Girl Meets Canada: A Tale of Two Reginas

Regina, Saskatchewan has always held a special place in my heart. It was home to a pretty surreal week when I was 19 and on my first road trip. I believe it was a Monday when I came to town. It was the evening, and it was a sunny one at that. I felt the desire to have a drink and maybe listen to some live music. So I stopped at the visitor info centre and asked for a venue recommendation. The young woman looked confused, and had to go consult with a few other employees. Eventually they came back to me and said, “Um, maybe at Club 97?”

In downtown Regina there is one block that is pedestrian traffic only. This block is mostly older buildings that look like they used to be apartments and are now store fronts. In the fall of 1998 one of the businesses was Club 97.

I climbed the narrow stairs up to the second story of this creepy old building, to find a dark and nearly deserted bar. Besides me, there was the bartender (and also owner, I later found out), and a young man at the bar. I joined them and we all started talking. The bartender was a Korean man named Rua, and I think the customer’s name was Sean. I told them about my travels, and Sean told us all about his wonderful fiancé and their wedding plans. At one point Rua asked if I’d be interested in making some money working for him for a few days. When I said sure, Sean invited me to stay with him and his fiancé, as they had a spare bed.

Nice people, these Regina folks!

Oh, 19-year-old Sarah, you have so much to learn!

I’ll spare you the boring details of Sean. Let’s just say that he had failed to mention that his wonderful fiancé was out of town and by “sleep in the spare room” he had meant “in bed with me” and “naked”. I respectfully declined and opted instead to sleep in my car.

Lesson learned: when guys invite you home from the bar, it’s usually for the sex.

Before I reported for work the next day I went to the barber. Remember how I said I’d buzzed my hair before I left? Well, it was still extremely short, but it was growing out a little scruffy so I thought I should tidy it up. The barber looked at me and said, You’re a girl, right? I agreed, and he refused to cut my hair. WTF? I mean, it’s not like I had these shimmering long tresses that I was asking him to chop off. I was already near bald. But I couldn’t convince him that it was okay, he wouldn’t hurt me.

Jeesh.

As Rua had asked me to work for him for a few days, I was expecting to be doing dishes or busing. You know, something that required no training. But when I showed up that day he handed me a copy of Bartending for Dummies and then walked out the front door.

The rest of the week is a blur. He did a fancy lunch during the week and had a different theme every night. One was a rave thing that was really popular with the kids, and one was an African dinner, that was only popular with the African cook’s family. I worked all day and night, then stumbled to my car around 3am and slept in it until the traffic woke me up. Rua was rarely around. He was always off to an important chore.

This dream job ended that weekend. On Saturday Rua handed me about $600 in cash and told me to drive around to three different liquor stores to buy alcohol for that weekend. Apparently you pay a higher tax for alcohol sold in bars. He figured if I spent $200 at each store I could pretend it was just for a house party. So I had the back of my car (where my bed was) full to the top with beer and hard liquor. I parked in the alley behind the bar and start lugging this stuff up the fire escape. In the rain. I used the key Rua had given me just in case he wasn’t there to help me.

He wasn’t there.

He’d set the alarm.

I had my arms full of 40-ounce vodka bottles when two cop cars came screeching down the alley. I can’t really blame them for yelling at me to put my arms up or they’d draw their weapons. I mean, from their point of view it probably looked like I was taking the alcohol out, not putting it away.

Fortunately I was able to prove my innocence through my $600 of receipts. The cops reset the alarm and told me to beat it.

Great. So now I had a car visibly full of liquor. Can anyone say target?

I parked it in a residential area and draped clothes over the boxes as best I could to hide them, then wandered back to the bar, still hopeful that Rua would appear so I could get that stuff out of my car. This all started around 4pm. At 8pm I bumped into a regular, who informed me that Rua was at the casino. That Rua was always at the casino. That Rua had a massive gambling problem.

Suddenly, the last week made total sense, and I felt like an idiot for not getting that earlier.

The next day I came back to the bar when I knew that Chandra, the one other employee, would be working. Rua was also there, but he hid in his office until I’d unloaded the alcohol all by myself. When he finally did come out he started yelling at me. I’d really let him down by not opening the bar the night before. Did I have any idea how much money I’d lost him? He’d trusted me! I was fired!

Oh no!

I told him about the cops and the alarm, but he still seemed to think it was my fault. So I took the money he owed me out of the till and we went our separate ways. And that was my Regina of 1998.

Day 34 (Sat, June 12th)

My Regina of 2010 is a much happier story. My friend Jocelynn (the one with the cute dog, Pika, that I dog-sat last January) had given me the name of a friend of hers in Regina. I once again had great intentions of calling June well before I arrived in town, and those intentions were once again ignored. But even so, June very kindly invited me into her lovely heritage home (the kind that has a separate room for the toilet, and doors that you need a key to unlock from the inside) and cared for me for three days.

I got to see a totally different side of Regina. One not consumed with drunken gamblers and stale beer. It’s actually a really beautiful city, with the largest urban park in all of North America. June showed me all the cool areas of town and the must-try coffee shops, and very kindly gave me her cuddly miniature schnauzer, Dani. I left him in her care, but I will come for him someday. BEWARE!

Thanks June!

While walking around downtown I tried to find Club 97. Not surprisingly, it doesn’t exist. I couldn’t even remember what building it had been in.