Yellowknife (Northwest Territories)

V

Government

The first municipal government of Yellowknife was established in 1940. In recent decades, city officials in Yellowknife have had to tackle a variety of challenges, including the upgrading of Old Yellowknife, the pressures of rapid economic and population growth, and labor issues related to the mining industry.

As territorial capital since 1967, Yellowknife has had access to federal and territorial funds that have enabled it to build an impressive set of recreational and community facilities. This funding began to decline after 1999, when the eastern part of the Northwest Territories split off and became the new territory of Nunavut. At that time, a good portion of Yellowknife’s administrative activity shifted to Nunavut’s capital, the town of Iqaluit.

VI

Contemporary Issues

Yellowknife is struggling with the challenges posed by its geographic isolation, harsh climate, and ethnic diversity. Many of the city’s nonindigenous residents come only to make short-term profits or wages and do not remain long; their high turnover has made for community instability. There are also tensions between the newcomers, especially those involved in mining and resource development, and the Dene and Métis, who have begun to assert their land claims and other political rights.

Another serious issue in Yellowknife is the high cost of living. Because much of the city’s resources must be imported from the south, self-sufficiency has been hard to achieve. The construction of a dam on the nearby Snare River in 1948 provided greatly needed electricity, but most other vital supplies—including food and fuel—have to be imported from southern Canada at considerable cost and delay. Local wages have often failed to keep up with living costs.

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VII

History

Indigenous nations have lived around Yellowknife Bay for thousands of years. The historic occupants were the Athapaskan-speaking Dogrib people, hunters of caribou. The Dogrib were displaced briefly in the early 19th century by the Yellowknife band of the Chipewyan nation, who moved into the area to participate in the fur trade. The bay, and eventually the city, were named for the Yellowknife band, whose name is believed to derive from their yellow knife blades hammered out of native copper.

Scottish-born Canadian fur trader and explorer Sir Alexander Mackenzie came into the area in 1789, traveling down the river that now bears his name. His firm, the North West Company, operated a fur-trading post at Fort Providence near the western shore of Great Slave Lake until the 1820s. The area attracted outside interest again in the late 1890s when prospectors discovered gold there. However, the deposits were not extensive enough to spark serious mining activities.

In the 1930s the advent of aircraft that could fly into remote areas, and renewed interest in northern minerals, brought prospectors back to the Mackenzie Valley. When a large supply of gold-bearing deposits was found on Yellowknife Bay in 1933, miners headed for it. The Yellowknife community developed in 1935 around three gold mines—the Con, the Negus, and the Giant. Mining operations virtually stopped during World War II but picked up again after the war. Yellowknife was named the territorial capital in 1967, and its new role as administrative center provided an economic counterbalance to the mining industry. In 1970 Yellowknife was incorporated as a city. Gold mining has declined in recent years but the discovery of diamond deposits in the area has provided a valuable boost to the local economy. Another positive economic development in recent years has been the settlement of the land claims of indigenous peoples in the Mackenzie Valley. Resource development in the area, which had been stalled pending the settlement, is expected to pick up and thereby spur additional mining activity.

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