They say a great meal is worth any journey, no matter the distance. Meet the man who took this saying quite literally.
Glen Powell is a triple threat. The specialist in film and television production has a knack for cooking and he’s also a licensed pilot.
Powell was recently inspired to take a solo trip, by air, to Saskatchewan’s southeast corner to indulge in a rare fast-food delicacy – the Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) buffet.
Once a staple for the KFC brand, now only a mere handful of KFC buffets exist across North America.
Weyburn, Sask. has the honour of hosting the only KFC buffet left in Canada. Despite a closure scare around a decade ago, the buffet survived and is as busy as ever.
For Powell, the hours spent flying from Steinbach, Man. to Weyburn didn’t matter, as he got to experience an era of fast-food that’s long since passed.
“Larry, the manager, talked to everybody who came through the door, like he personally spoke to everybody. You could see that he really cared about what was happening in his store … that amazed me and I was very happy for that. Like that was something that really moved me,” he recounted to CTV News.
Powell has a long history with both aviation and television production. Having risen through the ranks of Toronto’s tv and film scene, he knows how to put together a compelling tale.
Seeing the potential of YouTube as an avenue for storytelling, Powell created his own production company in the mid 2000’s to create YouTube videos for clients. From there, Powell created a cooking focused show on the platform.
As far back as the late 1990s, Powell had the idea of a series centered on someone building an airplane. His success on YouTube created opportunities – and one of those eventually involved an airplane.
“When the opportunity for this airplane came along, I thought, ‘Okay, so now I’m going to do the TV show that I always wanted to do, but I can do it on YouTube now.’ So, I bought an old plane and spent nine months in a shop rebuilding it, getting it ready, and now I can just fly it around and do cool things with it,” Powell explained.
One more avenue for adventure birthed a second channel, dubbed Glen’s Hangar. Both of his interests would collide prior to his spur of the moment trip to the land of the living skies.
According to Powell, he discovered Saskatchewan’s fast-food secret from a fellow content creator on YouTube. He immediately knew he had to experience it for himself.
According to Powell, his trip to Weyburn brought back many memories from his experience in television production.
“My career of making television commercials, I did a lot of KFC commercials, and I saw how KFC changed over a 30-year period,” he said.
Powell plans to return to the province to document some of Saskatchewan’s more natural and less fried chicken-related wonders, like the Athabasca Sand Dunes in the far north.
“My wife wants to see the sand dunes, so we were planning a flight to go to Uranium City,” he explained. “… just fly low over the sand dunes and show people that Canada has a very diverse landscape. You would not expect full-on sand dunes in northern Saskatchewan.”
But for now, Powell said his meal – courtesy of the Colonel – was worth the journey.
“Everything was fresh, and it was relatively inexpensive. Fast-food has become unbelievably expensive for usually what you get. The restaurant was packed with people, and the quality was high and it was reasonably priced.”
“It was well worth the trip,” he said, smiling.
