Yellowknife’s Explorer Hotel turns 50

Yellowknife’s Explorer Hotel turns 50 this year – a major milestone for a building that has housed everything from territorial politics and the Berger Inquiry to tourists and weddings.

“It was always, in my view, a very special property, much like some of the classic old hotels like the Fairmont Hotel Macdonald in Edmonton or the Palliser in Calgary. It’s kind-of a timeless property,” said Doug Cox, the CEO of Nunastar Properties, which owns the Explorer. 

In the late 1960s, then-NWT commissioner Stuart Hodgson oversaw the creation of a territorial capital that moved some aspects of governance from Ottawa to Yellowknife.

Cox said Hodgson had “a very big vision for what Yellowknife could and should be, and one of his ideas was that they needed a first-class hotel.”

Hodgson brought in Pacific Western Airlines to help develop the project, as the company was doing a lot of business in the North at the time.

The airline had no hotel experience, however, and so it recruited Harry Hole – of Lockerbie & Hole, an Edmonton engineering company – to help.

Hole, who became Cox’s father-in-law, saw the project through to completion between 1972 and 1974, even after the airline stepped back.

“They had their grand opening in 1974. It was an incredible event, to have a hotel of that size,” said Cox. In the years that followed, the hotel hosted some meetings of the Territorial Council before it became known as the Legislative Assembly.

Cox said Hole sold the property in 1998 to Grandfield Pacific. In a full-circle moment, Cox bought the property in 2004 under his own real estate development company.

“It needed a lot of work in 2004, so we made a very significant renovation of the property, which was the beginning of what it looks like and feels like today,” he said.

In 2007, Nunastar added an extra 60 rooms to the hotel. In 2018, it added another 72. Today, the hotel has 259 rooms.

“There’s always a balance in any great hotel between the number of rooms you have and the public spaces – the conference space, meeting space and restaurants,” Cox explained. “It’s really quite optimized now and in great shape.”

“Every time we’re looking at renovating or improving or fixing or replacing finishes, we always think about what it means to people. We want to make it even more special as time goes on. The vision will never stop for that hotel,” he said.

Later this summer, the Explorer is getting an outdoor patio as part of that vision.

“It’s just adding something that Yellowknifers can enjoy. It’s not really a moneymaker, but we want people to enjoy the hotel,” said Cox.

Ups and downs of the Explorer

Reflecting on his time owning the Explorer and even before that, Cox said: “It’s been incredible. It’s been an incredible property. I love the hotel business because hotels have personality, just like human beings do.”

It hasn’t always been easy, though. He thought back to the 1990s, when the gold mines were shutting down and business slowed.

There was also the Covid-19 pandemic, which shuttered the tourism industry for a season. In spite of that, the Explorer reports an overall increase in travellers over the past decade.

During last summer’s wildfire evacuation, Cox said he flew into Yellowknife as nearly everyone else left, planning to help the fewer than a dozen employees left to serve 200 firefighters and emergency crews.

“We started to go to work and gradually found enough people to run the property during that period of time when the town was empty, but our hotel was full,” he said.

Food was airlifted in via Buffalo Airways to ensure the hotel had enough to feed people.

“From an emergency point of view, the key people that were on site basically said if everything goes down, this is going to be the last building standing,” he said, “because it was basically the nerve centre of the effort and the people to fight that fire.”

To celebrate the hotel’s 50th anniversary, Cox said Nunastar is planning an initiative that celebrates “50 years with 50 good deeds.” The hotel is planning to donate to local charities and have staff volunteer at events.

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