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Yellowknife’s bright Northern Lights
Aurora Borealis are natural colored light displays, which are usually observed in the night sky, particularly in the polar zone
By: Mary Gostelow
The 20th Arctic Winter Games will be held in Canada's Yellowknife, capital of Northwest Territories province, March 9-15 2008.
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WOW.travel went to inspect the site, ahead of the teams from northern areas of Finland, Greenland, Norway and Russia. As well as more general sports such as basketball, gymnastics and speed skating, the 19 disciplines will include curling, Dene games, dog mushing and snowshoeing. (Dene games are traditional sports practiced by the Dene: included in the 2008 Games will be stick pull, namely pulling a greasy stick out of your opponent's hand; finger pull, straightening your opponent's finger until he/she concedes; pole push - teams of four grasp each end of a pole and try to push the pole their way; snowsnake, to see how far you can throw a spear underhand; hand games, in which you hide a token in one hand, but which? Dene games were male-only until 2004). www.awg2008.ca
Perhaps the contestants, and visitors, will have a chance - says Mary Gostelow - to see the Aurora Borealis, Northern Lights, which attract over 10,000 Japanese a year. Here the Aurora (photo) is often so vivid it seems close enough to touch - in fact it sweeps a mere 40 miles or so above the earth, a gigantic ribbon of energy, 120 miles across, encircling the magnetic north pole. I went to visit Aurora World, half an hour east of Yellowknife, along the Ingraham Trail, to Prelude Lake, where viewing terraces, heated Poka Poka chairs and heated cabins allow you to watch in comfort, hoping to see the lights, www.auroraworld.ca. You can even get married, or renew your vows, under the skies. The appearance of the lights is never, by the way, guaranteed, but for the best chance try between December to March, when the sky is darkest, and be content that Yellowknife has, depending on the weather, 240 potential viewing nights a year compared with 90 in the Alberta capital, Edmonton, and a mere 18 in Toronto: www.discovernorth.ca lists Aurora forecasts.
But in winter, of course, it will be cold, very cold, and you might only have four hours' daylight. Temperatures can plunge to -40° or more (for warmest weather, visit in July, when it can still be light at 3 a.m.). It was partly because of the extreme winter cold that the first Yellowstone residents, who came here in 1937, built log houses that are as small as ten by six feet, and barely tall enough to allow you to stand upright. They built their houses anywhere, anyhow. Many of them have not only survived but have now become much-coveted homes. Yes, some have been extended, and attached to newer structures, but you can still see the higgledy-piggledy planning - or lack of - by wandering around the Einar Broten historic area of town, along Ragged Ass Road, so called because two early settlers, disillusioned by lack of mining success, said you sure don't make any money here.
You do need money to visit, today. Basic essentials are about 30% above prices down south simply because of location. Yellowknife, which has a certified population of a mere 19,430, is 62.2°N and a good, or rather grueling, four days' drive north of Edmonton. WOW.travel readers are unlikely to visit the city merely for itself. The main draw includes the fact that the entire Northwest Territories area is fishing heaven, with Arctic Char, Arctic Grayling (the fish of NWT), Lake Trout, Northern Pike and Pickerel among the catches. There are 55 lodges within two hours' flight. You may want to try one of one of the Plummer' Arctic Fishing Lodges, started as a one-cabin operation in 1939 by Chummy Plummer and his son Warren, who built the first fly-in fishing lodges in the Arctic. Chummy Plummer's grandson today runs the operation, which includes air transport and luxury-level fishing at Great Bear Lake, famous for trout; Great Slave Lake; Trophy Lodge, for trout and grayling; Neiland Bay Lodge and Tree River, for char, www.plummerslodges.com.
There are only about 43,000 people in the entire 520,000 sq miles of NWT, and roughly half of these are of Aboriginal origin, namely, from North to South, the Inuvialuit, Gwich'in, Sahtu, Deh Cho, Tlicho and the Akaitcho. Another category is called Recent Settlers, the explorers, prospectors and others come to try something new.
I was driven around by a Recent Settler, a local character, Yvonne Quick, who came here in the last century - well, 40 years ago - as a bush pilot and has never left (she now lives in a luxury basement apartment below her daughter Robin Wotherspoon, who chairs Northwest Territories Tourism). Mother knows everyone, knows the history of every building in town. She says that many visitors are drawn to NWT for such traditional winter sports as cross-country skiing, heli-skiing, and dogsledding with skilled mushers. They come for bear and caribou watching and for climbing peaks like the Cirque of the Unclimbables (the highest peak in the Mackenzie Mountain Range is the 7,500 ft-high Keele Peak), and admiring the Carcajou Falls, and hiking and so much more. Annual festivals include the grueling Diamond 300, an over-200-mile race on foot and snowshoes or skis for solo or three-person teams, www.rockandiceultra.com.
Ah, diamonds. Northwest Territories has Canada's three premium diamond mines, all about 200 miles north-east of Yellowknife. One, Diavik Diamond Mine, a joint venture between Aber Diamond Corporation and Rio Tinto plc, has a visitor centre. The diamond is the provincial gemstone of NWT, just as gold is its mineral, the gyrfalcon its bird, and tamarack its tree.
You can see a 1.31 carat northern diamond set into the crosspiece of the Province Mace, displayed at the the Legislative Assembly (parliament of the Northwest Territories). Take one of the regular, free, tours of what is, no question, the architectural highlight of Yellowknife, a dome-covered two-floor open-horseshoe indigenous stone shape rising above the treetops. Opened in 1993, it was designed by NWT architects Ferguson Simek Clark and Pin Matthews, working with Vancouver-based Matsuzaki Wright Architects. The hub is the circular Chamber, assembly room itself, with an all-round upper tiered gallery for the public, and a domed-ceiling surrounded by teepee-like beams. In the Chamber, the 19 elected members of Assembly - a consensus body, with no political parties - meet about
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seven times a year (the regular four-yearly election is actually this month, October 2007). Behind the raised Speaker's chair is a zinc-sheet wall depicting the northern landscape (artists John Farcy Jr and Letia Lewis). Around are glass-fronted translation booths, for all business is simultaneously affected in seven languages, English and French, and five Aboriginal languages.
In rooms and galleries outside the Chamber there is stunning local art, as well as fine examples of traditional crafts, including beadwork, embroidery, and quillwork. You can also see an example of the Tartan of the NWT, conceived by Yellowknife resident Janet Anderson-Thomson and designed and produced by Hugh MacPherson (Scotland) Ltd, in Edinburgh, UK - it shows the white of the snow, the green of the forest, yellow of the birch trees in the Fall and blue of lakes, rivers and oceans, and any NWT resident may wear it. www.assembly.gov.nt.ca
There are thousands of lakes and rivers in the Territories and Yellowstone, on the banks of Great Slave Lake, also encompasses baby lakes like Frame Lake, Jackfish Lake, Niven Lake. Much of the city is on permafrost, where one foot under ground remains permanently frozen. The area is mainly flat, and names like Franklin Avenue (main street) and Latham Island (a peninsular attached to the main city) reflect the explorers' history.
You may not think it by looking at Franklin and other main streets, but Yellowknife is great for beautiful souvenirs, best seen as they are being made - see soapstone carver Derrald Taylor at work with two colleagues, telephone +1.867.445.8427. Dawn Oman is the Ken Done of Canada (she has been painting since she was five, she says). Her works are witty, simple, lovely, full of color - though she uses a maximum of ten colors, each bold shape outlined in gold for clarity. She has tabletop china and fabrics, greetings cards and pictures, umbrellas and handbags, tableaux like modern stained glass to put on your windows back home. Visit her own home: the entire main floor is studio and display, and you can wander at will. Dawn will explain how her collection has evolved and you are just bound to buy - her enthusiasm is infectious, www.dawnoman.com.
There is equal passion to be found at Mathew Grogono's studio home, Northern Lights Glassware, but the setting is, well, somewhat eccentric. Several of the original 1937 'houses' have been relocated, cobbled one to the other. The nearest to the road displays his finished collection of exquisite engraved glassware, beautiful decanters and matching glasses, one-off bowls and goblets - every item is made from recycled bottles. You can peer through an open door to another old 'house' behind, where he lives. Go outside, past neatly stacked crates of empty bottles waiting to be recycled as art, and a few yards behind another pair of 'houses' is his workshop.
For WOW.travel, he takes an empty Bacardi bottle that has been soaked to make it easier to scrape off the label, with a razor. Next, this former engineer-turned-artist puts the bottle horizontally into a home-made Heath Robinson contraption that looks like a miniature Pilates torture frame, and he etches a circumference at the required place. He taps off the bottle top. The vessel, as he now calls it, is then put - wait for it - into a 1955 twin-tub Hoover washing machine that he has recycled. The machine's rotor is now a grinder, which grinds the vessel's cut surface. On top of where there was once a spin dryer is now a home-made lathe, into which the vessel is then placed for final smoothing.
What pattern do you want, he asks? A simple moose shape is selected, the required stencil is held around the bottle with masking tape. He puts the vessel into a sealed chamber with inset gloves, and a window panel, and he fires aluminium oxide around the shape. The vessel is removed, the stencil taken off and, hey presto, now we have our customized Bacardi vessel. (The biggest market, says Grogono, is for corporate gifts - these are ideal New Year's presents from companies, or farewell presents, and he can personalize as requested, www.ygr.coop)
Yellowknife has the opportunity for a first-class hotel development. I stayed at the Chateau Nova, a practical property with 24-hour business centre and small gym, and free broadband and wireless Internet: the clear plastic sheeting over breakfast table cloths was a reminder of diners of yesteryear. Do not miss eating - summer only - at Wildcat Cafe (The Cat), a log cabin built by Willie Wylie and Smokey Stout in 1937. After a spell as a Chinese restaurant it is now run by a government committee, and leased to Yellowknife's premier culinarian, Pierre LePage. You sit at communal wood tables and might find the premier, mayor or who knows? sitting next to you, also enjoying excellent mushroom soup, fresh salads, and pasta of the day. LePage also runs a two-floor year-round operation, with Le Frolic Bistro Bar at main level, and finer-dining L'Heritage above: we dined at Le Frolic, surrounded, it seemed, by the local and visiting business community - wines by the glass come in stylish carafes, and the Alberta striploin is available with fries or baked potato with choice of fillings, www.lefrolic.com.
Yellowknife Airport is one of those rarities where you only need to arrive 30 minutes before departure. There is no wait to talk to the Air Canada agent (no self-check-in kiosks here). I just have time to head for a cup of coffee in the restaurant: it is served by a Filipina. www.spectacularnwt.com
www.yellowknife.ca
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