Slave Lake’s Northwest Inn faces a tough choice, come Sept. 1. It must either ban minors, ban smoking or do expensive renovations. For now, the Inn’s owners have decided not to take the latter step. But dealing with the consequences of either of the other choices will be tough.
Becoming a non-smoking facility means losing customers that enjoy lighting up at the hotel’s coffee shop, dining room and lounge. Keeping the smokers means having to turn all the minors away at the door.
If the Inn’s architects had envisioned such an outcome, they likely wouldn’t have gone with the open concept of the hotel, in which lounge and dining areas share the same air space. Walling off and independently ventilating a smoking area would cost half a million dollars, Dias says. There’s no way the Inn is going to spend that money to comply with municipal laws when they could be superseded by provincial legislation.
“Look what happened in Edmonton,” he says.
Dias says some businesspeople there converted their restaurants to provide completely separate smoking and non-smoking dining areas – only to find that they’d wasted their money when the City of Edmonton ruled that all smoking in public places had to go.
“They got bulldozed,” he says.
Dias says he’ll meet with the Northwest Inn’s owners fairly soon to discuss which way to go. In the meantime he’s observing his clientele, comparing the numbers of families with children with the numbers of adult smokers.
One of those smoking customers, Lorne Larson, says he’ll continue to eat meals at the Northwest Inn whether it allows smoking or not.
“I’m not going to boycott them,” he says. “But I’ll tend to move more of my business-type coffee meetings to restaurants that do allow it. I respect people’s right to clean air, but I also defend my right to smoke.”
Further along Main St., manager and co-owner Asem Al-daboubi says Adam’s Addition restaurant will go non-smoking, but he’s not happy about it.
“I have no choice,” he says.
No choice that he likes, at any rate.
“They didn’t give me a choice. If I go smoking I lose families. If I go non-smoking I lose smokers.”
He’ll even lose some of his waitresses, who have told him they’ll leave if they can’t smoke, adding to his difficulties.
Like the Northwest Inn, Adam’s rejects the renovation option as too expensive.
“I can’t do it – a small business like (this). Who can afford it?”
Al-daboubi says he feels mistreated by the anti-smoking by-law.
“This is how they support small business,” he says.
The person responsible for enforcing the Slave Lake by-law doesn’t expect too much trouble. Community Const. Samantha Spiller says she’s not sure what, if anything, owners plan to do in the way of separate rooms with separate ventilation, but come September, “I’m expecting compliance,” she says. “I don’t think it should be a problem.”
The by-law bans smoking in all indoor public places accessible to children under the age of 18. It provides for smoking areas in restaurants only if they are enclosed, identified by signs and independently ventilated.
Some restaurants have pre-empted the by-law by banning smoking altogether in advance of its implementation. They include Leona’s Kitchen, A&W and McDonald’s.

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