A night at the Fairmont

The gift certificate for a one-night stay at Ottawa’s Fairmont Chateau Laurier had sat in a drawer for nearly a year, along with a couple of grocery gift cards and one to a shoe store. Some 10 months ago, I had been the highest bidder in a silent auction and walked away with the certificate, which was set to expire soon. Over the past two decades of living in Ottawa, I have been to the Fairmont perhaps a dozen times for meals, drinks or afternoon tea. But I had never stayed there. So, I booked a room for Sunday night and have been feeling like a tourist (or an impostor amongst the tourists), even though my own house is just 5 kilometres (3 miles) away from here.

Built in 1912 and expanded in the 1920s, the Chateau Laurier was a symbol of the Canadian nation-building effort, and more specifically the crucial role of the railway in that project. It was a railway hotel, facing Union Station — today the Senate of Canada Building. My room had a grand view of what was once a grand railway station.

Soon after checking in, I went swimming in the Chateau Laurier’s pool, completed in 1929. It reminded me very much of pools and thermal baths from a similar era in Budapest. The framed photographs lining the walls, depicting the Chateau Laurier “spa” of the 1930s, was an even more vivid reminder. The Chateau Laurier could have been a sanatorium anywhere in continental Europe. Our idea of relaxation, healing and spas has changed considerably since then.

While in the pool, I chatted with a very social couple in their early seventies. The wife told me she and her husband had decided to spend their holiday travelling across Canada and spending a night or two at Fairmont hotels at each location. It’s a great way, even a patriotic way, to see the country. It’s also a not insignificant financial sacrifice of sorts.

After dinner, I went for a long evening walk through Centretown. I had lived downtown, at the corner of MacLaren and O’Connor, for seven years while a doctoral student and before buying my place in the east-end 11 years ago. It wasn’t really a nostalgia tour but it did bring back memories, especially of places that are no longer there — like Elgin Video, the fantastic video rental shop that really belongs to a bygone era or Mags & Fags, which sold every variety of print newspaper and magazine or the old Mayflower pub. With the exception of a brief stretch of Elgin Street and around Wellington, the downtown was quiet on this Sunday night.

Back at the hotel, I started reading a new book and watched part of a CNN documentary on Mr. Biden’s decision not to continue with his presidential campaign. The documentary felt as though eyewitnesses were reflecting on an episode from distant history, rather than something from just a few weeks ago. And this morning I feel like I know just a little more about Ottawa and its heritage.