[Bcma-l] (Fwd) HCF / FHC Communiqué : The Can adian Museum of Rail Tra

[bcma-l@museumsassn.bc.ca]

------- Forwarded message follows -------
Date sent:      	Fri, 4 May 2007 12:08:46 -0400 (EDT)
From:           	heritagecanadafoundation@heritagecanada.org
To:             	list@list.heritagecanada.org
Subject:        	HCF / FHC Communiqué : The Can
	adian Museum of Rail Travel to
 	receive a Heritage Canada Foundation 2007 Achievement Award

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                    Heritage Canada Foundation / 
                    La fondation Héritage Canada
                                  
                             Communiqué
                                  
          The Canadian Museum of Rail Travel to receive a 
          Heritage Canada Foundation 2007 Achievement Award

Ottawa, ON May 4, 2007 – The Heritage Canada Foundation 
and Heritage BC are pleased to announce that the Canadian 
Museum of Rail Travel in Cranbrook, British Columbia, will 
receive a 2007 Achievement Award for the ambitious and 
creative Royal Alexandra Hall Restoration project. The award 
will be presented to Garry Anderson, executive director of the 
Canadian Museum of Rail Travel.

The Royal Alexandra Hall, originally known as the Grand 
Café, was one of the finer features of the Royal Alexandra 
Hotel, which was built in 1906 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, by the 
Canadian Pacific Railway. A favourite spot with Winnipeggers 
and the thousands of travellers who visited it, the café 
became synonymous with Edwardian elegance and first-class 
service. 

When the hotel was demolished in 1971, the room was 
dismantled piece by piece and, except for the curved beamed 
ceiling, stored for 25 years in a semi-trailer before being 
purchased in 1996 by Streit Brothers Antiques. In 1999, the 
Canadian Museum of Rail Travel (CMRT) learned of the room 
and purchased the contents, along with the massive two-storey-
high carved oak fireplace from the hotel’s formal dining 
room. The Grand Café was recreated in the Royal Alexandra 
Hall, complete with vaulted ceiling and eight curved double 
French doors, as a major Millennium project. 

“The Royal Alexandra Hall restoration project is one that we 
are delighted to recognize,” said Heritage Canada Foundation 
executive director Natalie Bull. “The Canadian Museum of 
Rail Travel has—with much dedication and 
ingenuity—brought the elegance of the Grand Café back to 
life for all to enjoy. We congratulate this small community for 
such an ambitious project.”

“I think the appeal is the unusual nature of the project,” 
said Rick Goodacre, executive director of Heritage BC, “the 
rather ‘fairy tale’ nature of this improbable story, and the 
determination of the CMRT to bring it back to life.”

Today, the elegant Royal Alexandra Hall is the centrepiece of 
the Canadian Museum of Rail Travel and its Deluxe Railway 
Hotel Architectural Tour. The space is also rented out for 
community and museum events.

This Heritage Canada Foundation Achievement Award, given 
jointly with Heritage BC, recognizes outstanding work in 
heritage advocacy and volunteerism, as well as projects that 
demonstrate a community’s commitment to heritage 
conservation. It will be presented to Mr. Anderson at Heritage 
BC’s annual general meeting in North Vancouver on Friday, 
June 1, 2007.

The Heritage Canada Foundation is a national, membership-
based, non-profit organization with a mandate to promote the 
preservation of Canada’s historic buildings and places. 


                                -30-
For further information:
Carolyn Quinn, Director of Communications, Heritage Canada 
Foundation, cquinn@heritagecanada.org; Telephone: (613) 
237-1066, ext. 229; Cell: (613) 797-7206. 



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