Montreal's Pre-eminent Hotel
In 1917, the owners of the Montreal Canadiens, the Quebec Bulldogs, the Ottawa Senators and Montreal Wanderers met in one of the Windsor Hotel's restaurants to form the National Hockey League. In 1919, the Dominion of Canada Football Association (today known as the Canadian Soccer Association) held its fifth General Meeting at the Windsor, the first after a four-year hiatus because of the Great War.
Executives of both the Canadian Pacific Railway and Grand Trunk Railway kept permanent residences in the hotel, making the Windsor home to men who controlled most of Canada's transportation infrastructure and much of its economy. In his later years, Stephen Leacock spent his winters living in the Windsor Hotel. Some of Leacock's writing, and much of his correspondence, was written on hotel stationery.
During the first ever royal tour of Canada by a reigning monarch, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth stayed at the Windsor Hotel, and their arrival on May 18, 1939 attracted throngs of well-wishers to the hotel. The crowds were so large that one man died of a heart attack, many others collapsed due to heat and exhaustion, and the police found 64 children that had been separated from their parents. At a state banquet in the hotel, Montreal's francophone mayor, Camillien Houde, famously remarked in his address to the monarchs: "I thank you from the bottom of my heart for coming. And my wife thanks you from her bottom, too."
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