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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
In 1945 it cost $15 to move a house from Latham Island to 49 Street. Blair Weatherby has the receipt to prove it.

Blair Weatherby, owner of Weatherby Trucking Ltd., was born and raised in Yellowknife and has family connections to the capital city going back to 1937 when his relatives arrived to prospect. - Danielle Sachs/NNSL photo

Now, the same move would cost anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000.

Born and raised in Yellowknife, Weatherby can't remember a time he wasn't using heavy machinery.

"When I was five or six I spent a full day driving the Cat," he said.

Afterwards, he admits it was probably only a few hours of driving but said it felt like a full day when he was younger.

Born Feb. 2, 1969, Weatherby said life was hard work from the start.

"It was tough even coming into the world," he said.

"I almost died and my mother almost died."

His mother and father, Barb and Gord Weatherby, now live on the same property as Weatherby and his wife Kelley.

It's also where they run the 100 per cent local trucking company Weatherby Trucking Ltd.

That property is also the same area where Weatherby's father used to play.

"My grandfather would drop my dad and a friend off for the day and they'd try and shoot fish," Weatherby said.

"It didn't work very well."

Weatherby also has a 26-year-old stepson, Dustin Phillapon, and a 22-year-old daughter, Aven Tremblett.

Weatherby's family has had a presence here since 1937 when his great grandfather George Holloway and grandfather Ted Williams moved to Yellowknife to prospect.

"My great grandfather owned a mill where Air Tindi is now," Weatherby said. He sometimes wonders if his great grandfather was murdered, because according to a coffee table book about Yellowknife's history Holloway just disappeared.

Weatherby's parents owned and ran the Gallery bar, along with the Stephenson and Sulz family. He can remember hanging out in the offices downstairs after school instead of having a babysitter.

Every week Weatherby and some of his friends would be roped into cleaning the bar.

"It was like slave labour," he said.

"I think that's why to this day I hate cleaning."

The upside to cleaning the bar was you could keep any change you found under the tables.

"It turned into a race over who could find the most change," said Weatherby.

"I found out years later that my dad would grab change from the till and throw it all over the floor so we could find it when cleaning."

Having both his parents running the bar once caused confusion with one of Weatherby's teachers.

"In Grade 4 there were a lot of school outings and we had to have permission slips from our parents," said Weatherby.

"I always told my teacher they were at the Gallery, so she started getting concerned and one day she went down there expecting to see my parents sitting there drinking but found out they owned it."

Between working and school Weatherby did find time to lace up his skates for hockey.

He once went south for a junior hockey camp, but left a week or two later to come back North.

"I had two weeks off work and I had to decide if the south was for me," he said.

"It wasn't, so I came back."

While Yellowknife is different now, Weatherby and his wife have no plans to move.

"I can remember when there were only three traffic lights," said Weatherby.

"It used to be a really open society, now it's a lot more closed and people don't know each other like they used to."

But even with the differences, they'll be retiring, eventually, on the same property they have now, with plans to build a log cabin near the lake.

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