In January 1908, 110 years ago, one of the most prominent landmarks in the province was open for business 鈥� and the editors of the Daily Colonist were there.
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The opening of the Empress Hotel yesterday constitutes a distinct and important landmark in Victoria鈥檚 onward progress to her rightful position as the Queen of the Pacific. It is nearly five years ago since Sir Thomas Shaughnessy was first approached with the idea of inducing him to build one of the famous CPR hotels in this city.
It was not long before he realized that the ideal site, our beautiful climate and surroundings only required a fitting structure to make the western gateway of the great transcontinental system a fitting companion to the historic pile on the heights of Quebec.
The negotiations completed, it was not long before the gigantic task of laying the immense foundations was started, a task rendered all the more formidable because the edifice is reared on land but recently reclaimed from the sea by the building of the causeway.
Little by little, the work was done, and then day by day, the great building rose gradually in increasing splendour till today in stately magnificence it commands the waters of the beautiful harbour, the most prominent feature of the panorama.
The CPR, with that wholehearted thoroughness characteristic of the big corporation on such occasions, had invited as its guests a number of representative newspapermen from all the principal papers of British Columbia, Washington and Oregon, and showed them yesterday what Canadian hospitality can do at its best.
An act of farsighted thoroughness, yesterday鈥檚 gathering will bear fruit increasingly throughout the future. Today, thousands of readers in all parts of the great Northwest will be told of the beauties of Victoria and how she is prepared to care for the stranger who may come within her gates.
For the Empress Hotel means much to this city. It is more than the finishing link of the chain of hotels with which the greatest railroad system in the world has girdled the continent. It is more than an exemplar of what wealth and taste and 20th-century ingenuity can do to make the path of the wayfarer pleasant and attractive.
It is a permanent token to the wealthy travelling public that Victoria can offer them entertainment that is not to be surpassed in any city on the continent. Here, every kind of outdoor amusement can be freely enjoyed at a minimum of expense in the balmiest climate on the continent of North America, and from now on, whether the visitor comes for a day or a month or a year, he can be assured of every comfort that money can purchase or experienced skill devise, surrounded the while with every accompaniment of artistic taste and luxurious setting.
The great hotel will bring the people here, and Victoria will do the rest, while those who cannot stay cannot fail on their return to be missionaries shouting the praises of the manifold beauties both of art and nature which were lavished upon them during their sojourn at the Queen city of the Pacific.
Daily Colonist, Jan. 21, 1908
