Bow ties, fried chicken and heat: Yellowknife Explorer Hotel staff look back on 50 years

It was hot summer in Yellowknife and Shane Clark had just finished working 72 nights in a row. 

Clark was first hired to work at the Explorer Hotel in Yellowknife when he was 21, working as the hotel's front desk manager in the 1980s and 1990s. 

"It was fun, it was vibrant. There was a really good team," Clark said. "If you wanted to work hard, you could."

He remembers one summer being particularly brutal. 

"It was one of those hot summers where there was maybe three days of rain between May and July."

The hotel was also going through major renovations, including the addition of a massive granite front desk. 

"They put a tarp up in the lobby … it was so hot that summer because we were tarped in."

He said hotel staff would go outside and stand under the midnight sun "just to cool off." 

Tourism in Yellowknife back then wasn't like it is today, Clark said. It was mostly government and corporate travellers, compared to the influx of international travellers the city gets now. 

A hotel that closed at Christmas 

In 1991, the hotel did something it had never done before: It stayed open over Christmas. 

That's because there were a handful of guests from Japan in town. 

"The chef came in and made meals just for those six or eight guests," he said. 

Markus Burkhard was the executive chef at the Explorer in the early 1980s. He also remembers the hotel rarely seeing international guests back then. 

"A lot of government employees, business men came through Yellowknife," he said. 

"Tourism wasn't really a thing."

Clark said at the time, it was a challenge to keep the hotel running — it usually had a 70 per cent vacancy rate. 

"It was my first real job. It felt good to provide a good service and be proud of the product you were servicing to the public," he said. 

Fried chicken fiasco 

Edward Tse has managed the Discovery Inn in Yellowknife for 25 years, but worked at the Explorer before that. 

His most amazing, and as he describes it, most embarrassing moment was when Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, visited Yellowknife and came to the Explorer for a luncheon. 

Tse was assigned to serve them, fully dressed in a tuxedo and a bow tie. 

The menu was high-end, Tse said, but also included a special item — Kentucky Fried Chicken.

"When I carried a plate with Kentucky Fried Chicken, my bow tie fell off," Tse said. 

Tse said the royal couple's entire entourage watched it happen. 

Then, he said, Sarah helped him put it back on.

"It was so embarrassing," he said. 

The hotel is hosting an event on Dec. 11 to mark its 50 years in business.