It is a huge hotel, with 770 rooms, up to 1,200 staff (in high season), and a catering department capable of serving 6,000 meals per day. Just walking around the outside of the main building took me 20 minutes, although I did stop to stare up at the slit-like windows of the rooms in tower-top spires, wondering how wide they were. (After a long climb I subsequently discovered the answer: less than six inches.) Had the management not thought to provide a map of the public areas, walking around the interior could take forever; but it would be time well spent, so rich and eclectic is the interior. Among the styles I spotted were Gothic, Edwardian country-house, Medieval, Art Deco, Ballroom, even (admittedly after a drink) Spanish Colonial.Until 1969, the Banff Springs was only a summer resort; since then it has been open for the winter season, giving easy access to three ski areas. Last week I skied at Sunshine Village, which is about 20km from Banff; set right on Canada’s continental divide it gets enough snow not to bother with snow-making, spending its money instead on high-speed lifts. The nearest, Mount Norquay, is only a few minutes away: it is small, by reputation tough, and opened only yesterday – so I can’t tell you much more about it. The scenery remains stunning, and the railway operational (though thanks to the Trans-Canada Highway it now carries only freight and tourists, the latter on Rocky Mountaineer Railtours).

And the extraordinary hotel that Van Horne commissioned and helped to design survives.The existing Fairmont Banff Springs was only set in stone in 1928, and is substantially different from the original, largely wooden structure. It had stunning scenery, which Van Horne protected by lobbying for what was to be Canada’s first national park; it was accessible only by rail; and it was blessed with a natural hot spring – a near-essential for a 19th-century resort – discovered by a group of railway navvies on what is now called Sulphur Mountain.The spring still pumps out warm, smelly water; it is fed at 40C into a public, open-air bath but no longer bottled and sold as “Banff Lithia Water”, nor claimed to be “beneficial for some women’s diseases”. Van Horne went a step further, by commissioning a hotel that would be a destination in itself. The site at Siding 29, later renamed “Banff” in honour of the Scottish origins of Van Horne’s predecessor as president of the railway, provided the ideal setting. Which is where the Banff Springs hotel came in.Plans had already been made for refreshment stops where passengers could break their journeys for food and lodging. (And when I say huge I don’t just mean in size although the statue that greets arrivals to the Banff Springs hotel apparently does him a favour, since he is portrayed as merely portly.) The building of Canada’s transcontinental rail link – for which Van Horne is commonly credited – was an achievement that had as much to do with nationhood as with running trains.With the Canadian Pacific railway completed, Van Horne’s next task come 1885 was to fill the trains. What is this place? It is one of the great, grandes dames of ski-resort hotels, the Banff Springs.The hotel’s curiosities are not merely architectural.

Then, directly ahead, a bizarre building rears up out of the trees, immediately bringing to mind the words “mock”, “gothic” and “pile”.
Rooms do seem to have been shovelled up into the building’s heights, to judge from the dormer windows poking out of the steeply pitched roofs; so “pile” seems fair enough. But on closer inspection – and notwithstanding the roof-line – the “mock gothic” isn’t right. Rather, the building is in Scottish Baronial style, seemingly modelled on the stately homes north of the border which look as if they could withstand armed attack. On either side of the valley, demanding attention, are the mountains whose beauty (combined with a sulphurous stream and the efforts of a 19th-century railwayman) won the park its special status.

Just beyond the Bow River bridge a Tudor Revival folly blocks their path: the road has to veer left to avoid the building, which houses the administrative offices of Banff National Park. There are a number of distractions for drivers heading south out of the small town of Banff, in the Canadian province of Alberta. (I have just checked, and two remain from last season.)
A hip flask could presumably be a lifesaver in the days when skiwear was made of worsted rather than Gore-Tex, and there were no ski-lift summits at which to build restaurants. But now, it’s so easy to get a drink out on the slopes that it can’t be worth carrying the stuff around (along with your bottle of Evian), unless you’re going well off-piste.Certainly, no skier has ever pulled out a flask and offered me a nip. Perhaps I’m skiing with the wrong crowd; but I doubt that I would accept, anyway A glass of wine with lunch is fine. Anything stronger seems rather unwise.Still, with Christmas spirit taking us over, it would be churlish not to mention a couple of unusual flasks that have recently come to my attention.