Hotels are one of the oldest and most common forms of business enterprise in Saskatchewan – in cities and in small towns. The fact so many of them have survived is a testament to the determination of the people who have owned and operated them over the past 100 years – and to the fact they haven’t burned down.
When they were first built in the early 1900s, there was good money to be made in Saskatchewan’s hotels. The railways had barely been built in the late 1800s before hotels began springing up like mushrooms along the lines. Their guest rooms were filled to capacity — at times with beds in the hallways — with railway crews, construction workers and families arriving to settle in the West.
There was always plenty of excitement at the hotels when commercial travellers pulled into town by train or in big horse-drawn wagons with as many as 15 trunks full of merchandise. The salesmen set up their goods for display in special sample rooms in the hotels. In the evenings, shopkeepers came and placed orders with the travellers.
On Saturday nights in most towns, the hotels were the main gathering place. Meals in hotel dining rooms cost 25 cents, and of course, every hotel had a tavern. Only men were allowed inside, where beer was supplied by the keg. On a Saturday night at the hotel bar in Pleasantdale, for example, “the place was so full that if one person came in one door, they would push someone out the other door.” These were the glory days of Saskatchewan hotels – the days before Prohibition hit the province (1915 to 1924).
My interest in Saskatchewan’s hotels began with my photography hobby. As I travelled around the countryside taking pictures of old buildings, I was increasingly drawn to small-town hotels. Eventually, curiosity got the better of me and I started going into them. I’d sit down and have a beer in the bar and talk to people. Soon, I realized there was a gap in the historical record of the province that, as an historian, I could help to fill. In February 2011, I set up a blog and began posting my hotel articles: www.hotelhistories.blogspot.com.
In the coming weeks, watch for my weekly column, Railway & Main, in the Thursday edition of the Battlefords Regional Optimist. The content of these columns is based on the articles posted on my hotel histories blog. If you have any stories or memories of old hotels, or if you have any comments, please contact me at joanchamp@shaw.ca.
