SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Many people head for warmer climes and bigger jobs after a few years in Yellowknife, but not many choose to continue living here at the same time – especially with the higher cost of living.

Patricia Baldwin and her daughter Katharine getting ready to cross country ski on Great Slave Lake. - Adrian Lysenko/NNSL photo

But Dr. Andre Corriveau has done just that. A year ago Corriveau announced he was leaving his job as chief medical officer for the NWT to take on the same position in Alberta. Corriveau said the reason he accepted the job was he wanted a new challenge.

Although she knew it was good for his career, his wife Patricia Baldwin said she wasn't happy with the news.

"Why would I want to leave?" said Baldwin. "I have boys next door to shovel my driveway, an RCMP officer across the street and great neighbours."

She said moving wasn't an option. So rather than relocate his family down south, Corriveau has been commuting from Yellowknife to Edmonton and returns on the weekends to spend time with his family unless he is on call.

"I was reluctant to leave," said Corriveau. "For 15 years I would walk to work on most days."

But despite the change in the location of his workplace, things are working out for the family who remain in the city.

"He's used to travelling," said Baldwin. "So it's not too much different."

What drew Baldwin and Corriveau to Yellowknife initially was simple.

"I came here for the rocks," said Baldwin.

"My husband let me choose the place, so I came for the rocks, as well as the aboriginal culture and the cross-country skiing."

Corriveau and Baldwin moved to the city from Puvirnituq, Que., with their son Pierre and daughter, Katharine in the summer of 1994.

"I wanted to stay up north," said Corriveau, who was exposed to the north in his early medical internship in St. Anthony, N.L.

The family had been living in the Nunavik settlement on Hudson Bay since 1986. Puvirnituq means "place where there is a smell of rotten meat" in Inuktitut.

Baldwin fondly recalled the muskoxen that would walk through the town.

"With two kids old enough for school we wanted to move them into a community with more choices," she said. "Yellowknife fit the bill at the time."

Upon arriving in the NWT, the family soon fell in love with the city. They canoe and hike in the summer, pick berries in the fall and cross-country ski in the winter.

"I like the community," said Baldwin. "It's multicultural and never boring."