A group of young Innu hockey players and their parents were charged $150 per room, per night for rooms that cost $104 for other customers, at the Château Roberval Hotel, in Lac-St-Jean, Que.
The players from the Pre-Novice Pessamit team are five to seven years old. They had travelled from Quebec’s North Shore region to compete in the Mashteuiatsh minor league hockey tournament and were booked into 15 rooms.
The parents noticed the difference when they realized another group of hockey players was charged a cheaper rate when they checked into another hotel from the same owner, Mario Beaubien.
“It’s humiliating. It’s also insulting to see that in 2014 situations that we consider racism could still take place in our Quebec society,” said Yan Riverin, a father of a six-year-old in the tournament.
The next day, the hotel owner apologized and refunded the families more than $1,300. Luc Tremblay, a spokesman for Beaubien said it was “an honest mistake.” He explained that an employee was applying an old policy from before Beaubien acquired the hotel eight months ago.
“It seems that this method of billing already existed as an internal policy, and the new administrators did not ask themselves the reason for this charge,” the spokesman said.
Fortunately for the Pessamit team, they won the tournament.
With files from CBC.