SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Ten locations - including the site of the NWT's first hockey game - will soon be officially designated as territorial historic places.

The sites - four in Aklavik, three in Tsiigehtchic, two in Fort McPherson and one in Deline - were recommended by a public committee as part of the government's historic places program, run through the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre.

The 10 sites were chosen from 29 government-sponsored heritage projects in 13 different communities during the past five years.

The designation of all of the sites was open to public debate until March 3, and now the museum will submit information about each of the locations to Education, Culture and Employment Minister Jackson Lafferty for official approval.

Tom Andrews, territorial archeologist with the museum, said once approved, the newly designated historic sites will receive international exposure with a spot on the online Canadian Register of Historic Places.

"This really just endorses why these places are important and they're important because they're of critical significance to people in the communities," Andrews said.

Four of the 10 sites are especially important in Aklavik, where the community is celebrating its centennial this year.

Many of Aklavik's prominent families were born at the old town site - Pokiak on the Peel Channel - before moving over to what is known as Aklavik today.

Charlie Furlong, with the Aklavik Indian Band, has a personal attachment to the place - his great-grandfather, Ken Stewart, started the first Hudson Bay Company post on that side.

"For historical purposes, it's important to keep that old town site from any kind of historical development," Furlong said. "A lot of families came from there - you've got families like the Hansens, the Stewarts, Nellie Cournoyea's family came from there, McLeods, McDonalds, people like that."

The sites - including the first recorded NWT hockey game in Deline in 1825 - will join two existing territorial historic sites that were named nearly 40 years ago, before the current government heritage program existed.

"Unfortunately nothing survived about the designation process or why these places were critically significant," Andrews said.

One is the Anglican Church in Tulita, and the other is the whalers' graves on Cape Bathurst.

Andrews said four other places will be "grandfathered in" to historic designations because they received commemorative plaques from the 1970s to early 1990s, bringing the number of NWT's territorial historic sites to 16.

Those four sites are: the trail Tulita Chief Albert Wright created when he put out the call to the Shuhtaot'ine, asking people to sign the treaty; Old Fort Reliance on the eastern end of Great Slave Lake, which served as the winter quarters for an expedition headed by Sir George Back in 1833; Old Fort Providence, 20 km east of Yellowknife, where one of the earliest trading posts in NWT started in 1786; and Fort Franklin, the 1825-1826 winter quarters of Sir John Franklin in what is now Deline.