HAY RIVER - Faye Duval grew up in the bush and preserves that attachment to nature with a privately-owned campground.

Duval owns and operates Mountain Aven Campground on the shores of Great Slave Lake, just a few minutes from downtown Hay River

Faye Duval is the owner/operator of Mountain Aven Campground in Hay River. She started the business as a way to satsify a life long attachment to nature. Work to create the campground began in 1995. - Paul Bickford/NNSL photo

"I just love the bush - the land, the wind, the waves, everything," she said, adding it gives her a feeling of being close to Mother Earth.

Duval, 60, said she originally never thought of creating a campground, but would regularly stay in the area in a tent.

In 1995, she began working on creating the campground from scratch, starting with negotiations for the land with the Town of Hay River.

"It's been operating since 1999," she said recently. "People can come here and camp and picnic."

The campground - on a 400x600-foot piece of land leased from the town - has four cottages, two teepees from Fort McPherson, one tent frame and a gazebo, plus it offers water, wood and washroom facilities.

The campground, which operates year round, has hosted weddings, small conferences, birthday parties, youth camps and retreats.

Most of the business is in the warmer months, but Duval said there are also some visitors in the winter.

"We've had the odd person come out to look at the northern lights," she noted, adding that has included some tourists from Japan.

Duval lives at the campground in a caretaker's cottage.

In the late 1940s, Duval's father and his family came to the North, where he first worked as a park patrolman and later as a game warden throughout the NWT.

She was born in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan.

"I came here when I was two years old," she said, noting her six siblings were born along the Mackenzie River.

"Our life was the bush, dog teams and canoes. That's all we knew," she recalled.

Duval said she loved growing up in the bush. "I think it's the best life ever for a child."

During the winters, she and her brothers and sisters were sent to residential school, first in Inuvik and then in Fort Simpson.

Through her campground, Duval wants her three grandchildren to experience life in the bush.

"It has everything good in life to start out with."

She also has two sons and a daughter, who also share her love of the bush.

From 1986 to 2001, Duval operated the information centre and park at the NWT/Alberta border.

She said that job was awesome and allowed her to meet people from all over the world.

"I'm still in contact with lots of them still today," she noted.

Before that, she was a parks officer for five years, overseeing the operations of 13 territorial parks in the southern NWT.

Aside from operating the campground under her Mountain Aven Enterprises, Duval also has a full-time job as an evening attendant and counsellor at Nats'ejee K'eh Treatment Centre on the Hay River Reserve.