28 October 2006
Rail Baron's Cozy "Dream" Home
Montreal Quebec - It's the sort of place that should have
a good Halloween ghost - a proper mansion with 10 fireplaces, vast wood-panelled rooms, and a nook with bayonets and
service medals on the walls.
But the odd thing about the former house of the first president of the Canadian Pacific Railway, ex-Scottish farmworker
George Stephen (later, Baron Mount Stephen), is that it still feels like a warm, friendly, ghostless home.
Of course, it's a very pricey home. For the past 80 years it's been a private club for the Montreal business elite. Visitors to the
Mount Stephen Club include Princess Margaret, John Diefenbaker, Pierre Trudeau, Brian Mulroney, Rene Levesque, Christopher Plummer,
and even Jennifer Love Hewitt.
Mere mortals are allowed into this piece of Canadian history for dinners on Saturday and brunches on Sunday, tour included.
A remarkable building hidden away in the most obvious place, downtown Montreal, this national historic site cost $600,000 to build in
1883 and has recently had a $1-million buff and polish by its new owners, The Tidan Hotel & Real Estate Group.
The feel is uniquely haute Canadian - Italian Renaissance Revival done in every manner of hard and exotic woods.
Not only are the walls panelled, the ornate ceilings, cornices and trims - and even many of the fireplaces - were carved by European
craftsmen from glowing walnut, oak, mahogany, rosewood, satin wood, and a few other trees now primarily known for their rarity.
Everything, from door handles and hinges to radiator grilles, is plated with 22-carat gold.
Rooms are thematic, covering friendly, domestic topics like birds or love, with co-ordinated stained glass windows,
fireplace tiles, skylight panels, and tapestries.
It is impressive, though somehow not ostentatious. And it says, very loudly, we have arrived.
Both George Stephen and Canada had come a long way. When Stephen, the son of a carpenter, was born in Scotland in 1829, what was to
become Canada was still about a third of the private fiefdom of the Hudson's Bay Company.
When Stephen arrived in Canada at the beginning of the 1850s, Canada had just 106 kilometres of railway track. By the end of the
decade, there were more than 3,000 kilometres of track.
In 1867, Canada started the process of Confederation, and by 1881, Stephen was the first president of the Canadian Pacific Railway.
The railway not only made Stephen rich, it knit together the various regions of Canada, making the country a reality.
When Stephen built, he built properly. Even his country houses have become pieces of Canadian history. Around 1870, he created a
private salmon fishing retreat in the Gaspe along the banks of the Matapedia and Causapscal Rivers.
It, too, became a private club for more than 60 years, but now the Matamajaw Historical Site is open to the public.
He gave another of his fishing retreats, also in the Gaspe and built in 1887, to his niece Elsie Reford, who turned it into one of the
most remarkable gardens in the New World. Still managed by the family, the award-winning Reford Gardens include more
than 80 hectares and 3,000 species on the St Lawrence River. Also a national historic site, Stephen's old fishing camp, Estevan Lodge,
is now a museum looking at the life of his niece and her love of salmon fishing and gardening.
Stephen and Canada prospered together, and Stephen showed his appreciation to the country that gave him the Victorian version of the
Canadian dream by helping to build the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal.
Stephen retired to England. In 1891, he became Canada's first peer, Baron Mount Stephen, named for the mountain in B.C.'s Yoho
National Park that was, not coincidentally, named for him in the first place. It's nice to own railways.
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