Deck The Halls

We carry on today with more of the Christmas trees in the Chateau Laurier.

One of the ballrooms was being prepared for an event. And one of the hotel's nutcrackers, a very large fellow, was inside the entrance.

I like the look of this chair, and the Christmas decor suspended by the wall lights.

The above trio includes one with mental health as its theme. These decorations, as you can imagine, I can relate to.

A few days ago I paid a visit to the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, for a series I'll start showing you in January. They had a tree inside overlooking the Great Hall.

They also had a tree outside, lit up when I was leaving.

Decorations

 The Chateau Laurier hotel has for years hosted a Christmas tree event. Local companies make a donation to the Children's Hospital Of Eastern Ontario, and trees get decorated with their names in the lobby and corridors of the ground floor of the luxury hotel. You can imagine it's a popular event locally, and ideal for the photographer.

Along with the Christmas trees, these halls include a wealth of photographs of the hotel's history. The Chateau opened in 1912. Its official opening date in April of that year was postponed for a few weeks. Charles Melville Hays, the railroad baron who had been behind its creation, had been coming back from Europe with his family and a substantial amount of furnishings bought on the continent.

They were sailing on the Titanic.

Hays of course died in that calamity; it's been suggested that his ghost haunts the hotel. There are other ghost stories connected to the Chateau.

Many others have been here over the years. This photograph of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip dates to when she was still the Crown Princess, and the Royals were paying a visit. Here they are accompanied by Vincent Massey, the Governor-General at the time.

More of those Christmas trees. I'll carry on here tomorrow.

Christmas

 Merry Christmas.

I tend to mark the day on my blog with churches. I begin today with a shot taken at the end of November in Westboro. This church houses two congregations- All Saints Anglican and First United. I pass by here once a month.

At the end of the prior month, the sanctuary door had been open, and I got a look inside. What I saw surprised me, as I'd thought the sanctuary would be parallel to the street. Instead, it runs northward away from the street. The original sanctuary, to the west, is now a chapel, and the two are joined together by what I'm guessing is office space, since it's all one building from the outside. The pastor I spoke to said the original building dated to the 19th century, and this current sanctuary is from the 1950s.

Taken on the same day as my first shot, this is the Catholic parish of St. George, at the western edge of Hintonburg.

This was taken one early December morning in the Glebe, in pre-dawn light. Here we have Fourth Avenue Baptist Church.

And downtown, this is Centretown United Church.

Snow was falling on the day I took this. St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church is downtown, across from the Supreme Court of Canada.

I'd been inside in late November- their annual Christmas sale. I took a chance to stop inside the sanctuary.

The arrangement of the sanctuary is unusual, with the pulpit off to the side at centre as opposed to at one end of the space.

Something else unusual: among the musical instruments here was a harpsichord.

St. Patrick Basilica is a Catholic church downtown. This time of year they have a nativity creche outside.

And I finish with this shot of Notre Dame Basilica, taken late in the afternoon just a few days ago from across the street at the National Gallery of Canada.

Market

Today I show the Lansdowne Christmas market at night. It was started up in 2019 in the European style, interrupted for a year by Covid, and started again last year and continuing this year. The Christmas market has wrapped up, but considering how busy it's been whenever I've been by, it'll be back. I start with this view of the Aberdeen Pavilion with the site's Christmas tree out front. 

Vendors have food and gifts for sale in a series of chalets set around the square on the north side of the Pavilion. Note the bakery at left- over the course of the season I had a few of their soft pretzels. On the first occasion I was walking with a friend, got the last one in stock for the evening, and my friend ruefully said, "you bastard."

Of course I found that amusing.

It was a cold, clear night. Note the Moon at upper left.

Beavertails, a local institution, was here. They sell flat fried pastries in the shape of a beaver tail, with various toppings.

There were lit ornaments for photo ops.

Thor's Trinkets, the business of an artisan who does pop culture themes onto beer mugs, tumblers, and other glass, was back. I bought some beer mugs this year. 

Lots of dogs were to be seen, including these two saying hello.

There's a stage here as well. Mercifully the two on stage weren't singing Christmas music while I was here.

The cabin at the end of this pathway is where Santa takes visitors. He wasn't in, but it was left open if you wanted to sit and pose for a shot yourself. On another evening as I was here, I told Santa "I can explain everything."

The Aberdeen Pavilion is a particularly photogenic building, day or night.