The Bellevue hotel was built by the Basler family in 1945 to replace their boarding house that burned to the ground. It was the largest and grandest hotel in the town. The Baslers sold the hotel in 1968 to the Chen family who operated the hotel until 1987 when it was converted into its second life as a senior’s residence called Château des Aînés. The Plamondon family operated the Château from 1990 until spring 2015.
In the 1930s, 40s and 50s, trains brought weekend skiers to Morin Heights by the hundreds, and a dozen boarding houses and small hotels
welcomed them with basic accommodations and home-cooked meals. Bunny Basler’s father, John, who came to Canada from Switzerland in 1911, operated one of these boarding houses along with his new wife from the Gaspé. Their Bellevue House – located further along rue Bellevue– was destroyed in a fire in 1945. The location was perfect – close to the train station and near 
Kennedy’s ski tow (on the side of Sunset Hill), and later Ken and Eddy’s ski hill which was taken over by the Basler family in the 1950s and renamed Mont Bellevue. The legendary Viking Ski Club operated out of the basement of the Bellevue Hotel throughout the 1950s. Club members focused on building and maintaining the nearby Cloverleaf and Triangle cross-country ski trails and also built a new ski jump on Mont Bellevue.
Morin Heights was somewhat of a party town, with square dances and later live rock music at a number of nearby establishments, notably the Common’s and Rockcliff Inn. The new Bellevue Hotel was also a lively place. The bar on the lower floor and a large dining room on the main floor were often filled to capacity. The Baslers added a swimming pool in the lawn just to the west of the hotel; while intended primarily for guests, it was also enjoyed by local kids on hot summer afternoons for 25 cents a day.
By the 1960s, things were quieter in Morin Heights. The arrival of the Laurentian Autoroute and the closing of the train in 1962 marked the end of an era. As more and more Montreal families owned automobiles, they chose to drive up north for a day of skiing instead of staying over. Before long most boarding houses and hotels had closed.
