1

Bentley Hotel -1955
1955
Bentley, Alberta


Credits:
Bentley Museum Society

2

Bentley Hotel & Bentley Agencies - 2005
2005
Bentley, Alberta


Credits:
Bentley Museum Society

3

Bentley Hotel - 2005
2005
Bentley, Alberta


Credits:
Bentley Museum Society

4

THE BENTLEY HOTEL
In the winter of 1939, the Morrisroe brothers Joseph and Lawrence decided to invest in a hotel. After telling an acquaintance, who had been a shoemaker from Bentley, that they were looking for a place to build a hotel, he suggested Bentley as a good place for a new hotel. The brothers went to Bentley and found that it met their expectations. The village was in a good farming area, and since they were farm boys from the Pine Hill School District, they wanted to settle in an area with good farm land because they were still interested in continuing farming.
A resident of Bentley, Bill Peterson, had had a vote in the summer of 1939 to see if the citizens of Bentley were in favour of a licensed hotel in the village. The vote approved having a hotel and Bill had been given six months to build one. Apparently Bill had changed his mind about building a hotel because when Joe and Lawrence arrived in Bentley, his option had expired.
The brothers then went to Edmonton to see if the Alberta Liquor Control Board would give them approval to build a hotel in Bentley. They were advised that a hotel man by the name of John Phelan from Barrhead, Alberta had made an application to convert the Brick building in Bentley into a hotel. However, the chairman of the Liquor Control Board said he would give John Phelan a 30-day option to commit to building a new hotel in Bentley, but if he did not respond in the option period the Morrisroe brothers would get the right to build. John Phelan did not agree to build a new hotel, so in about six weeks, Joe and Lawrence received a letter from the Liquor Control Board giving them the go ahead to build the hotel.
They then went back to Bentley and bought a lot to build on from Bob Woolgar, a businessman in Bentley. They paid $1000.00 for the lot. After purchasing the land, the brothers went and talked to all the main brewing companies in Alberta with the intentions of getting a brewery to help finance the hotel if the Morrisroe's would sell their beer. Not one brewery gave them encouragement that a hotel could be a success in Bentley. They all refused to help out in anyway.
On April 15, 1940, Joe Morrisroe came to Bentley with 4 horses, a Fresno and a scraper and started digging the basement of the hotel. The brothers had a long time friend from Red Deer, Mike Belich, who was the head carpenter in the construction of the hotel. They also hired Oscar Jacobson from Sylvan Lake as the finishing carpenter and the rest of the workers were local citizens. The Dickau boys, Roy and Don, helped wheelbarrow in the cement for the basement. Albert Wiancko did the plaster and stucco work. Hayhoe Plumbing from Red Deer did the plumbing and Larry Lewellan from Innisfail did the electrical work. Claude Summers, the manager of the Atlas Lumber Yard in Bentley, supplied the lumber.
Being short of money to complete the hotel and with the Second World War going on, Joe and Lawrence decided to invest $8000.00 on wheat options in the grain market hoping to make enough money to complete the hotel. Around the first of June 1940, when the Germans invaded France, the French government surrendered. The grain market fell enough in ten days for the brothers to lose the $8000.00 they had invested. They then decided they would have to shut construction of the hotel down.
However, the Good Lord saw they were in trouble and gave them some help. About one week later on a Sunday morning, a man by the name of Walter Bruce, Vice President of Calgary Brewing, was weekending at his cabin at Gull Lake. He drove up to Bentley to see how construction on the hotel was coming. When Walter met Joe at the hotel and Joe showed him around the building, Walter thought the hotel looked very good.
He said to Joe, "If you put Calgary Brewing Beer in the bar you might make out all right." Joe asked, "Why Calgary Brewing Beer?" Walter replied that Rimbey, Eckville, Lacombe, Sylvan Lake and Red Deer all had Calgary beer and the customers wouldn't like any other kind.
Joe answered, "Well, we're not going to be serving your beer, Walter, so we will be giving your beer the test." Walter wanted to know why they wouldn't be serving Calgary beer and Joe replied that Jim Cross, President of Calgary Brewing Company had turned them down for any financing. Walter asked Joe if the Lethbridge Brewery was going to supply the beer for the Bentley Hotel and Joe replied that in his agreement he was not allowed to tell, so Walter would have to wait and find out whose beer they were selling.
The next morning about 9 a.m., the telephone girl from next door came and told Joe he was wanted on the telephone. It was Jim Cross from Calgary Brewing who asked Joe if he had used any of his financing yet. Joe replied, "No, not yet."
Jim Cross said Walter Bruce had told him about the Morrisroes not using Calgary beer in the Bentley Hotel. Jim was now prepared to do some financing if the Morrisroes would sell Calgary Brewing beer in the hotel. While they were on the telephone, Joe made a deal with Cross for a $12,000.00 mortgage. That same day, Jim Cross telephoned all of the brothers' suppliers and said he would guarantee payment of any supplies and labour needed for the hotel and that they were to give Joe and Lawrence what they needed to complete the building.
All went well until the building was nearly finished. The $12,000.00 was gone and they needed furniture. Jim Cross called to find out how the construction on the hotel was going and when they would need some beer. Joe told him that they still needed furniture and that they had used all the mortgage money building the hotel. Joe said, "We have a crop of barley coming this fall and we plan to sell enough malt barley to buy the furniture."
Jim Cross once again came through and he said he would call the Summerville Company and tell them to give the brothers the furniture needed to open the hotel. They finished building and furnishing the hotel and didn't sign mortgage papers with Calgary Brewing until December 1, 1940.
Lawrence Morrisroe turned 21 years old on the 13th of July, 1940, and the hotel was opened on July 21, 1940. Lawrence served and drew beer at the opening just eight days after he could legally go into a beer parlor.
Later on in the fall of 1940, Joe and Lawrence harvested their barley crop and sent a sample off to the malting company. The barley came back rejected for malt because of early frost. On November 1st, Joe phoned Jim Cross that their barley had been rejected for malt and they wouldn't have the money right away to pay off the bill for the furniture. Jim Cross wanted to know where the barley was and he told Joe to fill a beer box with barley from each of their bins and send it by Greyhound Bus Lines to his office in Calgary and he would have another look at it. In ten days, Jim Cross phoned back that the barley had been approved for malt so they hauled it into the elevator and the malt barley paid for the furniture.
In 1941, Canada was at war and beer was rationed to each hotel by the amount that had been sold to that hotel the year before. Since the Bentley Hotel had only been open for 5 months the previous year, there wasn't enough beer for Joe and Lawrence to justify keeping the bar open all week so they reduced the days open to Thursday, Friday and Saturday from 11:00 a.m. to 10 p.m. This left them free on the other days of the week to begin farming in Bentley, in 1941.
In 1941, Joe married Evelyn Coutts from Eckville who was working at the Bentley Hospital as a cook. Lawrence married Grace Hawkings in July, 1946, a schoolteacher who grew up on her father's farm west of Bentley. Joe bought out Lawrence's half interst in the Bentley Hotel in April, 1946, and Lawrence and Grace bought the Leland Hotel in Ponoka in September, 1946. In 1950, Joe sold the Bentley Hotel to another party and bought the Rimbey Hotel.
In those days beer sold for 10 cents a glass and bottles sold for 25 cents each. Coffee sold for 10 cents a cup and it cost $2.00 a night for a room.
In 1951, Joe and Evelyn sold the Rimbey Hotel and returned to Bentley where they continued to farm. Evelyn died in 1959 and Joe died in 1978, still farming in what he called, the best farming area anywhere. Lawrence and Grace are still alive and living in Calgary.
My father, Joe, told me that the Bentley Hotel cost $20,000.00 to build, that they owed Calgary Brewing $12,000.00 on the mortgage and the loan was paid off 5 years after the hotel opened.
Joe and Evelyn's daughter Jean, husband James, and children, Thomas and Colleen Angus are still farming some of the best farmland anywhere at Bentley, Alberta.

Note: The following folks have owned the Bentley Hotel since Joe Morrisroe: H. Rawleigh, E. Pashyka, W. Dorn, E. Lenz, L. Benson, K. Rabasy, L. Gray, Mr. Atkinson, D. Prosse, W. Reimer, M. Soderstrom, B Thagaard, S. Morafkof, E. Anderson, and presently S. VandenBroek.