(Kingston, Ontario, Canada)
After visiting the remote northern Canadian territory of Nunavut in August of 2013, it only made sense to also visit the almost-as-remote Northwest Territories. Unlike Nunavut, it is *theoretically* possible to drive to the Northwest Territories…but we chose to fly from Edmonton.
As time was limited, we only visited the capital city of Yellowknife and its immediate surroundings. While we cannot pretend to have experienced the Northwest Territories by visiting its only true city, our visit was nonetheless extremely enlightening.
We stayed in a somewhat rustic B&B on the peninsula where the original settlement was located. Much of that peninsula is occupied by Ndilo, a Dene First Nations community; the modern downtown is located to the west. From our B&B, we could see floating houses (see photo at the top of this post) and floatplanes taxiing, taking off and landing on Great Slave Lake. Many of the planes were carrying wealthy travelers to remote hunting, fishing or recreation camps.
Our first substantial meal in Yellowknife was wholly unexpected. We found a restaurant specializing in Somalian and Ethiopian food. As it turns out, Yellowknife is home to a large Somalian community and some of them had recently established this restaurant.
On our second day in Yellowknife, we went for an extended walk around Frame Lake. While the city remained in view for about one-half of the walk, we eventually found ourselves in the barren rocky landscape that I imagined made up so much of the Northwest Territories.
Our third day in Yellowknife was dedicated to more walking, a bicycle trek, and a tour of the territorial legislature building. The bike trek took us to Yellowknife’s suburbs – we could just as easily have been in a small Alberta city as the Northwest Territories.
We saw several signs of affluence in Yellowknife. Canada’s diamond mining industry is based here and demand is high for ethical, high quality diamonds. However, that prosperity was tempered by evidence of despair: it was clear that not everybody was sharing in the economic miracle. Some efforts have been made to ensure that local residents are also sharing in the proceeds of the diamond industry but there were still some signs of culture clash.
There also seemed to be more of an “edge” to the city in the evenings, as one often finds in resource-based boom towns. Yellowknife is still a young place: it was first settled in the late 1930s and substantial growth didn’t start until a few decades later. However, there were some interesting quirks to Yellowknife: one of the streets was named “Lois Lane”, in apparent homage to actress Margot Kidder (who was born in Yellowknife and played Lois Lane in “Superman” movies).
As with our visit to Iqaluit in Nunavut, we left Yellowknife feeling that we needed to travel outside of the capital to truly connect with the territory. While not as large as Nunavut, the Northwest Territories still has an area of 1,346,106 km2 despite only having about 41,000 residents (although it does have 11 official languages). The vast size of the territory means that a long weekend is not enough…one day, I am sure we will visit other parts of the Northwest Territories and have a completely different experience.