The Hotel Cornwall

My Ontario tour continues with the Global Traders awards. Tomorrow we are handing out the hardware in Cornwall, Ont., for the eastern region of Ontario, and I am looking forward to more exciting, home-grown success stories.

Here is a link to my previous post, "SeussWorld", on the Central Ontario awards.
http://canentrepreneur.blogspot.com/2005/04/seussworld.html

BTW, this is my first mobile posting. I am at the Best Western Cornwall, a cute little business hotel in the absolute centre of town. It’s very homey, with the rooms done up in comfy pine furniture. My favorite thing is the little bookshelf over the desk which holds a wooden decoy duck (screwed to the shelf, naturally), and eight real books (not screwed to the shelf, for reasons that will soon become clear).

I rarely see business hotels offering their readers books – you find that in old-fashioned guest houses for visitors whose tennis lessons are cancelled.

For the record, here are the books in my room:

* An Inquiry Concerning Growth, Disease and Aging (1969) (dust jacket rather tattered, but the pages look unturned);

* Proteus, by Morris West (1979), no dust jacket;

* The Keeping-Room (1981 (the newest book);

* Part II of Dombey & Son, a lone volume of The Complete Works of Charles Dickens (535 pages – he was paid by the word);

* The Bond Triumphant, a Canadian historical novel printed in 1923;

* The Sudden Guest (1946), a Book of the Month Club selection that has strayed from the library of someone named Evelyn Ross;

* Guy Mannering, a fragile hardbound novel by Sir Walter Scott that must be at least 100 years old (the paper is wonderfully brown and parchmentish);

* and So You Want to Go Into the Theatre?, a manual for young people. From 1936.

I guess this place buys old books by the pound.

Anyway, it’s nice to have the books in the room. Even old, unwanted, unread books make the place feel more human.

And to think some people watch movies in their hotel rooms.