The Explorers Society Hotel

Nine Rooms Above a 1911 Tobacco Shop

Revelstoke spent a century as a railway town before the skiers found it, and its main streets still carry the brick and cornice work of that period. The Explorers Society occupies one of the better examples: the McKinnon Building at 111 First Street West, raised in 1911 by Hector McKinnon, a tobacco merchant who served as mayor five times. The conversion turned it into the town’s first boutique hotel without stripping it out, so the staircase, the masonry and the volumes are the ones the building was born with, and the nine rooms are fitted into them rather than over them.

Why It Works

Revelstoke is a serious mountain destination with a shortage of places to sleep that match it. Most beds are condos at the hill or motels on the highway. The Explorers Society is the third option, and the only one where the building itself is part of the trip. We kept it because nine rooms, a restaurant with a named chef and a bar built around a hundred-year-old boiler add up to something no base village can reproduce, and because staying downtown means the evening does not require a car.

Why This Location

First Street West is the heart of downtown Revelstoke, which means the restaurants, the bakeries, the bike shops and the Revelstoke Railway Museum are all within a few blocks. Revelstoke Mountain Resort is a short drive southeast, close enough to ski without living at the base. Mount Revelstoke National Park begins at the edge of town, with the Meadows in the Sky Parkway climbing straight out of it, and Glacier National Park lies about an hour east along the Trans-Canada. The Columbia River runs below town for summer paddling.

Fast Facts

• Price: Premium to Luxury

• Vibe: Heritage brick, expedition-club, small

• Rooms: 9 rooms across the converted McKinnon Building

• Best For: skiers and snowboarders, summer cyclists and paddlers, couples who prefer a town to a resort

• Our Favorite Thing About the Hotel: the Boiler Room bar, built around the building’s original coal-fired boiler rather than around a design brief

• Dining: Quartermaster, French-leaning cooking under chef Olivier Dutil, with the Boiler Room bar for whisky and cocktails afterwards

• Amenities: rooftop lounge with fireplace and outdoor terrace, hot tub and sauna, ski and bike storage, parking

• Attractions: downtown Revelstoke at the door, Revelstoke Railway Museum a few blocks away, Revelstoke Mountain Resort a short drive, Mount Revelstoke National Park at the edge of town

The Boiler Room, and What Was Kept

The conversion is the reason to notice this hotel rather than another. Rather than clearing the basement, the owners built the bar around the original coal-fired boiler and left it in plain sight, which gives the room a centre that no amount of styling could buy. The same instinct runs upstairs in the joinery and the window reveals. Nothing here pretends the building was always a hotel, and that honesty is what separates a heritage conversion that works from one that reads as pastiche.

Quartermaster and the Rooftop

Quartermaster is the dining room, French in technique under Olivier Dutil and sourced close to home, and at this size the kitchen can move with what arrives rather than with a printed card. Above it, the top floor is given over to guests as a lounge: deep chairs, a fireplace, an outdoor terrace and a long view over the rooftops to the peaks. It is the part of the hotel that earns its keep on a storm day, when the hill is closed and nobody wants to sit in a bedroom.

Nine Rooms, and What to Know Before You Book

Nine rooms means the hotel sells out early in both seasons, so book well ahead for a powder week or a summer weekend. Check-in runs from three in the afternoon and check-out is at ten, earlier than most, which matters if you were planning a last morning on the hill. There is no spa, but a hot tub and sauna cover the recovery, and ski and bike storage are handled on site. Pets are not accommodated.