'It will be a hot ticket': Immersive Arctic experience coming to Midtown Plaza

Arctic - A Man Under the Ice is coming to Saskatoon in the spring, with organizers optimistic it will inspire growth in Saskatoon’s tourism sector which has been hit hard by COVID-19.

The event is being presented by TCU Place and SaskTel Centre.

“Seeing an exhibit like the Arctic come into Saskatoon, first and foremost something that we can celebrate as the hospitality and tourism sector because the impact is going to be really like a ripple effect throughout the whole community,” said CEO of Tourism Saskatoon Stephanie Clovechok.

The exhibit takes people on a journey through the Canadian Arctic, put on by filmmaker and photographer Mario Cyr.

“Walk into life-sized base camps and join the exhibition as the explorer meets his invaluable Inuit guides,” per the press release. “Allow yourself to be transported through Mario Cyr’s lens of over three hundred images taken during his twelve thousand dives revealing a spectacular mosaic of northern lights, polar bears, walruses and diverse aquatic life.”

“It will be a hot ticket. People will come to this event and it’s almost like an out-of-world experience,” said SaskTel Centre Executive Director Scott Ford.

The events runs from April 21st – May 29th at Midtown Plaza. Last summer it sold more than 100,000 tickets in Montreal and organizers in Saskatoon are hopeful it will surpass 40,000.

“Our community has been hard hit, but our downtown has been extremely hard hit. Our retailers, our restaurants, our hotels, they have suffered incredibly through the last two years and they need a bit of a boost,” said TCU Place CEO Tammy Sweeney.

According to Tourism Saskatoon, the city lost upwards of $25 million year-over-year from business events due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Tourism Saskatoon hopes the event can drum up business for the downtown core.

“It really helps us to re-establish that event hosting community,” said Clovechok