Richard Gleeson
Northern News Services

Yellowknife ( Jun 07/00) - There are many T-shirts tourists can buy as remembrances of our exotic Northern frontier mining town, the gateway to adventure in Canada's Arctic and future world diamond capital. But which one do most take home with them?

"They want something that's identifiably Northern," said Gallery of the Midnight Sun manager and co-owner Lisa Seagrave.

Until this year, Seagrave said, T-shirts with inukshuks and polar bears on them were the favourites, though you'd have to go another 1,000 kilometres north to come across a polar bear, and inukshuks are far more emblematic of Nunavut than the NWT or Yellowknife.

One of the old favourites reads, "If you don't think hell freezes over, you haven't been to Yellowknife in winter."

Since they arrived in December, the fastest-selling souvenir T-shirts in Seagrave's business today are a new series that incorporate camouflage technology developed by the U.S. military.

Line drawings depicting Yellowknife's downtown skyline and animals of the area fill in with colour when exposed to sunlight.

"The Japanese just loved them," said Seagrave.

Over at the Northern Frontier Visitors Centre, Ragged Ass Road T-shirts move the fastest. So fast, in fact, that there won't be any available until the centre gets its next shipment in.

"I think it's the uniqueness of the name and the story behind it," said Jenny Chan, pointing to a card telling the story of how Ragged Ass Road got its name.

"I would say the bush pilot T-shirt (is the next most popular)."

Sue Ha of Northern Souvenir and Gifts says T-shirts with bugs and bears are the favourites.

Bug T-shirts typically have a Yellowknife, NWT theme. A popular one has a picture of a huge mosquito and the words, "Send more tourists, the last ones were delicious."

The most popular among the bear emblems is the simple symbol of the GNWT, the blue, three-legged polar bear.