Canada's grand railway hotels

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Château Frontenac in Quebec City

Canada’s railway hotels are a series of grand hotels across the country, each a local and national landmark, and most of which are icons of Canadian history and architecture. Each hotel was originally built by the Canadian railway companies, or the railways acted as a catalyst for the hotel’s construction, and the hotels were intended to serve the passengers of the country's then expanding rail network.

1 Architecture
2 History
3 National icons
4 References
5 See also

[edit] Architecture

Many of the railway hotels were built in the “château style” (also termed the “neo-château” style), which as a result became known as a distinctly Canadian form of architecture. The use of towers and turrets, and other Scottish baronial and French château architectural elements, became a signature style of Canada’s majestic hotels, and was even borrowed by the designers of important public buildings (such as the Confederation and Justice buildings in Ottawa). In later years, the railway companies departed from the château style for some of their properties, notably with the construction of Winnipeg's Royal Alexandra in 1906, the Palliser Hotel in Calgary, built in 1914, and the elaborate second Hotel Vancouver , which was done in grand Italianate style quite unlike any of the other Canadian railway hotels.

[edit] History

Banff Springs Hotel in 1929

Canada's first grand railway hotel, the Windsor Hotel in Montreal, opened in 1878. Although it was not owned by a railway company, it was built to serve railway visitors from nearby Windsor Station. Given its location next to Montreal's main train station, the Windsor served for years as the permanent residence of executives of both the Canadian Pacific Railway and Grand Trunk Railway.

The direct involvement of the railways in the construction and operation of large hotels originated with the opening of the Banff Springs Hotel by the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1888. CPR president William Cornelius Van Horne had personally chosen the site in the Rocky Mountains for the new hotel, and he envisioned a string of grand hotels across Canada that would draw visitors from abroad to his railway. Van Horne famously remarked: “If we can’t export the scenery, we’ll import the tourists.” (Chisholm, 2001:12)

Canadian Pacific Hotels next built the Château Frontenac in Quebec City, which quickly came to be the symbol of the city and was designed to rival any hotel in Europe. Place Viger followed in Montreal, followed by The Empress in Victoria, British Columbia and the Château Lake Louise in Alberta. The CPR’s main competitor, the Grand Trunk Railway, was not prepared to leave the field solely to its rival, and it was similarly determined to build a chain of luxury hotels across the country, even borrowing the château style from the CPR. The GTR built the Château Laurier in Ottawa in 1912, with the Fort Garry Hotel in Winnipeg and the Hotel Macdonald in Edmonton following in 1913 and 1915 respectively.

The Château Laurier in Ottawa

The GTR was amalgamated into the Canadian National Railway in 1920. During the decades that followed, the CPR and the CNR continued to expand their competing hotel chains across the country. The Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, built in 1958 over that city’s Gare Centrale, was perhaps the last true railway hotel built in Canada, although both chains continued to open new establishments in subsequent years (albeit none of them had any connection to the railways, except through their ownership).

In 1988, Canadian Pacific acquired the CNR hotels, and for the first time, many of Canada’s railway hotels were operated by the same chain. In 1999, Canadian Pacific Hotels became Fairmont Hotels and Resorts, borrowing a name of a company it had recently acquired. Although Fairmont continues to operate many of Canada’s landmark hotels, some of the historic railway hotels are owned and managed by other hotel chains.

[edit] National icons

Despite their age, Canada’s railway hotels remain national icons. It is hard to imagine Victoria without the Empress, the Rockies without the Banff Springs or the Château Lake Louise, Toronto without the Royal York, Ottawa without the Château Laurier or Quebec City without the Château Frontenac. (Chisholm, 2001: 7)

[edit] References

Chisholm, Barbara, ed., Castles of the North: Canada’s Grand Hotels (Toronto: Lynx Images Inc., 2001) (ISBN 1-894073-14-2)
Knowles, Valerie, From Telegrapher to Titan: The Life of William C. Van Horne (Toronto: Dundurn Group, 2004) (ISBN 1-55002-488-4)