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It could easily have ended up in Toronto. It almost did.

Imagine?

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Fifty years ago Sunday, ’round midnight, John Lennon and Yoko Ono touched down at Dorval airport and made their way to the Queen Elizabeth Hotel for a one-week stay that would mark music history and ingrain itself into the psyche and soul of our city.

But their Montreal bed-in for peace happened almost by chance. From the decision of where to hold it to seemingly everything that followed, and everyone who found themselves in the midst of the era’s new self-appointed ambassadors of world peace, serendipity played a part.

Photo by Tedd Church / Gazette files

Looking through the Montreal Gazette archives and other sources, one is struck by the array of fortuitous circumstances that led so many regular Montrealers into the orbit of John and Yoko, and led the happy hippie couple to set up camp in Room 1742 (and adjoining Rooms 1738, 1740 and 1744) of the Queen Elizabeth, from May 26 to June 2, 1969.