My friend asked me last night what has inspired my love of the Chateau Laurier. I would have thought that I was born with an innate love of Fairmont hotels, but I would have been mistaken.My earliest memory of a Canadian Pacific (CP: now the modern Fairmont) castle-like hotel was a trip that my family took to Banff. It is a memory stitched together with just a few images. Some of my memories may not have been the same year or even in the right place, but there are two things I remember strongly: waking up at least one day in the campground and doubting my dad’s proclamation that we were in the mountains, until the fog finally lifted to reveal the rock face that had been completely obscured in the dark right beside our tent, and the outrageous and hilarious freedom of wearing garbage bags with our arms poked through because of rain, feeling none of the usual embarrassment in knowing that everyone we met was a stranger anyways.
I have a vague memory of stopping for a hot chocolate in the lobby of the Banff Springs Hotel, but maybe it was just a look in the lobby. I have a picture of the hotel that must have been taken from some height, and looking down into the valley, the hotel was the scale of Neuschwannstein, and resembled the castles that I later knew were as an adult in Europe, with the ruins of Heidelberg found in the fog being a strong memory with no photo. When I moved to Montreal, I am not sure I understood the breadth of the CP hotels that spanned the country. I think that Quebec city’s Chateau Frontenac (CF) may have been my only knowledge of a hotel with the turrets and dramatic rooftops outside of the Rockie Mountains, but I am even unsure of that timeline, and that I would have connected the two spanning such a distance as where I grew up to where I ended up.
What I do know was that I started a file folder with the bills and room cards for all my Fairmont Hotel stays over the years, and this is the timeline that I am more certain of, although given memory’s unreliability, there is still some artistic license likely to be present.
From my records;
My first Fairmont booking was for a conference in Toronto called the North York Emergency Medicine. It was 2007, and I did not go alone, leaving my then husband and my one year old daughter to their own devices while I spent long days learning. I remember that we took pictures in our bathrobes, and that my daughter was just starting to walk with confidence, using a toddler sized rolling walker and enjoying the enormous carpeted floors of the lobbies and hallways. The hotel was the Royal York, and I can’t remember if it was this visit, or another in 2009, but we took the train that actually brought us to the train station that still serves the hotel.
The following year, 2008, we booked a room at the Hotel Frontenac in the summer, and now we full blown chased after the little tyke who ran away if she could! No walker needed!
In 2009, I indulged in a night to celebrate my birthday, staying at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in hometown Montreal, with a view down on my favourite reminder of Rome (Vatican City, actually) that is Mary Queen of the World cathedral, and the incredible Sun Life Building that sits kitty-corner to it.
The Chateau Laurier was next, during a year that I was developing the intention of becoming a premier member. That year was 2011, and there was a midwinter promotion in concert with the Holtz Spa in the nearby Byward market. I went with two friends that I knew from a group of long time friends. At the time I don’t think we had spent any time together by ourselves, but that trip changed things. Both of these women have become very important to me, likely beginning with that stay. This also is likely to be the start of the idea for the book I am on day three writing. Certainly, CL is the closest Fairmont hotel to me unless I stay in Montreal, so has been the easiest to visit. It has never had the heart stopping increases in price that CF has had, and it is now officially the CP hotel that I have visited the most, thanks to my recent visit there with one of the two women that accompanied me there ten years ago.
The three characters may have developed on a different timeline, but it is interesting to see the parallel of three women from that visit. I know that two of my original characters were based on others, and not on my travel companions, but even down to the room we had with 3 separate beds and a view to Parliament Hill feels primordial to where my story has evolved from. I also wonder if all my reading of Nancy Drew (ND) and her two best friends could have played a part. I think I may have even added a boyfriend, like Ned, to balance out the estrogen. The Mystery at Chateau Laurier was the original title, which sounds like a ND mystery, and the name stuck until my first NaNoWriMo in 2019, when I started to fill in the characters, but the mystery plot never developed, or was very awkward.
I started going to the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) conferences beginning in 2011, and travelled to quite a few cities this way. I found the cost of the exchange rate, and the demand in the US cities almost unaffordable, so was not able to consistently stay at a Fairmont. I did enjoy my stay so much in Boston at the Copley Plaza that I returned with my family, this time with a time booked to walk their lobby dog named Caty (pronounced Katey). I remember a little room in San Francisco that was the peak of what I was willing to pay for a night, especially for a room that I was literally only using to sleep in. It was steep in price, but also in real estate, and I when the sting of the cost wore off, I was glad to have stayed truly in the heart of San Fran, even if it was just for a short time.
I started this blog in 2012 on a spinoff trip as a Rick Steves superfan with an incredible stay at the Fairmont Seattle. Eating alone turned out to heighten each meal that I ate, and certain foods still come up as fond memories. Spanish fig loaf found in a brick at the international section at the grocery store, and several failed attempts to make the breaded cheese croutons that topped a vegetable bisque soup come immediately to mind. The food was accompanied by the luxurious surroundings and a pianist! I can also recommend that fall is a great time for eating out!
Today I was reminded why I had the idea of a treasure hunt, when I found an envelope from October 26th, 2013 addressed to Princess Pirate, Room 373, and was dotted with pastel coloured and sparkly stickers in the shape of hearts and with happy horse faces . I don’t remember the ruse, but I wrote at the top, I believe addressed to the front desk staff:
BONJOUR. LAISSEZ MOI Á LA RÉCEPTION
The first clue must have been hidden in plain sight in the room, left to be found.
It read:
Good morning, Rebecca!
Today I have a treasure hunt for you!
The first clue is waiting for you at the lobby’s front desk, where I checked in. Just ask for a message for room 373.
Good luck,
Love,
Mom (smiley face emoji)
The second clue read:
Ask your daddy to help you find Albert Einstein’s photograph.
Below it is a desk.
Check the right drawer for your next clue.
P.S. This poodle is for decorating our shoelaces.
The third clue read:
Good job!
You found the next clue!
(Editor’s note: I am hearing Blue’s Clues in my head now. I think that might have been my inspiration. Unfortunately it may have also been my aspiration. This was not great work, which is why I have had so much trouble making it into an adventure worthy of a novel!)
This place I found when I visited the castle last winter.
I loved it and am so happy to use it’s hiding place today!
Don’t leave the room, but look for a lamp with a stack of books.
Don’t be afraid to be a detective.
Be curious - I promise it won’t break!
The fourth clue was the last clue, and it read:
Wow, that was the toughest spot to find.
Hope you are having fun!
Now it is time to return to your room.
Find the “safest” place and press the numbers of your birthday - month.
Don’t forget to put 0 (zero) in the tens spot + day.
(Editor’s note: I think this is confusing, and I don’t remember what the gift was!)
Hope this is a good gift for a princess!
Enjoy your castle!
I have long admired the construct of a murder mysterday, but before binge-watching was a thing, the closest thing we could come to was binging a series of books, which was hard to do given the constant wait required repetitively for the next book in the series to be released to you after putting it on hold. Even then, with authors like Agatha Christie who had long ago finished writing, it seemed like a far-fetched idea to have so many murders around one person, usually in a small space, or in a small town. These eventually transitioned to murder mystery shows, and the sequence of so many victims quickly became too terrible for me to bear. So I have still never read all of Agatha Christie’s books, and I don’t binge watch crime shows for fear of becoming so despondant as to be suicidal. I like the “twist” though, and when I started writing this book in 2019, I thought that I would take inspiration from the idea of a letter, but it turned out not to be a very interesting device for a plot twist.
I took inspiration at least for the protagonist Stephanie from a Tissot painting that I have loved for a long time that hangs in the National Gallery of Canada called The Letter. It is a medium sized painting set in a beautiful garden. A woman with an elegant black gown and hat from the late 19th century holds a letter in her gloved hands that she is actively shredding. The multiple pieces hang impossibly in the air behind her, as if caught by an updraft. She is surrounded by fallen horsetail chestnuts, so I always imagined the park to be in Paris. She stands on the grass, which is a big no-no in a park in France, and there is only one table behind, so although I had imagined that she was in a public place, maybe she is at her own private residence and the man behind is not a waiter but a footman maybe. I don’t know what is happening, but her face seems confident, making the expression closest to disgust. Maybe she has been stood up with a letter carrying the excuse? Whatever is happening, she is not devastated, but this is just the beginning of a story in my mind. She is my first truly original character. She is not based on anyone I know. She is her own persona, although I have to admit, she is also the character most like myself!
So there you have it. A story written over two Novembers, from 2019-2021, started a long time ago. The three women characters have been developing on paper and in my mind for along time, and they probably met the Chateau Laurier during a cold a grey fall in 2011. It was not a trip very far away, but that weekend changed my life. It brought me to dear friendship with two extraordinary women, had me fall in love with the architecture and history of the hotel, and started my writing inspiration for the story that continues to challenge me today!
