Unfortunately I'm not able to be there today due to a required thing at work, hopefully someone else will be providing updates for you guys.
On a related note, I notice on Kevin Spraggett's blog, and I think I've read elsewhere also, people complaining about this event "scaring away" the top players.
I just had a look, and we have 6 of the top 7 active Canadians in this event. I'm not sure how that doesn't count as "strong." And if we also ignore players who haven't played a rated game in Canada in oh, the past, say, 4 years and 11 months, we have 6 of the top 6.