This is the second installment in a two-part review of Yellowknife as a tourist destination.
Revived with a sweet mocha from Tim Horton’s, I chatted with a helpful woman at the desk in the Visitor’s Centre. There, I was able to charge my phone as well as own batteries while leisurely sipping my Tim’s and reading Up Here, the local magazine dedicated to travel adventures for Canada’s lands above the 60th parallel. Next, I was en route to the Woodyard Brewery and Eatery, recommended by the helpful Visitor’s Centre employee because of the fish on their menu.
My attention was frequently diverted by log cabins, shops, and unique flower planters including a mosaic bathtub. As I neared the restaurant, I spotted three huge flower boxes in front of an auto parts store. I stopped to smell the proverbial roses and was so taken with the care that someone had put into this garden that I entered the business to compliment the gardener. She turned out to be the business owner, Heidi, who came to Yellowknife from Bosnia in 1973.
During her first year in the land of the midnight sun (and its counterpart, the disappearing winter sun), Heidi admitted to crying herself to sleep each night. Yet, she stayed for 50 years and has a very successful business with her husband. She happily spent a chunk of time guiding me through her flowerbeds from sweet peas to roses, glads to sunflowers and global amaranths, plus so many others. Heidi is clearly sensitive to pronoun preferences and lovingly referred to her beautiful blooms with the pronouns “she” and “hers.”
Though I was enjoying our conversation, my appetite begged me to move on.
At this point, I was only steps from the restaurant I was searching for, but when I arrived too early for dinner, I was directed to have a pre-dinner walk. As promised by the pink-haired server, I was rewarded with a beautiful view of Great Slave Lake when I walked up Tin Can Hill and around the rather unfortunately named Rat Lake. Once I finally arrived at 5:30 pm to eat dinner, after my sweaty hike in the late afternoon sun, the woman behind the bar indulged me by patiently answering my questions about ciders and made some recommendations. I ordered a big bottle of hard cider from British Columbia, with ice — yes, thanks very much — and headed to the washroom.
After washing my face and hands and fluffing up my damp, hat-head hair, I returned to find a young man seated next to my place at the bar. He and one of the bartenders were chatting about swimming on such a hot day, and while I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, it was hard to ignore the conversation. Minutes later, while the barman attended to another customer, I introduced myself to my bar mate and asked where he had been swimming earlier in the afternoon on such a fine sunny day. It turned out Bradley is a corrections officer and had some inmates on an outdoor detail. He rewarded them with an impromptu swim at Folk on the Rocks, which I learned is the site of an annual summer music festival on Long Lake.
I joked with Bradley that he’s probably the first corrections officer I’ve ever met — fortunately! He chuckled and continued to tell me about himself. Somehow, that delicious whitefish tasted even better with a friendly local on the next barstool to keep me company.
After so much walking — and without the benefit of lunch — I had plenty of room for dessert, but alas, there wasn’t an attractive gluten-free option on the menu. No matter: Patrick, the barman, sent me to Latham Island for what he described as the best homemade ice cream in town at Sundog Trading Post, a 10-minute walk from the brewery. It certainly sounded good enough to merit a measly 1-km walk in the opposite direction of my Airbnb. Two scoops of deliciousness, vanilla on bottom and chocolate sea salt on top, was exactly what I needed.
Out on the Sundog Trading Post porch, I sighed with contentment to my fellow ice cream diners, “Life’s not too bad, huh?” That was all the Taiwanese couple at the next table needed to open a pleasant conversation as they described their travels up from Edmonton. Both spoke English so well, but the wife had an especially strong command and a remarkable vocabulary. I complimented her. She thanked me but said she didn’t understand what ‘trading post’ meant. That was easy for me to explain with a smile at the old-fashioned term, but I was smiling more broadly later when I researched what sundog means, since I’ve seen it in the name of several places here in northern Canada.
There’s always something for me to learn, and now I’m just a little bit better informed about the phenomenon of a mock sun, or a little patch of concentrated sunlight that occasionally forms 22 degrees left or right of the sun, or sometimes on both sides. The technical term for a sundog is a parhelion, but it’s too late to share that with the affable Taiwanese couple. Sated at last, I headed southeast for my 5-km trip back to the Airbnb via the most direct route, Franklin Avenue. Float planes on the lake and flowers continued to draw my attention, as did a darling mosaic on the side of a building featuring a yellow lab in a canoe, awaiting his paddling partner.
Yellowknife is so full of surprises and pleasures, and after a single day of finding some of them while clocking 32,000 steps, my body was weary, but my heart was elated.
—Susan FitzGibbon travelled to Yellowknife in August, prior to the wildfire evacuation. She lives in the New York suburb of West Orange, N.J., where she is a teacher. Her goal is to journey to all the territories and provinces of Canada.