canada's grand railway hotels...chateau-style.

Canada is celebrating its 150th birthday this summer, so I thought it would be interesting to look at one of the most important aspects of it becoming the developed, cross-country country that it is…the Canadian Pacific Railway. This artery of transport and tourism, now over 20,000 kms of track, finally unified the provinces when the last spike was hammered in on November 7, 1885...just 18 years after Confederation.

Anyone who has traveled through Canada has surely seen one or two (or more) of the stunning, chateau-like hotels that are sprinkled throughout the country. Not coincidentally, these hotels were placed in some of the most picturesque locations along the Canadian Pacific Railway line by the company itself.

Chateau Lake Louise, Lake Louise, Alberta

During the building of the longest railway ever constructed at the time, the company had acquired lots of land throughout the prairie and western provinces. In order to encourage settlement out west, CPR began to offer packages to Europeans. The company created enticing advertising campaigns offering passage on a CP-owned ship, travel on a CPR train and a plot of land starting at $2.50/acre. The only caveat: the land needed to be cultivated.

Photo: William J. Oliver

The idea of the Canadian Pacific Railway developing grand railway hotels came from the company’s then vice-president, William Van Horne, who said, „If we can’t export the scenery, we’ll import the tourists“. Van Horne set about hand-picking the site of the first such hotel, the impeccable Banff Springs Hotel, set at the edge of Bow Falls in Banff National Park.

Banff Springs Hotel, Banff, Alberta (Photo: Kim Payant)

Built in Scottish Baronial style to resemble a castle, the original architect, Bruce Price, was one of the afficiandos of building Chateau-style. This type of architectural design went on to become an actual Canadian 'thing' with turrets and towers joining the picturesque Canadian landscape from sea to sea.

Growing up in Calgary, Banff is like a second home to me. My father was born in the mountains of southern Germany and therefore spending time in the mountains of Alberta during winter and summer was a common experience for our family…and still is.

I have organised weddings at the Banff Springs Hotel, have taken countless number of tourists through its corridors, have romped about on the golf course and alongside the falls, and even honeymooned here. But it's not just meaningful in my personal history, it is an iconic part of Alberta, hosting famous faces, such as Winston Churchill, Queen Elizabeth, along with a whole host of Hollywood royalty, with no face more familiar than Marilyn Monroe.

The rooms within the hotel also have numerous stories to tell, if only they could speak. Mount Stephen Hall for example, a medieval dining hall and event space, is the most popular wedding location in Alberta. This gorgeous space is dedicated to the first president of the CPR, Lord Mount Stephen, whom Van Horne took the company over from in 1888.

Mt. Stephen Hall

Directly following the construction of the Banff Springs Hotel, the continued design of further Chateauesque railway hotels, this time on the other side of the country, included the impressive Chateau Frontenac in 1893, in Quebec City.

Arguably the most photographed hotel in the world, Chateau Frontenac, who also has William Van Horne’s fingerprint on it, was built to rival the most elegant European hotels. Located in the old part of Quebec City, its home is also in what most people would say, the most ‚European‘ part of Canada.

Chateau Frontenac, Quebec City, Quebec

The grand railway hotel to follow was the Empress Hotel in Victoria, British Columbia. Sitting on the edge of the Victoria harbour, the Pacific Ocean lying at its feet, the Empress Hotel is an impressive sight to behold and a very popular tourist attraction.

The Empress Hotel, Victoria, British Columbia

The Empress is not just beautiful on the outside, but remains decorated with turn-of-the-century charm and elegance...while serving possibly the grandest high tea in Canada.

My favourite of the Canadian Pacific Railway hotels has to be Chateau Lake Louise, completed in 1911, and today a UNESCO World Heritage Site. I love this hotel quite simply because of its location. The lake on its doorstep, the mountains looming above, this place is magical at all times of year.

Lake Louise at dusk

Not just Lake Louise, but the surrounding mountains lakes, like Peyto and Morraine, are already instagram stars in their own right. These are incredible sights to see, with turquoise colours so bright my boyfriend said that he’s sure they put something in the water – "like some sort of highly poisonous liquid". The colour is a result of the light refracting off of the rock flour; a minute fine dust the melting glacier erodes from the surrounding mountain. This creates the most incredible colours in a milky bright hue.

Travel Alberta pulled off a great April Fool’s joke in 2015 which had people around the world actually dumbfounded, stating that every 100 years the lake bottom gets a fresh coat of turquoise paint.

“Lake Louise is one of Canada’s most popular and photographed locations,” said Leslie Bruce, President and CEO of Banff Lake Louise Tourism. “Visitors ask us all the time: ‘How do you get the lake so blue? Is the water dyed?’ I can categorically say: no, we don’t dye the water. We paint the bottom of the lake with non-toxic, environmentally friendly paint.”

The mayor of Banff was even in on the gag. “Painting the bottom of Lake Louise is really important,” said Karen Sorensen who apparently volunteered at the centennial event. “My grandpa painted the lakebed 100 years ago and here I am now. We all have to do our part to make sure this province stays beautiful.”

Photo: Travel Alberta

Moving eastward from Banff, across Alberta and into Saskatchewan, the next Chateau-style hotel that the CPR built, was the Bessborough Hotel on the North Saskatchewan River in Saskatoon.  Officially opening in 1935, 'The Bess' (as locals call it) was designed by architect Francis Rattenbury to resemble a Bavarian castle. To this day, it remains the focal point throughout the gorgeous river valley.

The Bessborough Hotel, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

Joining all of the provinces with a railroad made it possible for the country to grow and unify, to develop out west, and to entice visitors to get to know Canada. Without the railway, the fastest route to get from Toronto to Vancouver had been a four-month sea voyage. 

Rail bridge across the North Saskatchewan River

The cross-country railroad was also a huge economic boost, allowing the fast movement of Canadian raw materials to get to either ocean port, and down south into the United States.

Photo: Ken Walker

Canada turns 150 years young in 2017, and thanks to its first Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, one of the visionaries of a unifying railroad, this beautiful country was built on the welcoming values of diversity, inclusion and acceptance. Not without its flaws of course, including the horrible stain of what settlers and government did to the First Nations communities already living on this land, I think that the good traits and its committment to reconciliation make Canada the best place to grow up in…and that I can say from first-hand experience.

Happy Bday my beloved country...thanks for being you.

the man who inspired me not to fear the world... but to go

Yesterday, I talked to my dad on the phone and asked him how spontaneous a decision it was for him and my mom to move to Vancouver from Cologne back in 1965. They had met and married just the year before, and the whole story just seems very spontaneous to me. I heard him pause down the telephone line, processing my unexpected question about the long-gone past. Yet again I had yanked him out of his busy present, which currently involved stepmum and him entertaining my six-year-old nephew the morning after a sleepover at their house.

'No, it wasn't a spontaneous decision. We had to quit our jobs and there was paperwork to fill out,' he finally said. Okay, so that would take what three or four months maybe (in Germany one has to give a minimum of three months notice to quit a job, at least nowadays)? Maybe my parents had thought about it for 6 months, I don't know. I couldn't really get into more detail about it because of said nephew-entertaining.

Pa struttin his stuff back in the day

The point I'm trying to make is that my father has, as far as I can tell, always been fearless when it comes to travelling and learning about the world. He has traveled to many countries and has moved across the Atlantic a total of six times (six!) and for all of these times which I've been present for, he tackled these new experiences with seemingly very little trepidation. Often traveling was a necessity for him, but it always felt like he eked out the positives of each new place and then came back overflowing with stories for us. Like teaching in Cuba, or setting up house in Germany so that his kiddies would feel welcome, or managing a pipeline project off the coast of Nigeria or in Sudan or Kenya, or just road-tripping through Spain and France.

Don't get me wrong, he's not light-hearted or foolish, and for sure he's no reckless adventurist. He is a methodical planner, a learner, and an obsessive list-maker, as anyone in his life knows. (For example, he just told me that he and stepmum are coming to Germany in the fall - I'm sure I'll be receiving the excel spreadsheet with the itinerary details in the next couple of weeks - love ya, dad!!).

Pa and I...just hanging out

I guess it's not surprising then that travelling came early for me...real early. A few years after moving to Vancouver, they moved back to Germany separately (I'll skip the gory details) and then pregnant with me, they moved back to Canada, this time settling for good in Calgary. That is where I was born (yay! being Canadian seriously rocks).

I've always said that growing up this way, having all of my extended family on another continent had its advantages and disadvantages. Yes, my brother and I grew up with a big view of the world, experiencing other cultures, traditions and languages and knowing that there's nothing scary about them. But, of course, that also meant that we didn't have grandmas and grandpas, or cousins or aunts and uncles to hang out with. We mostly only saw them when we went back to Germany.

Flying was old-hat for me by this time ;)

For some reason, from both of their families (they each have 3 siblings) my parents were the only ones who moved away from home. They embraced the adventure of a new country, even though the language and culture were pretty much completely foreign to them. My dad has hilarious stories of their adjustment period, like the time he saw a rootbeer stand and got so excited for a good dark ale, that when he downed the glass he almost spit the entire thing out in disgust. For those of you who don't know, rootbeer doesn't taste anything like Bavarian beer.

Things weren't always rosy. My father, just like many many people, often had to travel and move as a result of pretty difficult decisions he had to make. As kids we caught on, of course, but I never saw fear in him, and I never saw worry about being in a new place. Mostly being away from us was, I think, the hardest part.

My first trip away from home and loving it

But, he brought us gifts! Always the one to focus on the positives, let me tell you about some of the things I remember him bringing back for me from his travels abroad. From a market in Egypt, he bought me a pair of rust-coloured, very pointy leather shoes. They were huge, because finding shoes that fit was (and still is) the bane of my existence. Man, were they odd. While teaching in Cuba he picked up the most intricately beautiful drawings of old Havana for me. In Abu Dhabi, he bought me a very heavy dog-collar-like silver necklace, which I'm sure cost too much for the fact that I don't think I ever wore it. It's the thought that counts! And when he returned from a gruelling, extended trip managing an off-shore oil platform in Nigeria, he brought back his smiling, weary face and a very full beard. That wasn't exactly for me, but I remember it like it was yesterday.

My father is a great storyteller...long, very detailed stories that often go off on all sorts of not-random tangents. He always has a point, and he remembers experiences and conversations he's had with people he's met in airport bars or with taxi drivers or, in some cases bodyguards, from trips dating back to the late sixties. It's an incredible gift he has. I have inherited his list-making obsession but not at all his ability to recall conversations. These details make his travel stories come to life no matter how long ago he lived them.

My obsession with fountains started early

So, my brother and I grew up travelling back and forth to Germany, which sometimes included a hop, skip and a jump to countries like Switzerland and Italy. Eventually we started travelling on our own, and never once did we hear either of our parents say, 'oh but that's so dangerous', which unfortunately I hear so many parents say nowadays. The world is not, in my opinion, a different place now. You know, there were bad people back then too, doing all sorts of random bad things. I remember the Lockerbie plane bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in 1988 (a route almost everyone I know has flown since then). When I was seven a terrorist bombed the Munich Oktoberfest killing 13 innocent people (Munich is my father's hometown and we had been to the Oktoberfest the year before). A bomb exploded in a market square while my dad was working in Tunis, and he often needed to ride in an armoured car to and from his office in Nairobi. That is just the world we live in...have always lived in. It won't change much, because the world is made up of people and people are the same everywhere. That is what I have learned growing up internationally. All of the millions of groups of people in every corner of the world are inherently similar. There are good and bad folks: peace-loving and hateful, extreme and apathetic and empathetic, nice and not-so-nice. It doesn't matter if you're in Paris or Mexico City, Seoul or Saskatoon.

The difference nowadays, in my opinion, is just that we hear about the bad things on a 24-hour news cycle so that we cannot get away them. They stick in our heads. Every person, even much-too-young kids, have a smartphone and see every detail of every bad thing that's happening...constantly. I hear from friends in North America that 'Europe's getting to be really dangerous', while we in Europe are bombarded with each new week's mass gun murder in the U.S. The horrific events that happen are all true, but unfortunately bombings and killings and random acts of bad have always been happening. As Jo Cox's husband just pointed out on the one-year anniversary of her murder on the streets of London, there are these few absolutely devastating acts of evil that happen, but at the very same time there are hundreds and thousands of really good, loving and caring acts that occur. These events are just not run on a 24-hour news cycle, if even mentioned at all.

My father was actually much more interested and encouraging of our travels abroad than say, when I told him I was moving to Saskatchewan...the wide-open prairies east of Alberta. A few years later I decided to move to Germany, and now that excited him! Even though I would be a 9-hour flight away, instead of a mere 9-hour car ride, he was inspired and envious and full of joy about all of the wonderful things I would be experiencing and learning living in Europe. It is true, it has been a very rich few years, but the prairies also had a lot to offer...just sayin.

Memorably, my brother and I visited our father quite a few times, either together or individually. One trip I took was to Corpus Christi, Texas to spend a week with him as he managed a project there for a six months. It was hot and humid on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, but we would spend the evenings, after he got off work, exploring the great seafood restaurants and talking for hours.

Our views of the world were not always the same; of course our experiences have been very different.  With my father, you are more often than not listening and talking about the interesting state of the world, which ever corner of the world doesn't matter. He is an incredibly well-read person...always reading about 11 books at the same time; ranging from small-town crime novels set in the Alps, to  Freakonomics, to Margaret McMillan's The War That Ended Peace. He is always learning...and that is possibly the greatest gift that he's given to my brother and me. Our father always said there's money for books.

When I was working in refugee settlement about ten years ago, we clashed often. At the time, I was meeting many people from across war-torn parts of the world and trying to assist them in making Alberta their home. They had fled Southern Sudan or Afghanistan or Colombia or Iraq. At one point I was having many frustrating conversations with the Canadian Embassy in Nairobi trying to process applications for refugees from that region. My father had had many dealings with that same embassy over the years, while working as an expat there, and obviously his experienced had been very different to the hundreds of refugees flooding that office. He and I would get into heated discussions about white privilege pretty much anytime the subject of my work would come up. But, in the end he encouraged me to just go. I really should have taken the opportunity to visit Kenya, but I didn't. I'm sure I would've been able to prove my point to him better...and with pics!

Years before, when my brother was getting ready for his many-month trip to Ghana to visit a friend who was working there, the three of us sat together and I lamented the fact that I was not going anywhere interesting but had to stay and work. My dad said, 'Why not go?' I didn't have the time or money to go to Africa, but we ended up finding the 'half-way' point between Ghana and Calgary: France! My brother and I ended up spending to this day the best two weeks of travelling I've ever experienced. We created our own French language using all of the vocabulary we could think of and sounding absolutely atrocious, my brother regaled me with very interesting (but completely made-up) historical facts about wherever we happened to be walking, we narrated the opera we were watching from our standing seats of the top floor of the Nice Opera House, because we didn't understand a word of the Italian opera with French subtitles (needless to say, our interpretation was filled with humour and clever bits). We nutella crepe-ed every morning, washed down our standard meal of baguette and cheese with red wine on every park bench or sandy beach we could find, shared a bed in most hostel-y places cause we had no money, and my brother would randomly head off in search of vegetables to ward off scurvy. He's just the most relaxed and hilarious travel companion.

Standing on the train platform in Gare Nord, as we parted ways after two weeks training up and down France, we bawled our eyes out - he was heading off to Africa and I was returning home. That really was an all-round perfect travelling experience. And we had mostly followed all of our father's many tips of where to visit along the Cote d'Azure and Provence.

Pub night...whenever we're together!

One lasting tradition of our evolving family is that wherever two or more of us meet, it's pub time! We always have traveling stories to tell cause it's in our blood and I can't wait for the next time...now we just need to find pubs with a daycare attached.

Thanks for the travels Pa. Happy Father's Day.
Love from Germany,
Nina