FAMOUS CANADIAN HOTEL

Evening Star, Issue 19779, 1 February 1928, Page 10

FAMOUS CANADIAN HOTEL

CLOSE OF LONG CAREER HOUSE WITH A HISTORY. St. Lawrence Hall, a hotel which lias a place all its own in the social and political history of Canada, was dosed on New’ Year’s Day, as the Canadian Pacific Railway Company required the land on which it is built. King Edward YJL, when Prince of Wales, slept beneath the roof of this hotel. Sir John MacDonald planned there many of the steps that led to Confederation in ISG7. “Jeff” Davis, of ‘Sour Apple ’free’ 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 Ids name on the register. Surratt, his companion, fled to Canada, and registered at the Hall under an assumed name. Charles Dickens assembled many of his living mind pictures while a guest there. The list of internationally known figures who found a temporary home within its walls is interminable. Adelina Patti, Field-marshal Wolseley, Lieutenant (afterwards General) Build-, Buffalo Bill (Colonel Cody), Sir George Etienne Cartier are 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, Genera! Bruce, Admiral Milne, and Lady Franklin, widow’ of the Arctic explorer. The Trout affair, which led to mobilisation in Canada, brought the hotel into prominence as the headquarters of the staff. The proprietor of the hotel from the ’fifties onward, Henrv Hogan, had an international reputation for all the things that go to make up a hotel’s patronage.