“A Chinaman’s Chance” – Chinese Curlers in Saskatchewan

The rink from Wadena at the Saskatoon bonspiel, 1928. They are identified as (L to R): "Jee, lead; Tom Sing, second, George, third; Toy Wing, skip." Source: Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, January 21, 1928. I believe the men have been misidentified. My guess, based on photo comparison, is that they are (L to R): Tom Sing, George Hing, George Gee, and Toy Him.

As I research small-town Saskatchewan hotels, I often come across references to the men-only enclaves of Chinese laundry, restaurant, and hotel owners that had settled in nearly every village, town and city in the province by 1919. These men, who were not allowed to bring their wives and children to Canada until 1947, did not have a lot of time for leisure activities. Many of them did, however, participate in the sport of curling – whether as fans, team sponsors, or as players.

In her book Cultivating Connections; The Making of Chinese Prairie Canada (2014), Allison R. Marshall writes that participation in sports provided lonely Chinese men the opportunity to connect with their communities. Curling, Marshall asserts, was the most significant sport in which prairie Chinese men and boys were welcome to participate. “As people watched local curling bonspiels that included Chinese curlers, they came to see these participants as members of their own community,” she writes. “Community pride swelled when local boys played sport, regardless of whether they were Chinese or non-Chinese.”

[For more about the history of Chinese hotel owners in Saskatchewan, click here.]

Tom Sing's Wadena Rink

Winnipeg Tribune, Feb. 7, 1944

There were several Chinese curlers in the province prior to 1950, but the most remarkable story I’ve come across yet is that of the all-Chinese rink from Wadena, skipped by Thomas (Tom) Sing. According to Canada census records, Sing arrived in Canada in 1906 at age 15. He went into the restaurant business at Wadena where he worked for 25 years before becoming the proprietor of the hotel in Elfros during the 1930s. By the 1940s, Sing was back running a restaurant in Wadena. Throughout the decades, he was a curler and his game just kept getting better and better.

On February 14, 1927, according to the Regina Leader-Post – the first newspaper account I have found about Sing – he entered an all-Chinese team in the Yorkton bonspiel. The other members of the rink were Toy Wing, George Hing, and Yuen Loy. They defeated a Manitoba team in their first game of the competition. Fred W. Graham wrote about the four Chinese curlers in a Maclean’s magazine article entitled “Baled Hay Rinks” (Dec. 15, 1938). “Did you ever see a Chinese curl?” Graham asked. “I saw the [Wadena rink] in action at the Yorkton Bonspiel a few years ago. They always had the opposing rink advantage, for they discussed all their shots in their own language.”

In January of 1928, Sing’s Wadena rink entered the Saskatoon bonspiel and scored a 9-6 win against a rink from Marengo in the T. Eaton competition for visiting rinks. “The Orientals played a splendid draw game and were in the lead all the way,” the Star-Phoenix stated on January 17^th. “The win proved most popular.” 

Headline in the Winnipeg Tribune, February 8, 1944.

In 1944, when Tom Sing was 53 years old, he entered the first-ever all-Chinese rink in the 56^th annual Manitoba bonspiel. Curlers “blinked in surprise when they took to the ice this year,” Maclean’s wrote on March 15, 1944. Skipped by Sing (who was now back in Wadena and serving on the Saskatchewan Curling Club executive), the rink included Toy Him of Wadena, Harry Ying (or Ing) of Preeceville, and Charlie Poy from Kelvington. None of them were young men. He and his team “curled for fun not for trophies,” Sing told Maclean’s. He likened curlers to bananas – green, yellow, and overripe. His rink, he joked, was in the latter category.

The Chinese curling team suffered some tough losses during the 1944 Manitoba bonspiel. Sing’s quartet dropped a 10-9 decision to Curly Marlatt of Rocanville, Sask., and suffered a 10-8 setback at the hands of a Winnipeg rink.

An International Match

Headline in the Star-Phoenix, January 24, 1945

Tom Sing at the Saskatoon bonspiel. Source: Star-Phoenix, Jan. 24, 1945.

Sing persevered. In 1945, he entered his all-Chinese rink in the 41^st annual Saskatoon bonspiel – his last appearance in that ‘spiel had been in 1928. With 189 rinks competing, the Wadena curlers stole the show. An American vs Chinese game at the Granite Curling Club attracted one of the largest crowds in the bonspiel’s history. The Star-Phoenix provides the following account: “In the early stages of the game the ice was too heavy for the Chinese boys, with the result they could barely reach the house with their shots. While these conditions existed, the Americans chalked up points and were leading 6-1 at the end of five ends. Mr. Sing went to town from then on. His men found the weight for draw shots and tied the score at 6-6 at the eighth end. The Americans went into the lead on the ninth but Tom promptly scored four points on the 10th to practically cinch the honors. He added another in the 11th and held his opponents to one point on the 12th when they tried to build up the house." The final score was 11-8 for Sing's rink.  

Members of the American and Chinese Canadian rinks at the 1945 Saskatoon bonspiel. L to R: George Hing, lead; Dr. C. R. Curtis, lead; Charlie Jim, second; Ross Bennett, second; Toy Him, third; Frank L. Van Epps, third; Tom Sing, skip; and Walter Polski, skip. Source:  Star-Phoenix, January 24, 1945.

Curling provided a chance for Chinese Canadian men like Tom Sing - small-town Saskatchewan hotel and restaurant owners - to move out of the shadows and overcome stereotypes. “Newcomers began to seem less strange and exotic as team players … so that they were seen to be like everyone else,” Marshall writes. However, she cautions, while sports participation “could help young Chinese men fit in, athletic involvement wasn’t a guarantee of acceptance.”


[NOTE: I apologize for the poor image quality. They are screen captures. The Star-Phoenix photo collection, now housed at the City of Saskatoon Archives, does not contain the original photographs shown above.]

©Joan Champ, 2019. 

Behind the Bar - Barrels, Beer Kegs, and Bung Starters

How did small-town Saskatchewan hotels serve beer in the early 1900s? It started with the shipment of wooden beer barrels by train to the hotels, unloaded on the railway station platform. The Bulyea local history book, Between Long Lake and Last Mountain (1982), recounts a story about two local farmers who crawled under the train platform “armed with a brace and bit, a washtub, and several buckets.” When the hotel owner arrived to pick up his delivery, he was dismayed to find an empty barrel.

Barrel terminology. Source

Because they had to stand up to pressure and liquid (and the occasional tampering), beer barrels were lined with pitch and made of thicker, good quality wood. The barrel was filled by the brewery through a bung hole. Once filled, a plug was hammered into the hole, sealing the barrel. 

Source

 

Star-Phoenix, June 1, 1948

Opening the beer barrel presented a challenge to many a hotel barkeep. They used what was called a “bung starter” – a heavy wooden mallet – to drive the wooden plug, bit by bit, up and out of the bung hole. Bill Graham, head bartender at the Great West Hotel in Davidson during the pre-1915 days, told the Star-Phoenix on June 1, 1948 that he had driven many a faucet pump into a keg of beer with a bung starter. Unless you were quick, Graham recalled, beer sprayed all over the place. “I got pretty good with that old bung starter,’ he said. “People would stand around and watch me with their mouths open.” The heavy bung starter also served as an excellent weapon for a beleaguered bartender.

To keep beer cool, many small-town hotels used ice that had been cut from local lakes or rivers. For the hotel at Fairlight, for example, this meant replenishing the ice in the draft beer cabinet on a daily basis and checking the storage of beer kegs in the basement cooler two or three times a week. Other hotels kept ice in an icehouse, packed in layers of sawdust.

During Prohibition, it was not unusual for hotel owners to keep a barrel or two of booze hidden away in the basement of their establishments. In 1925, police raided the Cecil Hotel in Moose Jaw. As the officers entered the hotel, they saw the man behind the bar pull a string. “The officers darted to the basement and attacked a lock cabinet, where they found a small keg overflowing with water driven into it at high pressure,” the Regina Leader-Post reported on February 3rd. “There was, of course, a smell of beer about the place.” The hotel had installed a beer keg apparatus – alleged to have been invented to defeat liquor enforcement methods – consisting of a double spigot connected to the water main. The pulling of a string flooded the keg and removed the beer within seconds.

Regina Leader-Post, February 26, 1935

In 1935, when the Government of Saskatchewan permitted hotels to sell beer by the glass, Saskatchewan’s hotels scrambled to reopen their beer parlours. This required a major outlay of cash for the hotel owners to meet the government’s rigorous architectural and regulatory standards for licensing. In addition to building renovations and new furniture, hotels had to install new drawing systems for beer, refrigeration equipment, and draft beer cabinets. “A 25-table beer parlour will require the most modern beer pumps, a cooling system, and cabinets,” the Leader-Post wrote on December 4, 1934. “It will need 100 chairs, at least 400 glasses and an insulated storage cellar.” This equipment cost thousands of dollars per hotel. Saskatchewan suppliers did well. The Saskatoon Star-Phoenix reported on April 8, 1935 that Sterling Millwork Company and Cushing’s Limited had many orders for tabletops and refrigerators, and the John East Foundry was manufacturing $8,000 worth of table bases.

Ad in the Star-Phoenix, April 30, 1935

1935 was also a boom year for beer keg manufacturers. The Leader-Post reported on May 4 that one Regina brewery acquired 2,900 kegs for its new draft beer business. Of these, 800 were steel, “the newest wrinkle in the keg business.” The remainder were wooden kegs which cost the breweries about $8 apiece; the steel kegs, which had an insulated aluminum lining, cost around $12. “Handling of the empties by the breweries entails a lot of work, the newspaper wrote. “They must be sterilized and repitched each time they go back to the brewery.”

With the outbreak of the Second World War, metal beer kegs were prohibited due to the war effort, but metal hoops and fittings were still allowed on wooden kegs.

Eventually, bottled beer became popular and draft beer sales declined. Today, draft beer is enjoying a comeback thanks to craft breweries.

A 1980s bar set-up, with bartender serving draft beer. Leader-Post, July 2, 1987.

©Joan Champ, 2019

Catastrophe at the Macoun Hotel

 This is an expanded version of an earlier post on this blog. Click here for Hotel Fires.

Macoun's hotel was built in 1905 by Len Youngberg. Source

Macoun Hotel, c. 1910. Source

Six weeks after purchasing the hotel at Macoun and getting his family settled within, Carl Hochhaus left town to see to matters on his Alberta homestead. He could never have imagined that when he returned home, he would find his hotel a smouldering mass of ashes with many dead inside, including his wife Gertrude and 23-year-old daughter Emma.

On April 20, 1914, one of the most tragic hotel fires in Saskatchewan’s history occurred at Macoun, located 28 kilometres northwest of Estevan. Eleven people (some accounts say thirteen) lost their lives as a result of the disaster and many more were injured, including three Hochhaus children, Gertrude, Carl Jr., and Bernard.

The Explosion

At lunchtime on that fateful April day, thirty people were inside the Macoun Hotel. Some were Hockhaus family members, some were staff members, others were hotel guests. Many were sitting down for lunch, and the hotel dining room was full.

James Towey, a ten-year-old witness of the explosion, provides his account in Plowshares to Pumpjacks: R.M. of Cymri: Macoun, Midale, Halbrite, (1984). Shortly after noon, Carl Hochhaus, Jr. smelled gas and decided to go down to the basement to investigate. “He had a lighted cigar in his mouth as he descended the stairs and opened the door to the basement,” Towey recounts. “Immediately there was an explosion which lifted the entire structure approximately thirty feet in the air, then the building dropped back down into the basement.”

The bank and drug store (seen from rear) were still standing after the fire, but the hotel, meat market, telephone office and a private house were destroyed. Source

Carl was blown several feet through a doorway on to the street and survived with only a few bruises, singed hair and eyebrows. Everyone caught in the conflagration was injured, perished in the fire, or died later as a result of their injuries. 

The hotel’s dining room was located directly above an acetylene light plant in the basement. The explosion caused the entire dining room to collapse into the cellar below. Wreckage from the walls and floors above fell on top of the diners and then caught fire. All of the people who were in the dining room at the time of the explosion were killed. 

The Victims 

 

Headline in the Saskatoon Daily Star, April 21, 1914.

In addition to the two Hochhaus family members, those killed in the Macoun hotel explosion were: four telephone workers, Daniel Egan from Moose Jaw, Harold George Clark from Estevan, Thomas Drake from Pipestone, Manitoba, and Peter Joyner from Estevan; Joseph E. Grant, carpenter from Macoun; James Dunger, buyer for International Elevator Company of Manitoba; and three members of the hotel staff, Clifford VanDer, hotel clerk from Vancouver, Ferdinand Schmidt, hotel bartender from Alberta, and Stella Peterson, hotel cook from Macoun.

Stella Peterson, the hotel’s young Icelandic cook, was terribly injured in the explosion. The building collapse caused her to be pinned in the kitchen for some time before she was rescued. Miss Peterson, the sole wage earner for her widowed mother and younger brothers and sisters, died in Winnipeg General Hospital on June 16^th after weeks of suffering.

Bernard Hochhaus and his dog, Bismarck. From Plowshares to Pumpjacks

The most talked about incident in connection with the hotel explosion was, according to the Regina Leader-Post, the “miraculous escape” of Hochhaus’ youngest son, Bernard. The eight-year-old was playing with his dog, a large collie named Bismarck, in the lobby of the hotel when the explosion catapulted the two right out the door. Covered by debris, the collie dug its way into the open air but would not leave without little Bernard. “That the boy did not perish also,” the paper wrote on April 23, “is attributed by everyone to the dog.”

The day after the explosion, trains brought throngs of curious people to Macoun. The Leader-Post reported that visitors "formed a moving circle around the charred ruins of the wrecked building, watching silently the men of the Mounted Police, their red coats blackened and torn, delve into the debris, seeking those who were lost in the holocaust." Most remains were charred beyond recognition.

Crowds viewing the aftermath of the Macoun explosion, April 1914. Source

Acetylene Gas Regulations Needed

Small acetylene gas plants were one of the best lighting options in Saskatchewan in places where electric light was not yet attainable. But, after the Macoun disaster, there were calls for change. Saskatchewan’s fire commissioner, R. J. McLean, immediately appealed for safety measures in the installation of acetylene gas works in any home or public building. Acetylene gas can “do more harm than dynamite,” he stated, cautioning that no generators should be permitted in basements.

One type of acetylene gas plant, storage tank in centre, generator on right. Source

The Saskatoon Daily Star felt that more than warnings from the fire commissioner was needed. “One acetylene gas plant to one frame hotel equals one death trap,” an editorial stated on April 24. The newspaper advocated for laws requiring that gas plants be housed in separate buildings a safe distance away from inhabited buildings. The arrival of electricity in villages and towns during the 1920s, however, spelled the end of gas lighting in the province.

Final Resting Place 

Gertrude Hochhaus and her daughter Emma are buried at Tumwater, Washington, along with Carl Sr. and other Hochhaus family members.

Source: www.findagrave.com

©Joan Champ, 2019