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Barry Taylor's tales of Yellowknife Resident shares memories of 44 years in the cityKevin Allerston Northern News Services Published Friday, April 13, 2012
He said he came North to find work in the mining industry and quickly landed a job working underground at Giant Mine.
"It was a good experience. Compared to what I'd come from it was easy mining," said Taylor, who had previously worked as a miner in Northern Ontario. "I came out of contractors where you work seven days a week."
The 64-year-old big game outfitter said he liked the friendliness and sense of community Yellowknife had at the time. He knew most people around town, he said.
"The reception was remarkable."
Housing options were so limited that he pitched a tent at Fred Henne park, before serendipity stepped in and he got a room, though it wasn't much.
"We had the old Bromley and Son hardware store, and I was in there to see if I could get some ice," he said, "and I mentioned something to them and they said, 'Gee. We've got a tenant moving out upstairs.'"
Taylor rented a windowless room upstairs.
"I had to get dressed, go downstairs, check the weather and then change clothes," Taylor said with a chuckle.
He said he misses those days, and that as Yellowknife has grown, that sense of community has disappeared.
"We've lost the whole small town community spirit. Even though we have all these groups that are doing all these charity things and all this, Yellowknife isn't a family anymore," said Taylor.
Though small, about 6,000 people in the early 1970s, he said there was always something to do.
"There were always little things going on. There were always little dances. For the longest time I would hear the little unique things advertised on the radio - that there's going to be a dance here or there, an open bar, etc., etc. - and they would always repeat 'No minors allowed,'" which he interpreted as "no miners allowed."
He said he thought that because miners could be a rough crowd, they were being excluded from the events.
"So, for a few months, I didn't go to these things," Taylor laughed.
He said where Surly Bob's sports bar is today on Franklin Avenue was a bar called The Hoist Room, one of his favorite places to go for a bite to eat or wet his whistle.
"That was as nice a bar as you would find anywhere in Canada and the food was fantastic," he said.
He also remembers when they started developing Northland Trailer Park, a decision he said he doesn't understand.
"I can remember bringing somebody out one morning and I looked over and in the swamp and there was this big old steel-wheeled antique tractor with a plow on it, and I was sitting there saying 'you can't make a farm there, or a garden, what are you doing?' Well, what they were doing was plowing furrows to drain the swamp into the lake. Every time we had a huge rain, that was a big depression, and people had to paddle around in canoes," said Taylor. "That was city council's decision of the day, whether it made sense or not.
Taylor dabbled in taking people out on the land as an outfitter in 1982 before deciding to pursue it more seriously and starting up Arctic Safaris in 1984, a company he operates to this day. He said he has loved the outdoors since he was a boy living on a farm in the Ottawa Valley.
"The biggest challenge was back then, nobody knew where the NWT was. I used to spend six months travelling trying to drum up business explaining where the NWT was. A lot of the time when I would tell somebody I was from the NWT, they thought I was talking about the Northwest Territory of Australia."
While he misses the small town he remembers Yellowknife as when he first came, he still likes the city.
"It's home."
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