Tara Kearsey
Northern News Services
Yellowknife (Nov 08/00) - What began as a neighbourhood scattered with dilapidated trailers where miners and low-income families resided is now going condo.
Northland Mobile Home Park was built in 1970 by Currie Construction, H&H Plumbing and Territorial Electric, which was owned by Allan and Hazel Marcoux. It was originally intended to be a temporary solution to a housing shortage in Yellowknife.
At that time, the city had decided to shut down what was commonly known as the 'Dump Trailer Court,' which was located in Old Town next to the Racquet Club.
Located at the corner of Old Airport Road and Franklin Ave., people of all walks of life moved to Northland -- young families and retired couples, a large number of Newfoundlanders, students and those surviving on low-incomes who would rather live in a private trailer than a cramped apartment building. However, a majority of the first settlers there were Giant Mine workers.
Mobile homes first began sprouting up in Northland in 1971. Ron Sulz, manager of the trailer park from 1973 to 1991, was one of the first to set up a trailer there. Back then, there were four streets in the Northland block, rows 100 to 400.
Management owned the lots only. They were each rented out for only $65 a month. The lots were fully-serviced with water, sewage and electrical services included.
In 1975 it was expanded to include the 500 and 600 rows. Giant Mine owned several trailers in the 600 row that were used for staff housing.
The popularity of Northland was overwhelming. People were constantly moving in, but there were always a few residents moving out as well.
Walt Humphries moved to Northland in 1974. At that time, there were about 46 trailers in the park.
"You could buy a trailer out there then for about $5,000 and they could go as low as about $3,000 or $2,000.
"It was a lot cheaper than an apartment with quite a bit of land and space," he said.
Back then, most of the trailers were not mobile homes, but camping trailers. After a few years, tenants were forced to upgrade the state of their trailers or move them.
"People would put porches on them and live in them. They weren't really designed for the North, that's for sure," Humphries said.
Most of the mobile homes in Northland were not suited for the extreme Northern temperatures, which caused all sorts of problems.
Water pipes ran underneath the homes about 30 to 40 feet and then into the trailer. Because most of the trailers were very close to the ground, pipe freeze-ups were imminent and getting under there to fix any problems was virtually impossible.
"After two years I just brought the pipe straight in and run it right through inside the trailer," he said.
When the snow began to melt in the spring, excess runoff would accumulate around the trailers because of frozen drainages. When that happened, residents would sometimes have to wade through a foot of water to get to their cars in the morning. But that problem was usually solved quite quickly.
Water main breaks happened quite a few times at Northland and there was not a year that went by without a devastating fire occurring there.
A fire could destroy a trailer within minutes. The insides were made of panel board, only about a quarter of an inch thick.
Just last week, a trailer located at the corner of Fairchild Crescent and Norseman Drive caught fire when the owner attempted to fix a water main with a torch. Trailer damage is estimated at $30,000 while belongings lost is estimated at $10,000.
"When a trailer catches fire, it's gone quickly.
"We had one in the 500 row and by the time I got up there (the trailer) was gone in 15 minutes," said Sulz.
Overall, most of the residents didn't cause any trouble, said Sulz, but there were exceptions.
"There were a lot of good people.
"There was two per cent of them that made it a little tougher, but it made my job interesting. You always seem to remember those that do give you trouble," he said.
There were a few noisy residents, especially during the summer, he said. People would not stay inside their trailers during parties.
"Everybody had to realize that trailers don't have eight-inch walls so the noise does travel quite easily, plus the fact that the trailers are all close together, so you can almost hear your neighbour tip-toeing down the hall," said Sulz.
Many Northland residents lived there for many years, but there were also plenty of people that only lived there for a short time.
"A lot of people did stay a long time. Some were there for the duration that I was there and were still there when I left.
"A lot of other people, they invested in a house. But up there, the cost of housing is pretty darn high so trailers were the next best thing. You didn't have to shell out $200,000 to be able to have a spot to live," said Sulz, who now lives in an A-frame home in the Okanagan Valley.
In 1981, during an economic slump in Yellowknife, dozens of individuals and families began to pick up and move.
"What was happening was people on low income were getting behind in rent and before we knew it they had just vacated their trailer," said Sulz.
The company was then forced to take over those five or six trailers, which it sold or rented out to recoup the loss.
In the end, before the trailer park was sold to Yellowknife Condominium Corporation No. 8, Allan and Hazel Marcoux of Territorial Electric were the sole owners of Northland.
They retired to the Okanagan Valley and then decided to sell.
Now Northland is managed by James Clark, president of the Condominium Corp. No. 8. Only 43 of the 259 units that exist today are rented out, the rest were purchased by their owners.
A 370 square-metre lot can be purchased for $37,000 and prices can go as high as $44,900. The 43 lots are rented at $450 a month.
The Condo Corporation holds an annual spring cleanup every year when residents can gather for a community barbecue and there are several playgrounds and a ball field for children to enjoy. Some roads were re-paved this year and more will be done later this year.
