If you have an upcoming stay at this hotel I would suggest you call ahead and see where you are staying. I showed up to the front door to be told this has become a homeless shelter and my reservation was at another hotel 3 km away. No calls or emails were made to me prior to my showing up. Had I known my weekend arrangements would have been different. They offered to pay my cab fare since I was on foot.

One of the best pieces of advice I got many years ago was to stay at the best hotel you could afford because if the weather sucks, and the city sucks, you always have a nice hotel. It was great advice and so I was a bit worried about my choice to stay at the Strathcona in March when I attended the prospectors convention. It is not a luxury hotel ... but it is still very nice, very comfortable and very affordable. So why not stay there? Anyone who has been to the PDAC event in past years knows how busy it can be. I was leaving the hotel at 9 a.m. and getting back by about 9 p.m. Just enough time to get to the pub, have a nice supper, a couple of beers, watch the hockey game and then crash into bed. Getting up the next morning, I found the rooms were perfectly functional and clean. My first morning, tried the in-house breakfast. It was nice. It was also expensive. The second morning I noticed there was a huge Tim Horton's right across the street. So I went in and was pleased to see several friends already there. Breakfast at Timmies was just fine. A couple of days later, the boss was pleased to note I had saved $600 from my hotel stay over the previous year. That counts when you want to submit travel plans for future events. So yes, the Strathcona was worth it and I plan to stay there for personal travel as well. The strathcona is in a perfect location, about 100 metres away from the Royal York and close to several nice restaurants.

At the end of February our VIARail reservation on The Canadian was cancelled because of the indigenous peoples protest blocking the tracks. As a result we needed to cancel a pre-paid reservation at the Strathcona made through a third party. The third party refused to credit me and said that I needed to deal with Strathcona, who had already credited the third party for my reservation.

To make a long story short, Michael Kashan, the Front Office Manager at the Strathcona Hotel, worked hard on my behalf to get my refund. It took a number of emails and significant time to make me a very satisfied customer. So "hats off" for a job well done by Michael and the Strathcona. I look forward to personally meeting him on our next stay!