The Territories

Whitehorse, Yukon

 People from Yukon are known as Yukoners.

The territory is named after the Yukon River, which means "great river" in Gwich’in.  

The Klondike Gold Rush was the seminal event in the Yukon's history. A party led by Skookum Jim Mason discovered gold on a tributary of the Klondike River in August 1896. An estimated 30,000 to 40,000 people braved numerous hardships to reach the Klondike gold fields in the winter and spring of 1897-1898 after the discovery became known in 1897. With the influx of American stampeders, the Canadian government decided to create a separate territory to better control the situation. In 1901, after many had gone back, the Census put the population of the territory at 27,219, a figure that was not reached again until 1991. The influx of people greatly stimulated mineral exploration in other parts of the Yukon and led to two subsidiary gold rushes in Atlin, British Columbia and Nome, Alaska as well as a number of mini-rushes.

"There's gold in them thar hills!"

THE DANCEHALL GIRLS

With names like the Oregon Mare, Diamond Tooth Gertie and Babe Wallace, the dancehall girls of Dawson City were responsible for a large part of the town’'s colour and cachet. Lonely miners would pay up to one hundred dollars an evening for a special dancehall girl’s camaraderie. Most of the girls were showered with marriage proposals. Chris Johansen, a miner from Whiskey Hill on Hunker Creek, offered Cecile Marion her weight in gold if she married him. She agreed and at 135 pounds, her price came to $25,000.

Diamond Tooth Gertie (a.k.a. Gertie Lovejoy) was a bona fide Yukon dance-hall queen,
named for the sparkling diamond she wedged between her two front teeth.
Gertie made a fortune relieving miners of their gold nuggets.
She once commented: “The poor ginks have just gotta spend it,
they’re that scared they’ll die before they have it all out of the ground.”

Dancers at Diamond Tooth Gertie's

In 1973 a character known as Captain Dick Stevenson (AKA Capt. River Rat) 
bought a cabin outside of Dawson that was known to have the pickled remains of the owner's amputated toe inside. 
Over a long night of drinks in Dawson, Capt. Dick decided to concoct a most unusual drink 
where the pickled toe is dropped into a glass, and the shot is downed to their newly penned mantra: 
Do it fast or do it slow, but your lips must touch the toe. 
Not surprisingly, the Sourtoe Cocktail caught on in Dawson City, 
the Eldorado Hotel bar becoming the home of the Toe.

Northwest Territories

Coat of Arms
No motto

Territorial Symbols

The Northwest Territories (NWT; French, les Territoires du Nord-Ouest) is a territory of Canada.

An Inuksuk in the North West Territories

Yellowknife is the capital of the Northwest Territories and Diamond Capital of North America. Yellowknife is literally built on gold, with the tunnels of both gold mines burrowing deep beneath the streets, a city where "the gold is paved with streets". 
Yellowknife is the centre for transportation, communication, recreation, commerce, tourism, health care, 
mining and government for the Northwest Territories.
Yellowknife and its surrounding waterbodies were named after the local Yellowknives tribe, 
who made tools from regional copper deposits.

A population of close to 20,000 and so known for diamond mines makes Yellowknife very attractive city to live in. 
Ekati, North America's first diamond mine which officially opened on October 14, 1998, 
has reached a milestone and produced its first million carats.
    

Located in northern Canada, it is east of Yukon, west and south of Nunavut (Canada's two other territories), and north of British Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan. It has an area of 1,171,918 square kilometres and a population of 41,861 as of July 1, 2006. Its capital has been Yellowknife since 1967.

Yellowknife

Geographical features include the vast Great Bear and Great Slave Lakes, as well as the immense Mackenzie River and the canyons of the Nahanni River, a national park and UNESCO World Heritage Site. Territorial islands in the Arctic Archipelago include Banks Island, Parry Peninsula, Prince Patrick Island, and parts of Victoria Island and Melville Island. The highest point is Mount Nirvana near the border with Yukon at elevation 2773 m (9098 ft).

The present-day territory was created in June 1870, when the Hudson's Bay Company transferred Rupert's Land and North-Western Territory to the government of Canada. This immense region comprised all of modern Canada except British Columbia, the coast of the Great Lakes, the Saint Lawrence River valley and the southern third of Quebec, the Maritimes, Newfoundland, and the Labrador coast. It also excluded the Arctic Islands except the southern half of Baffin Island; these remained under direct British rule until 1880.

The name of the territory is traced to North-Western Territory, a region named for the geographical location relative to Rupert's Land.

Dog Sledding

Nunavut

Coat of Arms of Nunavut

Motto:   Nunavut Sannginivut
(Inuktitut: Nunavut our strength or Our land our strength)

Nunavut , is the largest and newest of the territories of Canada; it was separated officially from the vast Northwest Territories on April 1, 1999 via the Nunavut Act and the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement Act, though the actual boundaries were established in 1993. The creation of Nunavut resulted in the first major change to Canada's map since the incorporation of the new province of Newfoundland (including Labrador) in 1949.  

The capital of Nunavut is Iqaluit (formerly Frobisher Bay) on Baffin Island in the east. 

Iqaluit

Other major communities include Rankin Inlet and Cambridge Bay. Nunavut also includes Ellesmere Island in the north and the eastern and southern portions of Victoria Island in the west. Nunavut is both the least populated and the largest of the provinces and territorities of Canada. It has a population of only 30,782 spread over an area the size of Western Europe. If Nunavut were a sovereign nation, it would be the least densely populated in the world: Nearby Greenland, for example, has almost the same area and twice the population.

Territorial Symbols

Inuksuk is the Territorial symbol of Nunavut.

It is a monument used for communication and survival that is usually made of un-worked stones.

Inuksuit (plural) have been used by the Inuit people as guides and markers for special places in the Arctic, marking trails, caches of food, nearby people, or the migration routes of caribou.

Such a marker is of considerable importance on a landscape that could be otherwise featureless or constantly changing because of ice and snow. These "signposts" were essential for survival and Inuit tradition forbids their destruction.

Nunavut means 'our land' in Inuktitut, the language of the Inuit. Its inhabitants are called Nunavummiut, singular Nunavummiuq. Along with Inuktitut, Inuinnaqtun, English, and French are also official languages.

Majestic Scenery

The region now known as Nunavut has supported a continuous population for approximately 4000 years. 
Most historians also identify the coast of Baffin Island with the Helluland described in Norse sagas, 
so it is possible that the inhabitants of the region had occasional contact with Norse sailors.

Whitehorse, Yukon is 3,473.5 miles from our home.
Yellowknife, North West Territories is 3,097.8 miles from our home.
Iqaluit, Nunavut is 1,520 miles from our home.

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The music heard is "Maple Leaf Rag" by Scott Joplin.

© Lightning Productions, 2007.