Mayson’s Tender Brought the Maritime Tradition to Canada’s North West

Posted on by Thor

The group Mason’s Tender, a maritime group from New Brunswick, Were at the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel to perform each evening. The band members are, Bryon Chase on lead guitar, Gabriel Caissie on bass and Chris Daigle on Drums. All of the band members are of mixed French and English background. They
performs a mix of East Coast traditional, roots, folk and country based
songs forged from a shared passion of place. This sketch was done in the main bar area on the ground floor near the back of the hotel. I decided to sketch from a second floor balcony looking down. It turned out that I was right next to the main spot light that ended up illuminating the band. Terry ordered a drink and sat at the base of the stairway.

For the second set, we sat together in the cushy leather seats sipping custom mixed drinks. I had a drink similar to a Mojito but with a fresh twist. The traditional Irish tunes had me wanting to dance a jig but no one was on the dance floor in this ritzy upper crust hotel. After a few drinks, Terry and I wandered the halls. We wandered across a party where Queen Elizabeth was residing and greeting guests. Terry didn’t notice the queen but when I pointed her out, Terry wanted to walk up and shake the queen’s hand. We walked down a line of mounties in red coats and one finally stopped us a few yards short of the queen and asked if he could help us. That is never a good sign. Ive always found that people who offer help actually are offering the opposite. He told us that this was a private party and that we would have to leave. I’m sure the queen was actually an actress as were the mounties.

The Fairmont Hotel in Banff Makes a luxurious home base in the Canadian Rockies.

Posted on by Thor

Terry and I stayed at the well appointed Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel (405 Spray Ave, Banff, AB T1L 1J4, Canada). As soon as we drove up, valet’s helped us with our luggage and got us checked in. Our room was high up in one of the turrets making it feel like we were staying in a Scottish castle.

William Cornelius Van Horne, the general manager of Canadian
Pacific Railway (CPR) has been credited with recognizing the tourism
potential of the Canadian west. Van Horne maintained tourism was an
intricate ingredient in getting people to ride CPR and was conscious of
the financial possibilities attached to the western mountain scenery.
His philosophy reflected this awareness, ‘Since we can’t export the
scenery,’ he said, ‘ we’ll have to import the tourists.’ To enhance
traffic on the CPR, Van Horne envisioned a succession of lavish resort
hotels along the railway line through the Rocky and Selkirk Mountains. Van Horne hired Bruce Price of New York, one of the leading architects of the time to design and build the Fairmont Hotel. Construction of the Hotel
began in the spring of 1887 and the hotel publicly opened on June 1,
1888.

I sketched Terry as she looked at a guide book planning our next day’s adventure. From this back patio you could hear the distant Bow River waterfall. We hiked down to the waterfall and discovered that this was the launching place for daily river rafting trips. We decided to take the rafting trip which went down river for many miles. The passenger next to me lost his paper day planner in the water. Luckily it floated along side the raft. My reach was just long enough to touch it with my finger tips. It sank at my touch and I cursed. It rose to the surface again and then I grasped it. Everyone on the raft cheered. Had he used a digital device it would be at the bottom of the river.