© 2026, Christian Cassidy
King's Hotel in 2008
The King's Hotel on Higgins Avenue is up for sale for just shy of $1 million. It has been closed for over a year and looks worse for wear than in 2008 when I took the above photo.
I was only there once, when scouting out places for my Historic Hotels Walking Tour back in 2015 or so. A younger couple had taken over the bar, did some renovations and were reintroducing live entertainment. Unfortunately, most of my interior photos are lost on an old hard drive somewhere, except for this and this.
The hotel was too far off the beaten track to add to my tour, which may have been the issue that plagued the business in its earliest years as a hotel as well.
Here's a look back at the history of the King's Hotel before it is gone.
Place: Richelieu / Roman / King's Hotel
Address: 114 Higgins Avenue (Map)
Constructed: 1903
Architect: Unknown
Contractor: Henri Soucisse
The King’s Hotel at 144 Higgins Avenue was constructed in 1903 as the Richelieu Hotel for Joseph Napoleon "Nap" Levesque, who a year earlier was a blacksmith at 106 Higgins Avenue.
The first general manager was William C. Germain, who came from Brandon where he had managed the Langham Hotel.
Levesque's liquor permit hearing didn’t happen until April 1904, and it was granted in early May. Commissioners advised him to be sure to keep his hotel open to visitors to the city rather than fill it with longer-term boarders. (The city was in a housing crunch with many people living in hotels, which in turn caused a hotel crunch with not enough rooms for short-term visitors.)
The advice wasn’t taken as there are at least four boarders listed in the street directory during the hotel’s first year of operation: Frank Butler of Shamrock pool rooms; E. Gault, a carpenter at J Y Griffin and Co. pork and beef packing plant; W. Secord, a butcher at J Y Griffin and Co,; and Minnie Hull, hotel employee. By 1911, there were 20 people listed as boarders.
Newspapers reported in September 1906 that Levesque sold the hotel to the partnership of Morris Liss and Ralph Glube. Liss moved to the site with his wife and child, while Glube was the resident manager of the Dominion Hotel. A few months later, the partnership was dissolved and Liss took over the hotel himself until June 1911.
It was then transferred to Thomas Fell. He was born in Hamilton, Ontario where he was in the hotel business and came to Winnipeg in 1909 and worked at the Stock Exchange Hotel before taking over the Richelieu. His wife, Frances, and four children lived with him at the hotel.
Fell ran the hotel until 1917, then took over the King George Hotel for a year before moving to Emerson, Manitoba.
The new proprietor of the Richelieu Hotel was Edward Berger, who often flaunted the law.
In July 1917, which must have been just weeks after taking over, he was arrested for selling liquor at the bar and fined $200 (well over $5,000 in today's money). This was during Manitoba's prohibition era.
Berger was in the news again in October 1917, when he was remanded for a week for both selling liquor and “keeping an immoral resort”, which was a catch-all phrase that suggested he allowed prostitution, gambling or other illegal activities to take place.
Soon after, Berger lost his hotel license.
By the start of 1918, Edward W. Woods was the proprietor and couldn't escape the bad clientele the hotel had been attracting.
The Richelieu was raided on New Year’s Eve 1917 by the morals squad, and four people, including Woods, were charged under the Temperance Act.
Later in January, Woods lent an unemployed man named Johnson $5 on the promise that he would repay him once he got work. Over a month later, Woods bumped into Johnson, who had been avoiding him, grabbed him by the collar, and removed a tie pin from his shirt. He told Johnson that he would get it back when he repaid the $5.
A few days later, Johnson stole a revolver, "a massive, ugly looking weapon" according to the Free Press, and went to the hotel to demand his jewellery back. His weapon was pointed at Mrs. Woods when Mr. Woods and another customer walked into the room. They wrestled Johnson to the floor and the police soon arrived.
February 6, 1920, Winnipeg Tribune
The proprietorship changed again in 1919 to Eli Gates. (Perhaps Mrs. Woods didn't appreciate being threatened with a weapon.)
In February 1920, it was announced that Stanley Pong had bought the hotel, though his name never appears again in relation to the hotel. It could be that the deal was never finalised.
By 1921, Michael Syzek was the proprietor, and a few hotel patrons were mentioned that year in news stories being fined for minor alcohol and gambling offences.
April 11, 1928, Winnipeg Free Press
The hotel finally found the stable, longer-term ownership it had been missing in 1922 when Frederick T. Gates and family took it over. They also changed its name to the Roman Hotel.
Crime stories related to the hotel and its patrons dropped off immediately, and though the Gates still relied heavily on longer-term lodgers to fill the beds, they did advertise for tourists from time to time.
The Gates family, highlighted in yellow above in the 1931 Census of Canada, consisted of Frederick "Fred" and Annie Gates from Romania. She came to Canada in 1904, and he came in 1912. They married here and had two daughters, Olympia, born ca. 1923, and Elizabeth, born ca. 1925.
Looking at the entire role of residents listed at the hotel in the census, a majority of them were either Romanian or Austrian by 1931. In fact, the vast majority of residents on that block of Higgins Avenue, which includes the King's Hotel, several houses and an apartment block, are listed as Austrian.
The Gates must have been prominent in the local Romanian Community. When Queen Marie of Romania visited Winnipeg in November 1926, it was reported that 10,000 people came to the Legislative grounds to see her. At a ceremony on the Legislative steps, two young children, including Olympia Gates, presented her with flowers.
The family kept to themselves and ran a clean hotel. There was only one liquor infraction, a 1926 fine to Annie for having liquor in a place other than the bar.
By April 1934, the Gates had disappeared not only from the hotel but from the Winnipeg street directory. This is a sign that they likely moved to another town or province, perhaps to run another hotel.
June 10, 1940, Winnipeg Tribune
After nearly a decade of stability under the Gates, the hotel got a new name by the end of 1934: the King's Hotel.
According to the city's historic buildings report, at some point the hotel fell under the ownership of Drewry's Brewery, and this is likely that time.
Many hotels faltered under increasing debt load during the Depression, and often their biggest creditor was a brewery. This caused several owners to cheaply sell, or just hand over the keys, to a brewery.
Two of Winnipeg's largest breweries, Shea's and Drewry's, amassed several properties each and created hotel subsidiaries that renovated and sometimes rebranded the establishments, then hired managers or leased them out to others to run. Drewry's hotel division at one time included the Sutherland, Yale, Vendome, and King's.
In the late 1950s and through the 1960s, as the regional breweries were swallowed up by national brewers, they divested themselves of their hotel divisions.
The King's had a quick succession of managers, the term used next to their names in the street directory. They were: A. M. Kiedyk (1934), N. Steafiniv (1935), and John Russell (1936-1937).
(The above image appeared in the Winnipeg Tribune in 1940 to show some of the signage on the building. It was never called the Elgin, so that must have been part of an advertisement or related to the neighbouring building.)
By October 1939, there was a new proprietor named John Bednar. He notes even in classified ads that he was Czechoslovakian, and that would become a focal point for the hotel in the years ahead.
Winnipeg had a strong Slovakian community. In 1932, George Rodos co-founded the National Canadian Slovak League in Winnipeg. Several big events sponsored by the Slovak league were held at the hotel, including a dinner to commemorate the anniversary of the death of General Milan Stefanik in 1936 and 1937. Also in 1937, a concert and dinner was held to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Slovak League.
The dinners suggested a dining hall or conference room at the hotel, which is not something noted in earlier years.
The Bodnars ran the hotel until 1940, then disappeared from the street directories. This suggests they moved out of town.
Medard "Case" Mourant and his wife Anna were the proprietors starting in 1941.
Case was born in Lauve, Belgium and came to Canada in 1914 with his parents and settled in Rosewood, Manitoba. He became a trainer and breeder of horses. Anna was also active in the horse industry. Both were members of the Belgian Club and Horsemens Benevolent Protective Association.
The Mourants ran the hotel until 1949, when William and Martha Hay took over. Martha died in 1951, but Mr. Hay continued at the hotel until 1959.
George and Maria Sredzyk
George (Yurko) and Maria (Izyk) Seredycz were the new owners and proprietors in 1959. (Presumably, the hotel was sold off by Drewry's)
The couple were married in Ukraine in 1942 and came to Canada with their young son Boris in 1948. They first worked on a beet farm near Lethbridge before moving to Winnipeg in 1950, where they had a daughter, Irene.
The couple ran a grocery store on Sutherland Avenue that they sold to buy the King's Hotel in 1959. George ran he bar, Maria the restaurant, and together they ran the hotel.
Like most hotel and motor inn owners, the Sereddzyks took advantage of changes in liquor laws to create a "beverage room" and have live entertainment. One of the first ads for its live shows was a Talent Night on Tuesday nights in April 1966.
The bands on offer at the King's often had a Ukrainian flair, such as the D-Drifters 5 and Interlake Polka Kings.
The Sereddzyks were also business partners in the Lincoln Motor Inn and Seven Oaks Motel.
They sold up around 1968, when they moved to Regina and continued in the hotel business.
December 10, 1971, Winnipeg Free Press
The hotel used the phrase "under new management" in its ads through 1968.
It was purchased in 1971 by Peter and Rita Bartmanovich. The couple married in 1955 and previously ran a chicken and pig farm near Howden, Manitoba.
The live music continued in the beveridge room. Through the 1970 and early 1980s, the hotel fielded baseball and fastball teams in various commercial leagues.
In 1985, Marjorie Zelinki died. She had been the manager of the hotel restaurant for 14 years.
After the Bartmanoviches left in 1992, ownership becomes harder to pin down. By this time, most of these older hotels were owned by hotel companies that had several properties, and news about them and ownership changes didn't make the newspapers as they did decades earlier.
A liquor permit application for the hotel in 1992 shows a numbered company.
The next owner whose name can be found in newspapers is that of Michael Bruneau, who owned several hotels in Manitoba.
In 2008, he was interviewed about the possibility of a new football stadium being built in the Point Douglas area. He made news again in 2018 when he began a crowdfunding campaign to raise money to help send area residents to the Aurora Treatment Centre for meth addiction after two residents of the hotel died from the drug.
October 7, 2014, CBC Manitoba
During Bruneau's tenure, local musician Dustin Harder took over the management of the bar in June 2014 - 2015 with the hope to make it "a meeting place, bridging the condominiums on Waterfront Drive and the Point Douglas neighbourhood", according to this CBC News story. This Shaw video is a visit to the hotel in 2015.
The hotel's kitchen also became home base for Althea Guiboche, "The Bannock Lady", during Harder's management.
Michael Bruneau died in 2025, but had sold the hotel circa 2020.
The new ownership was the death knell for the already struggling hotel.
The Liquor, Gaming and Cannabis Authority of Manitoba cancelled the hotel's vendor license on March 15, 2021, "until it is confirmed by Manitoba Health that the Health Hazard Order is no longer in effect and by the inspection it is confirmed that the required rooms are in a rentable condition."
Its liquor license was cancelled on February 14, 2024, after the owner was one of six people charged with several drug-related offences and will not get it back until "pending charges have been resolved through the courts, and the LGCA reviews this resolution and makes a determination of its impact on the principal’s eligibility to hold a licence under the Act."
As late as March 2024, presumably until the charges led to arrests, the owner was advertising for a hotel manager.
After her arrest, the hotel was closed and is now up for sale.
PAST OWNERS, PROPRIETORS, AND MANAGERS
This list is pieced together from newspaper notices and street directories. The latter lists the "proprietor" of the hotel, but it is hard to tell if that means they owned the building or were leasing it from the owner, unless a sale is confirmed by a newspaper story. Street directories were not as accurate as a census, so the years and descriptions of roles might not be exact.
Richelieu Hotel
1903-1906: Joseph Napoleon Levesque (owner), William C. Germain (manager)
1906-1911: Morris Liss and Ralph Glube (Just Morris Liss by 1907)
1911-1917: Thomas Fell
1917-1917: Edward Berger
1918-1918: Edward W. Woods
1919-1920: Eli Gates
1920-1921: Stanley Pong
1921-1922: Michael Syzek
Roman Hotel
1922-1934: Fred and Anne Gates
King’s Hotel (likely owned by a division of Drewry's from 1934 to 1959)
1934-1935: A. M. Kiedyk (manager)
1935-1936: N. Steafiniv (manager)
1936-1937: John A Russell (manager)
1938-1940: John Bodnar
1941-1949: Medard "Case" and Anna Mourant
1949-1959 William and Martha Hay (Martha died 1951)
1959-1968: Mary and George Seredycz
1968-????: "New Management"
1971-1992: Peter and Rita Bartmanovich
1992-????: Numbered company
ca.2008-ca.2020: Michael Bruneau
ca.2020-present: Harpreet Mangat
Related:
114 Higgins Avenue City of Winnipeg History Building Report
King's Hotel My photo album on Flickr
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