Chapter Four

The Castles of the Lines: The Railway Hotels

Canada’s early rail travellers needed places to stay overnight and sometimes longer periods. These were often itinerant salesmen. Descending from the hissing coaches, likely tired and hungry, they didn’t want to endure a long walk, luggage in hand, to their night’s accommodation, especially if they were carting wares to display. For this reason, hotels were invariably a vital adjunct to the railway station landscape. And the railways made sure there was space for one nearby.

But the railways, caught up in their own sense of grandeur, and also wanting to earn extra income from luring travellers to their better destinations, often built the hotels themselves — and the grander the better. Put the blame on William Cornelius Van Horne, the crusty president of the CPR. Realizing the stunning beauty of the Rocky Mountains, which rose suddenly from the stark prairies, and spurred by the surprising discovery of hot springs in those mountains, he built the Banff Springs Hotel. It was just one of several his company would create, usually in the stunning Château style, with steeply pitched rooflines and towers and turrets. Other rail lines followed suit, and these buildings stand as being among the grandest elements of the prairie railway landscapes.

The Hotel MacDonald, Edmonton

Built in 1915 by the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, the “Mac” was designed by the architectural firm of Ross and MacFarland as a Château-style hotel, typified by its steeply pitched copper roof. Situated on a high bluff overlooking the North Saskatchewan River, its terrace and garden were a popular feature. Its location at the opposite end of 100th Street from the station ensured the railway a dominant visual presence of Edmonton’s early commercial core. The firm also designed similar grand hotels for the GTR and GTP, including the Fort Garry in Winnipeg and the Château Laurier in Ottawa.

A later sixteen-storey addition so detracted from the ambience of the original seven-storey building that it was removed in 1983. Then, in 1988, the Canadian Pacific hotels bought and restored the old building, and today “the Mac” has regained much of its original elegance.

Ornamental plaster work decorates the high ceilings of both the lobby and Confederation Lounge, while eight historic provincial crests adorn the mezzanine. Meanwhile, the Wedgewood Room has retained its original plaster frescos.

Perhaps the most rewarding result of the restoration was when the false ceiling was removed from the Empire Ballroom to reveal an eight-metre high ceiling with a classical “Chase” scene painted on it. In earlier times, unescorted ladies and gents used separate rooms; the Ladies Drawing Room for the ladies and the Gentlemen’s Writing Room, now the Jasper Room, for the men. The latter was decorated with rich oak panelling and stained-glass windows.

Behind the building, a formal garden sits high above the wide valley of the North Saskatchewan River. The building, now part of the Delta chain, still retains a magnificent garden overlooking the North Saskatchewan River. It was designated in 1984 as a municipal heritage resource.[8]

The GTP’s Failed Chateau Qu’Appelle, Regina

For Regina, the GTP proposed a grand hotel at the corner of 16th (now College Avenue) and Albert Streets in downtown Regina. In 1910 the GTP had erected a station and roundhouse near a residential area and wanted to add a grand railway hotel in nearby parkland. Because the station had been built in a residential area, the city council came under fire for considering a hotel in one the city’s more popular parks, Wascana Park. But the GTP got the go-ahead anyway.

The garden of the Hotel MacDonald in Edmonton overlooks the North Saskatchewan River.

The plans would incorporate the style into the name by calling it the Chateau Qu’Appelle, named after the Qu’Appelle Valley. In 1913 construction began and soon the steel skeleton stood seven storeys in the air. But the war intervened and construction halted. By the time the war ended and peace was declared, the GTP (and the CNo as well) were out of money. Both rail lines were absorbed into the newly created Canadian National Railway, which showed an interest in completing the building, but the federal government did not share that interest, and the hotel remained unfinished. Had the Chateau Qu’Appelle been successful, then Saskatchewan’s “Queen City” would have had its grand hotel in true Scottish baronial style.

Later, in 1927, when the CPR decided to locate a grand hotel in the provincial capital, they acquired the unused girders from the Chateau Qu’Appelle and used them to construct the Hotel Saskatchewan.

The CPR’s Hotel Saskatchewan, Regina

Located in downtown Regina, this railway hotel moved away from the grand Château style so favoured by the CPR and GTP in their earlier years, and it exudes a simpler, more classic flavour.

Following the failure of the Chateau Qu’Appelle, the city council lobbied the CPR to come up with a “grand hotel” for their city. Using some of the girders from the Qu’Appelle, and tyndall stone for the facade, the hotel was ready to open in 1927. It represented a more contemporary style of building.

Inside, however, the building is as elegant as any of its Châteauesque cousins, with an elaborate lobby and a Royal Suite, home to any visiting royalty. The Brighton Boardroom and the Regency Ballroom, as well as the Monarch’s Lounge, all reflect the royal aspirations of this grand hotel. The Royal Suite is specifically designed with royal elegance in mind. The hotel today is part of the Radisson chain.

Winnipeg’s Fort Garry Hotel

As happened all across the prairies during railway’s heyday, the hotel and usually the station became the grandest structures in the city. While the CPR had built its own hotel, the Royal Alexander, adjacent to its Winnpeg station, and the Northern Pacific and Manitoba (NP&M, later the Canadian Northern) constructed a Château-style hotel atop its first station, the Grand Trunk Pacific undertook to construct the Fort Garry Hotel.

Designed by famous railway architectural firm of Ross and MacFarland, the thirteen-storey landmark opened in 1913. Using Indiana limestone, the design displays its Château elements primarily along the roofline, where the slope is steeply pitched, with multiple peaks and dormers. At the entrance, the stone stairs, brass railings, and copper canopy lead to a two-storey foyer, where the arches and pillars that surround the mezzanine display the national and provincial emblems. The floor is marble inlay and the stairs are marble as well, with iron and bronze balustrades. Piers and mouldings are trimmed in gold, while a bronze railing surrounds the mezzanine. The action, however, takes place on the seventh floor, where the oak-lined two-storey ceiling contains decorative lanterns. Arched openings with French doors lead to such grand rooms as the Concert Ballroom and the Crystal Ballroom, where the vaulted ceiling offers crystal chandeliers as well as oak columns and stained-glass transoms. And it sits within a block of the city’s grand Union Station.

The CPR’s Royal Alexandra Hotel and a long-forgotten hotel, the Hotel Manitoba, are but two of the lost railway hotels. The Hotel Manitoba was built by a rail line that has also been forgotten: the NP&M, which operated between the Forks and Emerson. The company built a seven-
storey Château-style hotel, which included its station and offices as well, at the corner of Water and Main Streets. Completed in 1890 with luxurious accommodations and Château-style towers, it lasted only nine years, burning in 1899. Soon afterward, the CNo assumed control of the NP&M railway.

The Royal Alexandra Hotel was designed by the CPR’s chief architects Edward and William Maxwell and was opened in 1906. Considered an upscale facility, it operated until 1967 and was demolished four years later. The interior of its dining room can still be seen if one travels to the Canadian Museum of Rail Travel in Cranbrook, British Columbia. The fine oak carvings, including the oak fireplace, were among more than a hundred separate sections from the hotel’s grand café obtained by the museum after two decades of storage. They were reassembled by the museum in 2004, now in a new shell as the “Royal Alexandra Hall.”

Sadly, the same cannot be said for the massive murals that the CPR commissioned prominent artist Frederick Challener to prepare for the hotel dining room. These evocative paintings, which measured 3.5 by 3.5 metres, decorated the hotel’s vast dining room and depicted the life of both the aboriginal populations and the early settlers. Although the CPR donated the artwork to the province, removing and restoring them proved complicated and expensive. Ultimately, four were restored and briefly displayed at the Winnipeg Art Gallery in 1973. Sadly, only one remains on public view, in the Manitoba Archives, and the others were put in storage. The whereabouts of the unrestored murals is unknown. The seven-storey building stood at the corner of Higgins and Main, close to the surviving former CPR station.[9]

The CPR’s Palliser Hotel, Calgary

Unlike most of the CPR’s other grand railway hotels, the Palliser, although no less spectacular, was designed by architect Lawrence Gotch in what architects called the Edwardian Commercial style. When guests attended the grand opening in June 1914, they were treated to views of marble columns and floors, oak panelling, and hand-woven rugs. The Renaissance Revival Rotunda consists of Tennessee marble flooring and Italian marble columns.

A special celebration of the hotel’s distinctive railway heritage is the more recent Canadian Pacific Pavilion, reminiscent of CP station designs. Here, a twelve-metre-high ceiling with marble floors is connected to the Great Hall, a 150-metre extension that houses the classic coaches of the Royal Canadian Pacific train. When the luxury coaches are in town, diners can book one of the vintage CPR business cars for meals.

The Rimrock Restaurant contains an eleven-metre mural by artist Charles Bell. The restaurant’s historic fireplace was saved from removal to facilitate kitchen access, and it remains one of the hotel’s more historic features. Access to the Calgary CPR station was through the hotel until passenger service to Calgary was eliminated by the government of Brian Mulroney. Travellers on the CPR’s vintage Royal Canadian Pacific tour train can still board here, however.

The Bessborough Hotel, Saskatoon

This elegant Château-style classic stands high above the South Saskatchewan River, where, with its steep roof and frequent dormers, it has earned the nickname “the castle on the river.” The grand building is a surprising latecomer to the Château-hotel era in Canada, having opened only in 1935.

Known as the “castle on the river,” the CNR’s Château-style Bessborough Hotel in Saskatoon was not completed until the 1930s.

The railways, however, had arrived long before, with the CPR showing up in 1889 and the Canadian Northern in 1905. The CNo station, modelled after the one in Dauphin, with a high pyramid roof flanked by two wings, stood at the head of 21st Street. But the town lacked a comparable grand hotel. In 1927, when the CPR opened its Hotel Saskatchewan in Regina, local business interests lobbied the Canadian National Railway to provide a comparable structure. As a result, architect J.S. Archibald went to work outdoing his CPR rivals with his soaring castle-like design. Following Archibald’s death, John Schofield, the CN architect who designed several other stations during the thirties, took over.

Finally, in 1935, Saskatoon got a look at its new château. It was named after Canada’s then governor general, Sir Vere Ponsonby, 9th Earl of Bessborough. Interestingly, the vice regal suite sits not at the top, nor facing the river, but rather on the 3rd floor, facing down the main street toward the CN station. Subsequent “improvements,” as often happens, covered many of the hotels more decorative features. Restoration began in 1999 and lasted five years, unveiling original ceiling moulds and plaster reliefs, and the original terrazzo floor was restored.

Stretching from the street side of the hotel, 21st Street has been landscaped and its many heritage buildings preserved. And at the end of the street, there stands a replica of the CNo’s 1905 station, which had been demolished in 1952. The replica houses a new downtown mall. But more than that, its facade, dominating one end of the main street, and the hotel the other, helps to celebrate a heritage railway landscape found in few other communities.

The Strathcona, Edmonton

Not all the hotels built by railways on the prairies were grand châteaus. Some were simple, but no less historic. Such is the case with the Strathcona Hotel in Edmonton’s Old Strathcona heritage district.

In 1891 the CPR’s Calgary and Edmonton Railway reached the south bank of the North Saskatchewan River and went no farther, much to the dismay of Edmontonians. Here, it located its station, and, to accommodate its passengers, built a hotel across the street. The three-storey wooden structure, initially called the Edmonton House, was until 1904 the area’s largest hotel, accommodating newly arrived immigrants as well as hosting many community functions. It was enlarged in 1904 and again in 1907. Then, in 1913, when the CPR built the High Level Bridge over the river and added a new station in downtown Edmonton, the importance of the Strathcona dwindled. When prohibition was imposed in 1918, it became the Westminster’s Ladies College. But when prohibition ended just six years later, thirsty Strathconians began pounding at the doors, and it once more became a tavern and hotel — a role it plays today.

Here, in conjunction with the CPR’s grand Strathcona station and a heritage main street, the hotel helps to create one of the stronger railway heritage townscapes in the region. One of the last of the wooden hotels, it was designated a provincial heritage resource in 2001.

Moose Jaw’s River Street Hotel Row: A Heritage Lost

In August 2000, Moose Jaw’s city council announced a $470,000 upgrade to the city’s historic “hotel row,” River Street. Two blocks from the CPR station, the street grew into a strip of hotels, many of which harboured ladies of the evening and catered to the lustier instincts of single railway men and visiting salesmen. The new initiative would involve installing decorative sidewalks, street lamps, and an iron-arched gateway above each sidewalk. In addition, the historic buildings would receive a much-needed facelift.

In his public statement, the city mayor, Ray Boughen, boasted that the project would be “a great addition to our city as a tourist destination.” Among those historic properties was the Brunswick Hotel, a designated heritage property. By 2003 the sidewalks lamps and gateway were all in place. The revitalization, the mayor noted, would play a role in the 2005 centennial celebration of the province.

The historic row of three- and four-storey hostelries grew up with the development of the site as a major CPR divisional point and repair terminal. Train crews, travelling salesmen, and job-seekers crammed into few spaces available. When the boom times quieted down, and the rowdies of an earlier era had either married or moved on, River Street became a seedy row of dingy taverns and flop houses. Nonetheless, their role in the early history of Moose Jaw’s growth gave them a distinctive heritage prominence.

Unfortunately, within a few years of the announcement, a developer had made clear his plans to demolish not just the Brunswick but the entire historic street. Outraged citizens created a Facebook page to oppose the demolition.

In 2009 the city stripped the Brunswick Hotel of its heritage status and allowed the developer to proceed with the demolition. As the new mayor, Dale McBean, lamented, that while to see the hotel removed would be “sad,” it had seen “the ravages of time.”