Thatcher’s resignation, saying that the premier was “unfit to govern.”  Thatcher proved too powerful and Gardiner’s political career was over. Click here to read full story in Star-Phoenix, p. 3.  

In 1972, Heather Robertson interviewed Wilf Gardiner for her book, Grass Roots. At that time the Plainsman Hotel was painted robin’s-egg blue. There was a big wooden cut-out of Davy Crockett over the hotel’s main entrance and an Indian’s head with feathers over the bar which was called the Eagle’s Nest.  When Robertson met with him, Gardiner was presiding over the bar,” a dark, cavernous place with cheap arborite tables and chrome chairs.” He explained to the author that Bienfait was his last resort after his battle with Thatcher. “Usually a man who’s been in government can get a big job with business,” Gardiner said. “Thatcher had enough power to freeze me out of a job.” Gardiner and his family ran the hotel themselves. He was the bartender, his wife did the cooking and cleaning, and his kids mopped up the pub on Sundays.

According to Robertson, Gardiner was “a wheeler-dealer, a promoter with a dozen schemes up his sleeve and all the angles figured.”

He’s out to promote Bienfait, to turn the town on its ear. Already he’s organized a shuffleboard tournament and an Indian pow-wow in the beer parlor. “I’m an honorary chief of the Crees,” he booms. “I have the complete outfit, white buckskin jacket, feather headdress; my wife has a wig with long braids. We’re gonna dress in the outfits all summer for the tourist business. I’ve been working seven years to get tourists into this province. The people say the only reason I’m doing it is because I’m gonna benefit, being in the hotel business. Most of them don’t recognize it as history. They’re not old enough.” … Gardiner has detected that [the mayor of Bienfait] Metro Katrusik is not too enthusiastic about advertising Bienfait’s illicit past. His eyes twinkle wickedly and a slow smile spreads across his face from ear to ear. “The mayor was one of the biggest bootleggers in the area! He admits it.” … Gardiner’s sly laugh booms through the pub. (Robertson, pp. 278-9)

 In 2010, the bar at the Bienfait Hotel was called the Coal Dust Saloon.

Coal Dust Saloon, Bienfait, June 2006.  Joan Champ photo

Courtesy of Google Street View

© Joan Champ 2011

View Larger Map

Tabor Light at Esterhazy

Joan Champ photo*

A ghostly light seen at the Tabor Cemetery, 17 miles northeast of Esterhazy, caused a sensation in Saskatchewan for several weeks in 1938. It was front-page news, with extensive coverage on the radio. “The Tabor Light was sometimes described as a ball of fire, slightly reddish or pinkish in color, and occasionally flickering,” Jo-Anne Christensen wrote in her book, Ghost Stories of Saskatchewan (1995). “Witnesses always said the glow appeared to be directed inward, the light never illuminated the surrounding area … and it would either dance among the trees skirting the cemetery, or speed along the road that ran past it.”

There were some superstitious people in Esterhazy who saw an evil omen in the spooky light. Descendants of the original Czech colony feared that the Tabor Light was a warning and that something sinister was going to happen. The Tabor Cemetery was remembered as a cemetery where atheists were buried, the Leader-Post reported on November 30, 1938. It was said that some of the Czechs who came to the country in 1885 “spread their gospel there was no such thing as a God or hereafter, and their people were buried in this ground."

The site became a popular spot for people from miles around. On the night of December 2^nd, for example, the Leader-Post reported, “A laughing thrill-seeking crowd of more than 80 persons including a cameraman and reporter jammed the bleak Tabor cemetery … in a vain search for Esterhazy's phantom light.”  About thirty cars from Churchbridge, Yarbo, and Langenburg were parked around the tiny burial ground for hours, the newspaper continued. “The presence of so many lights, however, definitely handicapped the watchers and made the task of shooting the strange ball of red fire a practical impossibility.” Eventually, the iron gates to the Tabor Cemetery had to be locked to stop the desecration of graves.  

The Central Hotel in Esterhazy, 1958. Image source

The supernatural visitation drew many guests to the Central Hotel in Esterhazy. The Leader-Post reported on December 6^th that ever since the light was first seen, the hotel proprietor, James Brown, had been “losing sleep attending to numerous visitors.” The newspaper continued:

Best joke in Esterhazy is one perpetrated on Mr. Brown in connection with his electric light services. Canadian Utilities of Calgary has the franchise at Esterhazy and supplies the electricity to consumers in the town. With his light bill for the last month, Mr. Brown received another bill, calling for charges made for consumption of light made by the 'will o’ the wisp' after midnight. At first Mr. Brown was mystified, but on closer examination, was satisfied office boys at Calgary were just having fun.

The Esterhazy hotel was not the only hotel in the district impacted by the eerie light. Like most of the people in the province, T. Raymond, the owner of the Tantallon Hotel, was curious. On the night of December 5^th, Raymond decided to leave his wife and young daughter alone in the hotel, and drive 20 miles (30 kilometres) northwest to Esterhazy, where he joined the nightly vigil at the Tabor Cemetery. In the early hours of December 6^th, Mrs. Raymond was awakened by the sound of her child’s coughing. Smelling smoke, she ran into the hotel hallway, where she saw that the entire lower floor of the Tantallon Hotel was in flames. She threw bedding and valuables out of an upstairs window, and then escaped with her daughter. The entire hotel building was destroyed. 

Esterhazy Hotel, 2006. Sheave wheel (pulley used in ore extraction) in foreground.
Courtesy of Ruth Bitner

Click here and here to read more about the Tabor Light near Estevan.

*Photo taken at the Crooked Trees north of Speers, October 2008; flare added.

© Joan Champ 2011

View Larger Map

Wolseley Hotels: From the Empire to the Leland

Leland Hotel, 2010. Image source

Wolseley’s first hotel was a primitive affair. Built in 1883 by W. D. Perley and E. A. Banbury, the one-storey, wood-frame building had a canvas top.  A more substantial hotel called the Leland was built in 1901 by Robert E. Hall and his wife, Eliza. Meanwhile, Perley and Banbury built the brick three-storey Empire Hotel on Sherbrooke Street.  In 1923, when the Leland Hotel was destroyed by fire, the owners bought the Empire Hotel and renamed it the Leland.

William Dell Perley and Edwin A. Banbury

Edwin and Edith Banbury, 1886. From

Bridging the Past: Wolseley and District, 1880-1980

Wolseley’s first settler, Edwin Ashely Banbury, arrived from Ontario at what was then called Wolf Creek in 1882. William Dell Perley arrived that same year with his young family after being defeated in a provincial election in New Brunswick. Both men started farming, and soon afterwards built several small businesses, one of which was the wood and canvas hotel. A fellow named G. Swift wrote a letter to his aunt in 1899, in which he described the conditions in the hotel in Wolseley:

I was shown a room, I’ll never forget – Very small, rough boards, not finished. Old fashioned bed, washstand and chair, and no lock on the door. (I should have been thankful there was a door.) So I had to barricade it by pulling the bed across and piling a stand and chair between it and the side of the house. … The bed was unmade from the last occupant, so no getting undressed that night. … In the morning after putting things back in place I went down to get breakfast. I found a room where five or six men were sitting down to a table made of three rough boards put together, there was no cloth to cover them. I was told to sit down and asked if I would have some porridge. Not knowing what that might be I asked if they had anything else, and was told they had some beefsteak so ordered thinking that I would enjoy that after my long trip. When it was served I found my knife was not sharp enough to cut it. I drank my tea and returned to my room for my coat.

Car race in Wolseley, 1912, with Empire Hotel on right. Source: Bridging the Past

In 1906, Perley and Banbury built the Empire Hotel on Sherbrooke Street.

W. D. Perley. Source

W.D. Perley was elected to the Northwest Territorial Council for Qu’Appelle in 1885.  In 1887, he was the first elected MP for the riding of East Assiniboia. After only two years, Perley resigned to accept an appointment to the Senate in 1889.  He served on the Senate until his death in 1909.

Banbury died at age 97 in 1955. Source

Edwin A. Banbury was the co-founder, along with his brother Robert, of the Beaver Lumber Company. His hotel venture provided him with the capital he needed to establish Banbury Bros. Lumber Company in the 1890s.  A series of mergers and takeovers with partners and competing firms led to the formation of one large lumber company in 1906.  A name was needed that had something to do with wood.  Edwin Banbury came up with "Beaver" which remained the company’s name until 1999, when it was taken over by Home Hardware. In 1886, Banbury married W. D. Perley’s daughter, Edith. They had eight children, three of whom died from diphtheria at a young age.

 

The Leland Hotel

Windsor Hotel on left, before the 1905 fire.

From Bridging the Past

In 1901, Robert E. and Eliza Hall built their first hotel, the Windsor, on the corner of Sherbrook and Front Streets. This wooden building burned down in 1905, along with most of the other buildings on the street. The Halls, who were among the first homesteaders in the Wolseley area, then set about building a new, three-storey brick hotel on Front Street, half a block west of their first hotel. 

Hotel Leland, centre, c. 1920. Image source

The Leland Hotel, as it was called, had distinctive arched windows on the second floor. The Halls had two children, Herbert and Pearl. Robert ran the hotel with the helped of his son. When Robert retired and moved to Victoria, the Leland was operated by Pearl and her husband, Charlie Corbett.

In the middle of the night on October 6, 1923, a fire broke out in the basement of the Leland Hotel. Within four hours, the hotel burned to the ground. All of the people inside the hotel at the time managed escaped with their lives. About half of the 30 occupants were guests – mainly commercial travellers; the rest were regular roomers, boarders and hotel staff. The building filled with dense smoke, and some people had great difficulty finding their way to an exit. The proprietors of the Leland, Pearl Corbett and her four children, were among the first to be rescued. Some of the hotel guests had to jump from the upper floors. Others lowered themselves from the windows of their rooms with ropes. One salesman crawled down the hall on his hands and knees, through the acrid smoke, only to fall down the stairs. He managed to get out the front door with only a few bruises. 

Leland Hotel after the fire, 1923. From Bridging the Past

According to the Morning Leader, Frank Vincent, the postmaster for Wolseley who roomed on the hotel’s third floor, had the most spectacular escape. “Overcome by smoke in his bedroom he could only be reached by a couple of ladders,” the newspaper recounted. “The upper ladder was held from the top of the lower ladder by two men while the third assisted Mr. Vincent over the window sill and down the perilous upper ladder.”

The heroine of the disaster was Gladys Macdonald, the night telephone operator in the telephone building at the rear of the hotel. She called the police and fire brigade, and then stuck to her post throughout the conflagration, while “every minute the telephone building was threatened with destruction by the flames and was enveloped with dense smoke for hours.”  None of the contents of the hotel was saved. People lost everything except the pajamas they were wearing as they escaped the blaze. Click here to read the full story of the fire on page page 12 of the Morning Leader.

The new Leland in the former Empire Hotel building. From Bridging the Past

After the fire, the Corbetts and Grandma [Eliza] Hall bought the Empire Hotel and renamed it the Leland Hotel. This hotel was purchased by Victor Hunter and family in 1971. Vic Hunter was still the owner in 2010.

© Joan Champ 2011

Tisdale Tragedy: Anatomy of a Hotel Fire

 

The Imperial Hotel, c. 1912 Source

The following graphic account of a horrible hotel fire in Tisdale was published over several days in the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix (republished in the Regina Leader-Post) by one very thorough, unnamed reporter. All of the photos shown below are from the newspaper. Click here to read the full account from February 8, 1933.

Dolly Couture, daughter of owner

In the early hours of a frigid February morning in 1933, a devastating fire at the Imperial Hotel in Tisdale took the lives of eight people. Mrs. C. Couture, owner of the hotel, and her three daughters were among the victims. The others who died in the fire were Emma Roy, the hotel chambermaid; Jack F. Marsh, commercial traveller for Adams Brothers Harness Company of Saskatoon; Fraser Paige, commercial traveller for Spillers Milling Company of Calgary; and – a few days after the fire – William John “Sandy” McPherson, the 65-year-old manager of the hotel. The coroner’s inquest determined that the terrible fire was caused by a match or cigarette butt that had been tossed into the woodbox beside the stove in the hotel lobby.

The Cause of the Fire

Mah Choon, manager of the restaurant at the Imperial Hotel, rose at 5:00 a.m. to prepare breakfast for six commercial travellers who were leaving Tisdale on the 6:10 a.m. train. The temperature outside was 45 degrees below zero and there was a strong northwest wind. Choon served the meals at about 5:30, and after the travellers were finished, he cleared the dishes and took them to the kitchen. As he came back into the restaurant, he noticed fire in the rotunda through the glass doors. The cook went into the rotunda where he saw flames coming out of the woodbox, licking the wall. He ran back into the kitchen for a bucket of water, but by the time he returned to the rotunda, it was too late. The fire had spread to blankets that were hung to dry on the stair banister, and was raging up to the second floor. Choon ran to the foot of the stairs and called, “Fire! Fire!” He was immediately answered by Mrs. Couture. Choon then went to wake up his two restaurant partners, Roy Mah and E. Kin. The three Chinese men then escaped the building.

Chambermaid Emma Roy

The hotel night porter, Jack McLory,was also working that fateful Wednesday morning. Because it was extremely cold outside, he stoked both the furnace in the basement and the stove in the rotunda. A few minutes before six, he escorted the departing travellers across the street to the Tisdale train station, carrying their bags. For some reason, McLory turned around about a minute or two after leaving to look back at the hotel and saw a sudden burst of light through its front doors. Within five minutes, the entire two-storey building was engulfed in flames. So severe was the fire that the plate glass windows of the store buildings across the street cracked under the intense heat – in spite of the 45 below zero temperature. Telephone communication between Tisdale and the outside world was cut off for hours by the conflagration.

George Booth, Tisdale’s night policeman had accompanied McLory and the six salesmen from the hotel to the train station. At the coroner’s inquest, Booth stated that some of the men had been smoking in the hotel. One of them – it was never determined whom – must have carelessly thrown a cigarette butt or match into the woodbox. McClory admitted to the jury that there had been paper and other rubbish in the box. “I had not cleaned it out for three or four days,” he said. “The box was open and had no cover.” (Leader-Post, February 10, 1933)

The Survivors

C.B. Conley of Winnipeg broke his hip when he leapt to safety through a second-storey window. After landing, his hands and feet became badly frostbitten. Mr. and Mrs. Charles A. Otterbein escaped through the window of their hotel room, jumping into the snow behind the general store next door. They were rescued there, half frozen in the snow by the storekeeper. The couple was immediately taken to the hospital, along with C. W. Martin of Prince Albert, who also escaped through a window. His feet were badly frozen.

Charles Otterbein was a district forest ranger from Nipawin, formerly of Hudson Bay Junction. He was in Tisdale on business, accompanied by his wife. His hands and face were badly burned by the blaze, and his feet were badly frozen. In an interview for the Leader-Post, Mrs. Otterbein, feet heavily bandaged, remembered: “I heard someone [Sandy McPherson] running around in the hall in excitement and we got up to see what it was. I opened the door. The flames were right in the hallway. We could not get out. My husband broke the window and I got on the roof of the next building, then my husband went back in again. I was ready to go in after him, he seemed to be so long. I began to call him, when he came out the window again. His face was burned and the flames were already coming through the window.” Click here for full story

John L. Tennent

Of the thirteen people inside the Imperial Hotel at the time of the fire, only one man escaped unharmed. He was John L. Tennent from Saskatoon, a representative of General Motors Products of Canada, Ltd. Thankful to be alive, Tennent told the Star-Phoenix, “Two seconds more and I’d have been there yet.” The Saskatoon traveller said he owed his life to Sandy McPherson, who spread the alarm up and down the hotel hallways, endangering his own life. Tennent grabbed his clothes and sped out of his room into the hallway which was already on fire. “I didn’t know which way to go,” he continued. “I never was in the hotel before, but I headed for the back of the building.” When Tennent got to the back door, it was locked. He had to force it open. Clad only in his pajamas, he ran barefoot down the street to the safety of the Tisdale Hotel. Interestingly, when Tennent registered at the Imperial Hotel the night before, he was shown to a room on the second floor. Because of his inherent fear of fire in “country hotels,” however, he had his room changed to one on the first floor. That spur-of-the-moment decision likely saved his life.

The Dead

Newlyweds, Mr. and Mrs. Fraser M. Paige

Screams of the dying could be heard by the frenzied volunteer fire-fighters soon after the outbreak. The building was razed with such speed, however, that they were unable to force their way into the inferno. It was so cold that the ice formed inside the fire hoses, rendering them useless. The fire was not brought under control until the next day. The metal roof of the hotel had collapsed, completely covering the burning debris. The remains of the victims, "simply skeletons," were not located until two days later when the roof was lifted.

 

Jack F. Marsh

Jack F. Marsh, the Saskatoon commercial traveller who perished in the fire, was survived only by his wife. Marsh, who had resided in Saskatoon for a number of years, was well known on the commercial travellers’ circuit. Fraser Paige, formerly of Calgary, had recently married. He and his wife had lived in Prince Albert for about one year. Both Marsh and Paige were likely disoriented in their strange surroundings during the early morning, and could not find their way out of the hotel.

The young chambermaid, Emma Roy was from McKague, Saskatchewan. It was determined that she became trapped in her room at the time of the fire.

Margaret Couture, age 19

The Couture family, formerly of Saskatoon, was all but wiped out by the fire except for a son, Edward, who operated the Kinistino Hotel, also owned by his mother. Mrs. Couture, the owner of the Imperial Hotel, had been ill for some time. She had been released from Holy Family Hospital in Prince Albert on January 20th, returning to Tisdale. She still was confined to her bed at the time of the fire. Her eldest daughter, Dorothy ‘Dolly’ Couture, age 22, had graduated from the nursing program at St. Paul’s Hospital in Saskatoon in 1932. Dolly had arrived in Tisdale a few days before the disaster to nurse her mother. Dolly and her sister Margaret, 19, both “strikingly beautiful,” were graduates of Tisdale high school. Their younger sister, Simone, 13, attended public school in Tisdale. It is thought that the Couture daughters rushed to their mother’s bedside in an attempt to save her. All four perished in the same room. They apparently did not even attempt to escape through a window. At the funeral, the remains of the three Couture girls were placed in one coffin. The Tisdale schools were closed that day out of sympathy and respect for the Couture family.

The Imperial Hotel on left, 1928 Source

Sandy McPherson, the hero of the Imperial Hotel fire, died of his injuries in the Tisdale hospital four days later. McPherson, partially clad, had rushed along the hotel halls, going from room to room, warning the guests to save themselves. When the fire became too intense, he made a dash for the front door, running through a solid wall of fire. He emerged barefooted onto the street. “So cold were the sidewalks,” the Leader-Post reported, “that the flesh was torn from the soles of his feet, and as he rushed to the Tisdale Hotel, tracks of blood showed at every step. His hair was burned from his head; his face was badly cut and burned on one side almost to the bone.”  While in hospital, McPherson continually asked how everybody was from the hotel. Due to his critical condition, however, he was never informed of the deaths of the people he had so desperately tried to save. 

© Joan Champ 2011

View Larger Map

Sasko: The Hudson Bay Hotel's Pet Moose

Alcide Marcotte with Sasko, 1911. Source: Valley Echoes (1980)

In the winter of 1911, lumberjacks brought a baby moose to Marcotte’s Hotel at Hudson Bay Junction located in north-east Saskatchewan. They had caught the moose calf in the woods surrounding village. The hotel owner, Alcide Marcotte, obtained a government permit to enable him to keep the moose in captivity. ‘Sasko’ became the family pet. Every day, it would climb the steps of the Marcotte’s Hotel to be fed. It basically had the run of the hotel.

Rosalie Marcotte with Sasko, 1911. Valley Echoes (1980)

By the summer of 1911, Sasko must have outgrown the Marcotte’s hotel. The Saskatoon Star-Phoenix reported on July 13^th that the one-year-old moose had arrived at the CNR station from Hudson Bay Junction, packed in a piano box.  “Saskatoon is to have a little zoo of its own opposite the Flanagan Hotel [now the Senator Hotel on 21st St.],” the newspaper stated.  “Sasko … is turned loose inside a small run on 20^th Street, and seems quite at home.” Mr. G. A. Wilding, the new owner, stated that his intention was to present Sasko to the street railway company when it opened up a park after the system had started, as a first donation to their zoological department.

None of this ever happened. Saskatoon Municipal Railway did not begin operating until 1913. It is not known what happened to Sasko.

Marcotte's Hotel 

Alcide Marcotte came from Quebec to the Prud’homme region of what is now Saskatchewan with his parents and eight siblings in 1897. Alcide was well-educated and became an entrepreneur, dealing in real estate. He was always building, buying and selling hotels. When the Canadian Northern railway line came through around 1905, he owned hotels in Warman, Osler and Vonda. 

Marcotte's Hotel, c. 1910. Valley Echoes (1980)

In 1907, Alcide and his father, Joseph A. Marcotte, built the hotel at Hudson Bay Junction (called Etomami until 1909; “Junction” was dropped in 1947).  “There was a long bar with a brass rail and beautiful big mirrors over it,” Alcide’s daughter Elsie wrote in the Hudson Bay history book. “The customers were nearly all lumberjacks from the woods and they had every kind of liquor [in the hotel bar] they wanted.”

Alcide and Rosalie Marcotte. Image source

Alcide married Rosalie, 20 years his junior, in Duck Lake. They had four children, Donald, Wilfred, Maurice and Elsie, who were raised in the hotel at Hudson Bay Junction. “I sure did love that hotel,” Elsie recalled. "It brings back so many memories. In those days we didn’t have plumbing or electricity so everything was a lot of hard work.  My father really built Hudson Bay Junction and owned most of the town at one time. He was a real business man and very smart.  He treated mother like a princess. She was never allowed to work around the hotel, only to dress and look pretty for him.  He was so proud of her and of course, she was never allowed to worry about business.  When he died in 1920, she knew nothing of money matters or the hotel business." (Valley Echoes: Life along the Red Deer River Basin, Saskatchewan, 1900-1980)

When Alcide passed away in 1920, Rosalie managed Marcotte’s Hotel with the help of her sons. In 1928, she was doing all the cooking for the hotel and needed help. A young woman named Josephine from Gimli, Manitoba, came to work in the kitchen. “The chambermaid and I became good friends,” Josephine recalled, “and we would often go for walks but not too far away from the buildings because the bush with wild animals was so close by.” (Valley Echoes) Josephine married Donald Marcotte in 1929. In 1935, Maurice Marcotte took over ownership of the hotel when his mother and sister, Elsie, moved to Los Angeles, California. A beer parlour opened in the hotel that same year.

Marcotte's Hotel, 1953 Source

The Marcotte family operated the hotel until 1955 when they sold it to a Mr. King. Not long afterwards, Ovide Desrochers and Arthur Kelm became the owners, changing its name to the DesRochers Hotel.

DesRochers Hotel in Hudson Bay, 2007.  Ruth Bitner photo

© Joan Champ 2011

View Larger Map