Canada’s first aboriginal arts hotel opened in 2014. Part luxury hotel and part social enterprise, Skwachays Lodge ticks all the right boxes. On the luxe side: high thread count sheets, Hypnos beds (the same as the British royal family sleep on), spacious rooms, and abundant on-theme extras including Spirit Bear coffee (the company works with the Tsimshian Nation) and aboriginal-owned Earth Mother Essentials toiletries. The social enterprise part: all profits from the hotel and its gallery, which doubles as the check-in and lobby, go into subsidizing 24 live-work art studios on the first two floors of the lodge. Each room is unique, decorated with custom-made reclaimed wood furniture and designed as a partnership between local Vancouver artists and First Nations artists, including Corrine Hunt (a member of the Raven Gwa’wina clan from Ts’akis, who codesigned the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics and Paralympics medals). Many of the artists who created the rooms live on-site. BC First Nations themes of eagles, ravens, bears, whales, and the sun and the moon all feature strongly in the design.
