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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Moments on arriving in Yellowknife, guests of a new luxury tour operation looking to cross items off their bucket lists with a trip to the North cross off their first item of the trip - a flight in a Buffalo Airways DC-3 of the famed television show Ice Pilots NWT.

Senator Nick Sibbeston and his wife Karen during a trip on Bucket List Tours' luxury coach tour bus in Fort Providence in August. - photo courtesy of Bucket List Tours

On arrival in Hay River from Yellowknife, groups of 14 or fewer catch the brand new coach bus that started Tracy Therrien's new luxury Bucket List Tours business - a 14-passenger leather interior freight liner, equipped with televisions and a full-sized refrigerator for long trips.

"You get to do a whole bunch of really Northern things and the highway coach bus has got the most comfortable seats you could ever imagine," said Mayor Gord Van Tighem, a passenger on the maiden voyage of Bucket List Tours this summer. "It's gorgeous leather seats - it's three- or four-hour seats not like the ones on our airplanes that are only good for an hour."

While Van Tighem has lived in the North for years, he was just as awed with the activities on the overnight tour from walking barefoot across Wood Buffalo salt plains, flying over Virginia, Louise and Alexandra falls in Nahanni National Park in a Twin Otter, and seeing bison cross Fort Providence, one of the original Hudson's Bay posts along the Mackenzie River.

"It's rather spectacular," Van Tighem said.

Therrien, who is the general manager of the Northern Frontier Visitors' Association, said that as guests from Montreal, Toronto and Alberta snapped photos along the tours, operators in Hay River, Fort Smith, Fort Providence and Fort Simpson would ask, "We're on somebody's bucket list?"

The first group that took the seasonal tour enjoyed the experience and there is a demand for the luxury-class tours of the North, she said.

"I truly believe there's plenty of interest," Therrien said. "There's a lot of interest in the North, and Ice Road Truckers, Ice Pilots and Arctic Air isn't going to hurt us either."

Therrien, who is from Hay River, chose Yellowknife as the starting point of her South Slave tour because of the many flight options to the city from across Canada and the United States.

In addition, television shows such as Ice Road Truckers and Ice Pilots have put the city on the map for tourists, she added.

Bucket List Tours adds to the region's tourism product, Van Tighem said.

"It's just neat to see something new, see a plan come together and it'll be interesting to see how it is accepted in the marketplace," he said.

Therrien started the business with assistance from the Department of Industry, Tourism, and Investment. The company is seasonal, and although its first season has finished up, Bucket List Tours will start up again next summer.

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