Continuing our journey from east to west, looking at Canada’s grand railway hotels, we start in Toronto and the Royal York Hotel.

The largest Fairmount hotel in Canada, the Royal York is directly across the street from Union Station, still the departure point for trains which head across the country to Vancouver¹.

When it opened in 1929 the hotel was the tallest building in the British Empire, and it is typically where members of the Royal Family stay when visiting the city.

Hopping across the still-lacking-in-Street-View-imagery provinces, we head to Alberta and the Palliser Hotel in Calgary, located right next to the Calgary Tower.

Opened by the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1914, the Palliser is now home to the CPR Pavilion, an exhibition showing the historical links between hotel and railway, including some vintage train cars². Once the tallest building in the city, the hotel is now dwarfed by skyscrapers that have sprung up in this oil-rich city.

Following the Street View car west we get to the Rocky Mountains, and two hotels that can perhaps be considered the grandest of the grand hotels. CPR President William Van Horne declared “If we can’t export the scenery, we’ll import the tourists”, and those tourists still flock to these hotels in huge numbers every year.

The Banff Springs Hotel opened in 1888 and was rebuilt 40 years later after a fire, though it took another 40 years after that for it to be made suitable for winter use.

The Banff Springs takes its name from the natural hot springs which rise in another part of the town – the hotel’s current spa is only ‘reminiscent’ of the natural springs!

Named a National Historic Site in 1992 (and located in the UNESCO World Heritage Banff National Park), the hotel is now a major ‘resort’ with a world-renowned golf course, huge conference centre, on-site staff housing and multiple accommodation wings for guests.

About 60km to the north-west is Chateau Lake Louise, which has also developed into resort status.

At the edge of a stunning glacier-blue lake, surrounded by soaring mountain peaks – this has to be one of the most scenic hotel locations in the world³, though it is amusing to see trail-ragged hikers wandering through the opulent surroundings after a long day’s walk. And despite its size, this hotel did not open year-round until the 1970s. Winter activities now include skiing and skating on the lake, as well as horse-drawn sleigh rides.

Finally to Vancouver, end (or beginning, depending on your direction of travel) of the cross-country train journey, and the Hotel Vancouver.

A joint construction by Canadian Pacific and Canadian National, the hotel is a short distance from the current VIA Rail station. It opened in 1939 with a visit from the King and Queen.

Similar to the Chateau Laurier in Ottawa, the Hotel Vancouver housed the local CBC studios for a number of years.

We hope to conclude this series with the hotels in Winnipeg, Edmonton and Victoria – when Street View makes it to those cities.

Locations: Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario / Categories: Buildings, Street Views

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It is often said that Canada was built on the railroad, with expansion of the train tracks from east to west ensuring that the population – particularly new immigrants – spread across the country. A network of grand railway hotels was created to encourage wealthy tourists to take the train. With the arrival of Google Street View in Canada, we’ll take a look at these hotels, starting with Chateau Frontenac in Quebec City.

Opened in 1893, the hotel’s history is apparent the moment you step into the ornate wood-panelled lobby, while the exterior is typical of the style of hotels built by the Canadian Pacific Company, with soaring turrets and towers.

Its position atop a rock outcropping gives stunning views across the St Lawrence river from many of the rooms and makes it the dominating feature of the city’s skyline – see the view from the Old Town about 60m below.

The Chateau is now owned by the Fairmount hotel chain, as are most of the other grand hotels, including the Queen Elizabeth in Montreal.

The last railway hotel to be constructed (in 1958) before air travel became the preferred form of mass transit, it has a rather more modern architectural style. It is located directly above Montreal’s Central Station and is the largest hotel in Quebec with 1037 rooms.

This hotel is perhaps most famous as the location of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s 1969 Bed-In. They took up residence in room 1742 for a week, receiving the world’s media and many celebrities and other guests. The bed-in culminated with the recording of Give Peace a Chance.

The Queen Elizabeth was preceded in Montreal by two other – externally more elegant – hotels, both of which have now been converted for business or educational use: the Windsor Hotel and Place Viger. The Windsor Hotel was the first of the grand railway hotels, opening in 1878; it closed 103 years later. Place Viger opened 20 years later but closed in the economic depression of the 1930s.

In Ottawa the Chateau Laurier stands beside the Rideau Canal, just a few meters from Parliament Hill.

Originally located across the street from the train station¹, the hotel was commissioned by Charles Hays, chairman of the Grand Trunk Railway. Unfortunately Hays chose a ship called the Titanic to make the journey to the hotel’s opening celebration, which was subsequently delayed by a couple of months. Hays may have made the journey anyway, as a number of guests have reported seeing his ghost wandering the hallways!

Being in the nation’s capital, the hotel routinely plays host to visiting heads of state and other dignitaries. For 80 years it was also the home of the local CBC studios, while portrait photographer Yousuf Karsh had a studio and apartment in the hotel.

We’ll cover the rest of the country in part two of this post.

Thanks to Denis Gravel, Stephen Salomons and Dave.

Locations: Ontario, Quebec / Categories: Buildings, Street Views

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We’ve already found some great Street View sights, which you can see on our brand-new Street View page or even better, follow us on Twitter to get the latest sights the moment we find them.

Montreal’s Olympic stadium was one of the very first sights we posted to Google Sightseeing, when the site was just 3 days old. Now 4 and half years later, we get a much better view of the bizarre building and the world’s tallest inclined structure.

Outside the stunning Canadian Parliament building we can see Tamil protestors, calling for action on the Sri Lankan Civil War. They protested non-stop throughout most of April 2009.

Probably Canada’s most recognisable landmark, the CN Tower in Toronto can be spotted from miles around. This unique view, complete with truck about to crash into the tower, comes from the CTV’s television station.

The impressive Czech National Museum sits atop Prague’s Wenceslas Square. The facade had to undergo major repairs following severe gunfire damage during the 1968 Warsaw Pact intervention.

Have you found anything cool on the new Street View? Send us a tweet so we can tell the world!

Locations: Czech Republic, Ontario, Quebec / Categories: Street Views

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First up, a giant bug on top of a building in Reno, Nevada.

This spider sculpture was created by artist David Fambrough. It consists of the body of a VW beetle / bug (depending where you live) with huge metal legs. Some people wanted to squash the impressive looking bug, but it has been granted a reprieve and will instead be moved to another part of the city.

Controversy can also surround the bronze or steel casts of Louise Bourgeois‘ sculpture Maman, which can currently be found in 8 different location worldwide. In my home town, Ottawa, there’s a 10m tall Maman which cost $3.2millionCAD, though it quickly became a popular local icon.

Maman can also be found outside art galleries in Bilbao, Tokyo and Seoul.

In Kansas City Maman isn’t visible on Google Maps, but Street View reveals that she is happily menacing two women and a (doubtless quite traumatised) baby in a stroller.

Maman also lives in St Petersburg, Paris and Havana, but I can’t track her down on Google Maps or Google Earth. Let me know if you can!

Finally, giant spiders must spin giant webs … like this one in Colorado, which appears to be at least a couple of hundred metres wide.

Thanks to Steve and Bleij.

Locations: Colorado, Japan, Missouri, Nevada, Ontario, South Korea, Spain / Categories: Animals, Street Views, Structures, Weirdness

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The Amusement Park was open to the public from 1898 until 1993 and through the years it was home to a number of roller coasters, rides, shows and restaurants. The remaining dance hall is about 3300 square metres and for a while had the largest dance floor in the world.

Most visitors reached the island (also known as Bois Blanc) by ferry from Detroit, leading to perhaps the most historically significant development related to the park. In 1948 a US Supreme Court decision upheld the Michigan law preventing corporations from racial discrimination, however the ferry company tried to deny African-Americans passage as the island destination was foreign. The Court eventually decided it was not ‘very foreign’, being socially and economically closely tied to Michigan, and having no ties to nearby Ontario communities.

A comprehensive history of the park can be found here. Today the island is being developed with luxury housing, a golf course and a marina.

Just to the West of the island is the tree-lined Livingstone Shipping Channel.

The channel was cut through shallow water to provide a safe route for ship traffic heading south to Lake Erie.

Thanks to Kirk Hayhurst who submitted this fairly regularly for the last couple of years!

Locations: Ontario / Categories: Buildings, Islands, Theme Parks

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Despite the very innocent Swastika symbol having been around longer than civilisation itself, these days the symbol has been almost exclusively associated with the Nazi Party, ever since they adopted it as their logo in the 1920s. Given that the symbol in this field is contained within a circle (the actual Nazi symbol is in a circle and set at a 45° angle), the likelihood is that this was indeed created by some nasty Neo-Nazis hoping to promote their evil cause.

Unfortunately for our inept villains, they’ve drawn it with the arms of the symbol left-facing, which despite having plenty of historical precedent is incorrect, as the Nazi swastika had right-facing arms, even on the rear side of their flag.

Previously on Google Sightseeing we’ve seen an unintentional Swastika building, a Swastika fountain and some Dutch neo-nazis who were equally incapable of getting simple shapes the right way round.

Thanks to S.Patrick.

Locations: Ontario / Categories: Large Type

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The park, which opened in 1999, was designed to represent the different elements of Bach’s Suites for Unaccompanied Cello and was a partnership between landscape designer Julie Moir Messervy and cellist Yo-Yo Ma.

Six distinct areas represent the dance movements of the Suite and are intended to give visitors a sense of flowing rivers, forest trails, wildflower meadows, a quiet conifer grove, a formal flower garden and an amphitheatre of large grass steps.

Microsoft’s Live Maps has a bird’s eye view, showing the park with it’s more lush summer greenery, which mirrors the view no doubt enjoyed by many people living in the condo towers along Queens Quay.

More information (history, pictures and an excerpt of the music) at the City of Toronto website.

Thanks to Kenway and Chris.

Locations: Ontario / Categories: Natural Landmarks

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Manitoulin Island in Ontario, Canada is officially the world’s largest island that is located within a lake.

That’s pretty simple, but within the island there are an additional 180 lakes…

Within one of those lakes, Mindemoya Lake (to be precise), is the largest island, in a lake, on an island, in a lake (in the world). Still with me?

But we’ve missed out a step! On the island of Sumatra in Indonesia we find Lake Toba, and its principal island of Samosir – which at 630 square km is easily the largest island, in a lake, on a island.

After Samosir, the second largest island within a lake is Glover Island, which is in the Grand Lake on the island of Newfoundland.

However, Glover Island’s largest lake also has many islands, of which the largest is about 2 acres. This tiny, unnamed island is therefore the largest island, in a lake, on an island, in a lake, on an island!

Unfortunately, it has no lakes in which we might find further islands.

Seeing as it’s island week, we’ve left out many additional facts about the largest lakes found on islands (some of which are larger that the lakes containing islands we’ve mentioned here) but I think this post has been confusing enough!

Wikipedia: Manitoulin Island, Samosir & Glover Island

Thanks to Dee, kejoad, Daryl, Chris W, Boing boing, Elbruz.org and World Island Info.

Locations: Indonesia, Newfoundland and Labrador, Ontario / Categories: Islands

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Eventually Nick managed to track the image back to the Corbis library, and in turn to the photographer, Peter Burian. With a little coaxing, Peter eventually remembered that he took the photo in the village of Kilbride, near his home in Milton, Ontario.

Of course once we had the address, we managed to find the exact tree-lined path and barn in a couple of minutes – thanks to Google Maps

And although these particular trees are still green, there’s thousands in this area that have started to turn a fantastic shade of orange!

Via Kottke.org.

Locations: Ontario / Categories: Movie Locations

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Some of these abandoned houses are supposedly still used as holiday homes, but what interests me if the makeshift airport to be found deep in the forest. It’s evidently still in use but I’ve found no mention of the airport around the internet. Most websites say that the marina is the “only way of getting on the island”, but it’s clearly not. If you asked me, an abandoned island would be the perfect place for an evil empire to keep its headquarters…

Thanks: Matt Blum & Taylor

Locations: Ontario / Categories: Aircraft, Buildings, Islands

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