It’s Friday night and there isn’t a soul around, save for an elderly humpback whale who flirts with our Coastal Craft yacht in Canada’s Bute Inlet. She huffs a spout of water in the foreground, then flicks her tail in a “British Columbia goodbye.”
“If you’re tired of humpbacks, you’re tired of life,” sighs our French naturalist guide Laura Gly, who was drawn to this region—as many are—by the lure of wildlife. People are well outnumbered by the humpbacks and pods of orcas, bald eagles and herons, seals and sea lions grunting their tone-deaf tunes atop the rocks. Then there are the bears, grizzlies and black giving the Great Bear Rainforest its cred, guarded by the First Nations people whose land we’re exploring. We had just come from a guided bear viewing with members of the Homalco tribe, who showed us how to “walk with marshmallow feet” (aka tread softly) up to old fire towers, where we could safely watch a mama grizzly and her cub enjoy a salmon buffet at the convergence of two rivers. There’s so much life here; it’s humbling to be among it.
That’s partly what drew our host, French entrepreneur David Tuchbant, to make his second home away from Paris out here—atop a mossy, forested bluff an hour’s seaplane ride from Vancouver, BC. The nearest neighbor is 20 minutes away by boat. Yet he’s not the first high-profile person to call these woods home. He bought the former private lodge of Hollywood icons Michelle Pfeiffer and David E. Kelley, who ordered construction of the (now) five-bedroom main house and lived there from 2007-2017 (after the Ally McBeal years but before Big Little Lies). A few of the original staff stuck around to help run the 340-acre property, which also includes a cabin overlooking a private lake. After Tuchbant took over, the remit changed: This place was too beautiful, too special to keep to themselves. He poured tens of millions into redesign, updating the kitchen and swapping the home cinema and billiards room for more bedrooms, and turned the space into Fawn Bluff: a nonprofit, fully serviced wilderness retreat only available for exclusive buyout (from CAD$26,250, or $18,899 a night). Proceeds will support the building of a Homalco-run trauma center in Campbell River, welcoming community members coping with addiction.
“There’s a reason for us to be here. We bought a property in the middle of First Nations territory, so it’s now our mission and purpose to serve the community we, by accident, became a member of,” Tuchbant tells us. “We have no other purpose than to serve the Homalco First Nation community.”
This model of regenerative tourism is one Tuchbant hopes others can get behind: hospitality that focuses on human connection rather than standardized luxury. The white-glove service is “too cold,” says Tuchbant. “It’s so perfect. You lose the human connection. I personally hope, in a place like this, we can be more ourselves.” Fawn Bluff is remote with a capital R but it doesn’t have to be isolating. Guests will have multiple opportunities to forge relationships with the Homalco, staff, and local guides: kayakers, mountaineers, naturalists, even helicopter pilots who make a mean fondue (more on that in a moment).
Everyone working here wears many hats, in part because scarcity breeds necessity, but also to maintain a standard of hospitality expected for this price point. Imagine the type of traveler who might buy out Fawn Bluff: perhaps an extended multigenerational family, with schoolkids clamoring for their spot in the bunk beds and teens trying to claim the lake cabin (god help us all). Give whoever flew the farthest the luxurious primary bedroom, with its double-high ceilings, cloud-like king bed with hemp linens, a cedar walk-in closet, and oversized bathroom with freestanding tub. If you’re traveling the distance, it better be worth it, right?
Thankfully, it’s all pretty spectacular. Within the Douglas fir walls is a warm, welcoming retreat, decorated with beautiful handcrafted First Nation art, and with views of the mist-touched bay and mountains from every room. Expect the kind of touches that make it feel better than home. Unless your home has someone handing you a latte when you walk into the kitchen; a personal chef named Kwin who’s bound for Michelin status and will speak passionately about the ingredients of every meal; a towering stone fireplace; a bar stocked with the finest wines and Lagavulin 16; and a property manager who will protect you from bears.
On one epic day with Fawn Bluff, I felt the awe of a traveler breaking in their first passport. We boarded a helicopter (my first) flown by pilot Bastian Fleury of 49 North Helicopters, who left the Swiss Alps—let me repeat: the Swiss Alps—for the Coast Mountains of British Columbia, where the peaks are so remote, they’re not even named. This is one of the great remaining mountain wildernesses, extending all the way up through Alaska. After 15 minutes of soaring over the tips of evergreens, zooming in on alpine basins, and silent screaming, we landed at a glacier-fed lake 7,740 feet up. Here, we would break through the ice in inflatable kayaks and stand-up paddleboards to reach a still, silent teal lagoon, more perfect than colored glass and a casual zero degrees Celsius.
The bravest (craziest?) among us would cold-plunge before we took off in our helicopter, bound for the snowy plateau of a glacier, where Fleury broke out his grandmother’s authentic fondue pot from the 1930s to make us lunch. Stuffed with sourdough and melted Vacherin and Gruyère, we then hiked the glacier with our guide, Jan Neuspiel, a former Himalayas mountaineer, and posed with our pickaxes at the top in triumph. Did we conclude the morning with a long, humbling hike down? Of course not! Our helicopter picked us up like an Uber and deposited us back at the lodge—the pinnacle of luxury.
So many firsts in that one excursion—so many lucky chances to see the beauty of British Columbia from different angles. This is the kind of place where moments of serendipity seem to occur by magic, but only because of the careful watch and planning of the staff: like guest experience director Tiffany Manhas being helicoptered separately to the top of a glacier, where she would set up the snow picnic and waited patiently for our arrival; or operations manager Jonathan Clarke, aka Mr. Safety, who knows every inch of the property and has the mantra, “If I’m wearing pants, I have bear spray”; or culinary director Kwin Marion, who’s “competing with the bears for ingredients.”
One of the highlights of the stay here is the food, foraged fresh and scripted with your moods in mind, whether you had too much fondue and just need some soup, or crave a tasting menu with wine pairings nightly. Each meal came prepared with evident joy, like the family-style Dungeness crab boil with Old Bay and garlic butter alongside a 96-hour Loong Kong Fraser Valley chicken roast with black garlic gravy and vegetables supplied by “Mike & Melissa,” Quadra Island farmers who achieved mythic status by the time we left. We weren’t just eating Caprese salad. This was tomatoes with burrata, Thai basil, smoked tomato vinaigrette, house rosehip vinegar, wild rice amino powder, and lacto-fermented tomato powder.
Another pinnacle of luxury: Ask and ye shall receive. On our final night, after a wee dram or two of Lagavulin, I may have requested an impromptu stargazing session out on the docks, bears and spiders be damned. Mr. Safety looked me in the eye and said, “Well alright.” Down we went, staff and guests alike, with blankets, bevvies, and bear spray in hand. Minutes later, as the dock lights were extinguished, we all gasped at the glittering night sky—then shrieked as a brilliant shooting star flew by, a celestial exclamation mark to end our trip.
Fawn Bluff, one of Robb Report’s 50 Greatest Luxury Lodges on Earth, will start taking bookings for its debut season (June 1 to October 15) in spring 2026. Nightly rates for a full property buyout start from 26,250 Canadian dollars ($18,889). The main house and lake cabin can accommodate up to 12 adults and four children. Included in the rate: dedicated staff, all meals prepared by a private chef, a selection of wines and spirits, and guided activities. The rate excludes transfers and helicopter excursions.
