Thanks to a sleuthing public, the Château Laurier has announced that a famed portrait of Winston Churchill appears to have been taken off the hotel's walls this past winter, during a span of a week and a half over the holidays.

After news of the theft broke on Monday, people started sending the hotel pictures they had snapped of the print signed by famed Canadian photographer Yousuf Karsh, according to Geneviève Dumas, general manager of the Fairmont hotel in downtown Ottawa.

"It was something very dear to the people of Ottawa's heart, the Karsh Winston Churchill portrait. Everybody was so kind in sending us all kinds of pictures and information they could share with us, which helped us," Dumas said.

As of Tuesday, the most recent submitted photo of the real portrait was taken on Dec. 25, 2021, and CBC's Washington correspondent Paul Hunter took the first known photo of the fake on Jan. 6 this year.