Dick Brocker's daughter dines at the Royal Connaught again

In a way, Andrea Brockers dinner downtown Thursday is a little like having a meal with her dad again.

Brocker will join nine family members for dinner at the Royal Connaught, the hotel that was her fathers pride and joy for 43 years.

Itll be emotional for Brocker, whose father Dick Brockerdied in April 2013, 12 years after retiring as the general manager of the "Grand Old Lady." Shell join her mom, her brother, her sons and other family for a catered dinner in the once-closed hotel that's now being converted intoboutique condos.

"It will help me in healing after losing my dad, and knowing how he felt about the hotel not being rejuvenated,"she said. "Its definitely a healing process."

"I dont think itll be an easy time for (my mom), or for me. Watching her tonight is going to be very emotional."

Dick Brockerimmigrated to Canada from Germany in 1956. Two years later, he got a job at the Royal Connaught. He started as a dishwasher before moving his way up to work as a waiter at the elegant Wedgewood dining room. When he retired in 2001, he was the hotel's general manager.

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The hotel was his baby, AndreaBrocker said. He spent many hours outside his usual work day supervising events, wanting each one to be perfect. Most of his own familys events were spent there, from "birthdays in the dining room" to "weddings in the ballroom,"Brocker wrote in an essay that won a contest put on by the developer.

As a child, she felt lucky "to be able to watch the Santa Claus parades and the Grey Cup celebration from inside the warmth of an unused meeting room," she said.

She remembers waiting for her dad to finish work and heading into the kitchen to ask for food, or running "the never ending hallways."

She was particularly fascinated, she wrote, with the ladies' powder room near one of her dads offices, which was pink and black and had swivel stools where women could sit and touch up their makeup. She eventually worked at the hotel herself for about eight years.

Dick Brockers well-attended retirement party had an element of sadness, she said. People knew the hotel was struggling. Its closure in 2004 was like losing a family member, she told CBC Hamilton.

"You spend your lifetime dedicated to your career, and to see it fall apart, that was the hardest thing," she said.

"When you love something so much, you want to be able to have memories go on and continue. But it just wasnt looking like that for a while."

One by one, plans for the Connaught rose and faltered. Her father didnt live to see the final one the Spallacci Group and Valery Homes developing The Residences of Royal Connaught condo project.

The developer offered the contest winner dinner for 20 people at the new Connaught, which AndreaBrocker will share with co-winner 93-year-oldMargaret Sardo, who worked at the hotel in the 1940s.

When she entered the Connaught in September, it was the first time in 12 years. "Tears came to my eyes," Brocker said.

The lobby looked the same. The original pillars were there. The character of her former second home was intact.

The Connaught's condos are 70 per cent sold months ahead of schedule, the developers say. They will make an announcement about phase two before the end of the year. They're about to start the first phase of construction.

With the Connaught open again, with the building cared for, she likes to imagine her dad is still there, somehow.

"I know hes busy running that grand hotel in the sky,"Brocker wrote in her essay.

"But please remember, if somehow a monarch gets into the lobby, let it be. Its just my dad having a lookaround."