Fairmont Le Château Montebello

Fairmont Le Château Montebello stands on the north bank of the Ottawa River in Montebello, Quebec, halfway between Montreal and Ottawa. It is a hotel built entirely of logs, raised in the spring of 1930 in about four months by a crew of 3,500 workers, and since then it has been called the largest log building in the world. Opened as a private club, it became a public hotel in 1970 and now serves as the country luxury hotel near Ottawa for summits, corporate retreats and weddings.

History

The land was part of the seigneury of Louis-Joseph Papineau, leader of the Patriotes of 1837, whose Manoir Papineau still stands on the estate. In 1929 a Swiss-American entrepreneur, Harold Saddlemire, bought the land to create a private retreat, the Seigniory Club, backed by Canadian Pacific. Construction started in the spring of 1930. Logs of western red cedar were shipped from British Columbia, and the Finnish-born master builder Victor Nymark directed a workforce that assembled the main building in time for an opening on 1 July 1930.

The Seigniory Club served Canadian and American industrialists, politicians and members of the royal family as a hunting, fishing and golf retreat for four decades. In 1970 Canadian Pacific Hotels took it over and opened it to the public as Le Château Montebello. In July 1981 it hosted the G7 summit, with Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, François Mitterrand, Helmut Schmidt and Pierre Trudeau among the leaders. It received a NATO ministers' meeting in 1983 and, in August 2007, the North American Leaders' Summit of George W. Bush, Stephen Harper and Felipe Calderón. The hotel took the Fairmont name in 1999.

Architecture and design

The plan is a star of wings radiating from a central hexagonal hall. The hall rises three storeys around a six-sided stone fireplace with a hearth on each face, under galleries of log balustrades. The architect Harold Lawson drew the plans and Victor Nymark supervised the log work, in the Scandinavian tradition of notched and fitted timber. The exterior shows the red cedar logs bare; the roofs are steep and the windows small, which keeps the interiors dim and warm in winter. The building is heated and insulated for year-round use.

Rooms and suites

The rooms are in the wings off the central hall, on three floors, with log walls and views of the river, the gardens or the woods. Most are of modest size, in keeping with the club origins of the building, and several suites occupy the ends of the wings.

Dining

Aux Chantignoles, the main dining room, serves breakfast, lunch and dinner with Quebec produce and game. A bar and lounge open off the central hall, and in winter the fireplace hall is the meeting point of the house.

Wellness

The hotel has an indoor swimming pool, an outdoor pool for summer, a spa and a fitness centre. On the estate, the golf course laid out by Stanley Thompson in 1930 runs along the river, and the grounds offer tennis, cycling, cross-country skiing, curling and snowshoeing, with a marina on the Ottawa River.

Weddings and events

The hotel has hosted heads of state and corporate boards since 1930, and its conference facilities can seat up to 300 people. Three principal event rooms serve plenaries, dinners and receptions, with the central hall and the lawns by the river used for cocktails and ceremonies. Weddings are frequent, with the log hall and the river terrace as the usual settings for photographs.

Location

The hotel is at 392 rue Notre-Dame in the village of Montebello, on Route 148 along the Ottawa River. Some 80 kilometres to the west, roughly an hour by road, is Ottawa Macdonald-Cartier International Airport; Montréal-Trudeau lies about 130 kilometres east. The Parc Omega wildlife park and the Manoir Papineau national historic site are minutes away.