Yellowknife then ... and now
Fifty years after the government came to town, a lot has changed
John Parker, the newly appointed deputy commissioner, hammers a small wooden sign - one foot by five feet with the words Government of the Northwest Territories - onto the side of a clapboard building that became the government's new norhern headquarters Sept. 18, 1967. - photo courtesy of Jake Ootes |
Kirsten Fenn
Northern News Services
Friday, September 15, 2017
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
It was sometime between the late 1960s and early 70s. Walt Humphries had just touched down in Yellowknife, dressed in his bush clothes.
Walt Humphries is a prospector who first came to Yellowknife in 1969 and eventually settled there in the 1970s. He remembers the city as a working town where people held the attitude that they were in things together. - Kirsten Fenn/NNSLphoto |
Like so many at the time, the prospector had come North for mineral exploration, passing in and out of town until settling permanently in 1974.
"We came into town on a floatplane and were staying at a motel," he said. "Because we'd been in the bush ... we just wanted to get something to eat."
But it was a Sunday. The only place open at the time was the dining room at the town's hotel - too fancy for his taste, and his attire.
"So we asked the cab driver and he's like, 'Well, you know, if you just want burgers and that, we can go to Lenny's,'" said Humphries.
A few minutes later, they rolled up to the side of someone's house on 48 Street. (Today, that building is now houses Coldwell Banker.)
"The kitchen window opens and Lenny says, 'What do you want?'" he said. "He'd turned the kitchen into a takeout place."
The only thing missing, he thought, was a cold one to wash things down. With food in tow, the cab driver drove the group out of the town of less than 5,000 and pulled over at Long Lake.
"He walks around the back of the cab, pops the trunk and says, 'What do you want? Beer or wine?'" said Humphries. "He was bootlegging. And he was a member of city council."
But Yellowknife was a different place back then - a frontier town with bootleggers, moonshiners and a 'we're-all-in-this-together' attitude, said Humphries.
"It's when it became the capital that they started shutting down all the after-hours clubs, drove the ladies of the night underground. The morality changed and the attitudes started to change," he said. "They were trying to make the place more respectable."
Yellowknife was officially named the capital of the Northwest Territories on Jan. 18, 1967.
Reaction to the news was "jubilant" in the small city, a CBC broadcast at the time declared, with a chorus of applause and cheers audible in the background of then-Northern Development Minister Arthur Laing's announcement.
But more memorable perhaps was a day exactly eight months later.
On Sept. 18, 1967, a DC 7 charter plane carrying 75 passengers from Ottawa landed on the tarmac in Yellowknife to a crowd of 1,000 people and a red carpet.
 | A pet skunk named Snoopy | 
|
The new arrivals — many of whom were employees of the Government of the Northwest Territories — were accompanied by family members, an immigrant from London and a pet skunk named Snoopy, according to one news report from the day.
Stuart Hodgson, the first resident commissioner to oversee the territory from the North rather than from Ottawa, also made the trip.
A second plane followed closely behind, carrying 21,246 kilograms of paper and 5,216 kilograms of government files.
Although current Yellowknife Mayor Mark Heyck was born several years after the seat of the territorial government moved to the city, he remembers how his hometown changed in the years following the government's arrival.
"It really started a major transformation of the community," he said.
What was once a "rough and tumble" mining town with three distinct communities — Old Town, the Giant Mine site and the Con Mine site — started to blur together, resulting in what was called New Town in the 1950s, making up the city's downtown core and surrounding area, said Heyck.
Today, there is more integration than ever before between communities across the NWT, thanks to improved transportation corridors and air travel, he said. This has come with its own challenges - namely dealing with an influx of people coming to the city for programs, services or employment, who end up stuck on the streets if things don't work out.
Heyck also pointed to the establishment of land-claim negotiations in the past 50 years.
"That year began a decades-long evolution that I think we're still experiencing in some regards," he said. "But I think we've also done a good job of maintaining that aspect of our heritage, of where we started out from."
The city of Yellowknife blossomed from gold. In 1934, the precious metal was discovered along Yellowknife Bay, followed by another discovery at the Giant Mine site in 1944, according to the NWT Mining Heritage Society.
While it brought prosperity, it also meant boom and bust cycles in the economy.
"Throughout the late 80s and 90s, when it became apparent that the quality ore was finally running out at Giant and Con, we could see the writing on the wall that we were in for some tough times," said Heyck.
Those were some of the worst days for Dave Lovell, who worked served as a councillor under then-mayor Pat McMahon until taking the reins himself in 1994.
"We had the Giant strike and the murders and people lost their self-confidence," he said, referring to the murder of nine Giant Mine workers by a homemade bomb that former miner Roger Warren planted in 1992 at the site. "It was awful."
And while some residents were doing better than they'd probably ever done in their lives, working in government, transportation or other areas, he said, "the miner didn't know whether he'd lose his house in the next two months."
Lovell remembers his house being picketed during that time as well. The only bar he felt safe drinking at was the Gold Range, which he claims had the toughest bouncers in town.
"If you weren't with people you were against people," he said, adding some friends he'd known his whole life stopped talking to him for the next 10 years.
"Oh, it was a rough time," said Lovell, left to govern the city in the aftermath of the bitterness and violence, until residents elected someone new in 2000.
"I was so glad not to be mayor, I swear to ya," he said. "It was a tough time and I was the lightning rod for a lot of things, a lot of resentment, a lot of fear."
While the NWT economy has continued to face challenges over the last 50 years, there have been positive developments since those dark days.
"We were very, very fortunate that during that same period there was a considerable amount of exploration for diamonds," said Heyck. "While there was a bit of a downturn in the economy after the gold mines shut down production, certainly the diamond mines have created a considerable amount of spinoff activity."
The struggle today is capturing the benefits. Whereas most Giant Mine and Con Mine workers lived in Yellowknife, said Heyck, today's mine sites are like communities themselves, and workers have the ability to live anywhere they want during their two-week rotations off.
"That's been a big challenge for us," he said.
"Having said that, obviously many mine employees at the diamond mines do live and play in Yellowknife and we're grateful to have that."
There has also been growth in Aboriginal business because of the creation of impact and benefit agreements for First Nations in the region, he said.
Since the civil servants touched down in 1967, Humphries said some aspects of Yellowknife have improved.
When he first arrived in town, the streets weren't even paved. Now there are more people, more stores and more amenities available.
"When the civil servants started to arrive, that created a whole new class of people in town," said Humphries.
But rather than designing things for the
North and adopting the way of life here, he said he feels many ideas were imported from the south.
In some ways, he said, it was a missed opportunity.
"There's still a lot of really nice people up here and interesting people. But the town has lost that 'we're-all-in-this-together' aspect," Humphries said. "Sometimes I wish we weren't the capital - it would have been interesting to see how it would have turned out."
