Category: Northwest Territories

It took me a while to figure out how to show you the Dempster Highway, as I shot 197 photos on the day we drove it, April 10th. I hope that two posts will be reasonable – Inuvik to Fort McPherson, then Fort McPherson to Dawson City. Actually only...

First, a map to get you oriented. Aklavik is located on a channel of the Peel River, towards the west side of the central part of the vast Mackenzie River Delta. An interactive version of the map can be found here. Having driven the ice road from Inuvik, my...

On Tuesday, April 9th, my friend Tyson and I drove the ice road from Inuvik to Aklavik, but this post shows more than the title indicates. We also drove back to Inuvik in very different weather conditions, took a side trip on the ice road to historic Reindeer Station,...

One of the most iconic and beloved buildings in the circumpolar North is Inuvik’s Roman Catholic church, Our Lady of Victory, commonly called “the Igloo Church” because of its shape. I told my friend Tyson that my #1 wish was to see inside the church again and photograph it...

In this post I’m going to assemble three little tours of downtown Inuvik, starting at 9:35 pm after getting back from Tuktoyaktuk, with a look at some of the public art downtown. First is a mural painted by Brian Macdonald in 1994 – it shows the Rec Hall, constructed...

Although Tuktoyaktuk was mostly just part of the package this time, on my first visit 39 years ago, Tuk was the target destination, and the many other places we visited were just bonuses. The first photo today is a flashback to that 1985 visit, with my Cessna 172, C-GWDM,...

On Monday, April 8th, Tyson and I drove from Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk and back, with a lot of exploring and some visiting in Tuk. Here’s another orientation map – during a 3-day period, we would visit all five of the communities shown on the government road conditions map. The...

I arrived at the Inuvik Mike Zubko Airport on Sunday, April 7th. After not coming over the horizon at all for 30 days, the sun returned in early January, and Inuvik is well on its way to a 56-day period of 24-hour daylight. On the 7th, the sun set...

Today is the 20th anniversary of one of the blackest days in the history of the Canadian North, and in Canadian labour history. On September 18, 1992, an explosion at the Giant gold mine at Yellowknife, Northwest Territories killed 9 men – it turned out to be not an...

The Grand Adventure part of the trip is now over. I’m in northern Alberta, and most of the rest of the ride is on highways I’ve been on dozens of times. Beautiful country for sure, though, and something new could pop up 🙂 It started to rain hard as...