On the Road Again 2012 #15

Yellowknife was not at all what I expected it to be. Not that I can define exactly what I thought it should be, but I think I thought it would be more rustic or pioneer like. It is of course, a city. A capital city that also functions as a port city on Great Slave Lake. I also, I think expected it to be a wide open city with something happening 23 hour a day. After all the sun is up 23 hours a day so why wouldn't the inhabitants? Of course the folks who live there need to have real lives and therefore need to sleep. Still I was a bit disappointed when I looked out my window the first night at around 2::00-3:00 AM and there was no one out on the streets.

The hotel I stayed at was $125 a night. It was not worth 2Xs the amount of the one that I had stayed in in High Level. The lobby  and stairway up to my third floor room looked a bit shabby. The room itself however was just fine - in fact it was quite spacious. It certainly had everything a hotel room needed. As I was checking in, an older couple and what I assumed to be their middle age son came into the lobby. Their ethnic heritage was quite clearly Inuit. It was my first experience meeting folks from the furthermost northern Nations. I, before leaving home, had for some reason never even thought about the fact that there could be more than one First Nation. It was kind of exciting. Throughout Yellowknife there are signs (literally) of the multitude of official languages in the NWT. It  is not unusual to see signs in four languages.

There were many indications of people's pride in their culture. This "drawing" on the side of a rock cliff was beautifully done and in spite of the fact that it had been installed for a number of years - there had been no gratuitous graffiti added.

I was hungry. I had not eaten anything since the great meal the night before. I was in a city. In spite of the fact that it was near 11:00, there had to be something open. If there was, I could not find it. All I did find was a corner store selling egg salad sandwiches and a bag of chips. I really wanted a better meal to celebrate my arrival in Yellowknife. I also wanted to tell someone about my epic journey and my excitement over seeing the bison and my crossing of the Mackenzie River. But I could talk to no one and therefore I ate my sandwich while watching some bad movie. I really would have preferred a ticker tape parade!

The next day was rainy and the city was pretty dead. Very few of the stores were open and there was not much to see. It was after all, a holiday Monday. Yellowknife is not a tourist destination that works hard at attracting summer tourists. Pity - it has a lot to offer.   Occasionally one would see some people on the streets who looked like tourists off of their boats down by the harbour. In the downtown core there were a few groups of young people wandering around and once when the bingo hall emptied a number of older people gathered on the street but generally I developed no sense of where people went or what they did. The day was rather crummy with intermittent rain.  I watched TV more than I normally would including seeing the movie Dried Green Tomatoes. I had forgotten how good it was.

I went down to the section of Yellowknife called "Old Town". A few of the tourist gift stores were open and I wondered through them. Their stuff was nicely done and I thought the prices were quite reasonable.

Old Town, because it is built on solid rock has no town plumbing. All water is trucked to and from each house.




Some of the houses were truly remarkable in terms of design and colour. There was a sense of whimsy in some of the structures that I found quite remarkable. I wish I had been able to talk to some locals just to ask if the somewhat whimsical designs were because of the long winters or in spite of them.

This house was covered with sheets of metal bolted to the sides. Very interesting

Because of the rock, houses had no basements and the houses had to be built around the uneven rock

The other thing about Yellowknife that I found absolutely remarkable were the house boats. As you can see from the pictures they were heavily built and had cord wood already stacked for the winter. I have a hard time believing that people actually live on/in frozen Great Slave Lake during the dark days of winter.

I had a veggie burger in a fake English pub. It tasted fine and the cold beer was welcome.  There was a sense however, of the surreal or of a disconnect to reality as all of the people in the pub were of European desent. The composition of this pub's clientele was quite different than the Chinese restaurant where I had had breakfast. There the majority of the patrons had been either Inuit or members of a more southern First Nation wth a few working class older white men thrown in as well. There seemed to be an easy flow of conversation at breakfast between the various groups of people whereas the pub could have been found in any town in North America. I found eating breakfast far more interesting than lunch. There was also a Boston Pizza and I ate there once. It was the same as any other Boston Pizza. Reliable, basic and predictable.

I hope I will find a way back to Yellowknife. There is so much that I would like to explore but a car would be so useful to get to the outlying parts. I would love to go to NWT legislative building (which looks to be a remarkable building) and watch how their parliamentary consensus process works. I would also love to be able to spend enough time there so I could meet some local people and find out where they eat, hang out, have fun.   There is a sense of Yellowknife still being a small town disconnected from the rest of the country, but it is as well, the center of bustling and growing new economy.  It will be interesting to see how it grows. I suspect that in spite of its innovative governing procedures, it will have many challenges as it needs to determine how the various ethnic groups  will work together. It  was difficult to tell from just a few days but given the number of First Nation individuals (especially the youth) I saw on the street, my reading of history, and of the poverty that results from "a bust and boom cycle" - the proper allocation (or re-allocation) of the natural resources will be major issues for the future.