SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Bill Tait says when he is asked how he got his unofficial title - the father of aurora tourism - he gives credit to an old friend who died late last year.

The man credited with being the father of aurora tourism in Yellowknife said the idea came from Toshi Togo, seen here in Japan in the 1990s, a former sales representative for a Canadian airline in Japan, who passed away late last year. - photo courtesy of Bill Tait

The veteran marketer of the aurora borealis in Yellowknife said 80-year-old Toshi Togo - a Japanese sales representative who was working for Canadian Pacific Airlines in Tokyo in the late 1980s - was the first to realize the city's potential for Japanese tourists.

Northern lights, wildlife and geology are big draws in Japan and Yellowknife is closer to them then other popular aurora viewing spots in Scandinavia, he said.

"He was the spark. He said, 'I'm looking for somebody that will handle the Japanese market,'" said Tait, who was then one of the only tour operators in Yellowknife - and so the only one who could help Togo guide Japanese tourists around the city - when the GNWT directed Togo to speak with him about ramping up. Togo proposed Japanese tourism operators include Yellowknife aurora tour packages in their deals and that Tait's operation, then Raven Tours, be responsible for guiding the tourists once they arrived.

Togo met him early in 1989 and the rest is history, said Tait.

"So all of a sudden, he walked in and planted the seed and said 'you've got to get going with it.'" Tait said 80 Japanese tourists visited that first year. But that number has been growing and continues to grow. Last winter saw tourism spike by 6,000 additional visitors, 3,500 from Asia.

"And it just got bigger and bigger," he said. Tait said Togo knew Japanese tourists would be keen to visit the North to see the Northern lights and nature. They started bringing Japanese tourists to the city in the winter soon after that first meeting and since then, Tait said, Asian tourists have made around 80,000 visits to the city.

Elijah Forget, spokesperson for the Northern Frontier Visitors Centre, said the organization began counting tourists from Asia in 2008 so it's difficult to say exactly how many Asian tourists have visited since the late 1980s but said Tait's estimate of 80,000 visitors is probably accurate.

"I wouldn't be surprised," said Forget, adding that the centre counted more than 16,000 Asian visitors last year alone.

Jun Saito said he was promoting travel to Canada for the Canadian Tourism Commission in Tokyo when he met Togo around the time the deal with Tait was being hammered out.

"This was his idea," said Saito. "He went there and he found it was great. So we started to promote it."

Saito said the city was already known as a great aurora viewing city, so he visited with Togo in the summer of 1989.

"It was very cold. My first impression was, 'Wow, it's horrible,'" he said. "But I got used to it. And it was quiet and the people were friendly."

The Japanese visitors went caribou watching, saw the famous light show and went back to Japan with good stories to tell, said Saito.

"I had a good experience," he said. "I promoted it a lot across Japan with Togo."

Died of cancer

Saito said Togo had cancer and died Nov. 29.

"He had many friends," he said. "People followed him. They trusted him."

Many residents didn't show an interest in welcoming Asian tourists in the beginning, Tait said, but the market has been a huge boost for the city.

"What a huge economic impact it created for Yellowknife. There's quite a few hotels that sprung up because there's an overflow of Asian tourists. It really was a big industry and still is," he said. "We tried to get a sister city thing going on with a town over there but it fell through because the mayor of that town lost the election. But (before that) I took an entourage there, with the mayor and council members."

Tait said he left the city and moved to Vancouver in 2003 but he still books Asian clients on trips to Yellowknife as a sales rep for Beck's Kennels.

'It really pisses me off'

Tait said he's exasperated by a myth about the Japanese visitors, which does not go away despite his efforts.

"They like to see aurora," he said. "This ugly rumour got around that they make babies under the Aurora. It really pisses me off because it's totally false."

Tait said the yarn began in Alaska and was repeated in a magazine published in Los Angeles. A writer working for early 1990s TV comedy Northern Exposure read the article and the myth was repeated in episode 20 of the third season.

"It went like fire through all of North America and Europe and I had calls from the Associated Press," he said. "And I always thought it was ugly because it ignores the great love the Japanese have for nature. Even the rocks, they look into it in a deep way."

Tait said he does not enjoy hearing the myth repeated by people in Yellowknife.

"They treat it like it's a joke," said Tait. "Even when people were told directly this wasn't true."