Yellowknife (June 27/03) - Neil Phillips has lived in the NWT for the better part of 25 years. During that time, he's seen kids chase a polar bear through town and met a man who trapped wolves and used them to guard his property.

But none of that compares to the day in the mid 1970's when Phillips was walking in Old Town and a 250 pound lion bolted past him.

"I was walking on (Latham) Island and all of a sudden a lion ran right by me," said Phillips, a 50-year-old employee of the NWT Housing Corporation in Inuvik.

"The hair on the back of my neck stood up, but I couldn't quite process what had happened. After all, this was Yellowknife and the last thing you would expect to see was a lion."

Phillips recently told the story to a friend who was new to the North.

"He's only been up here three or four years and he hasn't seen some of the things I've seen," said Phillips. "He didn't believe me and we ended up betting dinner on the whole thing."

To settle the wager, Phillips and his friend turned to Yellowknifer.

A search of the paper's archives revealed that Yellowknife had indeed been home to a lion -- actually a lioness named Sheba -- in the mid 1970's.

Phillips said Sheba's owner, Al Seibel, routinely let the lion run around off its leash. "You would see them out in the morning," he said. "The lion would be running along the road and her owner would be 20 or 30 feet behind."

Seibel drew fire from his neighbours who blamed Sheba for the disappearance of their pets.

"There was one time, a neighbour's dog wandered into the backyard and became a meal," said Phillips.

Seibel disagreed with neighbours who claimed Sheba was dangerous. But in a 1977 interview with Yellowknifer, he admitted that Sheba "... did scratch a kid." He also said "She bit my father on the rear end, but it wasn't serious."

In the wake of a motion by city council to restrict the ownership of lions in Yellowknife, Seibel asked the public to let him keep the animal.

"I'm going to see what they think," he said, after posting petitions in local stores.

Remarkably, the city bylaw wasn't passed on its first reading.

"I'm still not sure there shouldn't be any lions in Yellowknife," said Alderman Bob Baetz at the time.

Ultimately, Phillips said Seibel agreed to send Sheba to a zoo in Alberta, ending one of the stranger chapters in Yellowknife's history.

"Living here all this time, I don't need to make up stories," said Phillips, who was looking forward to a free dinner. "I've lived them."