"Later that month, Dunning was named vice-president of Lucerne-in-Quebec, a CPR company that operated the Seigniory Club, an exclusive resort on the Ottawa River in Montebello, Quebec. Describing Dunning’s new duties, Harry Sifton explained: “He builds roads, excavates for swimming pools, sells land and has a great time, getting $25,000.00 a year for doing it.” “I am in the happy position of having more work than I can comfortably handle,” Dunning explained to a friend, “which always represents a condition of real happiness for me.” From a western regional perspective, little ambiguity remained: Dunning had “become an easterner.” ... The Lucerne-in-Quebec Seigniory Club at Montebello was not merely a moneymaking project; it was also a project of class consolidation. Taken over by the CPR from a U.S. syndicate, it was seventyfive miles west of Montreal and forty-five miles east of Ottawa, conveniently located between Canada’s centres of economic and political power and “easily accessible by Canadian Pacific Railway, or by Montreal-Hull-Ottawa highway, Quebec Route 8.” Dunning was, in a sense, ideal to manage the project, since he was already familiar with the Montreal-Ottawa axis that the Seigniory Club served and helped consolidate. Encompassing an area of 80,000 acres stretching into the Laurentian Mountains, the club was a planned community that offered exclusive hunting and fishing rights to its members, golf, an array of seasonal activities, and an exclusive club atmosphere. Beatty encouraged Prime Minister Bennett to treat “Lucerne as a suburb of Ottawa” during the Imperial Economic Conference in 1932 and argued it was a “convenient … place for the residence of delegates or advisers while the Conference is proceeding.” During the Second World War, Algoma Steel president Sir James Dunn spent much of his time at Montebello to stay close to Ottawa, where the steel controller and minister of munitions and supply, C.D. Howe, became “[a]nnoyed by the steel president’s frequent, unannounced appearances at his office.” This moneyed preserve had been a seigneury, as the club’s name suggested – that of Louis-Joseph Papineau, the famous patriote of the Lower Canadian Rebellion whose descendants could no longer afford the manor’s upkeep and auctioned it in 1929. Resold to the Lucerne-in-Quebec Community Association Limited, Papineau’s chateau was converted into a clubhouse with a large ballroom, a billiards room, and a mock-Elizabethan tavern. A promotional booklet emphasized Papineau’s role as a parliamentary reformer and reimagined the organic structure and aristocratic tenor of life on the seigneury; the property was thus not only legally appropriated but intellectually appropriated as well. Moneymaking and the maintenance of social exclusivity: one reinforced the other, since attracting the “right” people would make membership more desirable for others. Beatty encouraged CPR directors to join the club for that reason. “I have already told Mr. Dunning to send application forms to Sir Herbert Holt, Sir Charles Gordon, Mr. Tilley and myself,” explained Beatty to Stelco president Ross H. McMaster, also a CPR director. “He has already received an application from Senator Beique,” continued Beatty, “and applications for membership will also be sent to Mr. R.S. McLaughlin, Colonel Frank Meighen, Colonel Cockshutt and other members of our directorate. As you will appreciate this support should be of great value in the sale of lots, and if you feel free to take a lot, I would naturally be very glad.” Jews, meanwhile, were excluded, a policy that reflected the ubiquity of upper-class anti-Semitism during the period, and the procedure to gain membership ensured that only those with the requisite wealth and social standing would gain admittance. “Membership in the Seigniory Club and Lucerne-in-Quebec community is both selective and exclusive,” proclaimed a promotional booklet."
- Don Nerbas, Dominion of Capital: The Politics of Big Business and the Crisis of the Canadian Bourgeoisie, 1914-1947. University of Toronto Press, 2013. p. 93-95
