John Wilkes Booth, in Montreal, boasted that he'd kill Abe Lincoln - Montreal 375 Tales book excerpt

 St. Lawrence Hall 139 St. James (1851-1910) At a time when food was dirt cheap, Montreal's top hotel insisted all guests sample fish, steak, chops, ham, chicken, turkey, rissoles, and 10 other dishes, along with jugs of milk and coffee, and that was just breakfast.

  Owner Henry Hogan—whose Battle of Waterloo war veteran dad drowned after tumbling off a steamboat into the St. Lawrence River—sported big whiskers, curly mustache, pince nez glasses and would hoist three fingers in the air while talking, meanwhile vigorously shaking people's hands with his other paw. 

   Hogan felt protective of his guests and once stood guard outside the room of Pope-critic Alessandro Gavazzi, whose 1853 visit sparked a nine-death riot near Victoria Square. 

   The bustling street outside the 200-room hotel was jammed with carts, cabs and carriages, while inside sat a barber shop and a reading room with an all-night telegraphic bureau for newspaper reporters. 

   Hogan hosted annual Christmas dinners for ink-stained wretches and the kindness was returned, as one critic described the hotel as a “fine handsome house after the style of the new hotels in London and Paris." The hotel attracted Confederate military men and Montrealers warmed to the Southerners during a time when many were not keen on 

Abraham Lincoln. While playing billiards, guest John Wilkes Booth boasted—likely under the effects of cocaine—about his plan to assassinate Abraham Lincoln, a promise that he unfortunately kept. 

   Hogan earned praise for charging 10 cents for a glass of Scotch, long after competitors charged five cents more. 

   Hogan died just after the turn of the century, before hard-drinking federal Train Minister Henry Emmerson resigned after being caught with two women in his room in 1909. 

   The hotel was demolished and replaced by offices in 1910. A Craig Street annex stayed open until 1933.