Yellowknife strip club owner from N.S. driving water truck around fire-besieged city

The owner of Canada’s most northern strip club is a Nova Scotian who stayed in Yellowknife to help evacuate folks fleeing wildfire and protect the city he’s grown to call home.

Scott Yuill, who hails from Old Barns, Colchester County, was moving big piles of brush Monday that soldiers gathered from difficult terrain around the city. He trucked it to a remediated mine site that’s covered in gravel so it wouldn’t fuel the fire that was burning about 15 kilometres from the capital of the Northwest Territories.

“Everybody’s still working pretty hard to maintain things here,” Yuill said in a telephone interview.

“There’s a lot of fire breaks being built. The fire department’s doing an amazing job. We have a great crew up here. Fire status-wise, they’re still working hard at it to protect the city.”

‘Elite teams’

He has high hopes Yellowknife can be saved.

“We have some elite teams up here of firefighters. These guys are like the special forces of firefighters,” Yuill said.

“The water bomber pilots have been just killing it. I had the honour of meeting some of them. One of them is 75 years old and he’s still kicking it.”

Yuill, who has a Class 1 driver’s licence that allows him to drive most vehicles, answered the call for volunteers to help as most of Yellownife’s residents were trying to leave.

“My first few days I was running a bus hauling evacuees to the airport, bringing them out to the tarmac to the airlines,” he said.

‘Hit me in the heart’

People were under a lot of stress as they left their homes behind, he said.

“The most memorable point that actually hit me in the heart was a mother who was getting off with her kids.”

Like his other passengers, she thanked him as she got off the bus.

“Her little girl, she was probably about six or seven, turned and she gave me a hug and said, ‘Thank you for saving me.’ And that was the first time that I was trying not to choke up.”

Soaking risky spots 

Yuill has also driven a water truck refilling reservoirs around Yellowknife that supply heavy-duty sprinklers set up near homes that could be at risk if the fire gets any closer.

“There’s a major tank set up in certain areas that they have to keep full, to run pumps with sprinklers on them,” he said.

“They keep everything soaked. The wetter it is, the better it is.”

Yuill’s home lies in the green zone that’s been designated as a high-risk zone.

“They had (the sprinklers) on the other day and I came home for a minute, and the whole back area along (my street) was soaked.”

‘This town has been good to me’

Yuill arrived in Yellowknife 13 years ago and didn’t expect to stay. But he never left.

“This town has been good to me. I rebuilt my life from Nova Scotia to here,” he said.

Yellowknife’s “still got that community-based feeling. In this town, people help each other in time of need. You don’t see it very often anymore in society. But up here, you do.”

Yuill and his wife, Kelly McCarthy, who hails from Newfoundland, own Harleys Hard Rock Saloon, and a snow removal company.

“We worked hard to build what we did, and the community has been good to us, so we decided to stay and help out wherever we can and do what we have to do wherever we’re needed. I feel the need to help. People have helped me build my life here. I’ve had a great support system. I’ve met amazing people living up here that I’ve learned a lot of business skills from and I feel the need to give back to this community. It’s kind of like back home how it was back in the day.”

Wife wanted strip bar kept open 

Yuill’s one of more than 100 people who volunteered to stay behind.

He thought about closing his strip bar after the evacuation was ordered.

“But my wife made a good point. There’s a lot of things going on and people are working really hard. A lot of people in the trades are here. So, she wanted to keep it open, and I agreed.”

But they’ve reduced the hours, with last call at 11 p.m. and the bar closing at midnight.

“That way people will still be able to go to work the next day and do what they’ve got to do,” Yuill said.

“It’s great for mental health, to see the morale (boost). They get to come in and have a few beers, relax instead of just going back to their rooms and staring at the walls wondering what to do next. It’s a lot of stress on people, so we’ve maintained it open. My wife and one other staff member have stayed and have been doing an amazing job keeping it going. She’s been overwhelmed with the amount of thanks that we’re getting from people, to have a place they can go and sit down and socialize after pulling 18 hours a shift in the bush line dragging brush and that. They have a couple of beers, and they go back to their rooms, and they go to bed.”

‘It’s a fun bar’

One of the club’s dancers evacuated, leaving a woman who tends the 48th Street bar during the day as its only performer.

“We’re a small club. We’re a friendly bar,” Yuill said.

“Remember the TV show Cheers? It’s kind of like that. Everybody knows your name. It’s a fun bar.”

He’s keen to do anything to relieve the stress on friends who have evacuated, but need things done at their homes.

“My accountant – I’m taking care of his chickens for him,” Yuill said.

‘The chickens are first to go’

When the accountant asked Yuill to feed his chickens and collect their eggs, the bar owner couldn’t stop laughing.

“I said, ‘Well, if we run out of food up here bud, I’m sorry but the chickens are first to go.”

Yuill’s also checking up regularly on a friend’s father who stayed in Yellowknife.

“He’s old and stubborn, so I go by once in a while (to ask) ‘Are you OK?’”

The response every time: “I’m fine. Geez, I’ve been through worse.”

Worried parents

Yuill’s mother and father, Mary-Ann and Steve, still live in Old Barns.

“I’ve been keeping in touch with them. They’re worried, as usual, as parents do,” he said.

“I’ll text them every day to give them peace of mind. You know how parents are – you can be 43 years old, and they still talk to you like you’re a young kid.”

Yuill, whose birth mother was Mi’kmaq, heads the local chapter of the Crazy Indians Brotherhood.

“It’s an organization that helps homeless, people displaced and families in need,” he said.

They organized a clothing drive to help people in Hay River who lost everything when they fled wildfires.

“A lot of the guys have gone now with their families, which I respect.”

@harleyshardrock Fighting the beast one say at time #fyp #harleyshardrocksaloon #yellowknifentcanada #crazyindiansbrotherhood #canada #nwt ♬ original sound – Harleyshardrock

Contingency plans

If the fire gets too close to the city, Yuill plans to make the 20-minute drive to his fully stocked cabin in the middle of Prelude Lake. He has a boat sitting at the nearby marina.

“I’m not going to leave until they literally say we have to run,” he said.

The road that leads south out of Yellowknife is out of commission.

“It’s blocked off. Only emergency supplies and fuel can be delivered here,” Yuill said.

“It’s one road in, one road out, and it’s a hard thing to deal with.”

Packed mementos 

Yuill hopes the time to flee doesn’t come. But he’s packed mementos and important paperwork in a pickup truck.

“And I’m very confident that if we actually had to get out completely out of town or couldn’t (get to the cabin) there would be aircraft to get us out of here,” he said.

“They have a very well-planned evacuation plan for all the volunteers and essential services that are here if things ever did go wrong.”

Yuill’s hoping that won’t happen.

“I have a good feeling about this,” he said. “Everything should be all right.”