The Prince Edward Hotel

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Who was Prince Edward?

By: Grant Hamilton

Saturday, Jun. 2, 2012 at 4:33 PM | Comments: 0

Edward, Prince of Wales, during his visit to Canada in 1919. (FREELAND STUDIO, TORONTO)

When the Canadian National Railway announced that their under-construction hotel would be named the Prince Edward, they were tapping into a popular surge of royal sentiment.

George V had become king upon his father’s death in May 1910, but his coronation wasn’t held until June the next year, and 1911 was marked Dominion-wide as Coronation Year.

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Brandon joined the celebration, naming a brand-new East End school in honour of King George.

And, in early August, the Canadian Northern Railway announced that they would name their new hotel after George’s son, who had been invested as Edward, Prince of Wales.

Prince Edward, later to go down in history books as the king who gave up his throne to marry an American divorcee, was a popular and photogenic prince. He enjoyed his time in Canada so much that he once said he wanted to be looked upon "as a Canadian … in mind and spirit."

During a 1919 tour of the nation, it was announced that the prince would have half an hour to spend in Brandon on his way through to Saskatchewan, to Alberta (where he would buy a ranch) and eventually to Victoria.

City leaders huffed that 30 minutes wasn’t near enough time to show the future king all that Brandon had to offer. They requested two hours.

Responding to the hue-and-cry erupting from the city, Ottawa revised the schedule, and announced that the prince would be able to spend fully two-and-a-half hours in Brandon. He would arrive on October 10.

In "Brandon: A City," G.F. Barker writes that band music, banner-draped streets and 3,000 flag-waving schoolchildren greeted Prince Edward as he stepped off his special train at the Canadian Pacific depot that cool morning, as did "double-lines of Great War veterans" that the prince greeted with "a hand-shake for every man."

Prince Edward then went on to City Hall, where he presented medals to a number of wounded veterans.

Barker doesn’t record where else the prince may have stopped while spending time in Brandon, but City Hall in those days was located where Princess Park is now — just across Ninth Street from the Prince Edward Hotel.

Surely some city bigwig, puffed with Brandon pride, would have pointed out to the prince that the handsome six-storey structure across the street had been named in his honour.

After all, they had two-and-a-half hours’ worth of chances.

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