Stayed here over the Canada Day weekend and into midweek. The rooms are fine - window, closet space, beds, desks, vanity. Check-in was a bit long due to poor staffing, and on-site laundry is limited to one 24/7 site with one washer and one dryer for the entire dorm + individual sites with one washer and one dryer for an entire dorm only available at certain hours. I had to wake up at 5:30am in order to ensure I could do my laundry at a set time, and even then people were showing up at the room at 6:30am looking to use the facilities...
Location is mediocre. Close enough to the Commons, but still a 25min walk to museums, the train station, the waterfront boardwalk (prime attraction) - or more. Bus service is readily available. The campus is also aesthetically beautiful.
The bathrooms and showers in Shirreff Hall were unisex, but stalls were blocked floor-to-ceiling with adequate space for undressing and redressing. Hangers were also available, so the whole situation wasn't too bad. I was cautious at first, but it actually worked out nicely. Multiple stalls, too. Never had issues finding an available stall, but a lot of people left their university-supplied soap bars in the stalls, and housekeeping did not upkeep it frequently enough.
WiFi is decent. Beds are sturdy with lots of underbed storage. You can hear all of the noises in the hallway, though, and despite rules against it, there are a lot of drunkards and potsmokers that reserve rooms here and party.
That said, the staff is incompetent. I realized within 2hrs of checking out that I had left an expensive piece of equipment vital to my trip in the room, but I had already boarded a train. I called immediately to ask that they collect ship it via Canada Post to a Canada Post Office in Quebec City. They said they would take care of it, and I asked for a follow-up call - after three days with no follow-up, I called back to inquire, and the staff I spoke to at that time had no idea what I was talking about, although he confirmed that the item was on their desk. I was again promised a follow-up call, which I again did not receive. Four days later I called again, only to be told that this new employee had no idea what I was talking about. In all cases, I had provided credentials for a call-back, and I never received any. Finally, after over a week of back-and-forth, I received information about the status of my item, but it was instead shipped to my home and not to where I was at the time. This oversight significantly impacted my trip and cost me an additional 90$ out-of-pocket expense to partially replace the item with a knock-off product, minus the spare battery. While they shipped it to me free of charge, the running around and lack of adequate notetaking was frustrating from a traveller's perspective. It is a good thing I have free LD in Canada, or this entire ordeal would've been even more costly!
Meanwhile, I also notified staff about the potsmoking and the constant noise and banging in the hallways, and they blank-faced me on their own regulations. They claimed to have sent security to inspect the situation, but no one ever showed up, so I spent the night listening to slamming doors and loud howling inside and outside of the building. This amplified discomfort associated with Dalhousie University's dentistry division's severe case of misogynistic sexual harassment online and on campus: the situation felt unsafe for travelling women.
I would stay here again; however, I'd try to reserve at St. Mary's University before booking here. I would recommend Shirreff accommodations to others, as long as they do not require any help from staff members.
