The Glenhaven Hotel, Turtleford’s first hotel, was a three-storey, wooden structure built on the corner of Railway and Main in 1914. The 1916 Canada census shows hotelkeepers W. J. Mills and his wife Christina living in the hotel along with their five sons and four female staff members.
The Mills operated the Glenhaven Hotel until September 1917, when, according to Turtleford Treasures (1986), Bill Davis or “Pa” as he was called, took over. As the bar had been closed in July 1915 due to Prohibition, the village council granted Mills a license in 1918 to operate a pool table in the hotel’s former barroom.
In Turtleford Treasures, Lillian (Lundberg) Olsen recalls her time working as a domestic at Turtleford’s 17-room hotel for $25 per month. With the First World War raging overseas and Prohibition in full swing, Lillian says it was a “slack time” for the hotel but that the dining room did a good business. A full course meal cost 35 cents in 1917.
The Saskatoon Daily Star reported on Apr. 16, 1920, that many new businesses were springing up in Turtleford. “The Glenhaven Hotel and two rooming houses are filled with permanent boarders, comprising the in-flocking young men and women who are taking business positions in town,” the newspaper stated. “[The] town has its ‘housing problem’ and practically every day people are asking for houses to rent or, at least, rooms and cannot find them.” At this time, the hotel was owned by Joseph (Joe) Paquette and his wife Laura, recently arrived from Quebec, who lived in the hotel with their three young children.
On Feb. 1, 1922, disaster struck. The entire business section on the north side of Main Street, including the hotel, was burned to the ground. According to the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, the fire started in the Co-op store when gasoline was mistakenly used to start a fire in a stove. Also destroyed in Turtleford’s disastrous fire were a garage, newspaper office, harness shop, drug store and butcher shop. No lives were lost in the fire, but several people who had been living in suites above the destroyed buildings were left homeless, further exacerbating Turtleford’s housing shortage.
For the next few years, Turtleford had no hotel. Then, in March 1925, John Nordell moved his hotel from Cleeves to Turtleford. “The two-storey building was loaded on sleighs and pulled by twenty-four horses to almost the exact same location on Main Street as the original hotel was built,” the local history book recounts. “The hotel today is that same building with several additions and renovations.” A year later, Nordell sold the business to Norman Lambert.
During the 1930s, Lambert built a two-storey, twenty-six-foot addition to the hotel, which added six more guest rooms upstairs. In 1937, after the provincial government permitted hotels to sell beer by the glass, Lambert added a beverage room. “Due to the fact that alcohol was not so socially acceptable, going to the beer parlor in the former days carried a fair bit of secrecy to it,” Turtleford’s history book says. “Many times, a man could be seen taking a quick look up and down the street to see if anyone happened to be watching, if the coast was clear, he would quickly open the door and step inside.”
In 1944, business partners Jack Bridgeman purchased the hotel from Lambert. Bridgeman operated the hotel until 1952, when it was sold to Jack and Vera Lambert (no relation to Norman). Over the next few years, Jack recalls in the town’s history book, they changed the hotel “from slop pails, outhouses, stoves, heaters and lamps to providing central heating, water and sewage, and a good electrical system.” The hotel now had 15 guest rooms with central, modern bathrooms. The Lamberts also added a walk-in cooler in the beverage room.
The Turtleford Hotel continues to operate as a bar in the town, located on Hwy 26, 90 kilometres northwest of North Battleford.
