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Published on June 25, 2024 • Last updated 9 hours ago • 4 minutes reading
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The Palliser Hotel opened its doors in Calgary 110 years ago this month and has become one of the city’s most legendary buildings over the past century. Author, photojournalist and former Calgary Herald journalist David Bly wrote the following historical piece, looking back at Palliser Hotel. It was first published in the Herald on August 31, 2008.
By David Bly
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The Palliser Hotel was born in boom times as Calgary’s grand hotel. While other hotels of the era have been demolished or destroyed by time, the Palliser retains its status as the place in Calgary where the rich and famous lay their heads, and where Calgarians gather for events from the glittering to the mundane.
When there was land broken before the Palliser, Calgary was experiencing a real estate boom that had begun around 1903. Then the Canadian Pacific Railway broke On May 12, 1911, the boom was at its peak and social boosters predicted that their city would become the star of the West, if not the entire nation.
Then the boom broke out and the cheers of buoyancy became a cry of despair. In the summer of 1913 the prospects were bleak; things cleared up again when the Palliser officially opened on June 1, 1914, with 350 suites over eight floors and 300 employees.
Calgary was in the midst of a new wave of speculation. Two weeks earlier, the Calgary Petroleum Company’s Dingman No. 1 well had begun production of “wet‘gas in Turner Valley and everyone was trying to get a piece of the action. Much of that hustle and bustle took place at the Palliser that summer.
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That boom was short-lived; The Cold War winds in September put a damper on the economy.
In 1919, the grayness of the war years was banished when Edward, Prince of Wales, visited. From his suite in the Palliser, he described his parties and experiences in letters to his friend Freda Dudley Ward, wife of British politician William Dudley Ward, who himself would later come to Calgary and live in the Palliser in the 1930s and 1940s .
Visitors to the Palliser in the 1920s included Neville Chamberlain, who as Prime Minister of Great Britain would later try to appease Hitler, and Winston Churchill, who replaced Chamberlain as Prime Minister and became Hitler’s nemesis. (In 2003, Lady Mary Soames, Churchill’s daughter, sat in one of the Palliser’s conference rooms and reminisced about her famous father.) In 1929, three floors and a penthouse were added to the hotel, making it the tallest building in became Calgary. time. Millions have been spent in recent years upgrade and restoring the grand old lady.
Celebrities, royalty and national and world leaders continued to make the Palliser their temporary home when they came to Calgary. Queen Elizabeth was a guest at the Palliser several times.
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A number of prominent Calgarians made the hotel their home, including RB Bennett, Member of Parliament for Calgary West and Prime Minister from 1930 to 1935, who lived in a suite at the Palliser. Sometimes people sat in the foyer waiting for an opportunity to talk to him; he would usually oblige.
Not all celebrity guests were welcome. When American concert singer Paul Robeson came to Calgary in 1946, he performed to an enthusiastic packed house at the Grand Theatre, but his reception at the Palliser was less enthusiastic. Of Awesome difficultyhe was able to book accommodations and most reports indicate that he was the first black person allowed into the hotel as a guest.
If “this famous person slept herePlaques were installed at the hotel, the Palliser did not need wallpaper. The number of entertainers alone would number in the hundreds. She Involving Roy Rogers, Cary Grant, Sophia Loren, Jay Silverheels (who played Tonto), Superman (Christopher Reeve) and the Three Stooges.
After the merger of CP Hotels and a San Francisco-based company in 1999, this Calgary landmark was renamed Fairmont Palliser, something at least one of its guests thought offensive.
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“It should be the Palliser, not the Fairmont Palliser,said Pierre Berton, the writer who popularized Canadian history, during a visit in 2001, a few years before his death. “Railroad hotels in the country are landmarks: the Chateau Frontenac, Lake Louise, Banff Springs. . . . Names are important; they should not be changed on a whim.But Berton didn’t mind giving the Palliser a nickname.
“We called it the Paralyzer because we came here to party and have drinks,Berton said, recalling his war years as an infantry instructor at Currie Barracks in Calgary.
The Palliser is much more than a chic hostel for visiting celebrities. As soon as it opened, it began to serve as the main place for business and social gatherings, weddings, teas, receptions and dances. With the exception of its first few organizational meetings, the Calgary Rotary Club has met continuously at the Palliser since its inception in 1914. The hotel’s Crystal Ballroom has been the setting for thousands of events for almost a century.
The Fairmont Palliser is one of the three most important historic buildings in Calgary, along with the Lougheed House and the Lougheed Building in downtown. The significance of the hotel partly arises from its architecture, but mainly from the comings and goings that took place within its walls. And the grand old lady shows every sign of continuing to play an important role in the life of the city.
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