SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
One of Yellowknife's first celebrities quietly returned to the city last weekend after a 70-year hiatus.

Vera MacNeil, crowed Miss Yellowknife in 1946, holds up photos taken during the pageant. MacNeil was visiting the city for the first time in 70 years. August 28, 2015. - Meagan Leonard/NNSL photo

Vera MacNeil (nee Clegg) aka, the "rubber-booted beauty" - now 93, was the first to receive the title of Miss Yellowknife in 1946. Sitting down with Yellowknifer over beef barley soup at L'atitudes Restaurant Bistro last Friday, MacNeil's eyes lit up when she was asked to recall the events of that summer.

It all happened very quickly, she said.

Trudging through the mud-splattered streets on her way to the downtown Hudson's Bay Company where she worked as a clerk, MacNeil said she became curious when she passed by a boisterous crowd gathered at the Canadian Pacific Airline float base. Young women were lined up, scantily clad and shivering in the cool May morning. ¦One by one, she watched as they climbed the dock stairs and paraded before the enthusiastic spectators who whooped and clapped in response. Suddenly a friend of MacNeil's appeared in the ruckus. Grabbing her arm, he thrust her into the line and she found herself among them. Her rubber boots and long coat standing in stark contrast to the bathing suits surrounding her. ¦MacNeil, a popular face around town, with many friends and admirers, received the loudest cheers of all. She had won the mining town's first beauty pageant and would represent the territory in the Miss Canada contest later that summer.

"Before I knew it, they had taken a picture and declared me Miss Yellowknife and I thought, 'Oh my God,'" MacNeil recalled, adding afterward her "gumboots" became her trademark.

"I didn't wear a bathing suit until I got to Toronto," she said with a laugh.

Edmonton-based company United Cigar sponsored her trip to Ontario and gave her $300 in spending money to purchase clothes for the event to be held in Hamilton on July 4.

"In those days that was a lot of money," MacNeil said. "I stayed at the Royal York Hotel ... and I had a beautiful suite, oh my God it was gorgeous!"

MacNeil competed alongside 58 other young women in front of a crowd of some 6,000 people. Although she didn't end up taking the Miss Canada crown, the former Wildcat Cafe waitress received more publicity than any other candidate - but it wasn't on account of how she looked on stage.

Arriving alone in a new city, MacNeil said no one greeted her at the airport or hotel, so she decided to spend her first night exploring on her own.

"I went out and took a cab to the movies - at 10:30 p.m. I came out (of the theatre) and didn't have any idea how to get back to my hotel," she said. In the few hours she was gone, pageant officials had come looking for her. When she was no where to be found, they alerted the press, asking anyone for information on MacNeil's whereabouts.

"I wasn't even missing, I just went to the movies," MacNeil shrugged.

She eventually found her way back and went to bed - oblivious to the announcements on the radio and her photo's appearance in the papers. She said the story ended up going national.

"It had gotten around that I had gotten lost and I had disappeared," she said. "My grandfather in Victoria heard it on the radio and it was in the (newspaper) and everything."

After the excitement, she returned to Yellowknife and soon after met her husband Murdoch MacNeil who had recently returned from serving in the navy during the Second World War. The two moved to Edmonton soon after.

Arriving in the city after so long away, MacNeil said she was shocked to see how much it had grown. While many of the fixtures distinctive in 1946 have long since disappeared, she knew one place that waited for her.

"If I can just get to the Wildcat, I'll be able to find my way around from there," she said, having worked at the iconic eatery in the 1940s.

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