Canada’s
only guilded
butler serves
guests at
Azuridge Estate
by breanna mroczek
At Your
20
THE ESSENTIAL CALGARY 2015/16
United Kingdom that needed a butler would
hire from the guild.”
McLeod was approached by Azuridge’s
owners to join the team while he was
launching the Fairmont Gold program at the
Fairmont Baku in Azerbaijan, and while he was
entertaining a proposal to work in St. Lucia. “I
came [to Priddis] in November and it was cold
and snowing and I went to this small estate in
the countryside and I thought, ‘no way, I’m a city
guy’.” Clarence turned down the offer, but was
approached again in February. He made another
trip to Azuridge and met the rest of the team;
“that’s when I saw the potential,” McLeod said.
“I was deciding between Calgary and St. Lucia
and I picked Calgary.” He recalls making the
decision between Bermuda and Winnipeg early
in his career, and choosing Winnipeg turned out
to be a life-changing experience for him.
McLeod was selected to serve Queen
Elizabeth II during a stay in Winnipeg in 2002
during her Golden Jubilee tour. “The Queen’s
head of household and her butler came
and met me and we hit it off; they were [in
Winnipeg] to do their due diligence and visit
about a year before her Jubilee visit. I was
PHOTOGRAPHS: BY EMILY EXON, COURTESY PRESS AND POST
Service
Butlers are often associated with royalty and
celebrities, but Calgary has its own bona-fide
butler at Azuridge Estate, a luxury resort located
just 15 minutes from the south of Calgary in
Priddis, nestled between lush forests and the
Rocky Mountains where privacy is attainable
and customer service is key.
Clarence McLeod, Canada’s only guilded
butler and one of only three in North America,
has been at Azuridge since 2014, after working
at Fairmont properties for 25 years. “I’m finding
myself, and here is an interesting place to do
it,” he says. “Azuridge is a beautiful product and
unraveling all of the potential here with the
butler program is exciting. If there’s anything
I know how to do by heart, it’s the role of the
butler.”
McLeod describes the role of a guilded butler
as: “a professional designation given to butlers
who have gone through certain training,
usually the Victorian art of butlering. The
reason they go through the Victorian process
is because those are the techniques and skill
set you would need to use if you’re in service
to royalty—the biggest client designation.
Anyone in the royal family or palaces in the