Arago: Hotel Room Key Tokens

Owney received this token during one of his trips into Canada. The token was used in a grand hotel’s coat room. The Manitoba was a large seven-story, fashionably furnished hotel built in Winnipeg, the capital of Manitoba Province, Canada. The hotel, built about 1890 on Water Avenue, was destroyed less than a decade later in a fire in 1899. The hotel was a convenient stop for Owney, as it had been funded by the Northern Pacific and Manitoba Railway (N.P. & M.R.) and was located next to the N.P. & M.R. offices.