III.

City Landscape

Yellowknife covers a land area of 102 sq km (40 sq mi) and contains a mixture of old and new sites. Old Yellowknife, the original town site on Latham Island in Yellowknife Bay, is connected to the mainland by an automobile bridge. It has a number of log cabins and other rough buildings from the city’s early years, the 1930s and 1940s. Nearby on the island is the Dene village of Ndilo. Because the original town site could not contain the population drawn by the mining boom after World War II (1939-1945), a new settlement was begun on the mainland in the late 1940s. Modern buildings dominate the downtown core of the new city and include government offices, hotels, and retail outlets. Most residents live in housing developments and apartments similar to those of southern Canada.

Yellowknife offers residents a range of recreational facilities, including two arenas, an indoor swimming pool, a curling club, a golf club, and a public library. The most important public buildings are the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre—a cultural complex housing a museum, the territorial archives, and other heritage displays—and the Northern Arts and Cultural Centre, a performing arts center. Higher education is provided at a campus of Aurora College (1995), originally established as a campus of Arctic College in the mid-1980s. The city hosts a variety of annual events, including the Caribou Carnival and Canadian Championship Dog Derby, a festival celebrating the end of winter, usually held in late March; and the Folk on the Rocks concert, held in midsummer.