The Regal Constellation

My husband and I were in Toronto this summer and booked into a fairly new hotel near the airport, because we were flying out early the next morning. From our vantage point on the 7th floor, we could look out and see runway lights and airport hangers. But the one building I couldn't take my eyes off was an imposing white structure just across the street from our hotel. It was obviously an abandoned building, with glass-less windows, and a plywood barricade all around its perimeter. Some heavy equipment parked off to one side seemed to foretell that this building was slated for demolition. But right at the very top of this neighboring structure were huge red letters that were once lit to be seen for miles: Regal Constellation, they read. This was an old hotel and, by old, I don't mean turn-of-the-20th-century, Victorian-era, like the Chateau Laurier or Chateau Frontenac. The Regal Constellation hotel was 1960s vintage, a place that no doubt was celebrated as offering the latest amenities for the traveller of that time. Now, it stood empty, abandoned, a relic, preparing to be destroyed. I imagined all the excited tourists who had once strolled through its lobby, and weary business travellers just anxious to rest their heads. I imagined romantic dinners in its restaurant, and couples dancing to the music of The Beach Boys on its dance floor. Why, I asked my husband, why would it have to be torn down? Why couldn't they fix it up? "Building codes change," my electrician husband shrugged, "sometimes it costs more to fix up than it does to build new." Well, although I didn't even know the Regal Constellation, I'm sad to see it go. Sad, just like I am when I see dilapidated fishing stages and stores, wharves falling into the sea, and boarded-up houses in small-town Newfoundland. Derelict hotel, or emblems of a faded fishery. They both have stories to tell. And they both leave behind people saddened by their passing from history.

The Regal Constellation, before it went supernova: