CLOSING DOWN

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 5, 7 January 1928, Page 13

CLOSING DOWN

A FAMOUS HOTEL, RAILWAY REQUIRES SITE (From "The Post's" Representative.) VANCOUVEK, 14th December. St. Lawrence Hall, ahotel which lias a place all its own in the social and political history o£ Canada, is to be closed on New Year's Day, as the C.P.R. require the land on which it is built. King Edward VII., when. Prince of Wales, slept beneath its roof. Sir John A. Mac Donald planned there many of the steps that led to Confederation in 1867. "Jeff" Davis, of "Sour Apple Tree" fame, and later President of the United States, found sanctuary there before and after the Civil War. John Willis Booth, who murdered President Lincoln, wrote his namo on the register. Surratt, Ms companion, fled to Canada, and registered at The Hall under an assumed name. Charles Dickens assembled many of his living mind pictures of Canada while a guest there. The list of internationally known figures who found a temporary home within its walls is interminable. ArtHiiin Patti, Field-Marshal Wolseley, Lieutenant (afterwards General) Uullcr, ljiiralo Bill (Colonel Cody), and Sir George Etienno Cartier aro among the number. ■ The visit of the Prince of Wales, to open the bridge across the St. Lawrence in 1859, brought a distinguished company to the hotel, including Lord Lyons, General Bruce, Admiral Milne, and Lady Franklin, widow of the Arctic explorer. The Trent affair, which led to mobilisation in Canada, brought tho hotel into prominence as tho headquarters of the staff. The proprietor of tho hotel, from the 'fitics onward, Henry Hogan, had an international reputation for all tho things that go. to mako npi an hotel's patronage, i