Sadly, the Vic has been gone for more than 30 years, but the memories are still there. This is a wonderful article by Bob Burt, who was for a time a reporter at the Sault Star. The Vic really was a special place and I treasure the memories of the times I spent there, mostly with my dad, who was a regular there.
It just got posted to The Vic Facebook group. I'm taking the liberty of copying it here, with thanks to Bob Burt who perfectly captured the spirit of the Vic.
LAST CALL: A FAREWELL TO THE VIC AND GOOD TIMES
THE TORONTO STAR - SUNDAY EDITION
SEPTEMBER 3, 1989
BY BOB BURT
They sold beer at the Vic. There was no charge for the memories.
Now the Vic has been sold and the lights will flicker in a final Last Call on Sept. 29.
For everyone in or from Sault Ste Marie who has ever lifted a glass there and for everyone else who has lost a favourite "local", a place where everyone knew your name, I propose a toast, a tribute.
Sheer emotion. This flood's for you.
The Victoria Hotel. The House of Chow. The Vic. One of those places where what it meant was much more important than what it was.
It was a hotel. that's all; a two-storey, grey, kind of dilapidated.
Since 1920 it has leaned against a corner in the Sault's east end. It had a few rooms upstairs where people could stay. I think some did.
But mostly it was a beer parlour. That's what I remember; pickled eggs, no wine, no hard stuff. Beer only, bottles or Doran's on tap. Bottles were 40 cents, draught was a dime. One bottle or two draughts per customer allowed on the table. No carrying your beer to another table. A waiter had to do that. Separate entrances.
Men's side, brightly lit, tile floor, plain wood-panelled walls, wooden-backed chairs and orangey-red arborite-topped tables; no air conditioning, just long-stemmed floor fans that stood in the corners and pushed beer fumes, tobacco smoke and table talk around the room.
THE BROTHERS WERE SINCERE -- THEY KNEW YOUR NAME
Ladies and Escorts side; more intimate, more discreetly lit, red and jade green colour scheme; wallpaper, paintings, mirrors on the walls; the same wooden-backed chairs and arborite tables, but they seemed classier than the ones on the men's side.
The owners were the Chow brothers: John, Joe, King, Jimmy and Albert. They took it over when their father Charlie died in 1951. Dressed neatly, almost formally - with the exception of John - in short red jackets, white shirts, black tie, black pants, socks and shoes.
John wore suits, usually three-piece, in grey or beige. He was the corporate point man, the Chamber of Commerce and Kiwanis Club rep. While Joe, Jimmy and Albert waited the tables and King worked the taps, John worked the crowd, strolling among the regulars, sitting at their tables, inquiring after their families and jobs, buying the odd round.
Funny thing was, his interest was sincere. His brothers were the same.
After you went there two or three times they all knew your name and what you drank.
It always amazed first-timers that they never accepted tips.
And they took care of us. One night Joe handed me a wadded-up piece of corrugated white paper wrapper - the kind the picked eggs came in.
"You forgot this last time," he said. In the wrapper were $9 in bills and some silver - change from $10 I had left sitting on a table when I had walked out a week earlier.
They looked after us in other ways too. Sensibilities were different then and designated drivers were unheard of; most of us looked upon drinking and driving as standard operating procedure. But there were nights when one of the Chow brothers would take the car keys away from someone who had been too long at the table and hand them to a freshly-arrived friend, warning him to be the chauffeur. Or a Chow would simply take the keys, hide them and call a taxi. You could pick up your keys, sheepishly, the next day.
The Vic was a haven, a safe harbour. The kind of place everyone needs and the kind that when it disappears, it hurts like hell. That's what it meant. It was comfortable and familiar. You could go there anytime, without calling ahead, knowing that some of your friends would be there.
Local baseball, basketball and hockey teams gathered there after games; teachers unwound there on Friday afternoons; on any given night, salesmen, steelworkers, architects, off-duty cops, journalists, lawyers, labourers and local politicians gathered to talk, drink and watch whichever game was on TV.
Hundreds of romances began there, as many affairs, and I suppose, divorces. It was a starting point for ski weekends and beach parties; a stop-off after a movie; a launching pad for trips to Toronto, Detroit, Chicago or Green Bay; a departure point to forays across the river to the late-closing bars and sometimes, the red-light houses in the Michigan Sault.
Before bank cards and bank machines, you could cash a personal cheque there, or if the till was thin, King would pull out $20 or $50 out of his wallet and tell you to repay him the next time you came in. I don't think anybody ever stiffed him.
It was a place where brides and grooms dropped in between church and reception to hoist a glass to the Chows and the Vic for bringing them together. And it is said, perhaps apocryphally, that it was a place where brides occasionally stormed in to grab grooms who had stopped off on the way to church.
FAMILY DEMANDS ENDED TRADITIONAL CHRISTMAS EVE VISIT
On Christmas Eve afternoon, friends gathered and stayed until the 6 PM closing. For the regulars and familiar faces, the Chows had small presents - coffee mugs, keychains, plastic change purses that you squeezed open, all with the House of Chow logo.
Family demands and changing responsibilities ended that tradition for my generation. The last Christmas Eve I dropped in, several years ago, the place was packed but the Chows were the only people I knew.
The brothers grew older too. Albert, 82, is in a wheelchair after a stroke in the early '70s - John is 75, King 70, Jimmy 67 and Joe 64. Their children had different interests and went into different professions. It was jarring after a several-year absence to go in and see new waiters - and waitresses - who were young, Caucasian and who accepted tips.
When I first started going there - about two years before I legally should have - it was 1960 - and only the brothers worked there.
They closed at 6:30 and re-opened at 8 every night. That was the law. The theory was that you would go home for supper. But serious drinkers would go to a Johnny-come-lately cocktail lounge that didn't have to close because along with a drink, they'd serve a meal - usually a very tired cheese sandwich that no one ever ate.
The Vic was a place of happy hours - real ones, not just marketing strategies - cold beer and warm memories.
A summer night when I picked my dad up after his shift at the steel plant, I suggested for the first time that we go for a beer. I had turned 21, the age of majority then, while I was away at university. Dad knew I drank the odd beer but thought that I confined it to rec rooms and fishing camps. When we entered the Vic, 4 of the 5 Chow brothers greeted me by name and the 5th, Jimmy, placed a bottle of "my" brand on the table as we sat down, then asked dad what he'd like.
He ordered a draught, then silently studied me until it arrived. He shook his head.
"Not only do they know your name, they know which brand you drink," he said, voice tight. Then he started to laugh. "I don't think I'll tell your mother about this part," he said.
We laughed, sipped and talked for about an hour. The conversation was no different from the hundred others we had had, but we had passed some kind of threshold. It was the first time I thought of the two of us - together - as men. I'd found a friend.
A night when an old friend, a reporter for the Sault Star, sat at my table and asked what I was up to. I told him I had dropped out of university and was working at the steel plant while I figured out my next move.
He remembered that I liked to write and said that a reporter had just left the paper.
If I wanted to go in for an interview, he said he'd put in a word for me. I was hesitant but he spent the next hour enthusiastically talking up journalism. I went for an interview. Three weeks later I was a reporter. I'd found a career.
A night months later, after an evening reporting job, when the same guy who led me into journalism, led me into the Vic. (Actually this happened more than once.)
We checked out the women's side - that was what you did back then - and saw one of his girlfriends with another young woman whom I knew casually. A few years earlier, she had worked after school at a drugstore in our neighbourhood and had sold me the perfume and candy I had lavished on a succession of high school sweethearts, as I tried, more or less vainly in those pre-pill days, to buy my way into their hearts and other body parts.
The other reporter and I joined the women and chatted until he and his girlfriend decided to go to a nightclub. The ex-drugstore clerk and I didn't feel like partying and since she lived a few blocks from my place, I offered her a ride home.
A few days later I asked her out. The Chow brothers jokingly kept after me to drop her. She drank only pop.
But I didn't. Because I discovered in endless conversations - many at the Vic - that she was intelligent, articulate, funny, outspoken and had a passionate commitment to fairness and justice. That she was good-looking and had a terrific body didn't hurt either.
When the penny finally dropped, I was on the East coast, so I had to call her to ask the question. Otherwise I probably would have proposed at the Vic too. I'd found a wife.
We celebrated our 19th anniversary last month.
AS YEARS PASSED THE VIC EXPANDED TO SUIT THE TIMES
Times change, The liquor laws have loosened.. The Vic didn't have to close for supper anymore and it could stay open as long as the cocktail lounges. The Chows started serving wine and mixed drinks. They added an extension to what had been the women's side. For a while they served a great Chinese luncheon.
For their older customers they built a second addition where you could drink and talk quietly without being overwhelmed by the music. But that room was plush and had soft chairs and once I think I saw someone buy a drink with a little umbrella in it. I guess the Chow brothers were the only constant. And that was enough.
It was almost 20 years since I'd lived in the Sault, almost 30 years since I'd first sat at a table in the Vic.
I walked in and before I could order, Joe snapped open a bottle and brought it over, partially hiding it beside his body. Recalling the brand I'd drunk when he first served me all those years before, he said: "Export, eh, Bob?" Then he whipped the bottle onto the table.
It was a Blue. The brand I'd drunk the last time I'd been there, a few years earlier.
He was grinning.
"I remember," he said.
So do I, Joe. So do I.
