THEN & NOW
/MEMORIES OF THE SYLVIA HOTEL
A Quintessential Vancouver Experience
by Daryl Nelson
My parents rarely ate out – but if they did, it was usually at Woodward’s or The Bamboo Terrance in Chinatown. Unremarkable places where you could get a good meal at a reasonable price. But, whenever I mentioned the Sylvia Hotel, their faces would soften, as if they were remembering a time and place that was very special.
The Sylvia Hotel.
Although they never mentioned it, I wondered if this is where they went for lunch when they were dating. And so, as it has been for generations of Vancouverites – there is a love affair with an ivy-covered hotel, perfectly situated on English Bay near Stanley Park.
Everyone has stories about The Sylvia Hotel, but I think my favourite came from my Grade 12 English teacher at Winston Churchill High School. Mrs. Lambert had been raised in a small town in Saskatchewan.
One day she was having lunch with a childhood friend in the Sylvia Hotel dining room. Mrs. Lambert mused to her friend “I wonder whatever happened to Maude MacMillan?” another childhood friend.
A few minutes passed and then the friend said “Don’t look now, but I think Maude MacMillan is sitting over there”. Sure enough, there was Maude, sitting in the same dining room as her two childhood chums from a small town in Saskatchewan.
Are facts stranger than fiction? I don’t really know – perhaps you better ask Maude MacMillan.
I still have lunch at The Sylvia every few months with my friend Dave Salter, who I met when serving on the board of AIDS Vancouver in the 1980s. There are tourists there of course, but mostly it is just old Vancouver – lots of grey hair, but lots of smiles and laughs too.
Lunch at the Sylvia, the most quintessential Vancouver experience ever!
RELATED LINKS
The West End Journal has featured the Sylvia Hotel several times, and you can always find the lineup for each month’s live entertainment in the lounge in our Mark Your Calendar section.
Enjoy revisiting two stories of the venerable Vancouver landmark:
