After reading Ted Bishop's chapter within Edmonton on Location: River City Chronicles on the subject of the Hotel MacDonald, I found myself considering what my thoughts and feelings regarding the Hotel Mac were.
Bishop writes that during the late 1960's "[t]here was a general feeling in town that the Mac was stuffy, that it was only for special occasions like wedding receptions and graduations" (50). What I realized was that nearly fifty years later, I feel the same sentiments about the Hotel Mac.
One thing that I gathered from the chapter, perhaps mistakenly, was that it seemed as though once Jan Reimer took the reigns as mayor of Edmonton, there was an attempt to revive the overall image of the grand hotel. However, just to make sure I wasn't the only one who thought that this image revival had failed, I asked one of my roomates what her impressions of the Hotel Mac were. She responded by saying that she feels it is chateau-like and should be situated on a lake. "One of the only genuinely beautiful buildings in a downtown full of high-rises," she said, you always know that its there when you drive up to it because it's just so majestic."
So to me, the Hotel Mac, although a true city gem, remains a mystery because I have not yet been able to qualify an occasion of mine worthy enough of Hotel Mac status.
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I enjoyed this post. And I think "majestic" is the perfect word for it. I've been there on a few occasions and always find myself daydreaming about the elites strolling through there in the twenties or thirties. Looking at old pictures of downtown Edmonton, it's always a key landmark with almost everything around it changing (except the river) while it stays fixed. So, to "majestic" I'll add "an institution" for descriptions of the Hotel MacDonald.
ReplyDelete(I recommend the Sunday brunch there...always a great experience)