A LONG WAY FROM MANY PLACES
A Railway Hotel
“Vertical integration” was not a business plan catchphrase for Canada’s nineteenth century railway builders even though the hotels they owned and operated were pretty much annexes to their stations. So conveniently located; we’ll take you there.
These grand castles speckle Canada’s urban geography, colossally distinctive picture postcard landmarks. Most of them opened for business before or shortly after the First World War. Out west, the Empress overlooks Victoria’s inner harbour; there’s the eponymous Banff Springs; the Palliser in Calgary which hosted my grandfather and father for a Great Depression night before they boarded a train back to Montreal (Dad spent an early teenage summer working on a relative’s farm near Penhold, AB). Up here in Edmonton, Ann and I enjoy a drink from time to time with the Fathers of Confederation at the Hotel Macdonald bar; their portrait, a stiff and formal painstaking reproduction, takes up almost half of one wall.
Quebec City is archaic, the only walled city on the continent. Perched on a cliff, its skyline is dominated by the imposing Chateau Frontenac. I don’t see Parliament and the Clock Tower when I think of Ottawa. I see the grey Chateau Laurier looming over the Rideau Canal locks. The Laurier is home to the now infamous Karsh portrait of Churchill; the sort of place that just begs a caper or a heist. Railway hotels are monuments to nation-building, the stitching together of an impossibly big country with creosote and steel, or, conversely, hulking, ever-present reminders of the perceived failures of colonialism and capitalism. These stone establishments have hosted heads of state and royalty of both the rock and sovereign sort. No surprise then that some of them offer their guests ghost tours, peeks into their mustier attics, alcoves and crannies.
A hotel isn’t a destination. But one can cast a lure beyond a convenient location. When some weird retrovirus was just a rumour from Wuhan, two column inches on page five of our morning newspaper, Ann and I booked a stay in Toronto. We lined up baseball (Red Sox), theatre (Come From Away) and concert (John Hiatt with Lyle Lovett or vice versa) tickets. We booked the Royal York on Front Street across from the Beaux-Arts Union Station, itself a national historic site. All of our planned events would be within walking distance from our digs in a palatial railway hotel. That trip, like so many other plans I’ve made in my life, didn’t quite work out.
I’m intimate with a few Canadian cities and towns. And I’ve always felt comfortable in the less familiar ones. Local accents and slang can sometimes take some adjustment, a keener ear. Pace is a key variable; should I amble, mosey or stride to get in step? I know Toronto as a jigsaw, pieces. I used to enjoy the train ride from Montreal’s Gare Central to Union, anticipating hanging out with friends. Those activities were usually (un)focused. And there was a time when I could just turn up at Dorval Airport with a few hours’ pay in my pocket and board an hourly Rapidair flight to Toronto Island. On business trips later in my life I tried to get out and about as much as I was able, but time was always tight.
Comparisons are facile. Like internet listicles. Toronto is not Canada’s New York City. Toronto is what it is, best not to affix a label. There’s a frenetic dynamic on the reclaimed shore of Lake Ontario. Bay Street is undeniably the epicentre of Canadian commerce: lawyers, traders, CEOs. Skyscrapers and everything, all of which generates a fifth of Canada’s gross domestic product. Ridings throughout the Greater Toronto Area swing federal elections. Its eclectic arts and culture scene, amplified by the concentration of legacy and alternative media outlets in the city, have cast undue influence beyond the boundaries of the GTA while defying the casual perception of Toronto (and Ontario) as an uptight Protestant, Loyalist place.
Ann and I spent four nights at the Royal York in late September. We have friends there. Every Canadian knows somebody in Toronto. It’s a big town, but welcoming and walkable. And I needed a hit of Major League Baseball and there’s no fucking way we’re dipping south into the United States anytime soon.
The Royal York’s lobby was a perfect setting for my other life to frolic:
I’m seated in a comfortable wingback chair, its positioning subtly reoriented to better observe the reception desk and the comings and goings at the Library Bar. The Library is a flash joint, Bay Street’s bolt hole, cocktails available for twice the minimum wage; financiers and lawyers toast each other’s backs. The hotel’s main entrance, situated between them, is beneath my line of vision. It’s twelve wide steps down to Front Street from my perch. Twelve steps. They never quite worked for me, up or down. I’m wearing a fedora, the brim low enough to obscure my eyes. My suit is finely tailored, perhaps overtly shiny in places. The jacket’s bulky enough to hide the bulge of my snub-nose .38. I’m not quite down on my luck, but making a living is a boom or bust grind. My legs are crossed, knees not ankles. The straight razor in my scuffed blue suede shoe is close at hand. I appear to be reading a newspaper. I peer around it and over it as I turn a page. My cigarette burns down in the heavy brass ashtray stand. It marks the minutes as precisely as the lobby’s signature feature, the great circle of life ticking away. Time is a traveller’s essential commodity. We are all travellers. I’m staking out the joint, acting on an anonymous telephone tip. I was on a case, a fresh file with few leads and a tangle of disparate threads. Patiently on the trail of a phantom, doing the legwork. Killing time – and only time this time, I hoped, but you never know in this business. The morning’s baseball standings had blurred from simple statistics into chaos, Dixieland into Davis, when I clocked her. She rose like Venus from the sea on the arm of a uniformed doorman. A woman like her? I’d paint every perfectly proportioned inch and handmake reproductions. She just might be worth dying for. She shot a glance in the Library’s direction. The bar hadn’t reopened for happy hour yet. Well, well, well, it’s always about money when you get right down to it; greed for somebody else’s. And that cryptic phone call? The snitch had had more of a handle on the case than I did, but mine was getting awfully big. I snuffed my cigarette and folded my paper. Time for room servicing.
A pile like the Royal York warrants half an hour’s exploration, investigation. I grew fond of the Reign bar. The canned music was brutal, careening between post-war crooners and insipid modern pop, but there was a fine local pilsener on tap. I’m never alone in a hotel bar. I usually have a Hilroy exercise book to scribble in. The act of writing also deters random interaction with other drinkers. I needn’t have worried at the Reign: phones. No material for me, I can’t overhear a scroll or a text. Ann and I were in the Reign one night winding down our day. Ann ordered a starter, two sliders to share. The manager decided its delivery was nine or twelve minutes too tardy. He charged us for the food but waived our beverages. We know where the margins are in hospitality; his gracious illogic mystified and pleased us. Perhaps we were written off as spillage.
On one occasion I left the Reign for a cigarette in the company of pariah smokers booked on luxury motorcoach tours and the lost and crazy souls on Front Street. The Royal York’s main entrance features two heavy revolving doors. Manual, large brass PUSH plates, quarter wedges, two in, two out, counterclockwise. A fellow exited into the foyer just as I arrived. I was to the left of the door. I hesitated. I assumed the person behind him would close the window on my slot and, anyway, I’d obstruct their exit. The door stopped turning. The circle was broken. The person behind him was a young Asian woman, face in her phone, working it with both thumbs. She was somewhat stunned to encounter an immobile sheet of thick plate glass. She, like, totally dropped her arms, just, like, totally WTF!? I should’ve been gallant. I should’ve done my part, a push from my open segment to ease this poor woman on through. I didn’t. I guffawed instead, House of Windsor horse teeth. I circumvented my filter. I raised my voice: “C’mon! You can do it! It’s not so hard.” Fucking self-absorbed retard. Noses always appear overly bulbous in selfies anyway.
For the record, Ann and I did depart the Royal York for longer than it takes to smoke a single cigarette or double down on a second; for hours at a time. Honest.
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