SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - It must have been the heart-tugging grins and hesitant smiles of the seven little tykes sandwiched together on the lumber pile that caught our readers' attention.

Whatever it was, the charming 1956 photo of the children sitting next to the late Netta Pringle in Aklavik triggered much interest after its publication in the Summer/Fall 2007 issue of Nahendeh Notes.

The photo - snapped by Pringle's friend Gunther Abrahamson, a resident of Ottawa - was part of a tribute to Pringle, a lifelong adventurer and designer of the City of Yellowknife's crest.

But who were those unnamed children? A Pringle family friend, Bob Gamble, urged Abrahamson to try to track down their names. Soon, an e-mail with the image was darting here and there around the Mackenzie Delta, like one of the region's famed mosquitoes on a mission.

Abrahamson sent the photo to Aklavik wildlife officer Ian McLeod, who then sent it to his sister Helen Sullivan in Inuvik. An NWT Education, Culture and Employment employee, Sullivan turned to several sources for sleuthing assistance: Sharon Snowshoe, executive director of the Gwich'in Social and Cultural Institute in Fort McPherson, and Rosie Larocque - Sullivan's and McLeod's aunt. Aunt Rosie and other elders identified the children as best they could, and McLeod ran the results by two Inuvik elders, Richard Ross and Arthur McLeod, for further confirmation.

Meanwhile, back in Fort McPherson, Snowshoe forwarded the photo to her office's heritage researcher in Tsiigehtchic, Alestine Andre.

The Gwich'in Social and Cultural Institute also arranged to use Abrahamson's photo in an application to have the Pokiak area recognized as a territorial historic site.

Andre didn't recognize any of the children but struck gold after showing the image to the community's senior administrative officer, Danny Lennie.

Lennie, now the director of finance with the hamlet of Tulita, was the little boy at the far left in the photo. He recognized several of the children, including the boy beside him - his uncle, B.C. artist Rick Rivet, who at the time was known by his adopted family's name, MacLeod. Andre also asked Jerome Gordon and Annie B. Gordon of Aklavik who they thought the children might be.

There is solid agreement that the first three boys from the left are Danny Lennie, Rick Rivet and the late Gordon MacLeod (Rivet's adopted brother). The only girl in the photo is Mary Jane Leblue (nee Lennie) of Normal Wells, a cousin to Rivet. It's possible that the two boys on the far right are Maurice and Wayne Lennie. The fourth boy from the left may be either Gordie Lennie or Tommy Adams.

"We were back from our fishing and trapping camps for the summer," recalled Rivet as he examined the photo. The lumber that the kids perched on was likely from the nearby Roy Wright Sawmill, one of the kids' prime play areas.

"We were everywhere. We played in outhouses, out in the bush, in abandoned old boats, the sawmill, on the beach. That was the thing - everybody lived outdoors most of the time, even in winter and summer."

The Aklavik area was a rich cultural stew, home to First Nations, Inuit (including families who had moved from Alaska prior to the Second World War) and Metis, as well as British, Scandinavians and other Europeans who had come down the Mackenzie in the 1920s and '30s in pursuit of muskrat and other fur bearers in the resource-rich Delta. Many of these trappers stayed, married and raised families. Life in 1956 still embraced centuries-old traditions dictated by the changing seasons. Rivet is an expressionistic-primitivistic painter who explores modernist concerns through the lens of his Metis heritage, and symbols of his traditional childhood spent out on the land are reflected in his artwork today (www.rickrivet.ca).

So much has changed in the half century since Abrahamson snapped his friend Netta Pringle as she rolled a cigarette.

No longer do break-up and freeze-up in the Delta command the flow of communication. Computers and e-mail have made communication instantaneous and non-stop, and even in the North, the pace of life has become increasingly hurried.

Hopefully, though, the languid mood of a lazy summer day spent on the banks of the Mackenzie long ago will remain.

- Marion Soubliere is an Ottawa-based writer