How I Got Here The ninth of ten children, I was born on a particularly cold February day in 1979. Taking me home from the hospital, the air was full of tiny snowflakes my mum and dad had not seen since their days living in sub-Saharan Africa. They were the tiny dry snowflakes normally associated

Yellowknifers who have called the city home for more than a decade may remember the downtown orphan lot behind the court house as the old YK Esso Service. In the doublespeak of the 20th Century, the empty lot of dirty gravel is a brownfield, a word that crept into the language from Britain and Australia

Reflections of a generous place story by France Benoit  | images by Gary Milligan Random acts of kindness are in fashion but I much prefer deliberate, small gestures that have ripple effects in the community and say, “I see you, I hear you,” which in essence means, “I love you.” These acts of giving by

Returning to the bush gave me a new lens on Yellowknife I spent all of August in my home community of Tulita, ‘where the rivers meet,’ surrounded by the mountains that watched over me as a child. It seemed the whole month was celebratory: a wedding, land claims anniversary, hand games tournament. There was something

The many ways Yellowknifers celebrate the season Yellowknife has slid into the darkest and coldest months of the calendar – but ironically, the city’s multicultural celebrations transform winter into a season of warmth and light! Here’s a sampling of how people in Yellowknife celebrate during the festive season. Yellowknives Dene Traditional Celebrations Christmas and New

Have you ever wondered why some streets in Yellowknife feel like a roller-coaster, or some of your neighbours’ fences seem to be sinking into the ground? Or maybe, depending on where you live in Yellowknife, your house might have cracks in the drywall that seem to reappear each year during the winter? Remote sensing analysts

YK’s Homegrown Film Industry is Flourishing We are stressed right out. It’s a beautiful day out there, the boat bobbing up and down in the water, just taunting me out on the dock while I sit here pounding out emails and logging footage at the same time. Pablo Saravanja, my partner in crime at Artless

From sustainable greenhouses to a privately funded business plan to take visitors to the top, here are just a few ways to keep the Robertson Headframe standing Imagine the space the Robertson Headframe occupies suddenly void, a window on the stars. That’s probably how it would happen: the tallest structure ever built in the territory,

How investments by Yellowknifers could turn the headframe into a local attraction “The worst thing that happened to Con Mine was that pre-feasibility study that came out a while back,” said the third person I raised this issue with. So what was wrong with that 2009 study? Every single idea cost money, a lot of

The annual Yellowknife reunions in Victoria, Kelowna and Edmonton are testament to the many ex-Yellowknifers living down south. It used to be that people came north, made their nest egg and headed back south to enjoy it. These days, though, it seems more and more Yellowknifers are retiring – or not – and staying put.

Joanna Tiemessen on life off-grid, off the Trail

A History of Yellowknife’s Chinese Community We’ll never know for certain what the reception was like for Yellowknife’s first known Chinese resident, ‘Charlie’ Mah-Gow. He arrived in town during, or prior to, the Second World War. Back then, a xenophobic Canada had a long path to tread before the multi-cultural policies of the 1970s. In