Be a tourist in your own city and explore the histories of local hotels.

Hotels are exemplary liminal spaces: they are not home, but they can be somehow intimate. Hotels bridge the extraordinary: the foreign exciting city outside their doors, with the mundane: a bed, a washroom.

Hotels are both an attraction and crucial amenity for tourists, and, as such, are central to the “tourist gaze” focused on Ottawa.

Led by Tonya Davidson, this walking tour will offer a history and analysis of Ottawa’s spectacular hotels including the Chateau Laurier, the Lord Elgin and the historic and long-gone Russell House Hotel.

This event is free and open to everyone.

Access: We will meet at Carleton Dominion-Chalmers Centre (CDCC). The Para Transpo drop-off and an entrance with ramps are located on the 290 Lisgar Street side of the building.

The walking tour is two hours long. We will travel to eight stops, moving approximately three kilometers. We will have lightweight chairs to rest when we’re at the different stops, as well as snacks and drinks. The tour ends at the St. Germain Hotel in the Byward Market.