The iconic Banff Springs Hotel in Alberta was the inspiration for some of the settings in my cozy mystery, LIGHTS, CAMERA, MURDER – Kindle Unlimited
I called it The Silver Springs Hotel in my book, but make no mistake—I had the Banff Springs Hotel in mind.
I worked at The Banff Springs for one memorable summer when I was 18. That was a “coming of age” time for me. Long after I returned home, I still dreamed about the place—the surrounding peaks, the majesty of the hotel itself, and the staff, those I worked with, enjoyed, and played with, and those I feared, detested, and avoided. That time left a deep impression on me, both good and, um, not-so-good.
Once the train disgorged me onto the platform in Banff, I had no choice but to rely on my own courage, determination, wits, and intuition, not to mention untapped depths of cunning, to survive the hormone-fueled staff environment.
My good memories include the majestic snow-capped mountains encircling the hotel, Gord Lightfoot songs, the sound of bagpipes floating on the air at sunrise and sunset, a canoe paddle on Moraine Lake back in crowd-free days, a gorgeous young man I hung out with at romantic late-night campfires and singalongs, and the recounting of the hotel’s ghost hauntings around the fire.
It was the less favorable events, however, that truly tested my mettle. For example, the day I arrived, I successfully evicted a young man from my tiny staff-quarter bunk bed, eliciting hatred from three indignant room-mates. Turned out he’d been breaking all the rules, sleeping there for a couple of weeks. Too bad my arrival spoiled the fun and games.
Another of my triumphs was a successful evasion of the dining room manager’s groping hands. An ex-SS (Schutzstaffel) officer who’d escaped to Canada from Nazi Germany after WW-II, Hans ruled the dining room with cruel precision, inspecting us from all possible angles. His main mission in life appeared to be impregnating nubile young servers, or “waitresses,” as we were called.
I also attended a Purple Jesus party, where the male staff had mixed pure alcohol with Welch’s grape juice in two enormous 20-litre milk cans, deposited them for female consumption, and waited outside the party room’s door to pick off the drunken girls as they staggered away.
Aware of the toxic effects of Purple Jesus due to an unfortunate prior experience, I avoided the stuff and saved the life of one girl by turning her head out of the disgusting puddle of vomit she’d passed out in.
I incorporated some, not all, of these memories into LIGHTS, CAMERA, MURDER.
