Happy TravellerWelcome to Yellowknife, the capital and largest community of the Northwest Territories in Canada. Located on the northern shore of Great Slave Lake, Yellowknife is a city with a rich history, diverse culture, and stunning natural beauty. The city and its surrounding water bodies were named after a local Dene tribe, who were known as the Copper Indians or Yellowknife Indians, today incorporated as the Yellowknives Dene First Nation. Yellowknife is a city of contrasts, where modern amenities meet traditional ways of life. Its population, which is ethnically mixed, was 20,340 per the 2021 Canadian Census. Of the eleven official languages of the Northwest Territories, five are spoken in significant numbers in Yellowknife: Dene Suline, Dogrib, South and North Slavey, English, and French. In the Dogrib language, the city is known as Sǫǫ̀mbak’è (Athabaskan pronunciation: [sõːᵐbakʼe], where the money is). Modern Yellowknives members can be found in the adjoining, primarily Indigenous communities of Ndilǫ and Dettah.
History:
Yellowknife has a rich history that dates back to the early 20th century when gold was discovered in the area. The city quickly became the center of economic activity in the NWT, and was named the capital of the Northwest Territories in 1967. As gold production began to wane, Yellowknife shifted from being a mining town to a center of government services in the 1980s. However, with the discovery of diamonds north of the city in 1991, this shift began to reverse. In recent years, tourism, transportation, and communications have also emerged as significant Yellowknife industries.
Geography:
Yellowknife is on the Canadian Shield, which was scoured down to rock during the last ice age. The surrounding landscape is very rocky and slightly rolling, with many small lakes in addition to the larger Great Slave Lake. Trees such as spruce and birch are abundant in the area, as are smaller bushes, but there are also many areas of relatively bare rock with lichen. Yellowknifes high latitude causes a large variation between day and night. Daylight hours range from five hours of daylight in December to 20 hours in June. Civil Twilight lasts all night from late May to mid-July.
Climate:
Yellowknife has a subarctic climate (Köppen: Dfc). Although winter is predominantly polar, rapid heat waves emerge at the summit of summer due to the immense path south. The city averages less than 300 mm (12 in) of precipitation annually, as it lies in the rain shadow of mountain ranges to the west. Due to its location on Great Slave Lake, Yellowknife has a frost-free growing season that averages slightly over 100 days. In an occasional year, the first fall frost does not come until October. Most of the limited precipitation falls between June and October, with April being the driest month of the year and August having the most rainfall. Snow that falls in winter accumulates on the ground until the spring thaw. Yellowknife experiences very cold winters and mild to warm summers. The average temperature in January is around −26 °C (−15 °F) and 17 °C (63 °F) in July. According to Environment and Climate Change Canada, Yellowknife has the sunniest summer in the country, averaging 1,034 hours from June to August.
Cityscape:
Yellowknife, like most other urban centers, has distinct commercial, industrial, and residential areas. Frame Lake, Niven Lake, Range Lake, and Old Town are the residential sectors, with some of the population living in high-rises in the downtown core. Niven Lake is the only area under active development and expansion. Downtown Yellowknife is home to most of the citys commercial activity, though some retail does exist in Range Lake. Industrial activity is limited to the Kam Lake and airport subdivisions.
Economy:
As the largest city in the Northwest Territories, Yellowknife is the hub for mining, industry, transportation, communications, education, health, tourism, commerce, and government activity in the territory. Historically, Yellowknifes economic growth came from gold mining, and later government; however, because of falling gold prices and increased operating costs, the final gold mine closed in 2004, marking a turning point for Yellowknifes economy. After a downturn in the 1990s during the closure of the gold mines and the downsizing of the government workforce in 1999, Yellowknifes economy has recovered, largely because of the diamond boom. Today, tourism, transportation, and communications have also emerged as significant Yellowknife industries.
Houseboats:
Jolliffe Island sits in Yellowknife Bay and is public land under the jurisdiction of the City of Yellowknife after a land purchase when Imperial Oil vacated the site. The island is surrounded by a community of houseboats, where people have been living off the grid since 1978. Their relationship with the city is complex and often strained as the houseboats are popular with sightseers, but at the same time their residents live outside of the citys tax jurisdiction while still using city services, leading
