PDAC week, in one paragraph
PDAC — the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada's annual convention, the world's largest mining conference, early March, at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre — brings 25,000 delegates from 130 countries, a thousand exhibitors, and every mining company's CEO to Toronto for four days of exhibits, presentations, investor meetings and receptions. Ground transport for the week is booked two to three weeks ahead: block bookings for companies' delegations with arrival-day coordinators at Pearson, Sprinters for the exploration teams and premium sedans for the CEOs' investor roadshows through the Financial District's towers, the hotels from the Royal York to Yorkville to the airport strip, the receptions at the clubs, the hotels and the King West venues every night, and March's weather, which can add a snowstorm to it all. The rest of the finance conference season — the banks' conferences, the Toronto Global Forum, the pension funds' and the exchange's events — runs on the same pattern at smaller scale.
Toronto is the world's mining finance capital — more mining companies are listed on the TSX and the TSX Venture than on any other exchanges — and once a year the industry comes to it: PDAC fills both buildings of the convention centre with exhibits and technical sessions, fills the Financial District's towers with investor meetings, fills every hotel room from the core to the airport strip, and fills the evenings with receptions that run from the clubs on Wellington to the venues on King West to the hotels' ballrooms. For the black car trade it is the year's largest single peak after the December holidays — every delegation books its arrivals, every CEO books a roadshow, every sponsor books its reception's cars — and it arrives in March, when a snowstorm is as likely as not. This article describes PDAC week as dispatch runs it: the convention centre and the hotels, the arrivals and the coordinators, the delegations' Sprinters, the CEOs' roadshows, the receptions, the weather, the booking timeline, the accounts, and then the rest of the finance conference season that borrows PDAC's pattern.
The convention centre and the district
PDAC uses both MTCC buildings — the Trade Show and the Investors Exchange in the South Building's halls, the technical sessions and the Core Shack in the North — and the conference transportation article covers the drop-offs on Front Street and Lower Simcoe, the bridge between the buildings and the hotels around; during PDAC the Front Street lay-by is a queue from 7 a.m., the InterContinental and the Delta are the convention's own hotels, and the Financial District's towers two blocks east host the investor meetings that are the week's real business. The executive car service article has the towers' lay-bys, and the Union Station pickup article the station that half the delegates walk through.
The hotels: from the core to the airport strip
Twenty-five thousand delegates exceed downtown's hotel capacity, and PDAC's rooms run from the Royal York, the Ritz, the Shangri-La and the Financial District's hotels (booked a year ahead by the majors and the banks) through Yorkville's Four Seasons and Park Hyatt (the CEOs and the funds), the Entertainment District's and the waterfront's hotels, midtown's, and out to the airport strip's twenty properties on Dixon Road, whose delegates ride into the city each morning in a forty-minute crawl; the Pearson to downtown hotels article, the Toronto luxury hotels guide and the airport strip guide cover them. A delegation at a Dixon Road hotel books a Sprinter for the daily run to the convention centre and back, and it is the week's most common booking after the airport.
The arrivals: two days, every flight, a coordinator inside
Delegates arrive over the Saturday and Sunday before the convention opens on Sunday afternoon — from Vancouver and Perth and Johannesburg and Santiago and London, on every flight into Pearson — and the companies' delegations are met by our arrival-day coordinators inside the arrivals halls with the companies' boards, sending each arrival to the right vehicle as their flight lands; the group transfers article has the procedure and the customs time article explains why a Saturday afternoon in March with the Perth and Johannesburg flights landing together is the customs hall's slow day. A major's forty-person delegation is a manifest a week ahead and a coordinator for two days; a junior's three-person team is a Sprinter with meet and greet.
The delegations' Sprinters and the CEOs' sedans
The exploration teams, the geologists, the investor relations staff and the exhibitors' booth teams travel in Sprinters — the hotel to the convention centre at 7:30, back at 6, the receptions between — on the companies' accounts; the CEOs, the CFOs and the bankers travel in premium sedans on the roadshow article's pattern, because PDAC week is when every mining company in the world is on a Toronto roadshow at once: investor meetings in the Financial District's towers at half-hour intervals from 8 to 5, a lunch presentation, a reception, and the roadshow article's fifteen-minute buffers stretched to twenty for the week's traffic. The Mercedes S-Class article and the Sprinter guide describe the vehicles.
The receptions: every night, every venue
PDAC's evenings are the industry's networking: the companies' and the banks' receptions at the Toronto Club and the National Club, the Royal York's and the King Edward's ballrooms, the Ritz's and the Shangri-La's, the King West restaurants and event spaces, the Distillery's venues, the Hockey Hall of Fame, Steam Whistle, the CN Tower's restaurant, the Design Exchange — three or four a night for a delegate who is invited to all of them, and the hourly fleets shuttle the CEOs between them while the Sprinters move the teams. The event limo page, the Entertainment District guide and the Distillery guide cover the venues' pickups, and the corporate holiday party article's two-stage plan gets a sponsor's two hundred guests home from the Royal York at midnight.
March's weather
PDAC falls in the first week of March, and Toronto's March is the month of the late snowstorm and the freezing rain: a 20-centimetre snowfall on the convention's Monday is not rare, and the winter storm plan and the winter driving article apply to the week — the fleet on winter tires, the buffers doubled, the delegations' Sprinters on the routes the plows have cleared, the airport strip's morning run at an hour rather than forty minutes, and the arrivals' flights delayed and diverted with the tracking absorbing it. Delegations from Perth and Johannesburg who have never seen snow are a chauffeur's annual amusement.
The booking timeline
The majors and the banks book PDAC's transport in January — the manifests, the roadshow fleets, the receptions' cars; the mid-tier companies in February; the juniors in the last two weeks, when the fleet is committed and the answer is often a partner operator's car under our dispatch or an honest no. The how early to book article puts PDAC among the peaks with a two-to-three-week lead, and the last-minute booking article explains why a same-day request in PDAC week is the year's least likely to succeed. Our advice to a mining company: book when the convention registration is confirmed.
The accounts
PDAC bookings are on the mining companies' and the banks' corporate accounts — the investor relations manager or the executive assistant as the booker, the convention as a cost code, the roadshow as another, the reception as a third — and the corporate account billing article shows the week as a statement the CFO's office reconciles; the banks that host receptions and run their clients' roadshows book on their own accounts and rebill. Companies from abroad — Australian, South African, Chilean, British — pay in Canadian dollars with the deposits and payment article's foreign-card terms, and a delegation's account is opened in a day.
The rest of the finance conference season
PDAC is the largest, not the only: the banks' investor conferences through the spring and fall fill the Financial District's hotels with institutional investors for two days at a time; the Toronto Global Forum in the fall brings heads of state and CEOs to the Royal York; the pension funds' and the exchange's events, the CFA Society's and the fintech conferences, the Canadian Club's lunches at the Royal York — each is the conference transportation article's pattern at a smaller scale, with the roadshow article's investor meetings around them. The board meeting and AGM article covers the spring's AGM season, when the banks' and the miners' shareholders gather in the same ballrooms.
Discretion in a small industry
Mining is a small world in which everyone knows everyone's car, and PDAC week's roadshows discuss financings, mergers and drill results that are not yet public; the privacy and discretion article sets the standard, and a chauffeur who drives one company's CEO to a bank's floor in the morning and a rival's to the same floor in the afternoon says nothing to either. The diplomatic and consular article covers the version where a mining minister from a producing country brings a delegation to PDAC with a security detail.
A worked PDAC week: a mid-tier gold producer
January 20: the IR manager's email — a delegation of fourteen arriving Saturday and Sunday on nine flights from Vancouver, Denver, Lima and London; the Royal York for the executives, the Sheraton Centre for the team; the CEO's and CFO's roadshow Monday to Wednesday; the company's reception Tuesday at the Toronto Club; departures Thursday. Dispatch: two coordinators at Terminal 1 Saturday and Sunday; a Sprinter and two SUVs for the arrivals; a Sprinter on standby for the team's daily runs; two premium sedans for the roadshow with the roadshow article's buffers at twenty minutes; an hourly fleet of three for the reception's evening; the departures to Pearson and Billy Bishop over Thursday. Monday brought twelve centimetres of snow; the roadshow's first meeting started eight minutes late and the rest on time. One account, three cost codes, and an IR manager who booked the same week in January the following year.
PDAC and conference season quick reference
| Element | PDAC (early March) | The rest of the season |
|---|---|---|
| Venue | MTCC, both buildings; Financial District towers for meetings | Hotels' ballrooms; the Royal York; the clubs; the MTCC for the large ones |
| Scale | 25,000 delegates; every hotel from the core to the airport strip | Hundreds to a few thousand |
| Arrivals | Two days; coordinators inside Pearson's halls; manifests a week ahead | Meet and greet; smaller blocks |
| Delegations | Sprinters, hotel ↔ MTCC daily | Sedans and SUVs |
| CEOs | Premium sedans; roadshows with 20-minute buffers | Roadshow pattern |
| Evenings | Three or four receptions a night; hourly fleets | Dinners and receptions |
| Weather | March snowstorms; winter plan in force | Season-dependent |
| Booking lead | 2–3 weeks (majors book in January) | 1–2 weeks |
| Accounts | Companies' and banks' accounts; convention, roadshow and reception codes | Corporate accounts |
Booking PDAC transport
The corporate car service page opens a mining company's account in a day; the manifest and the roadshow schedule go to dispatch by email; the conference transportation article covers the convention centre and the roadshow article the meetings. Book when the registration is confirmed.
The investor relations manager's PDAC checklist
The IR managers who run PDAC transport well send dispatch the same things every January, and it is worth listing them. The delegation's arrival manifest — name, flight, date, hotel — as a spreadsheet, updated as the flights change. The roadshow's schedule — meeting times, tower addresses, the banker's contact — for the CEO's and CFO's cars, updated the Friday before. The reception's venue, start time and expected guest count. The hotel for each traveller, because a delegation split between the Royal York and a Dixon Road hotel needs two Sprinter runs, not one. The departures, which are always the last to be confirmed and can be sent the Wednesday of the convention. The cost codes. And one mobile number — the IR manager's or an assistant's — that answers during the week. The group transfers article has the manifest format and the executive assistants' guide the booker's dashboard where the IR manager watches the week unfold.
After PDAC: the site visits
The week after PDAC, some investors and analysts fly to the mines — and some mines are in Ontario: the Timmins and Kirkland Lake camps, Sudbury's nickel basin, Red Lake — reached by the airlines' northern flights from Pearson and Billy Bishop or by charter from the FBOs; the private aviation page covers the charter departures and the long-distance vs flying article the long-distance drives that some analysts prefer for a Sudbury visit. A company that hosts a site visit books the Toronto end with the same account and the same code.
