Yellowknife (Feb 23/04) - There's a new national Web site to list heritage sites. Now all the NWT needs is some sites to register.

"Communities in the NWT have the authority to designate heritage sites, but very few have done that," said Emily Hawkins, the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre's cultural places officer.

Only Fort Simpson, Hay River and Yellowknife have designated historic buildings.

Yellowknife played host to delegates from across the NWT last week for the Cultural Places: Connecting Our Lives and Land conference.

Delegates made presentations and discussed issues related to designating historic sites in their communities.

The conference was spurred by the federal government's creation of the Canadian Register of Historic Places, a national, online database of historic sites. To get a site onto the registry, it has to already have been designated by a municipal, territorial or the national government.

The NWT doesn't have a territorial designation process for historic sites. The Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre in Yellowknife has hired a consultant to draft one.

But communities can also identify and designate their own sites.

Hawkins has been working with the village of Fort Simpson to draft and pass a municipal bylaw to allow for the protection of heritage resources.

Fort Simpson's senior administrative officer Bernice Swanson gave a presentation to the conference on the new bylaw, which is nearing its third reading.

Proposed sites

Stephen Rowan of the Fort Simpson Historical Society gave a slide show of heritage buildings in the area.

Six of them, McPherson House, Lafferty House, Albert Faille Cabin, Hudson's Bay Company Warehouse, a livestock barn and the Papal Teepee, are proposed heritage sites under the new bylaw.

There are only two territorially-designated historic sites under the Historical Resources Act: the whalers' graves in Balaena Bay, east of Tuktoyaktuk, and the old Anglican church in Tulita.

There is also one heritage park, under the Territorial Parks Act: the Oblate mission in Fort Smith.

There used to be many more territorially-designated historic sites in the NWT, but most of them are now in Nunavut.

"There are about twice as many sites in the east," said Hawkins.

Getting sites onto the national registry will make information about the territories' history available nationally and might increase cultural tourism, said Hawkins.