The history of Whitehorse hotels and motels, 1942-2018

Dateline: March 4, 2019.

The Vancouver Sun - October 10, 1978

    She has seen miners, river men, politicians and all the other colorful characters which make up the north country cross her threshold.

    Her history is as many-sided and as fantastic as the land itself.

    But time has caught up with the grand old lady and now the Whitehorse Inn, once the finest hotel in the north, is to be torn down to make way for a bank and parking lot.

    Laurent Cyr, 60, was born and raised in Whitehorse and well remembers the glory days of the inn.

    "It was a grand thing in those days (the 1930's through the 1950's)," recalled Cyr. "It was the first hotel with steam heating and indoor plumbing and the fireplace in the lobby was really something.

    Cyr talked about the colourful past the hotel enjoyed.

    "In the 1930's when old T.C. Richards had it there were no licensed cocktail lounges, you could go and register a room at the inn and fill it with men. They'd bring you booze up in a bucket with maybe a newspaper ot something covering the bottle.

    "And they had what they called the Snake Room where you could sit around and drink a little and soon the cards would come out and there were some pretty stiff games going on there.

    "They used to keep the booze in the safe and leave the money lying around. No one was interested in the money," Cyr said.

    He said the hotel was built in 1927 by two Japanese brothers, Ken and Mac Yoshida, to house shipyard workers, transients and miners.

    They decided to sell out about 1938 or 1939. They may have been persuaded by the fact that T.C. Richards won $20,000 from one of the brothers ina poker game.

    It was Richards who bought the inn and according to Cyr it was he who was the chief reason for the reputation the inn enjoyed.

    Don Sawatsky, a local journalist and history buff, backs this up.

    "He was quite a colourful individual as well as a successful entrepreneur," Sawatsky says. "If there was a big party going on, that's where T.C. would be."

    Sawatski tells of the time a large party at the inn got out of hand and the bouncer started to pitch people out. One guy came flying out and landed in the street at the feet of a tourist.

    "The tourist was shocked at the 'drunken bums' being thrown out and was told, 'that’s no drunken bum, that's T.C. Richards, the owner.'"

    But Sawatski says the three-storey, wood frame hotel was never the same after Richards died and new owners took over.

    "The later owners could never put the color back into it," he said.

    Richards' daughter, Evelyn (Babe) Brown, agrees. "It is an absolute disgrace now. I'm ashamed to admit our family had anything to do with it," she said.

    She says her father arrived in Whitehorse to stay for one night and ended up staying for the rest of his life."

    Brown, 54, said she was thankful she grew up in Whitehorse and was part of the hotel as a girl.

    "It was the inn of the north at one time," she said.

    "You had to get used to the characters. Those prospectors would come out of the hills and they had nothing but money and were looking for a good time. You had to be stern with them or they would run you right out of the place," she said.

    In recent years the inn had been going downhill quickly. A year ago a 64-year-old Indian was ejected from the inn and died as a result of hitting his head.

    The inn was picketed by local Indians and business suffered.

    Renovations to the lounge proved to be futile and business declined further.

    Finally, in July of this year, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce bought the inn to build a new bank and parking lot.

    It's a sad end to what was once the inn of the north.