No Ordinary Hotel: The Ritz Carleton’s First Seventy-five Years

On the bone chilling morning of January 1, 1913, Montreal’s Ritz-Carlton opened for business – the dream of four tycoons who lived in Montreal’s “Golden Square Mile”. Seventy-five years after its birth, the Ritz has become inseparable from the city it has enhanced, and an integral part of Canadian history. It has coddled the rich, flattered the famous, and catered to the sophisticated needs of anyone else who could afford to be among its guests. Today, the Ritz-Carlton, an idiosyncratic bastion of refinement and elegance, is alive and well and sustained by the durable concept of luxury bequeathed by the one-time Swiss shepherd, César Ritz. In this book, Adrian Waller has captured the essence of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, weaving stories of human foibles with solid historical research.