One hundred years ago inside the brand new Barry Hotel, an orchestra played as patrons enjoyed a 50-cent full-course dinner. Outside the hotel, property speculation and population growth were testing a young Saskatoon then known as “The Wonder City.” Five years ago, items from inside the hotel once considered one of the finest in Western Canada were auctioned off after a Saskatoon veterinarian bought and decided to tear down the property that by its end had earned a reputation — fair or not — as a home for prostitutes, drug dealers and general thuggery. The southwest corner of 20th Street and Avenue B is now a parking lot that offers no hint of the Barry Hotel’s rich history, its patrons, employees or the surrounding neighbourhood. Longtime critics of one of Saskatchewan’s most infamous hotels say its demolition paved the way for the area’s revitalization. Others say whatever problems were concentrated at the corner have just moved down the street. ***** THE CORNER The Saskatoon Daily Star, 07/30/1913: “Costing approximately $200,000, three stories in height, equipped with the very latest in hotel fixtures through out, the new Barry hotel is the acme of hotel perfection in every respect, and the proprietor, R. J. Barry, has every reason to be justly proud of his new quarters.” Reg Barry, son of Robert J. Barry: “It was a long time ago, and I was a young kid. He started building the Barry the same day the Titanic sank. I think it was April 1912. He always said afterward that his own Titanic eventually went down.” Tom Maltman, veterinarian: “All I did was buy the hotel and tear it down.” Don Junor, real estate appraiser: “When the old [downtown] arena was still functioning, Stu Hart had wrestling events in Saskatoon once or twice a week. Half the wrestlers stayed at the Barry and the other half would stay at the Windsor. I remember guys like Sweet Daddy Siki walking in and out of the hotel. It was a sight to behold. You didn’t see an African-American with bleach-blond hair walking around Saskatoon that often. I watched it myself on TV. When I went downstairs to get ready for school, all of a sudden, large as life, these people were where I lived.” Saskatoon police Isp. Mitch Yuzdepski: “I started in the police service here in May of ’87. Really my first patrol area was Riversdale and Pleasant Hill. I always call it the ‘Legend of the Barry.’ Often, the legend is far worse than the reality of it. I grew up on the east side and even then people were like, ‘Wow, you’re working the west side,’ and really it wasn’t as bad as the legend. Having said that, there was some prostitution, some drug activity, the pimps were hanging around that area of the Barry and the Albany.” The StarPhoenix, 04/02/1993: “[Wayne] Strandquist was charged with manslaughter after he scuffled with a customer outside the Barry Hotel in the early-morning hours of Feb. 1, 1992. There was no dispute that during the altercation Strandquist, a bouncer, hit Floyd Laliberte, also known as ‘Hook’ because of the prosthesis on his right hand. After he was hit, Laliberte, 48, fell backwards and fractured his skull on the sidewalk. He died the next day from severe brain swelling.”

----- Photo gallery: Oral history cast of characters ----- Randy Pshebylo, Riversdale Business Improvement District: “You’re looking at everyone shunning not the just that corner but the neighbourhood of Riversdale.” Justin Pfefferle, University of Saskatchewan visiting fellow: “More specifically than remembering it as a rough place, I remember stories of it as a rough place. I heard about it as a place where you can get a knife between your ribs. Whatever social ills were happening at the Barry, has that just moved over somewhere else?” Coun. Pat Lorje, Ward 2: “It’s a good thing that it’s gone, and I have no regrets.” Dennis Hoehn, foreman, Silverado Demolition: “A lot of these old buildings have these ghost stories. The Barry had something like that. People said some weird things happened and they couldn’t be explained. I never saw anything except pigeons.” Jeff O’Brien, City of Saskatoon archivist: “I’ve never heard of there being a ghost at the Barry. You would think with that fire that there would be lots of ghosts.” Gail Dumont, retired bartender: “Scary Barry, they used to call it.” ***** BOOM, BUST, BURN The Saskatoon Daily Star, 10/28/1912: “Mr. Robert J. Barry, the proprietor, then saw that he had done all that possible to improve or extend [the 12-room Butler House], and he settled upon his laurels to wait the time when he could do justice to the demand and erect a building fully in keeping with the requirements of the city which was rapidly growing and becoming modernized in build, as in all else. Plans were prepared last fall for a fully modern hotel building, which is now under construction.” Reg Barry, son of Robert J. Barry: “He didn’t speak about the Barry a lot. Some of the neighbours around home [in Young, Sask.] would bring it up because they had gone to Saskatoon and stayed there. Some of them went there for their honeymoons. He was a quiet person. Polite and decisive.” Jeff O’Brien, City of Saskatoon archivist: “In 1912, the song of Saskatoon was saws and hammers. It was Saskatoon’s miracle year. It was the year we saw the population more than double to 28,000. There was a tent city around Saskatoon because workers had nowhere to live. Saskatoon was a happening place in 1912. It was very appropriate that the Barry Hotel, which they said at the time was one of the finest hotels in Western Canada, was built that year. But our boom did bust in 1913. It dropped like a paralyzed falcon.” The Saskatoon Daily Star, 7/30/1913: “It may be safely stated without much fear of contradiction that the handsome new Barry hotel, corner of 20th street and Avenue B, which today at one o’clock threw open its doors for inspection, is one of the most thoroughly modern hotels in this city ... a pool and billiard parlour, bowling alleys, Turkish baths, in charge of experienced attendants, shower and baths and tubs, a seven-chair barber shop with manicuring conveniences. The wine and beer cellars are large and are separated ... The woodwork in the interior is entirely solid oak, highly polished, with the exception of the bar, which is of solid mahogany, polished till it shines. The metal work is of German silver. The main kitchen which leads off from the dining room contains all aluminum kitchenware, modern bake ovens, automatic egg boilers, a feature not possessed by many hotels, three coffee boilers and all other utensils necessary.”

Barry: “He lost financial control of the Barry in 1915 because of a shortage of cash due to the imposition of the prohibition on liquor. The war came along in 1914 and the prohibition went in there because they figured it would help the war effort, but it didn’t help business ... The city was growing. It would have been OK if that liquor control business hadn’t come. All of his money was from lending. You had to have another source coming while you pay back what you owe. It was a long-term investment. It was his life.” O’Brien: “The hotel industry in Saskatchewan generally took a hit because of prohibition. When the bars were shut down, suddenly the cash wasn’t coming in. In the great battles between “The Wets” and “The Dries” during prohibition, the hotel owners in Saskatoon were the leaders of the “The Wets.” Al Anderson, business owner: “When I was younger [in the late 1930s], I used to come down there with my dad and what I found interesting was the number of stables that occupied land behind the Barry Hotel. These stables were busy places because there was a huge farm community that shopped in Saskatoon and the stables were all located in the Riversdale area. Farmers came in winter and summer with horses. I was fascinated by that as a youngster. There was a huge market. These things all played off one another in those days. There was a real active business community right around the Barry Hotel. There were three department stores within a block: Adilman’s, Lehrer’s, Friedman’s — all significant-sized department stores. And many restaurants.” O’Brien: “Saskatoon’s first two hotels were on the corner of 20th Street and First Avenue, by no coincidence right across from the first railway station. In Riversdale, you had the Barry, the Albany across the street, the King Edward Hotel, the Canada Hotel, and The Empress ... They would have been an important part of the economic activity on the street. For a lot of years, the Barry was a place where farmers stayed when they came to Saskatoon for business ... What’s now the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations had its founding meeting at The Barry Hotel.” Barry: “It was tough for him. He moved from the centre of the city to a farm. He didn’t talk about the hotel a lot. There was a discussion of the fire, and that upset him because he said he built it out of brick so it would last forever.” Acting fire chief Malcolm Wallace, official fire report, 12/08/1946: “I estimate that I arrived at the fire not later than 6 minutes from the sounding of the alarm. I was driven from my residence to the fire in the Chief’s car, and upon arrival I noted that the fire had already gained considerable headway. As I got out of the car I told the driver to notify the Fire Stations to call the off-shift immediately.” O’Brien: “At about 2:25 a.m. a fire broke out in the downstairs cafeteria. According to the café staff, somebody was filling the gasoline stove and the gas can ignited. The fire department got a call at 2:41 a.m. from the call box down the street, which was surprising given that the Barry had a telephone. A fire happens and suddenly people get panicky and all sorts of things can go wrong. There was a fire escape on one corner and the fire department started putting up ladders to get people out. The fire burned for about six hours.”

The Star-Phoenix, 12/09/1946: “IDENTIFIED DEAD William Munro, Mary Agnita Wall, Nels Peterson, and a Mr. Larson, all from Saskatoon. R. McNeil, believed to be from Hamilton, Ont. Charles Robert Lyons, Tisdale, Sask. Ronald Proctor, university student, Sovereign, Sask. Stanley Carrie, believed to be a resident of Yellowknife, N.W.T. Yee Lum, Alsask, Sask. Dong Wing, believed to be from Melfort, Sask.” Wallace, official fire report: “As a result of the fire 11 people are dead, and 17 injured, and the property damage is considerable. It is my opinion that your Fire Dept. did their utmost in life-saving and firefighting and as a matter of fact, serious panic was averted. I believe that once the ignited gasoline was scattered over the front entrance of this building nothing could avert a serious calamity ... Judging from the position of many of the dead bodies, that most of the victims had no time to leave their rooms, and others were overcome before they could find their way to the windows.” O’Brien: “It was a big-ass mess. It went under a substantial renovation. The fire made a mess of the hotel. They modernized it at the same time, which is nice, although at the same time we have modernized a great number of buildings in Saskatoon and they end up not being as attractive as they once were.” ***** RESURRECTION Barry lost his hotel to the banks in 1915, but his name stuck around. The Barry Hotel Company Ltd. bought the property in 1921. Seven years later, it sold to R.J. ‘Bob” Hinds and Barney Barnes for $150,000, when a one-night stay in a single-room cost as little as $1.50. Nat Rothstein, of the Winnipeg family that eventually owned The Roxy Theatre, bought the Barry in 1947, bringing Don Junor to Saskatoon one year later to manage his new Riversdale hotel. The neighbourhood proved attractive to postwar European immigrants and working-class citizens, says Junor’s son, also named Don Junor, who was six when the family moved into the Barry. Don Junor, real estate appraiser: “We had a suite on the third floor. I guess looking back now it was probably rather unique. I won’t say weird. That’s just the way it was. Dad took his position very seriously and was definitely hands-on, which is probably why we ended up living there.” Al Anderson, business owner: “I’ve been in the sporting goods business for the last 57 years and the location for our operation has always been in this area. And I lived, in my early years, in the Bedford Road area and 20th Street and everything on it was part of our world. It was an exciting world. It was an active area. Through those years, I came across the Barry Hotel starting with the forming of the Riversdale Kiwanis Club, which I guess is 51 years ago. We had our meetings in the hotel in a room behind the restaurant.” Junor: “It had quite a large beverage room. People called it a beer parlour. When we first moved, Saskatchewan liquor laws, being what they were, the first few years women weren’t allowed in beer parlours. Gradually that changed, and when it changed there was still segregation. I believe the men were in one section and the women in another section, and of course that changed as well. When I was a little older, 17 on to 22, I worked at the desk and helped Dad out a bit. In the early years, it seemed like the people who frequented the beer parlour were the blue-collar working men. It probably makes sense when you look at the geographic area. There was a body shop a couple of blocks away, there was a big steel plant two and a half blocks away.”

Saskatoon police Isp. Mitch Yuzdepski: “Back in the glory days, it was a very ethnic area. A lot of diversity. It was one of Saskatoon’s early neighbourhoods. Yes, it went through a bit of a change to become a little bit of a seedier area, and I think it’s going through a change again.” Gail Dumont, retired Barry Hotel bartender: “When the ladies were allowed to go into the bar, I think that was 1962 when they opened for mixed drinking, I was working in the Albany at the time and we used to go to the Barry for beers after work. Very nice bar to drink in. Everybody was always scared of the Barry and the Albany because they were on the west side. But we all enjoyed it. We lived here all our lives and got to know all the people.” Randy Pshebylo, Riversdale BID: “Growing up in the neighbourhood, it was always an interesting place to pedal your bike past or walk by. In high school it was always something that sort of caught your interest walking beside it, near it and around it — going to the Roxy Theatre at that time or European Meats. Having that magnificent presence — it was a big building for that corner and the cross traffic of the bar patrons from the Albany and to the Barry was always entertaining, to say the least.” Anderson: “The ’70s were the really golden years. If you were in business in the ’70s and not successful, you likely never will be. The growth was phenomenal. Everything slowed economically in the ’80s and early ’90s, until it started to go the other way. The residential component of Riversdale in my early years was an average area to live in. It lost that, for sure. The glue that held everything together, a mix of all people, many of those were attracted to the new areas and simply moved. The residents that filled in after that were not the same kind of mix for residential success.” O’Brien: “It’s easy to look at a situation and say, ‘This has happened and therefore it caused this other thing to happen.’ That’s the fallacy. You have to be careful making that logical leap. There isn’t really an easy answer. From 1946 to 1960 or so, the number of people in Saskatoon doubled and the number of cars tripled. That’s the age of suburban flight. All those neighbourhoods south of Eighth Street and heading east to Circle Drive, these are all ’50s and ’60s neighbourhoods. And then we have all the malls. Maybe what happened to the Barry and Riversdale is more a result of a change in the way we do business in cities, the way we move around.” Coun. Pat Lorje, Ward 2: “As long as I’ve lived in Saskatoon people have sort of been snooty about the west side. Certainly, Riversdale didn’t take off as a really trendy neighbourhood like Broadway did. The streets are very wide here. There are three major arterials going through the area — 22nd, 20th and 19th. Lots of traffic moves through here quickly. It’s a large distract, from Idylwyld Drive up to Avenue H.”

Junor: “As the city grew, you can imagine more hotels were built. Loyalties shifted. The city has always the east side and west side divide, unfortunately. As the east side prospered, the west side didn’t seem to enjoy the same thing and there was quite a division. As time went on it was widening and widening. I think we’re trying to narrow the gap.” Pshebylo: “A lot of it, if you looked back, had happened with the prostitutes typically being on the corner of Third Avenue and 20th Street and with the formation of the downtown business improvement district in 1986, a lot of that moved over across Idylwyld into Riversdale and it rooted here. Following high school — I graduated in 1981 — it was a on a very significant slide. The days of riding your bike and leaving it against a parking meter — not locking it, just leaving it and going in for fish and chips — had significantly changed.” ***** HUSTLE AND BLOW The Rothsteins sold the Barry in 1979, and Junor Sr. followed them out the door. In 1982, Henderson’s business directory began listing Ben and Shoshana Goldstein as owners of the Barry. Shoshana was listed as sole owner onward from 1994. Ben died in 2004. Shoshana declined several interview requests. Across the street, the equally problematic Albany Hotel turned into a now-celebrated halfway house. Health inspectors closed parts of the Barry and Shoshana decided to sell it and retire. City council mulled buying the Barry Hotel for $800,000 in 2007, but backed out based on an unfavourable environmental assessment. This gave a Saskatoon veterinarian an opportunity to add another piece to his growing portfolio of 20th Street West properties. The StarPhoenix, 03/13/1991: “Riversdale businesses are begging the Saskatchewan Liquor Board to cancel liquor licenses for the Albany and Barry hotels on 20th Street.” Jeff O’Brien, City of Saskatoon archivist: “Every building mirrors the context in which it exists. The context affects the building. The building is a touchstone and it will reflect the things going on around it. [Former manager] Don Junor, as an example, was one of the voices calling for the Barry and the Albany to be closed, and this wasn’t in 2008. This was a long time before that.” Don Junor, real estate appraiser: “It was a hotel that was obviously not a five-star hotel. As the demographics changed in the area, and ownership changed, it deteriorated, and that’s unfortunate. Dad told me after — he just shook his head at what was going on within the boundaries of the hotel ... I think it ate him up inside to see what was happening, but what can you do? He was probably hearing from other businesses in the area and would know first-hand.” Saskatoon police Isp. Mitch Yuzdepski: “In the late ’80s, maybe early ’90s, there was a lot of activity in and around the Barry and the Albany. The people who you were looking for were always to be found somewhere there. Either they were in the bar or if you sat outside long enough they would show up. In a lot of ways, it was easy to track people down ... There were a lot of people who drank there. It’s funny. We’re focusing on the Barry here, and I see the Barry and the Albany as twin hotels. Often if you would go into the Barry looking for someone that was a regular there, all you had to do was walk across the street and you might find the same person at the Albany.”

The StarPhoenix, 03/13/1991: “Last year, police charged more than 100 people with being drunk on Avenue B between 19th and 21st and ignored hundreds more. In the two hotels, they investigated almost 40 robberies, and a dozen assaults — half of them with weapons. They charged 30 prostitutes and nightly found people in the hotels in violation of bail or parole.” Yuzdepski: “If you walked into the Avenue B doors, there was a pool table off to the left and that was kind of where the street-level drug dealers or the pimps hung out. If you were looking for the hierarchy in the bar, that’s where they hung out. The people who just wanted to drink were off to the back side a little bit. There was a lot of hustling and bustling around the off-sale door in the lane, so quite often we would go in separate entrances to try and interrupt any activity that would be going on there.” Gail Dumont, retired Barry Hotel bartender: “They played pool and they had a shuffleboard until one day when this lady came in there and she thought the rocks on the shuffleboard were balls and started firing them around. Got her booted out, but after that the boss got rid of the shuffleboard. He took the dart board away, too.” Yuzdepski: “In some respects, I was a naive young cop who grew up on the east side, and you do have your eyes opened. Starting in the detention centre here was a great learning opportunity. You get to see another part of society that you don’t get to see growing up. You learn what alcoholism does to people, and about addictions and poverty and homelessness and some of the conditions people live in this city. It makes you appreciate how fortunate you were growing up. Everyone who goes into this job, you want to make a difference. You start as a wide-eyed individual wanting to make a difference, and for some people we do. If you treat people with respect, it pays off ten-fold down the road somewhere. A person might remember you from 10 or 15 years ago. ‘Mitch, I used to see you at the Barry all the time.’ It pays dividends.” Justin Pfefferle, University of Saskatchewan visiting fellow: “With the case of the pub, the bar is a prime place where people have an excuse to relate to one another. It’s a microcosm, on one hand. It is a place that tells you something about the community it serves. Taking that out to the idea of memories, the way we often read them is incoherent ... There is a way of thinking about the pub as a place where, fuelled by alcohol, inhibitions drop and certain truths can emerge. There’s this idea that drinking culture is socially bonding because there’s a kind of honesty you can get in social interactions fuelled by alcohol.” Dumont: “Another fella, he went to the Bank of Montreal on Second Avenue. He went into the bank and he robbed it, whatever he got out of there. Then he went into the Royal Bank. He demanded money there. Whatever he got from there, in his little satchel, it wasn’t much money and where does he go from robbing the two banks? The Barry Hotel. He comes in and he sits in the back — ‘Hi, Gail! Is Stretch around? I owe him some money. I just robbed a bank and I got money here to pay him.’ Stretch was a hooligan. I said, ‘Oh, really? No, he hasn’t been around.’ He’s sitting down and wants some glasses of beer. The waitress brings him some beer and he’s drinking and enjoying it. He never got to Stretch. The police come in and they looked right at him. We laughed and laughed. We still laugh about it.”

R. v. Willett, provincial court sentencing decision, 10/18/2005: “In the Dziadyck case (an unreported provincial court decision from Dec. 21, 1998) the accused pleaded guilty to two bank robberies which occurred August 4, 1998 at the Royal Bank in Saskatoon and the Bank of Montreal in Saskatoon ... He was then arrested the same day in the Barry Hotel consuming alcohol.” Dumont: “There were a lot of hookers and their men outside the bar hanging around, but we slowly got rid of them. They would come into the bar and they figured they could run the bar. We more or less streeted them out. But they were always in and out. The police were around. They used to come in the bar, and I knew a lot of the police. One day my boss came and said to me, ‘How come the police are hanging around here so much?’ I said, ‘I don’t know — it’s a public place and the police are walking through.’” Saskatoon Free Press, 02/07/1999: “When Shoshana Goldstein bought the Barry Hotel 16 years ago, she set out to change its image and restore it to the popular spot it once was. It took five years and a lot of hard work, a lot of cleaning and some renovating, bit she did it. She even made a list of those no longer allowed in the bar. ‘When I bought the Barry Hotel 16 yeas ago, I saw its potential. I knew that if I cleaned it up and managed it the proper way that it would be a good business,’ says Shoshana. ‘We have a lot of customers back. They feel safe and comfortable here now.’” The StarPhoenix, 03/17/2007: “Health officials have shut down the hotel portion of the Barry Hotel after discovering various violations ... Longtime Barry owner Shoshana Goldstein admitted there ‘are a few things we need to do,’ such as clean some mould off the walls, repaint and change the carpet ... The hotel is now for sale, and Goldstein says she just wants to retire.” Coun. Pat Lorje, Ward 2: “We pushed to buy it to ensure it would be demolished. I mean, obviously, the city had no use for a hotel, but because it was such a problematic property and consuming so much of the public resources — police, fire, ambulance — it was considered less expensive to buy it and deal with the building rather than have it fall into the hands of someone who would run a turnkey operation.” The StarPhoenix, 03/12/2008: “Dr. Tom Maltman, a Saskatoon veterinarian, made an offer to purchase the building at the corner of Avenue B and 20th Street. The sale price has not been disclosed but the offer, put forth at the beginning of March, has been accepted by owner Shoshana Goldstein. All that remains is the paper work.” Lorje: “(Tom and DeeDee Maltman) did what they considered to be, and what I considered to be, the responsible thing. The building at that point was beyond repair. Yes, it is a parking lot now, but the whole neighbourhood of Riversdale is much quieter.”

Tom Maltman, veterinarian: “I had bought the Adilman building and, you know, the hotel was always a big problem for the area. It was a one-stop shop: sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll. It just seemed like an unhealthy place. My vision was that this was never going away and I didn’t see anyone stepping up to the plate to do anything about it. So there was an opportunity. My realtor knew I was interested in the Barry so we knew what the window was. So I upped the offer and snuck it into Shoshanna Goldstein. It was a higher offer and I don’t know why she didn’t just accept it at first. But she didn’t. I found out where she was — she was at Burlingham Cuelenaere [a law firm] — and I went by on a Friday afternoon. She was in an office with her lawyer and I was in the little waiting area. Her lawyer was going back and forth between us with offers. We finally settled on a number, and I think some documents were signed right there.” Randy Pshebylo, businessman: “Along comes River Landing and the farmers’ market and we have people coming here. And that creates the notion that if something is going to happen here, I want to be near it. Then come property sales in and around it, all on speculation, and that’s why I’m adamant that Riversdale is a participatory sport. It’s not a spectator sport. If you think you’re going to buy property in Riversdale and just sit on it, nothing is going to happen. You need someone that is going to buy a property and move a business in. That’s what’s making the difference you see out there today.” Dennis Hoehn, foreman, Silverado Demolition: “We’re talking a couple of weeks of taking the hotel down. People, when you start taking down a building, they come to watch. The first few days when we were taking the sign off of the roof there were a lot of people out. There were people who came and sat in their cars and watched for hours. I don’t understand it. Maybe they drank there all the time.” Maltman: “Mainly it was cost prohibitive. It’s a concrete structure. Everything is buried in the concrete — all your plumbing, all your electrical is buried and it’s all old and out of date. It wouldn’t have worked financially. The structural columns were totally gone. It wasn’t salvageable at the end of the day. You could never have made it work, not for what your rents would be. You would’ve had to get 40 bucks a square foot. It’s $16 to $18 now if you have a decent space.” Pshebylo: “In the late ‘90s and early 2000s, every plan that we’ve ever had at the BID has always centered around the Barry. Every local area plan, business development strategy, survey, environmental review — everything hinged on the Barry Hotel. If the Barry is like this in its current state, what is going to happen around it? Nothing.”

Hoehn: “There were lots and lots of needles. Some of the old benches and seating in the building, when we started taking them out we’d find discarded hypodermic needles everywhere. It was maybe an indication of how bad that aspect of the hotel was. You had to be careful moving stuff and picking stuff up because you never knew what you were going to come across.” The StarPhoenix, 03/12/2008: “City coun. Pat Lorje, who was adamantly opposed to the Barry bar, is celebrating Maltman’s ownership … Larry Bozek, whose L & L Holdings was negotiating to buy the hotel earlier in the year, was considering changing the name to Lorje Place.” Lorje: “That meant I had to register my name so people couldn’t steal my name. It cost me a lot of money in terms of legal fees and getting it all arranged. But now I have my name and nobody else can steal it.” Junor: “It had such a bad reputation toward the end. You could change the name, you could change the philosophy. Then you would have no business because you weren’t going to get people to come to the Barry. You’d have the same old, same old.” Pshebylo: “No one business owner, no one property owner is worth the price of a neighbourhood. We learned that lesson the hard way. I believe the Barry Hotel was unjustly, as was Riversdale, branded and left as a castaway within a city that, ‘If it’s over there, it’s there and leave it alone.’ That attitude cannot be allowed to manifest to a point of tolerance. If that’s how we treat people, then I think we need to take a hard look at that too.” Maltman: "The parking lot generates income. There are property taxes to pay so you need to make some money. It allows me to sit on it and wait for the other side – I now own the majority of that first block on 20th from Idylwyld Drive– and I’ll get that developed and then take a look at the Barry. Everything takes time. I’m just waiting for an opportunity at the right time." ***** LAST RIGHTS Jeff O’Brien, City of Saskatoon archivist: “It’s a hotel of the boom years. It was a fine and important hotel, especially in that specific space. It was the queen of the Riversdale hotels. Unfortunately, I think when people think of the hotel now, they don’t think of it in those terms at all. Whatever legacy it might have had prior to, was overshadowed by what it became.” Al Anderson, businessman: “The history of 20th Street has all kinds of curves and turns, and I think it’s now moving into one of the better ones again. My recollection, because we were here in this location for the goods and the bads — maybe it’s better to say the ups and the downs because there were no bads, really, but we always talk about the good years — we were able to build a successful business, and we sit one block away from the Barry. Even in the down years, the area stayed strong and many businesses came through that.”