The Fort Garry Hotel was built between 1911 and 1913 by the
Grand Trunk Pacific Railway in order to service as a luxury accommodation for upper-class railway travellers. Constructed at a strategic location on
Broadway, just one block from GTPR's
Union Station, the hotel was one of many
hotels built by Canadian railway companies in the early 20th century to encourage tourists to travel their transcontinental routes. On December 7, 1971 at 1:30 am a fire broke out on the 7th floor causing damage to the top ten floors. Of the 95 guests were evacuated, only one man was hospitalized. The blaze took 50 firefighters two hours to get under control. The first three floors of the hotel remained open. In 1987, the hotel owed in taxes and was in "urgent need of renovations to bring it up to modern-day standards." During this time, the hotel was briefly owned by the City of Winnipeg, before being acquired in early 1988 by a company controlled by Quebec hotelier
Raymond Malenfant. The company purchased the hotel for $1 million with the promise of spending $12 million to renovate it. under managing partners Richard Bel and
Ida Albo, along with the Laberge Group out of Quebec City. A woman apparently died by suicide in the room many years ago after hearing of the death of her husband in a car accident. Overcome with grief, she hanged herself in the closet. There is no documentation to support this, no newspaper articles report a woman's death in the hotel. The tale changed over time, from being a man found dead to a woman dying by suicide.
CNR Radio The Fort Garry Hotel was the site of the Winnipeg studio of
CNR Radio, the precursor to
CBC Radio, between 1923 and 1932, using the original CKY transmitter on 665 kHz, moving to 780 kHz in 1925. CNR purchased time on stations they did not own, called "phantom" stations. == See also ==