Southway Inn 2002 [Video]

From a news article in 2015

“…For nearly six decades, the Southway Hotel, at Bank St. and Hunt Club Rd. in south Ottawa, has been a “home away from home” for northerners heading to the capital to shop, relax, get well, play hockey, golf or to just spend a night on their way somewhere else.

And so it was with disappointment that many Nunavummiut discovered this week that the Southway, Ottawa’s first official “airport hotel” will close at the end of the year and be transformed into a retirement home.

“Honestly the best staff I have ever experienced in the hospitality industry. If they don’t have it, they get it. If there is something they don’t know, they will find out,” wrote Christal Byrne, who works for the Nunavut Housing Corp. in Iqaluit, in an email to Nunatsiaq News.

“It makes us all very sad to know that this summer will be our last stay there. They were so dedicated to accommodating every weird request us northerners had (and there were some pretty weird requests at times.)”

Deenah Kelly and her husband Rick say they’ve been staying at the Southway two or three times a year for the past decade whenever they come to Ottawa from Iqaluit, including for extended medical stays.

Kelly said staff came and replaced the shower head to a hand-held one once to make it easier for Rick to shower in bandages.

“Always treated northerners with respect and appreciated our problems, like having to bring four or five Tupperware containers back to the hotel for that early flight in the morning back home,” Kelly wrote in a Facebook message to Nunatsiaq News. “Always made accommodations to put stuff in the fridge or freezer for you…..”

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