Queen's Hotel

The passing of monarchs

It was probably around 1970 when I actually set foot in the iconic Queen’s Hotel in my hometown of Battleford. I was raised believing that those doors were a passageway to hell but I ordered a legal beer anyway. As usual I pretended to enjoy it but I did not and still don’t.

But but I did soak up and enjoy the grunge.

I was by then married and away from home so I missed those formative wilder years and the opportunity to be one of the true locals. They were drinking tables full of draft Boh beer on towel covered tables. So, it was more of an anthropology moment than classic pub time as I had no fondness for the brew, but a huge fondness for old hotels in old towns.

Turns out this was a very old hotel in a very old town.

Credit: Tammy Buziak, Battlefords Now, The Queens Hotel, 19Mar2016

In fact, I recently learned that the Queen’s was the oldest hotel in Saskatchewan. A boarding house in 1883, it went through a few transitions but became a full tilt hotel in 1890. One of its incarnations was as the original school home for Battleford Collegiate School students (B.C.I.) and I imagine a few of my fellow alumni did their part to keep the drinking hole’s doors open over those many decades.

There was another old hotel a couple of blocks away that I got to know a little better. The Windsor Hotel was built in 1906 and during my time was owned and run by Ellis Marr, father of my best friend Billy.

Boy, did we have the run of that grand old lady. We hung out in empty rooms, scoured the kitchen for goodies and retired to the basement where the stash of pop was stored. Help yourself, says my buddy and I did so, contributing to the retirement plan of my dentist.

I was especially fascinated by the old school fire escape methodology. Every room had a thick rope tied to a hook that you threw out the window.

We would throw out the rope but we did not have the jam to follow it down.

So, I knew that old hotel very well but its sister, the Queen’s, not so intimately. The Queen’s was off the Main Street and always felt sketchy and just the idea of it appealed to my youthful rebellion. I always had the compelling feeling that behind those doors, the devil himself was probably behind the bar or at least one of his many ambassadors living in Battleford.

I had no idea for all those years that I had grown up five blocks away from an historic site. This was a hotel twenty years older than the incorporation of the very town itself. The early owners bragged that it featured dining parlours for ladies, rooms for travelling salespeople, good stables and even bathrooms.

The dining room story of a lonely partridge strolling in one morning, flying up onto a curtain rod and watching the diners at breakfast was a favorite.

I vaguely recollect riding my bike past the door, with the sign closing the doors over the dinner hour. I guess it was an early temperance charge to the men, to go home at least for dinner. These joints however were not paragons of morality and it took till the sixties for ladies and indigenous folks to be welcomed.

Sketchy.

Still, it was a refuge for many.

Speaking of ladies, one Battleford old timer recently recounted the story of one of his family’s earliest arrivals. One of his grandmothers came to Battleford and discovered she was the first woman settler in town. They gave her an impromptu parade but it made her a bit nervous and she retreated to the comfort and security of the Queen’s. It was a haven till her husband came to pick her up and take her out to the new homestead.

My own family has stories. My brother time lived for a long time across the street from the Queen’s, and had more than enough midnight viewing of the blood and broken glass on the gravel parking lot.

There was blood on the gravel,

and glass in my eye,

as the moon lit a parking lot hell

— lyric from Queen’s Hotel, song by Bob Chartier

Listen on Youtube

Tim’s plumbing business took him under many floors in that town, but over the years the Queen’s accumulated layers and layers of strange flooring and he had to find his way to the plumbing by crawling down into the generational labyrinths under the Queen’s. One day he got stuck under the Queen’s and had to be pulled out.

He found treasures like an old pair of turn of the century spats and then a weird pile of bones. He put the bones in a box and took them up to the manager.

“I always wondered where they buried Jimmy Hoffa,” was the sardonic response.

My nephew, Darryl, worked for a few years in the Queen’s and they gave him a room up on the creepy, abandoned and non-available rooms on the third floor. He was not alone in the conviction that the old hotel was somewhat haunted. Sure enough, one night he woke up to the clear sounds of a children’s choir. He figured they must be outside. He checked. They were not. Back inside, they returned and continued their concert.

So now there are no bones, no choirs and no beer. It’s gone.

It was like that Cheers show on television, says my nephew. Everybody knew your name.

But like so much of our history these days, there is more interest in the real estate than in serving beer to friends. The old dowager fell into disrepair and neighbours wanted something done. I get it, but I also envy the Europeans who, I am told, would love the oldest hotel in their town and would be seriously protecting, restoring and enjoying a seat in one’s own history and storytelling. In our towns, the hotel becomes the ghost, not the sleeping quarters of them.

Apparently, there was not even enough love around to keep the old sign.

Credit: Miguel Fenrich, SaskToday, Video: One of Saskatchewan's oldest hotels toppled after 140 years, 29Feb24

I suppose it’s fitting.

The Queen died not that long ago after many years of service. For many she is truly missed. The Queen’s is also now dead and buried and I know there are still a few old timers in my home town who miss her long reign.

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