This ribbon was used to thank and welcome people into an event held by Wm. Mcfarlane. With barely no information about the The Royal Hotel of Berlin, ON in 1856, we can not make many assumptions and inferences about the ribbon itself and it's real purpose and function. 

   Assuming that we did know, we could see on the ribbon that this ribbon is used for as I said, welcoming people into the Royal Hotel and giving them a small piece of ephemera that can be saved in order to say that they went to that opening. Although this is barely any information, it just shows that you need to have been there to really understand what had happened at that time.