Michele LeTourneau
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Oct 20/00) - Donna and Peter Huffam scoured the city last Christmas for gifts to send home.

They were specifically looking for a book that would visually depict where they were living.

They never found what they were looking for.

"Well ... there's Volume 1 of the Yellowknife Illustrated History, and that's a good book if you're into the history of Yellowknife," says Peter.

"But if you want something that just shows the scenes in the area, with just a bit of a superficial background history, there's nothing there."

"There just wasn't anything souvenir-wise on Yellowknife," adds Donna.

Donna decided to do something about it, and Yellowknife: Diamond in the Rough was born. The south, and the rest of the world, is the target audience for the book, but the Huffams, who moved North from Fort St. John, B.C. two years ago, believe Yellowknifers might purchase the book.

"We're contemplating pitching it to the local market, looking for people who want something suitable to send to their friends and family in the south," says Peter.

A Japanese translation is also in the works. After all, there's a steady stream of Japanese tourists passing through the city.

Words and images

Yellowknife: A Jewel in the Rough is comprised of half photos and half text. Donna, with some help from Peter and friends, wrote the text.

Most of the photographs are taken by Janice Phillips. Other contributors include Ed Hardy and Fran Hurcomb.

"This is an accurate representation of the place where I live," says Peter. "Not the history of it, but what it's like now."

Although Donna was inspired at Christmas to write the book, she only discussed the project with her husband this past February.

As the husband and wife team laugh, Donna admits to having all sorts of wild ideas. But this one appealed to her practical spouse.

"This is the first one where he said, 'I'm behind you 120 per cent,'" she says.

"She's the one that thinks up the concepts, but I'm sort of the one who says, 'OK, that's nice. But how much is it going to cost to do it,'" he says.

Peter mentions the age-old cliche about how a home is the single biggest investment a person can make in a lifetime, then adds, "This is the second!"

The Huffams financed the project themselves. The most expensive part of the process was the printing because the book contains about 120 full-colour photographs.

"It's funny, because as I write I've always come at things from the opposite end," says Donna.

"You look at the concept, you write a story, you send it out. This one, I had to come at it completely the other way. I had to look at the printing, find a printer, then find out what it was going to cost. And then figure out what we needed to put into it."

The Huffams tried to have the 5,000-copy print run done locally.

"We want to support local businesses, but as it turns out, nobody here could do the type of printing we wanted. What they would have done was taken the contract, done the layout work, farmed it out to a company down south, and then charged us a percentage on top of that," says Peter.

The Huffams needed to keep costs down because they plan on selling the book for less than $20.

"Judith (of the Yellowknife Book Cellar) was a really big help. When we originally planned it, we had something in mind like a hardcover, real flashy type thing. And she just said, 'No. What we really need is something that's more affordable that tourists will pick up.' She said under $20 would do it," says Donna.

The launch for Yellowknife: Diamond in the Rough will be held on Nov. 4 from 3-5 p.m. at the Yellowknife Book Cellar, after which the book will be available at Nor-Art International Gallery, Gallery of the Midnight Sun, the Explorer Hotel's gift shop, and the airport gift shop.