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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Born in 1946 as the Board of Trade, the Yellowknife Chamber of Commerce is still going strong, standing as one of the most successful business associations in the country.

While the organization, which now represents 476 businesses, has always strove to be "the voice of Yellowknife Business," the business association has helped shape the city of Yellowknife as a whole since its inception, said Mayor Gord Van Tighem, who served as president of the chamber in the late 1990s.

"A lot of what we are today is because of groups within the city like the chamber," Van Tighem said. "The ones that have lasted 65 years are obviously of continued benefit to the community."

Seeking to improve the experience of Yellowknife families in a Northern mining town in the 1940s, the board of trade's first major project was the construction of an indoor ice arena, spearheaded by the board's first president, Gerry Murphy, whom the arena was then named after due to his fundraising efforts for the project. The Gerry Murphy Arena opened in 1949 and stood until 2004.

"In the early days they were more focused on building things because if you have things then people want to live here," Van Tighem said.

Tim Doyle, executive director of the chamber, said that is a continuing tradition.

"We want workers to be here and we want them to be happy," Doyle said, adding the organization has continued to strengthen over the years, advocating for its member businesses.

"We have a long history and this demonstrates the support we continue to receive from the Yellowknife business community," Doyle said. "At 65, most folks retire to enjoy the golden years but we feel we are just hitting our stride."

The chamber has the largest number of members per capita of any chamber in Canada, Van Tighem said, presenting a strong front for lobbying the territorial and city governments. There are more than 1,500 registered businesses in Yellowknife, according to Doyle.

"Groups like the City of Yellowknife need a business association because they don't want to deal with each business one-on-one," Doyle said, listing zoning bylaws and lower taxes among the organization's causes. "We have great businesses here, we just want to make sure the environment for them to operate is as fair as possible."

With more than half of the city's businesses a part of the chamber, the "deep market penetration" is what makes the Yellowknife Chamber of Commerce one of the more successful chambers in the country, Doyle said, compared to a city like Edmonton, which has a bigger chamber but only about 10 per cent of the roughly 34,000 businesses as members.

"We have great support here," Doyle said, describing the Yellowknife business community as "closely knit."

Among the chamber's past projects, the organization worked to promote tourism in the Northwest Territories, setting up the first tourist bureau in Yellowknife and putting the first highway signs up and down the highway through northern Alberta to Yellowknife in celebration of Canada's centennial in 1967. The business association also organized the now-defunct Raven Mad Daze, the summer solstice festival which in previous years saw Franklin Avenue blocked off with vendors and festivities.

The chamber's next big project is to help rebuild and revitalize the downtown core, Doyle said.

The business association faced financial challenges in the early 2000s, but under the leadership of previous executive director Ellie Sasseville, the chamber has rebuilt its reputation and finances, past-president Warren McLeod said.

Replacing McLeod as president this year is Nunavut Insurance account executive Larry Jacquard, who was elected at the chamber's 65th annual general meeting last Thursday, along with a new board of executives and directors. Jacquard will be officially sworn in at the president's banquet in October.

A motion was passed at this year's AGM to bring the president's banquet and AGM together starting in 2012, so next year the chamber will be holding both the president's banquet and the AGM in October.

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