Canada's first grand railway hotel, the
Windsor Hotel in
Montreal, opened in 1878. Although it was not owned by a railway company, it was built to serve railway visitors from nearby
Windsor Station. Given its location next to Montreal's main train station, the Windsor served for years as the permanent residence of executives of both the
Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) and
Grand Trunk Railway. The railways' development role in the construction and operation of large hotels was inaugurated with Canadian Pacific Railway's opening of the Hotel Vancouver on May 16, 1888. This was the first of three railway-owned hotels by that name in
Vancouver. Two weeks later, the Canadian Pacific Railway officially opened the
Banff Springs Hotel on June 1, 1888. The
president of the Canadian Pacific Railway,
William Cornelius Van Horne, had personally chosen the site in the
Rocky Mountains for the new hotel. He envisioned a string of grand hotels across Canada that would draw visitors from abroad to his railway. Van Horne famously remarked: "If we can't export the scenery, we'll import the tourists." The original Banff Springs Hotel, of wooden construction, was destroyed by fire in 1926 and replaced by the present structure. , the
Royal York is the largest railway hotel built in Canada. Canadian Pacific next built the
Château Frontenac in
Quebec City, which quickly came to be the symbol of the city. It was designed to rival any hotel in
Europe. Its elevated location overlooking the city also made it a readily identifiable landmark as viewed from passing trains as well as ships plying the waters of the
Saint Lawrence River en route to or from Montreal.
Place Viger followed in
Montreal, followed by
The Empress in
Victoria, British Columbia, and the
Château Lake Louise in
Alberta. The largest of the railway hotels is the
Royal York in
Toronto, which opened in 1929. The main competitor to Canadian Pacific, the Grand Trunk Railway, was not prepared to leave the field solely to its rival. It also determined to build a chain of luxury hotels across the country, which it did in the château style. The GTR built the
Château Laurier in Ottawa in 1912, with the
Fort Garry Hotel in
Winnipeg and the
Hotel Macdonald in
Edmonton following in 1913 and 1915 respectively. was the last railway hotel built in Canada. The GTR was amalgamated into the
Canadian National Railway (CNR) in 1920. During the decades that followed, the hotel divisions of CPR and CNR,
Canadian National Hotels and
Canadian Pacific Hotels, continued to expand their competing hotel chains across the country. The
Queen Elizabeth Hotel in
Montreal, built in 1958 over that city's
Central Station, was perhaps the last true railway hotel built in Canada. Both railways continued to open new establishments in subsequent years, although none had any connection to the railways, except through their ownership. In 1988, Canadian Pacific acquired Canadian National Hotels. For the first time, many of Canada's railway hotels were operated by the same company. In 2001, Canadian Pacific Hotels was renamed
Fairmont Hotels and Resorts, using the name of an American company it had purchased in 1999. Fairmont continues to operate most of Canada's landmark hotels (see
Canadian Pacific Hotels). ==Inventory==