When festival-goers flock through the colourful entranceway into the Folk on The Rocks site this weekend for the festival’s 36th year, few may realize how close the venerable event came to not happening this year, and how fragile Yellowknife’s largest cultural gathering remains even after months of organizational CPR. “We’re alive, but we didn’t know
It’s about more than books. That’s the view of some Yellowknife lawyers, who expressed shock this week at plans to close the territory’s only law library. They say it profoundly affects access to justice in the Northwest Territories, limiting your ability to represent yourself in court and hurting the sole practitioners who help many residents
By 2019, territorial judges in the NWT could be earning more than $300,000 a year. Why? Because a panel of three civilians says so. Last week, justice minister Louis Sebert released the sharply titled Report of the Northwest Territories Judicial Remuneration Commission. It sounds truly mind-alteringly dull but it’s actually a treasure trove on two
Are police in the North doing a good job? The majority of NWT residents seem to think so, but not to the extent that the rest of Canada believes. Data released Monday by Statistics Canada shows that in 2014, most residents in the Canadian territories had positive perceptions of police performance, but the proportion of
Just over a year ago, the Yellowknife Chamber of Commerce released the results of a survey which asked their members if they supported Business Improvement Districts — essentially a scheme in which businesses pay into a fund for collective revitalization and promotion efforts. The results were stark: 50 percent of respondents opposed the idea, another
“The first time we flew in, we lost a tire and had to push the plane off the runway,” says NWT Power Corporation engineer Gilles Ringuette, as we bump along Colville Lake’s former airport runway in a new Ford pickup. “You had to bounce off the hill just to take off,” adds Bernard Blancha, who
Who’s coming to visit this summer? And more importantly, where is the quietest place to camp? There are stats for that. As we steel ourselves for a five-week session of the legislature — and many urgent mentions of “economic diversification” — territorial officials are tracking who comes in, and where they go, to figure out
“No, it’s not an austerity measures budget.” So sayeth Finance Minister Robert C. McLeod about the 430-page, $1.66 billion budget he tabled in the Legislative Assembly today. And, for the all preceding hullabaloo, this seems to be mostly true. Certainly the fiscal pruning shears came out, cutting some $31 million from government programs and allowing
Yellowknife’s most famous neighbourhood is actually a collection of many wildly varied areas, from the DIY shacks of the Woodyard to Latham Island super-mansions
Two years ago, I was one of five Yellowknifers who went to China to teach English. The one-week kids’ camp was held at an English language school set up by CloudWorks co-founder Paige Saunders. As a reward for their hard work, kids earned ‘camp money’ which they could spend on snacks and toys each evening
How can house prices be rising when our population has been basically flat for a decade? Sam Gamble explains in this three-part analysis of the Yellowknife housing market.
Once home to a dump, and the city’s sewage, Niven is now one of Yellowknife’s most desired areas
Years ago, John Sandlos and Arn Keeling report, arsenic killed a Ndilo toddler and poisoned many others, but it was business as usual at the gold mine
Our economy is, in several key ways, similar to that of middle-eastern petro-states.
Our supercharged construction industry has become tradable For the past eighteen months, my business partner Rob Warburton has been trying to give away $150,000. We had been approved for a $50,000 grant from the GNWT to install a new wood-pellet boiler in a recent condominium conversion project, but we couldn’t find a contractor to take on the