SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Andre Dupras has fulfilled his wife's last wish. Before 75 year-old Louisa Dupras died last March following a battle with colon cancer, she wanted to spend her golden years living in a log cabin.

"She always wanted me to build her one," said Dupras. "So I decided to build her a smaller log cabin."

Andre Dupras peers in from the doorway to a miniature log cabin he built at his wife Louisa's grave site at Lakeview Cemetery. - Adrian Lysenko/NNSL photo

Over the course of two weeks last summer, Dupras, with the help from his children and grandchildren, built a five-foot-wide, ten-foot-long log cabin filled with miniature furniture in time for Louisa's birthday.

He estimated the cost of the cabin at around $4,000.

"It's a spiritual place," said Dupras. "Everything is dowelled, there is no nail in there."

He got the idea to build it when he was prospecting near Hazelton, B.C.

"Every grave has a little house there, some of them have a church, some of them a gazebo," he said.

Originally from Northern Quebec, Dupras arrived in Yellowknife when he was 18 years old.

"I'm a bush rat," said Dupras. "I've been in the bush all my life."

The 73-year-old prospector has worked all over the world, from Alaska to Baffin Island to Greenland.

He met his future wife soon after arriving in Yellowknife; they were together for 52 years.

He was introduced to Louisa through her father Phillip Lafferty.

"(Phillip) used to work at Giant Mine," said Dupras. "I couldn't speak English and he spoke French."

"He said, 'come to my place on the weekend,'" said Dupras. "So I went there and I met his daughter and that was it, she made up her mind that she was going to marry me."

Louisa and her family came from Old Fort Rae, where they had migrated in the 1800s.

"She was raised in the bush and she wanted to live in the bush again," he said.

Louisa's brother Lawrence Lafferty said his late sister would approve of the grave site.

"She always wanted a cabin," said Lafferty. "They finally found a place to build one but then she got sick and then that was that."

Dupras visits the cabin at Lakeview Cemetery to check up on things everyday. Because of previous vandalism at the cemetery he plans to install motion sensor cameras.

"They broke three graves in a row right beside my wife's place," said Dupras. "Vandals have no respect."

He said he hopes that people will appreciate the cabin rather than being destructive.

"It's for people to look at," said Dupras. "A lot of people think it's really something."

Rather than be laid to rest in the grave site next to his wife he wants his ashes to be placed in the hearth of the fireplace of the cabin.

"She was a special woman," said Dupras. "If there's a spirit world I think she would be happy."