A Staircase's Undramatic Name, and a Souvenir That Held D-Day

Escalier Casse-Cou sounds like it should have a body count behind it — "breakneck" isn't a name you'd expect for something harmless. But city archives from the 17th century don't record a single death or serious injury on the stairs themselves; the actual danger back then came from reckless young men racing horsecarts down the adjoining hill at speed. The staircase carried gentler names for centuries — Champlain Stairs, even Beggars' Stairs — before "breakneck" stuck sometime in the 1800s, more evocative nickname than accurate history.

In 1943, Churchill and Roosevelt met inside the Château Frontenac to plan the invasion of Normandy, and the operation's complete outline briefly went missing in the most ordinary way imaginable. A Canadian sergeant major named Émile Couture found a leather portfolio stamped with both leaders' names and, not grasping what it held, simply kept it as a souvenir. It turned out to contain nearly the entire D-Day plan — troop counts, ship numbers, aircraft totals. He handed it in the next morning and never spoke of it publicly, and was quietly awarded a medal for his silence the following year.