According to its publicity brochures, Victoria's ivy-covered Empress Hotel is "stately, dignified, charming" and "suavely staffed." Located in the heart of Canada's most loyal citadel of British ways and manners, the hotel greets its well-mannered guests with a massive display of paneled walls, beamed ceilings and straight-backed chairs, serves them tea to the discreet accompaniment of a string ensemble. Small wonder, therefore, that an undersized, untweedy man wearing blue jeans, a grey fedora and a blue polka-dot handkerchief over the lower part of his face, was emphatically snubbed when he started to hold up the hotel's coffeeshop at pistolpoint last week.
The...
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