Nathan VanderKlippe
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Oct 31/01) - Ernie Abel doesn't cook, but he's running a catering business and preparing food like no one else in town.

Abel, who manages Bouwa Whee Catering in Ndilo, has been in the business for four years. He started the service, which focuses on native dishes, because no one else was catering traditional foods.

Ernie Abel ladles some caribou stew at a recent function in Ndilo. Abel runs Bouwa Whee, the only traditional foods catering service in town. -- Thorunn Howatt/NNSL photo

"We do a lot of catering on our traditional menus, including caribou stew, bannock, fish, fried fish, muskox, char and pate," he said. "But we also have our conventional meals, like Christmas parties that have a traditional turkey and ham dinner."

Bouwa Whee prepares dishes for many local functions in Ndilo and runs the Smoke House Cafe. He caters primarily to Yellowknife customers, but the last two years he has shipped pre-made food -- complete with warming instructions -- to Toronto for the national chamber of commerce meetings there.

Dishes for catering are prepared in the Smoke House kitchen, usually by temporary workers hired for the job.

Abel also has two full-time workers running a cafe at the legislative assembly, and has a contract to cater all of the assembly's meetings and functions.

Abel has a sense of mission with Bouwa Whee. The food, he said, "is part of our culture and we don't want to lose it." To that end, he hires native workers where possible and has plans to create an aboriginal dinner theatre.

"We'll have a set menu of traditional foods, use local people for theatre, and storytelling, and also use local people to do arts and craft demonstrations for tourism.

"We would basically be trying to use our local people as much as possible and try to encourage tourism for Ndilo and Dettah," he said.

Bouwa Whee is owned by Deton'Cho Corp., which is owned by the Yellowknives Dene First Nation. In the fiscal year ending April 1, the catering service brought in $200,000 in profits on $121,000 in operating expenses.

Abel said he expects profits figures to double for this year.

"Financially, this year is going to be a lot better because I've done quite a bit of catering since April 1. "Our figures are going to be a lot higher," he said.