The Best Places to Drink and Stay in Canada

The tallest building in Surrey puts every room well above the low-rise sprawl, with views stretching to the North Shore mountains that most Vancouver hotels can only hint at. This Autograph Collection hotel keeps the rooms crisp and minimalist, the service professional. Downstairs, Dominion Bar & Kitchen handles New Canadian cooking while Prado Cafe covers the morning coffee crowd. A solid base for exploring the wider metro without fighting downtown Vancouver for a parking spot.

Sitting directly on the Lake Ontario waterfront in Burlington, The Pearle is a luxury hotel where most of the 151 rooms face the water and the palette runs to pale wood and warm neutrals, the kind of calm that makes you forget you have a phone. The in-house restaurant draws from the hotel's own farm, and the spa runs to a Hammam, an indoor pool, and a full treatment menu, which is a serious offering for a city this size.

A lakeside resort just outside Quebec City where the activity list runs from paddle-boarding in summer to snowshoeing in winter, with a spa and private beach for the days you'd rather do nothing at all. Rooms lean into natural materials and warm tones, many with balconies over Lac-Beauport. The Michelin Guide has it among its selected hotels, which tracks: it handles both the slow weekend and the corporate retreat without feeling like it's trying too hard for either.

A mid-century downtown motel in the Rockies, renovated into a boutique hotel with worn leather, reclaimed wood, and just enough Scandinavian restraint to feel intentional rather than precious. Rooms come with Nespresso machines and Bluetooth speakers, there's a shared hot tub, and Canmore's whole walkable downtown, cafés, wine bars, taverns and all, is right outside. No restaurant, but the neighborhood handles that just fine.

A boutique lodge on the edge of Banff National Park where breakfast shows up at your door and a sauna is waiting when you drag yourself back from the trail. Rooms are stylish without being precious, so hiking boots are welcome, and some have gas fireplaces; the Micro Suite adds a kitchen for longer stays. Cruiser bikes are available in summer to poke around Canmore, which is exactly the kind of town you'd want to poke around.

A skybridge connects this Germain Hotels property directly to Ottawa's terminal, so an early departure means rolling out of bed rather than into a cab. The 178 rooms are clean and functional, with king rooms facing the runways for light sleepers who have made their peace with that. Sosta! Pizzeria does wood-fired pizza in the lobby when you'd rather not eat at the gate. The gym runs all night, because airport hotels attract that kind of person.

Each of the 49 suites at this slope-side boutique hotel comes with a full kitchen, a gas fireplace, and, in some, a private outdoor hot tub. Sundial sits steps from the Whistler and Blackcomb gondolas, yet still small enough that the concierge will arrange grocery delivery so you never have to leave. Village dining and nightlife are right outside when you do feel like it.

The pitch is a Ligurian villa somehow dropped onto a ridge above Saanich Inlet, with Vancouver Island's mountains filling every window. This resort north of Victoria has quietly shed its '80s Italianate kitsch for something more considered, and the Tuscan Spa keeps pace with the rooms. The restaurant, Alpina, runs on European technique learned in Italy, Germany, and Switzerland, applied to local British Columbia ingredients, which is a stranger and more compelling idea than it sounds.

A small lodge in Canmore, right where the Rockies tip into Banff National Park, with twelve suites that split the difference between mountain cabin and proper boutique hotel. Loft suites sleep four, and the Cougar Creek Suite pulls back to an intimate two. The restaurant, Devil's Table, arrived with the owners from the Caribbean island of Bequia, so the menu is a genuinely odd and pleasing detour from the expected après-hike fare. Selected by the Michelin Guide.

The entrance sits on the seventh floor because the hotel is carved into the side of Sulphur Mountain and simply keeps going downhill from there, which means nearly every room faces the same broad sweep of Rocky Mountain valley. It's a full resort in Banff, so gondolas, ski hills, and hot springs are all close, but the building's clever geometry means you don't need to leave the window to feel like you're already somewhere improbable.

Preservation jars line the shelves as decor, which tells you something: this Michelin-starred fine dining room on Main Street ferments, forages, and pickles its way through the seasons before a single plate reaches the table. Chef Gus Stieffenhofer-Brandson weaves Manitoba roots and Nordic technique into a deeply West Coast menu, and the bar crowd ordering à la carte gets the same serious treatment as the tasting menu pilgrims. North America's 50 Best lists it at number seventeen.

An English manor house relocated, spiritually at least, to a 22-acre spread above Ganges Harbour on Salt Spring Island. This small luxury country house hotel runs just 18 rooms and suites, keeping things quietly unhurried in a way that larger properties can only promise. Spa treatments happen in a converted barn, the restaurant puts a Swiss chef's European training against British Columbia's seasonal larder, and the ferry ride over from Vancouver already feels like the trip beginning.

The marble bar top, tin ceiling, and tile floor make Geraldine feel like it's been on Queen West since long before Queen West was Queen West. It hasn't, but the New Orleans-themed cocktail bar wears the illusion well. Green walls and floor-to-ceiling windows that fold open frame a long, narrow room where the bar along the left wall is clearly where the action is. Cajun and Creole food runs in the background, but the bar stools are the point.

The hotel had a colorful past before its transformation into one of Queen West's anchor addresses, and the lounge bar still carries that energy: loud, packed, and moving fast. Artists in residence leave their mark on the walls, so the room always looks like something is happening, because it usually is. A cocktail bar where the drinks share equal billing with the scene, and where the crowd tends to arrive already in a good mood.

A converted row house near U of T, with a backyard patio and ten seats at the bar, The Harbord Room is a cocktail bar that somehow manages to be a neighborhood spot and a destination at once. The staff is young and unstuffy, the room keeps its tables low and its energy lower, and the whole thing sits at the edge of a residential block like it landed there by accident and decided to stay.

An unmarked brown door on College Street, opened only by membership card, is all the warning you get. Inside, a narrow staircase climbs to a small, dimly lit speakeasy with dark wood, ten bar seats, and two tucked-away seating areas. It's a members-only cocktail bar, though out-of-towners willing to email ahead have been known to get in. The kind of place that makes you feel like you know something most people don't.

The floorboards are milled from Nova Scotian lumber, which tells you where the owners' loyalties lie. This boutique inn occupies a handsome Italianate mansion that survived a fire in the 1890s, and its restoration was quietly shaped by a trip to Italy and an interest in slow-living hospitality. Rooms are simply but warmly decorated, breakfast is made in-house, and your hosts apparently have strong opinions about where to eat locally.

A raw-concrete modernist house a short walk from the Avon Theatre, designed by Shim/Sutcliffe in the spirit of Tadao Ando, renting as a self-contained two-bedroom stay. The furnishings are modernist classics, the art is contemporary, and the kitchen comes stocked with Pelee Island wine and Le Labo bath products. It sits among Stratford's Victorian Gothic streetscapes like a polite argument. Check-in is Fridays or Mondays, with a minimum stay, so plan accordingly.

A 19th-century foundry turned boutique hotel on Lake Ontario, Drake Devonshire sits in Prince Edward County wine country with twelve rooms that range from a skylit nook called the Stargazer to a full A-frame suite. The design is all contemporary art and warm farmhouse bones, and the outdoor restaurant draws a sociable crowd that arrived carrying the cult energy of the original Drake in Toronto. Selected by the Michelin Guide.

Floor-to-ceiling glass on a black rock promontory above the Pacific, because the rainforest-lodge aesthetic has been done. This contemporary oceanfront resort selected by the Michelin Guide sits outside Ucluelet on Vancouver Island, with rooms built around the view: California kings, gas fireplaces, kitchenettes, and enough square footage that "hotel room" barely covers it. A full-service spa and a sea-view restaurant round things out for when the ocean stops being enough.

A red brick Gothic Revival mansion a block from Picton Harbour, Merrill House is the kind of boutique hotel that makes you wonder if you've quietly teleported to an English village. The owners split their time between here and London, and the décor takes that seriously, inside and out. Prince Edward County's wine country surrounds it, but the house itself is all anglophile calm, quiet enough to feel quasi-rural despite sitting just off Main Street.

Tucked between a deserted beach and the Wild Pacific Trail on Vancouver Island's Pacific coast, this cabin resort sits in the quieter, less photographed neighbor town to Tofino. The one-, two-, and three-bedroom standalone cabins are the draw, each feeling genuinely removed from everything, whether perched at the water's edge or nested deeper in the forest. The main lodge has suites if you want something smaller, but the cabins are why you came.

A renovated roadside motel in Prince Edward County wine country, The June sits just outside Picton with views over a protected bay. The 16 rooms run mod-bohemian, very photogenic, and the lobby bar carries the day from morning coffee through late-night cocktails. Guests eventually migrate to the garden firepit when the weather holds. The makeover was compelling enough that a second project earned its own Netflix series.

Swarovski built this Okanagan Valley resort, so yes, there are crystals everywhere, but the focus lands closer to kale than to chandeliers. The spa menu runs from standard massage to vitamin infusions and nutrition counseling, which is either reassuring or a lot depending on your vacation philosophy. Rooms are large, with floor-to-ceiling windows framing the mountains or the lake, and the restaurant leans into locally sourced cooking with the same views.

The fridges here run deep with natural, low-intervention, and unfiltered wines from B.C. and further afield, and the staff will pop a cork in your direction before you've even settled in. Bar Tartare is a wine bar tucked inside the Birds and the Beets cafe on Alexander, with a short food menu anchored by the tartare the name promises. Guest chefs rotate through on nights, so the kitchen is never quite the same twice.

Rooftop hot tubs overlooking the Columbia River set the tone at this boutique apartment-style hotel on the northern edge of Revelstoke. Units run from micro studios to six-bedroom spreads, so it works equally well for solo skiers and groups who want a kitchen and room to sprawl. Shared BBQs and communal space give it the feel of a well-designed base camp, which, to be fair, is exactly what it's advertising.

Floor-to-ceiling glass frames the golf course and the forests beyond, which is the point of being in Campbell River at all. This resort sits close to the docks where boats leave for whale-watching and grizzly tours, so the outdoors is the real agenda. Sustainably sourced wood and stone, Art Deco leather chairs, a cocktail bar downstairs, and an indoor-outdoor pool and firepits for when you come back muddy.

Marble floors, a signature Indian jasmine scent piped through the air, and live music three times a day set the tone for this hotel lobby bar inside one of Vancouver's glossier addresses. It's the kind of place where the city's famously casual dressing meets conspicuous chandeliers and nobody seems bothered by the contradiction. On weekend nights after ten, the potted plants reportedly double as a dance floor, so plan accordingly if you came to drink seriously.

A Douglas Fir bar that's been around forever runs nearly wall to wall, and the waistcoated bartenders working it keep classic cocktails moving at a clip that suggests they've never had a slow Tuesday. This Gastown cocktail bar pulls off a London pub atmosphere in a city that usually splits the difference between restaurant and lounge, with leather booths and deep couches upstairs for the chattier end of the crowd.

Groupings of clocks, plates, mirrors, and pictures cover the walls of this lively Queen West bar, giving it the feel of a well-curated storage unit that somehow works. High ceilings and a wall of windows that open when the weather cooperates keep things from getting claustrophobic, even when the room fills up and the noise climbs. The cocktail menu holds its own, and the kitchen out back means you can actually eat.

Ten stools, two bartenders, and a wine wall that takes itself seriously without making you feel like you should too. West is a wine bar on Granville that embodies what Vancouver does well: high-touch without the starch. The bartenders have been here long enough to know what you want before you do, and afternoons are unhurried, though weekend evenings pack the room two deep with the pre-dinner crowd treating it as a destination in itself.

The curvy white marble bar anchors one corner of a room that looks like it's been pleasantly roughed up by a century of good times, tiled floor and all. Clough Club is a cocktail bar with genuinely progressive drinks, which sets it apart from the group's other spots. Upholstered benches and club chairs line the walls, a tall marble table invites standing rounds in the middle, and the whole thing reads less like a design statement than a place people actually like drinking in.

A garage-door window folds open along Queen West when the weather cooperates, turning this narrow cocktail bar into something between a room and a street corner. Grey-and-green walls, yellow chairs, and a small raised library nook with a sofa and an aquarium give it the feel of a well-curated living room. The bar industry tends to hold its parties here, which tells you something about the drinks program without requiring further argument.