Chris and I rolled in to the town of Limerick Saskatchewan on the afternoon of June 14th. This would be the 13th stop on the ongoing Beer Parlour Project tour. Our hosts, Doug and Sandy, were extremely friendly and helpful and welcomed us with open arms. They insisted on providing us with our steak dinners, on the house, and refused to let us pay our tab. It has never been our intention to expect or even accept anything from the hotels we visit. On the contrary we would much prefer to pay our way and do our little part to help these small businesses survive. But Sandy and Doug insisted that they would not let us pay, so on this occasion we made an exception.
The hotel was once called the Delaney, and it was over a century old. The third floor was abandoned at some point and essentially closed off. There was once a brothel up there, and an old sign remains behind the bar. Doug took us up there, and even up onto the roof, to tour the space and it was like going back in time. We had to enter up an old servants stairway at the back of the building as the main stair from the front lobby had been closed off. However, the old railings still remained up on the third level.
We also got a tour of the basement, and all the old piping and boiler works that remained down there. Interestingly there was a concrete vault about ten feet square in the center of the basement. Originally there was no access to it from the basement. There was a trap door and ladder from the bar into the space at one time, and this was where the beer was kept chilled back in the days before refrigeration. The trap door was later eliminated, and access to the vault not possible. In later years a previous owner installed a small chute down into that space from the bar. For over 50 years they dropped all the beer bottle caps down that chute into the vault. Rumor is they also dropped a little change and some of their tip money. Doug and Sandy took over as new owners just a few years ago and one of the things that Doug did was jack hammer an opening into that concrete vault. The number of bottle caps in there is mind blowing and it must be several hundred thousand. There was a big pile of them in the basement, plus several large bags that had been filled, plus a lot still remaining in the vault. It was fascinating to see them, many of beer brands that no longer exist.
We met with Hilda and her husband, the previous owners of the bar. She allowed Chris to interview her and he got a lot of stories from the old days of the hotel's operation. There was also a gentleman present that once owned the grocery store in town, and he shared some stories as well.
Doug called in a bunch of his friends with hot rods and they parked them out on main street and allowed us to take some photographs. Mostly this duty fell and Chris and his digital camera as I just couldn't do much with a big view camera in this situation.
We had a wonderful evening and really enjoyed the company. We came away with a lot of images. I must have done about half a dozen set ups with the view camera, plus shot a bunch on 35mm film.
At the end of our evening, as we were driving back to our base, Chris and I both commented that it had been a really enjoyable, but really busy and draining evening. It would have been nice to have had Connie and Margarit with us to help out. They could have assisted in keeping the crowd engaged and helping us to remain organized. As it was we missed out on photographing some guests, while we were busy shooting other things. There were a couple old timers there that were really photogenic, but not interested in having a portrait taken. Perhaps the ladies could have persuaded them.
It was close to midnight before we got back to our apartment and we just off loaded our gear and crashed for the night...
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