Employees and guests reminisced about one of Montreal’s most celebrated hotels on Sunday, the last day of business at the Queen Elizabeth before it closes for a year of renovations.
The hotel where John Lennon and Yoko Ono held their famous bed-in will be getting a $140 million facelift. The closure will leave its 682 employees unemployed, though roughly 30 per cent of them have found new jobs.
“I’m just going to take a break for the summer for a few weeks and after that we’ll see,” said hotel supervisor Jason Turpin.
“I did my life here,” said bartender David Pacheco, who has worked at the hotel for 41 years. “I educate my kids, I paid my house. This is my life.”
In his decades at the Queen Elizabeth, Pacheco has racked up several lifetimes worth of memories and stories, including more than a few celebrity encounters.
“The queen,” he said. “Princess Anne, Prince Philip… Rod Stewart.”
Mary Wood has been a client of the hotel for ten years and considers many among the staff as friends. She has developed a loyalty to the hotel so strong, she extended her stay to ensure she would be the final guest to check out before the renovations. The staff gifted her a room key which many of them had signed.
“It’s hard for me,” she said. “On the back, they wrote ‘Activate for a lifetime,’ so this is going to be my memory for a long time.”
