Images of life in Yellowknife

Posted by Kate Gilbert on Oct 21, 2011 in Adventure | 6 comments

In the 1980s local architect Gino Pinn embraced Yellowknife’s rocky Canadian Shield geology and built his home on Latham Island – a piece of land joined to Old Town by a bridge, and also home to N’Dilo, Yellowknife’s native community. The building has stayed in the Pinn family and is a fixture of the Latham Island landscape.

YELLOWKNIFE, CANADA

Yellowknife, or Somba K’e in Dogrib (one of the Northwest Territories’ many languages), means “where the money is.” The name springs from the city’s original source of economic prosperity – mining. In the 1930s, gold deposits drew settlers from warmer climates to the territories. The population of Yellowknife increased dramatically and new residents built shacks near the shores of Great Slave Lake. That area is now known as Old Town.

It wasn’t gold that attracted me to Yellowknife – though the city’s northern frontier heritage, which is still very much alive today, is a draw.  Yellowknife is in many ways still a city of transients, with people coming from around the world to live, work, and play.  For me, it was the welcoming spirit and creative culture I witnessed when I first visited – during the winter of 2010 – that made me want to return for a longer stay.

I’ve returned. I brought my dog, found a job, and I’m subletting a townhouse – for a year, at least, though I could be a lifer. From the original settlers down to me, everyone who has spent time in this city would agree: there’s a particular sense of home that you get from Yellowknife, no matter how long you’ve been here.

My townhouse does not offer quite the same, uh, charm as the shacks in Old Town, a few of which still stand today.  Their common features include heat by wood or pellet stove, only, and – due to lack of plumbing – honey buckets, which are nowhere near as sweet as they sound.  Over the years, some shacks have disappeared as new residents buy up land and build their own dream homes.  In other cities, this familiar story usually ends with the town losing its charm. Not so in Yellowknife. These newer structures in Old Town are full of character and intrigue for new residents who pass by with cameras.

This shack, situated on the rocky hill leading up to Bush Pilot’s Monument, overlooks Back Bay of Great Slave Lake and is proof that a view and a roof is all that some people need.

This particular shack, larger and more glamourous than many, currently serves as a studio for Hudson Arts, where local antler and stone carvers can be spotted sitting outside, working away on their next pieces.

Since the settlement of Old Town early last century homes and businesses have been designed to suit the needs and ideas of their future inhabitants.  Some are large, some small, some built with natural materials, and others with fabricated ones.  Additionally, due to sparse tree growth, building materials often have to be imported, so lightweight siding is usually the material of choice instead of brick, which is popular in the southern parts of the country.  The upside: architects get creative with their designs.  With the exception of modular homes, you rarely see the same design twice here.

This home’s curved outer wall, faced with wooden shingles and colourful tiles, embodies the artsy and nomadic lifestyle common among Yellowknife residents.

This ship-inspired condominium overlooks a float plane base on Great Slave Lake. Its metal, angular exterior doesn’t look entirely out of place in among its more rustic surrounding buildings.

Painted wood adds colour to this eye-catching home. The large windows let in either midnight sun in the summer months or catch the few hours of daylight in winter. The traffic along the one-way street where this house sits often moves slowly, since drivers take their time to have a glance at the unusual building.

The clever, precarious positions of Old Town’s land-based homes are almost trumped by one of the area’s better-known lifestyles: houseboat living.  Houseboats are usually one-storey buildings of relatively small square-footage, built on pontoons.  They float in Great Slave all summer long, accessible only by boat. In the winter months, houseboat owners walk across the ice to get home after a long day’s work.  In break-up and freeze-up during spring and fall respectively, houseboaters cross the ice with a canoe in tow, should the ice be too thin to cross by foot in some parts.  Like shack living, house boats lack plumbing and are heated only by wood stove.

This bright orange, blue-trimmed houseboat boasts bright colours common to most houseboats. These homes are scattered around the water between Old Town’s shores and Joliffe Island.