During the first ever royal tour of Canada by a reigning monarch, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth stayed at the Windsor Hotel, and their arrival on May 18, 1939, attracted throngs of well-wishers to the hotel. The crowds were so large that one man died of a heart attack, many others collapsed due to heat and exhaustion, and the police found 64 children that had been separated from their parents. At a state banquet in the hotel prepared by chef Gabriel Meunier, Montreal's francophone mayor, Camillien Houde, famously remarked in his address to the monarchs: "I thank you from the bottom of my heart for coming. And my wife thanks you from her bottom, too."