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Yellowknife hasn't hit 20,000 people ... yet



The question of how many people walk the streets of Yellowknife as permanent residents is being met with a variety of answers. - Merle Robillard/NNSL photo


Dawn Ostrem
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (July 13/01) - Whether people inflate guesses of what the capital city's population is or downplay them, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

At least that seems to be the case when taking a random sample of people on the street.

A recent job opportunity posted by the city of Yellowknife in its newsletter boasted a population of approximately 20,000 people.

That's too high.

"We would prefer them to use our estimates," said territorial statistician David Stewart about all people who throw out guesses.

"Obviously any population estimate is very hard to do and hard to get an actual count."

So, Yellowknifers, what is our population?

"Just a guess? ... 19,444," threw out Mel Lafferty.

Nope. Once again, too high.

Jenneth Matthews wasted no time with her guess of "17,000."

"That's what I think it was three years ago when we first moved here."

Matthews guess was only short by 567 people for Yellowknife's estimated 1999 population according to the NWT bureau of statistics.

The current statistical estimate of the population of Yellowknife is just over 18,000 people. The NWT bureau of statistics makes educated guesses based on census and Statistics Canada information, vital statistics such as deaths and births, health care registrations and school enrolment.

According to the bureau Yellowknife was bigger in 1996 by just under 100 people. That dropped by nearly a thousand people in 1999 when government downsized and Giant Mine closed.

"There seems to be signs that the population is coming back a bit but there are still signs of instability," Stewart said.

"There doesn't seem to be the level of development that there was before," such as housing in the Frame Lake area. Right now it is estimated by the bureau that most people in Yellowknife are male between the ages of 35 and 39. The native to non-native ratio is 4,148 to 13,880.

Stewart said the bureau is awaiting numbers from Statistics Canada this month in order to manipulate into updated NWT statistics for 2001. Those stats will be available in December.