Canadian National Railway built this hotel directly above Montreal’s Central Station, requiring 160 concrete pylons to keep passing trains from rattling the rooms above, and it opened March 15, 1958, named for the young British monarch who would visit in person the following year. The hotel quickly became the city’s social anchor, introducing Canada’s first hotel escalators, air conditioning, and direct-dial phones in every room. During Expo 67, fifty of the sixty visiting heads of state stayed there.
Its most famous week came in 1969, when John Lennon and Yoko Ono, denied entry to the United States for a planned protest, checked into Suite 1742 for a week-long Bed-In for Peace, recording Give Peace a Chance there on June 1 with roughly fifty people crowded into the room, including Timothy Leary and Petula Clark. The following year, during Quebec’s October Crisis, Premier Robert Bourassa and members of his government reportedly took secret refuge in the hotel. A $140 million renovation completed in 2017 recreated the Lennon-Ono suite in tribute.