SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - After John Mainland "Smokey" Stout built the Wildcat Cafe in 1937 with his brother-in-law Willy Wylie, Stout moved to Kingston, Ont., and got married, then had a child named Bonnie and raised her in Whitehorse.

Bonnie Brown, the daughter of John "Smokey" Stout who built the Wildcat Cafe with his brother-in-law Willy Wylie in 1937, stands in front of the cafe with her daughter Jeanette Hernberg. - Tim Edwards/NNSL photo

Bonnie Brown is now 64 and has come to Yellowknife for the first time to see her dad's cafe.

"I seem to feel pretty close to my dad here," said Brown.

"I used to think about him all the time, dream about him all the time, and when my daughter came up to Alberta and told me that this is where my dad built his cafe, I was shocked. I had to see it. This is something that I had to do."

Her daughter, Jeanette Hernberg, raised her two sons, Lionel and Zachary Menard, here in the North.

Brown said that though she has never been to Yellowknife before, she has flown over it many times on her way up North, as she used to be a camp cook.

"I worked all over the Arctic - Norman Wells, Swimming Point, Rae Point, Tuktoyaktuk. You name it, I've been there."

Now that she has come to Yellowknife, it has had the effect on her that it has had on many - she plans to move here next year.

Though Brown was raised by her father, he was a private man and she didn't know too much about what he had done in his past.

"I don't know too much about my family. They were pretty private. I'm just now starting to find out things."

She knows that Stout was in the army when he was 18 and was for much of his life. She speculates that when he moved to Yellowknife he may have been involved in some of Wylie's prospecting ventures, but does not know for sure.

"He was in the army and I think when he left (Yellowknife) he went back to Kingston, Ont., where he met my mom. They got married there and they moved to the Yukon, where I was born and my brother was born," said Brown.

Stout died in 1978 and was buried in Abbotsford, B.C., with his wife Sylvie who died five years after him.

Brown was disappointed at the lack of information on her father here in Yellowknife, but not surprised.

"My dad was very secretive. He didn't like pictures taken of him or nothing. He liked doing things for people but he didn't want nothing in return. That's the way my dad was," Brown said.

She was able to find information on Wylie, though, who married Stout's sister Margaret in Yellowknife.

Visiting the Wildcat Cafe, which is now owned by the city and leased by Pierre Lepage, the first thing Brown noted were the high prices. Secondly, she didn't exactly approve of the signage - the word 'le' crossed out in red marker on the menus.

"I didn't like to see that at all. They should take it off. I'd like to meet this Pierre - I'd like to tell him what I think of that," said Brown.

Brown came here on July 13 and left on July 24, but will be back here to live next year.