The camp counsellors called me White Woman. It was short for Goddamn Useless White Woman, Jeeze!… but I’m sure it was meant kindly. It was 1976. I was 21, and I was director of Camp Antler, a summer youth camp that took place each year on the Cameron River. Our campers came from Fort Providence,
Paul Goulet, better known as Little Ray, started his lifelong love affair with critters and crawlers as a kid growing up in Yellowknife. There was fishing near the pump house, and hunting trips with his dad, Big Ray. If you knew where to look, a hike out to Cameron Falls could yield plenty of spiders.
When my family and I set out for a paddling trip earlier this year, we turned to Arctic Tern’s series of excellent brochures and maps of popular canoe routes around Yellowknife to pick a destination. A passage in the Tibbitt Lake Loop brochure caught our eye: “It is also possible to view the remains of
The three Hinchey brothers wore onesies. One was a panda. One was a penguin. Devin was a kangaroo. They passed around their Christmas gifts to each other at one o’clock in the morning on December 17, 2014. In between the unwrapping, Devin and his parents took turns crying. After years of lies, theft and substance
The trails are home to everything from medicine to gin flavourings to diaper liner.
At the height of the Cold War, a plucky band of local bush pilots, miners and reservists enacted their role in a worst-case invasion scenario — and won
It’s getting harder and harder to find a crappy cup of coffee in this city. Some of the old guys who used to meet at the Diner on 50th every morning to discuss important issues of the day such as who exactly is the biggest jackass in town have been deeply shaken by the arrival
This year, the largest national park in Canada has the most women crew members on the fire line in its history, with five female Type 1 wildland firefighters making up a third of its initial attack force. Initial attack crews are the first to the scene when it comes to boots-on-the-ground fire management. It’s a
“Dog on 54 Avenue. Wouldn’t come close to check collar.” That’s the caption underneath the photo of my dog. You can see a Yellowknife resident’s hand reaching out of their car door, offering a gesture of peace. You can also see, about five feet away, my dog resolutely ignoring that hand. “Me? I’m not lost,”
If you’ve got a stash of teen love letters, diaries, or notebooks from grade school, Dan Misener wants to hear from you. The producer of the popular podcast Grownups Read Things They Wrote as Kids is returning to Yellowknife to live tape another open mic event at the Top Knight on Friday, July 8. “We
“To reach the real gems, you have to do some legwork.” So says Bill Stirling, gazing at a Northwest Territories map from his basement office at Yellowknife’s Overlander Sports. In the NWT, half the joy of canoeing (and most of the effort) takes place outside the boat. The portage — picking up your canoe and
It was late, around midnight, and drummer Kevin Dunbar was alone in the jam space at the old Yellowknife dairy in Kam Lake when he saw a young Inuk boy looking at him from the doorway. “He kind of did a little bit of a jump in front of me — kind of like ‘grrr,’
Fireweed to start. Matsutake mushrooms for the main, washed down with spruce tips beer. And hold the morels. The first sightings along Highway 3 in recent days mean morel mushroom mania is ramping up for another summer, Posh restaurants like these uncommon, sought-after mushrooms, which pop up -post forest fire, and little roadside economies sprout wherever the
Congrats! You made it through the seasonal doldrums, when parkas are a thing of the past but shorts and skirts are still a questionable legwear decision. June is here, and with it, the joys of summer eating. To accompany the summer patio guide we published last week, here’s an overview of your outdoor food options,
“It was almost like watching a big snake crawling underneath the ground as the wave went by.” Toni Heron still has nightmares about the day her neighbour’s house disappeared from the horizon, swallowed up by a sudden collapse of the same earth she had spent her childhood playing upon along the river near Fort Smith.