Railway Hotels

It is still a prominent part of the skyline of Quebec City: the Chateau Frontenac. It wasn't always there and am reminded so by this brief aperçu of the view from Northrop Frye's preface to The Bush Garden: Essays on the Canadian Imagination:

As a student going to the University of Toronto, I would take the train to Montreal, sitting up overnight in the coach, and looking forward to the moment in the early morning when the train came into Levis, on the south side of the St. Lawrence, and the great fortress of Quebec loomed out of the bleak dawn mists. I knew much of the panorama was created by a modern railway hotel, but distance and fog lent enchantment even to that.

Romantic and ironic almost within the same breath.

And so for day 788
08.02.2009