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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Christina Vernon said she always knew she'd be back in Yellowknife. It was just a matter of time.

Vernon, who lived in Yellowknife for 12 years working for various non-profit organizations, left town when things became impossible money-wise.

Christina Vernon recently started offering massage therapy in a room inside Yellowknife's infamous "dinosaur museum" on MacDonald Drive. - Guy Quenneville/NNSL photo

But with the financial help of a friend - and a new career as a registered massage therapist - she's back in town, living in an Old Town duplex with crooked windows.

It's just where she wants to be.

"I wanted to come back as soon as I left," said Vernon, speaking from her small but cosy massage space at 3533 McDonald Drive - "the dinosaur museum," as it's known to most Yellowknifers.

"As soon as school was done, I wanted to come back."

Vernon took a two-year course at The Somatics Institute in Edmonton, enlivened by the thought of working on patients.

She said cracking open textbooks was not so much. But she was in for a surprise.

"I was terrified by the thought of studying the science part of it. I thought I couldn't do it. And as it turned out I did very well in that," said Vernon.

While putting great emphasis on the academic study of massage, her school also stressed the intuitive touch, something for which Vernon said she is grateful.

"Each person on the table is a different person and just because I know the science of what's going on, everybody needs a different approach," she said.

"You don't learn that in a textbook."

Finished her studies, Vernon tried her hand at opening a studio in Athabasca, about an hour and half north of Edmonton, but it didn't work out.

"It was very difficult to get a business going there," she said.

"Quite a few massage therapists showed up at the same time I did."

But that wasn't the only reason she left, she added.

"I didn't feel like I was part of that community," said Vernon.

Vernon said she feels she's come back at just the right time, as some places have waiting lists as long as one month.

Her friend and sometimes patient, Pearl Benyk, happy to see her friend return to town, is convinced of Yellowknife's potential for massage services.

"I think that Yellowknife is a very good place to be a massage therapist, because we have a lot of government employees here and government employees have health plans that pay for massage therapy," said Benyk.