It was time for an update on Vancouver, and the best place to start was its iconic hotel, Fairmont Hotel Vancouver. What a trophy it must have been when the four-floor building, with 60 bedrooms, was finished in 1887 (that building was replaced in 1912, and it, in turn, was to be demolished to give way to today’s towering 17-floor ‘castle in the city’, officially opened by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth in 1939).