The Origin
I have been asked on numerous occasions where the name Table100 came from. Well it’s an interesting story and if you’ve got a couple of minutes I’ll tell you. As most of you know I have spent most of my working life working for the Ministry of Forests throughout British Columbia. For a while I was posted in Stewart a small village next to Hyder Alaska. In 1991 I was offered an opportunity to move to Prince Rupert. Now they have a saying in the Forest Service, whenever you transfer you never go to a “Fort, Port, Lake or Prince”.
Now I was desperate to get out of Stewart so I jumped at the opportunity to move to a larger center even though it was a “Prince”. It was here that I met two lifelong friends Bill Jackson a.k.a.(Billy Two fish) and Al MacDonald a.k.a. (Mac). Now fine dining establishments and purveyors of the amber nectar are abundant in Prince Rupert however the Crest Hotel stood out. It was here that we three would meet on a regular basis to discuss the days happenings, fish quotas, or the benefits of a 64 mesh San Juan Special.
Of course like potato chips you can’t have just one beer so at the end of the evening we would pack up to go home and ask for our invoice. Now one bartender in particular was always challenged when it came to telling us how many beers we’d had that evening. It seems that on some nights I only have two and others might have 20. There was no rhyme nor reason as to how he came about those numbers. After awhile and after many arguments we decided there had to be a better way so we started asking for limes to be placed in our beers. Of course having consumed the beer we kept the lime and it was added to the next beer and so on and so on. At the end of the evening all we had to do was count the limes and this gave us an accurate count on the number of beers consumed. A foolproof method that was also quantifiable.
Around 1993, during an upgrade of the Crest Hotel, Steve Smith, the owner, also decided to change out the cash registers. A new system was put in that allowed for a touchscreen to track drinks. While the technician was installing them we asked him if it was possible to create ghost tables. He said yes but why and so we explained our dilemma. We had to create a nonexistent table that was greater than the number the Crest had on the floor. Now knowing that they would never ever reach 100, we chose that number. I became Table 100, Billy two fish became Table 105 and Mac became Table 110. We now had a brilliant solution to a simple problem that had plagued us for many years. Wherever we went in the lounge, all we had to do was tell them what our table number was and this became a simple and efficient tracking system. At the end of the evening we knew the count was correct. One other benefit to the system was that if you joined our table you would also get a temporary ghost table 100 number and like ours, your invoice would also be correct.
In 1995 I left Prince Rupert and moved on, however the memories stuck with me. I needed a way to remember the good times I had enjoyed. It was at this time that the dot com startup was sweeping the country and so with the encouragement of Greg Meredith and Bill Myers we secured the table 100 website name. My original goal was to sell it for $1 million however that never happened. Instead with the help of the Uber Web meister Bill Myers the table 100 website was created. Like the reason it was created the main theme centres around friends and the Amber Nectar. Nothing complicated but a simple story that is true in fact. As Paul Harvey is so fond of saying - “now you know the rest of the story”.
I hope you enjoy viewing the site and the history behind it. We try to keep it as current as possible during the season. New features, like the Mountain Web Cam- featuring the only current realtime live view from the cabin window that shows current weather and snow conditions has been included. Of course hill news updates are added on a regular basis. During the ski season you can usually find us in the lounge under the umbrella ( when they give it back to us ) enjoying the day. If we are there feel free to come and join us. If you have any suggestion or can offer feedback we welcome it.
Have a great Ski season. May all your wax be hard, da kine pow dry and your beer cold.
P2 – A member of the Table100