The strangest hotel | ALEXIS CREEK — In the new Chilcotin Hotel there is a pub with the decor one might expect. A moose has poked his head through one wall. Opposite hangs a bear trap with a sign saying CHILCOTIN SQUIRREL TRAP. The toilets are like toilets everywhere, chrome, porcelain and the smell of perfumed disinfectant. It is hard to remember that here you stand on hallowed ground. On this site were once the smallest beer parlor and the fattest inn- keeper in Canada. The beer parlor in the original Chilcctin Hotel was so small that they would have had to throw out seven customers (half the legal quotient) to make room fora stuffed moosehead. The separate men’s and women’s section, which B.C, law required in the 1950s, was created by a white line painted across the floor, up the walls and across the ceiling. At one wall there was, on each side of the white line, entrances to the men’s and women’s Zoilets, identified by photographs of Pointer and Setter dogs. However, both entrances led to the same toilet which was a hot water tank, sawn in half and lying on its side. The hotel had eight rooms to rent. That included two called Cowboy Rooms, each containing four cots and used largely for sobering up purposes, usually at no fee. It began as a log cabin in 1928, was expanded to eight rooms and a minuscule beer parlor later and then expanded again. In 1977 it all burned to the ground and was replaced by the present modern structure, The proprietor was Sammy Barrowman, built like a basketball and with the same bounce. Many stories accumulate around the memory of Sammy. My own favorite is sitting beside him in the one-room beer parlor one evening when he was assailed by a middle-aged lady traveller who had rented one of the upstairs rooms. ROADBLOCKS THE FOLLOWING re the scheduled road closures and detours for the coming week in North Vancouver District, City, West Vancouver District and along area highways. © North Vancouver District: Dollarton Highway Reconstruc- tion Project; Up to 20 minute delays from time to time. Use Mount Seymour Parkway as an alternate route. Lonsdate Ave.: 29th Street to Kings Ave: Weather permitting, Lonsdale Ave. wilt be paved on Sunday March 24. An extensive detour will be set up. Obey flag control personnel and = detour signs. * Nocth Vancouver City: Cotton Road Bridge: Lane closures of the Cotton Road Bridge will be necessary to facilitate concrete deck repairs. At least one of the five lanes of traf- fic will be closed for the entire construction period. Four lanes of traffic will be open from 7 to 9 a.m. and from 4 to 6 p.m. Mon- day to Friday. A minimum of two lanes will be open at all times. Expect minor delays. ¢ West Vancouver District: No scheduled road closures or detours. ¢ Ministry of Highways: Squamish Highway: Expect 20 minute delays 16 kilometres north of Horseshoe Bay between 9 a.m. and 12 p.m. and | to 4 p.m. Monday to Friday until further notice. Paul St. Pierre : PAULITICS & PERSPECTIVES ‘*Mr. Barrowman,”’ she said. **When you turn off the electric light plant at midnight, we are left without any kind of light in our room. No oil lamp. Not even a candle, I’m sure that the Hotel Act says you have to supply emergency lighting so we can get out in case of a fire.’’ Sam looked at her straight in the eye and said ‘‘Madam, do you have any conception of how far you are from the next hotel?” It was 75 miles to the next hotel in Williams Lake, a bit over two hours driving when the road was in good shape, which it never was. Many evenings the beer parior operated at about twice its legal capacity, 28 people instead of 12, but of afternoons it was usually empty. Customers who arrived served themselves. There was no draft beer, it was all in bottles for which Sammy charged 35 cents instead of the legal price as it then was of 25. You fished a bottle out of the cooler, which was a tin weshtub of melted ice water. Almost always the label had washed off so you couldn’! tell what brand you were getting. You drank out of the bottle and left your 35 cents on the counter to be collected later by Sammy or his wife Irene both of whom, you could be sure, had better things to do than hang around their hotel waiting for customers. There came a time when B.C. Liquor Commission declared that it was no longer good enough to claim that the Chilcotin Hotel had one of the first beer parlor licences issued in B.C. and therefore deserved the respect due to age. There would have to be separate washrooms for men and women, equipped with running water and real toilets. Ever ingenious, Sammy got two toilets from Eaton’s mail-order house together with extra sets of shipping labels. The toilets sat, month in and month out, on the front veranda, still cased in pack- ing slats. Every now and then Sammy put freshly dated shipping labels on them. When liquor board inspectors visited he was always able to say that yes, he was going to comply, the toilets had just arrived, as could be seen by the date on the shipping tags. Eventually the same inspector visited twice and the job was actually done instead of drcamed about. Once they were installed, Sam- my became inczdinately proud of them and instead of calling himself the Only Legal Bootlegger in Chilcotin he boasted that his hotel had the only flush toiiets be- tween Williams Lake and Yokohama. He sold out eventually and spent his old age happily playing blackjack in Reno and the horses at Exhibition Park. Alexis Creek was never the same again. | WANT YOUR REAL ESTATE BUSINESS! YOU WANT TOP DOLLAR. 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