While some old hotels in small-town Saskatchewan still have a sink in the room and bathroom down the hall, they have come a long way from the days when a 鈥渢hunder mug鈥� was placed under the bed. Before indoor plumbing was installed, hotel rooms were equipped with chamber pots 鈥� wide-mouthed vessels used by the room鈥檚 occupants as a toilet during the middle of the night. The container was then covered with a lid or cloth and slid under the bed until the chambermaid retrieved it in the morning. People used to joke that these were baseball hotels 鈥� 鈥減itcher鈥� on the dresser, 鈥渃atcher鈥� under the bed.
Tony Thibaudeau explains how the sanitation system worked at the Macklin Hotel in Prairie Views from Eye Hill: 鈥淚n those days the hotels provided a large wash bowl and a jug of water in each room and a matching chamber pot under the bed, and on each floor there was a sanitary toilet. The chamber maid would change the beds, clean up the rooms, empty her scrub water and the contents of the refuse containers into a metal chute that was attached to the fire escape at the back of the hotel.鈥� The barrel at the bottom of the chute was then bailed out with a pail and the contents disposed of 鈥渋n a covered pool down the lane.鈥�
During the 1930s, the Avenue Hotel in Nipawin had 16 guest rooms, a dining room, kitchen, laundry room, electricity, a wood furnace 鈥� and no running water. Instead, there was a cistern pump in the kitchen. Every day, water was heated on the kitchen wood stove and carried upstairs. Guests were given a pitcher of hot water with their wake-up call (a loud knock on the door) which they then used to fill a porcelain wash bowl sitting on a wash stand. Guests were also supplied with soap, towels and a pitcher filled with cold water.聽
These primitive conditions continued well into the 1940s and into the 1950s at some small-town Saskatchewan hotels. 鈥淚t is not so many years ago,鈥� the Wilkie local history book states, 鈥渢hat you might catch the hotel housekeeper emptying 鈥榩ots鈥� over the fire escape on the second floor.鈥� In 1948, Mr. and Mrs. Sydney Roitman completely renovated the interior of the Wilkie Hotel. The most modern touches of all were newly installed bathrooms, hot and cold running water and a septic tank.聽
In his book, To Get the Lights; A Memoir about Rural Electrification in Saskatchewan (2006), Dave Anderson recalls that life on the road in the early 1950s without running water in hotel rooms was 鈥渁 hardship.鈥� 鈥淎t day鈥檚 end it was impossible to get refreshed with a washcloth in the wash basin with a quart of two of cold water from a pitcher in which often floated a dead fly, moth or wayward ant,鈥� he writes. 鈥淪o, the communal tub at the end of the hall, if there was one, shared with 20 or so other guests, was reluctantly used.鈥�
