opulent gentlemen's club located on Drummond, between De
Maisonneuve Blvd and Saint Catherine St. The setting for
hosting elegant weddings, speeches and parties for Montreal's
elite. The Cuban mahogany front doors of The Mount Stephen
Club opened up for me on a gloomy Tuesday afternoon.
The former home of Lord Mount Stephen - formerly George
Stephen, 1st Baron Mount Stephen (1829–1921), was built as
an example of late Victorian architecture, with 24-karat
gold doorknobs and hinges and antiques filling its rooms.
The home was converted into a private business club for
men in 1926 - by Noah Timmins, J.H. Maher and J.S. Dohan.
Women were only later admitted.
The mansion, in which the club is housed, has been used
by various Hollywood stars for period films. The mansion
was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1971,
as the best example of a Renaissance Revival house and due
to its association with George Stephen - the Scottish-born
founding president of the Canadian Pacific Railway.
'Architecture is the triumph of human imagination over
materials, methods, and men, to put man into possession
of his own earth.' ~ Frank Lloyd Wright
I was there to meet a man for a job interview . . . of
sorts. Kenneth Beaumont, the scion of a real estate empire,
had decided to start a new venture in housing. Through the
years, his family had accumulated vast swaths of industrial
properties, and due to the recent economic downturn were now,
mostly vacant. Beaumont came up with this novel idea of
converting these large behemoths into cool units, but did
not want to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on newspaper
and magazine advertisements, but rather do it online. Of
course it had to be catchy, with cool phrases and enticing
content, aimed at the young and hip 'nouvelle vague'. Through
a business associate, Beaumont was informed that I may be
just the right candidate for the task at hand . . . being
a prolific writer of fantasy. Hence our luncheon.
I thought about how the course of life has shifted and
evolved, in such a brief moment in time and space, into
a whole other plane of existence. I look around the room
and thought about being from another world. This was a
moneyed world of fundraisers, cottages on the lake, old
iconic institutions, flying south on a whim, and houses
on the mountain. I thought how several obscure encounters
have brought me into this very private and exclusive
macrocosm.
"Good afternoon, young man," said Kenneth Beaumont, as
I entered the foyer.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Beaumont." I returned the greeting.
"Please call me Kenneth. Here is our table," said Beaumont,
as he motioned to a corner enclave set up for three.
At that moment a very tall, slender and gorgeous woman
dressed n a Herringbone skirt and jacket, with a crisp white
blouse and a foulard. As she was walking towards us, actually,
as she was slowly swaying every man, even some of the ladies,
turned as she went past them and made her way to our table.
"Good afternoon, sir. Good afternoon Mr. Borsellino. My name
is Wendy Carr. We have a mutual friend . . . Caitlin Rainn."
I turn to Beaumont and say, "Whatever you need . . . I'm your man!"
As he chuckled, he began, "We would like you to write content for
our online pages. I was shown several of your articles and I think
it's exactly what we are looking for."
'When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the
conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my
talent for absorbing positive knowledge' ~ Albert Einstein
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