PREFACES
Karen Mulhallen
Scott McIntyre

THE HOTEL DIRECTORY
Ian Brown - Midtown
Kildare Dobbs - Hotel Dreams
Nora Kelly - The Rain in Spain
Margaret Atwood - Ice Palace
Catherine Bush - A Love Story
Camilla Gibb - Untitled
Armando Pajalich - Have you got a problem? (Remembering Morgan’s Yacht Club in Port Royal, Jamaica)
John B. Lee - Hotel Tropicoco
Nathaniel G. Moore - Temporary Keys
Arnaud Maggs - Hotels of Paris (portfolio)

HOTEL OF MEMORY
Barry Dempster - Hotel Room
Amy Dennis - Room Twelve
Waseli Hiyate - Lost Star
Mary B. Valencia - Celtic Manor
Meredith Karen Laskow - Hotel at Daybreak

IN THE WHITE HOTEL
Aaron Tucker - concierge; the vocabulary of buildings
Barbara Pelman - The Perfect Hotel
Adrienne Gruber - White Hotel; The Ballad of Mike Leather
Leanne Leiberman - Sky Daddy
Ben Murray - self-love at the Best Western
Micheline Maylor - Listen
Desi Di Nardo - Over One Hundred Channels
Various Artists - Gladstone Hotel Artist Suites (portfolio)

THE ELEPHANT HOTEL /
ON THE LAM
Dave Margoshes - Comfort
Michael Knox - Out Front of the Waverley Hotel
Mark Anthony Jarman - Pine Slopes, Sweet Apple Slopes
Priscila Uppal - To Be Found Dead in a Hotel Room; Ode to Mini-Bars

Back of the Book
Contributing Editor’s Column Mark Kingwell
Contributors’ Notes
Co-Editor’s Diary Matt Carrington
Production Editor’s Diary Rebecca Payne
News and Notes
Advertisements

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It was a neighbourhood hotel in midtown Toronto, one of those places that are almost invisible from the street. You wouldn’t have known it was there. Back then, in what I now think of as the Pleistocene epoch of my life, the hotel had a breeze-through suburban name — the Dependable Inn will do for these purposes. A brand that promised a certain core comfort, no matter who you were — a modest but reliable, one-size-fits-all hospitality. It was convenient — on the way home from work — inexpensive (sixty dollars), and generally had rooms available on Friday afternoon, which was our time.

The fate of actors and actresses of distressed marriages
and kamikaze drug habits, I sometimes revolve into a hotel

wondering if yellow tape will anchor my stay. I hope
some sociologist is documenting, collecting statistics

on how many prostitutes, business men, good old-fashioned
domestics, mob hits, overdoses, and adulterers meet their end

in square rooms and strange beds, a bible in every nightstand —
the bad ironic score to this overused movie locale — and how

well-prepared the workers are in the likelihood of such
an event. How many maids and floor managers breathe in

before swiping the key card. How many accumulate
all kinds of ugly, human nature facts, spread out on sheets

or dumped into garbage bins, printed out on the hotel bill,
but keep silently and even happily doing their jobs.

I must not be found dead in a hotel room — no matter
who I came to see in this city, no matter what

I am expected to do. Anonymity is a mixed blessing,
and strangers in tight spaces make for stranger ends.

That yellow tape unravelling in your hands is not for me.
That yellow tape is the hotel’s conscience, not mine.

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Lightning shatters a girl and I walk hours of music. Our local brass band celebrates some ribald occasion outside The Elephant Hotel. Our raw faltering orchestra in the road, two drums, including a big bass drum and a smaller tom on a belt, sticks bouncing on the dented skins, but no snare drummer; we need a snare, that slurred, tidy sound — we all know the snare inserts drama, tension.