Diners at Bullocks Bistro had their lunch interrupted with a loud bang on Thursday afternoon.
At the tail end of the lunch rush, around 1:30pm, a snowmobile crashed into the front porch of the popular Yellowknife eatery.
“It’s the first event for Bullocks like this, thank goodness,” bistro co-owner Jo-Ann Martin told Cabin Radio. “So it was a bit of a shock.”
Martin said the “snowmobile decided to drive itself without a driver,” explaining that the machine’s throttle was stuck, so it shot forward when started.
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Thankfully, no one was in the porch area by the bistro’s front door at the time, Martin said. The driver was also uninjured in the accident.
The porch, however, won’t be making a recovery.
It was torn down on Thursday afternoon for safety reasons, while customers were still able to enter the restaurant through the establishment’s side door.
Martin said they plan to rebuild the porch as soon as possible.
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“Everything will be okay, it’ll just look a little different,” she said.
The porch was originally used on the set of Arctic Air in Vancouver. The Canadian drama television series about a Yellowknife-based airline and the unconventional family who runs it, aired three seasons from 2012 to 2014.
“When they finished filming Arctic Air, they shipped this porch up to Yellowknife to put on the bistro as a gift for letting them do some filming and stuff and use the bistro in their show,” Martin said. “So it’s a bit of a sentimental thing.”
Even without the iconic porch, it will be business as usual as the bistro.
“We’ve got huge support from the local people and there’s a few people coming in from communities,” Martin said of business during the pandemic. “We’re doing the best we possibly could in the situation.”
