Yellowknife.....Somba K'e.......'place of money'....

I’m occasionally asked by friends and family back home (Ontario), to describe Yellowknife in terms of size, what it looks like and who lives there, among other queries of interest (and sometimes concern) ……I get it, I had to do some extensive research myself before making that big decision to relocate, and even then, it’s never quite the same as experiencing it firsthand to describe the reality of a place.

The short description from the City of Yellowknife’s 2013 Tourism Guide is as follows:

‘Yellowknife is a hub of activity and adventure, a mix of history and modernity. The gateway to the Canadian North, for more than half a century the city was home to two gold mines. Today, it’s the centre of Canada’s diamond industry, serving three operating mines and gearing up for a fourth in the near future. Small wonder, then, that in the Tlicho aboriginal language, Yellowknife is called “Somba K’e,” or place of money. More than 20,000 people live here, a hardy, cosmopolitan group of Canadians of all stripes. Northern aboriginals such as the Dene, Inuit and Métis share the city with long-time non-aboriginal pioneers, southern transplants and immigrants from around the world.’

Yellowknife downtown

Collingwood Aerial View

Most of us have some trouble getting our head around the population size, trying to summon up a comparison with other locales that we know. What is not typical about Yellowknife, considering its size to various counterparts across the country, is that it has quite a few ‘high rise’ buildings which, psychologically, makes one think it’s a larger city than it is. For example, it is close in size to Collingwood, Huntsville, Owen Sound and Brockville, yet as the picture of Collingwood shows,

the ‘height’ of the city is in no way similar. I could research this further and try to find out what the reasons are for building up, instead of out, but I suspect it has a lot to do with the Canadian Shield (which was scoured down to rock during the last ice age) upon which it rests.

Okay, so other than high rise office and apartment buildings what does it look like? I think I’ll save commercial sights and sites for a future writing. In the meantime, from a residential standpoint, and without applying research information, we’ve observed a high number of trailer homes in various parts of the city. This probably made a lot of sense during certain growth periods when it was more realistic to transport a mobile home here than to haul up the material, and find enough builders to accommodate the residential needs. However, there is significant diversity when it comes to living accommodations, from house boats to housing co-ops to the half million townhome and 1+million home. And there are a lot of apartment complexes in all areas of the city. In terms of new commercial and residential growth, explosives are used to transform the rocky terrain into a manageable building site. Someone recently expressed his dismay at the new home building going on in anticipation of further growth / influx of newcomers to the city – he didn’t share the developers / city planners’ viewpoint, apparently.

 

Who’s here?

• The median age of the population is 32.6 years, lower than the national median age of 40.6 years.
• 34.2% of Yellowknife’s population is single (never married or common law etc), compared to the national average of 28%.
• And despite the idea that many people have about the ratio between Males and Females (ie that there are more men here than women), there are a similar percentage between the genders.
• Ethnicity demographics state ‘White’ makes up for 67.9% of the population followed by ‘Aboriginal’ at 22.2% and ‘Visible Minority’ at 9.9%.  
• English is spoken by 79.6% of the population; French by 4.3% and ‘non-official’ accounts for 14.7% - this breaks down further with Filipino cited as the largest non-official language at 17.3%

Yellowknife has a subarctic climate and averages less than 300 mm (12 in) of precipitation annually, as the city lies in the rain shadow of mountain ranges to the west. Thanks to its location on Great Slave Lake, Yellowknife has a frost-free growing season that averages slightly over 100 days. Most of the limited precipitation falls between June and October, with April being the driest month of the year and August being the wettest. Snow that falls in winter accumulates on the ground until the spring thaw.

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. Yellowknife's high latitude causes a large variation between day and night. Daylight hours range from five hours of daylight in December to twenty hours in June. Twilight lasts all night from late May to early July. (see Mr. Sun.... blog for more information about hours of light - 02Feb14)

Last, but not least......the weather

Environment Canada - Yellowknife tops many winter weather lists, including coldest year round, longest snow cover, most cold days and most extreme wind chill. With average winter temperatures of -28.9 degrees, Yellowknife holds lots of cold weather records, including extreme wind chill.

The coldest temperature recorded in the N.W.T. capital with the wind? -63.99

But Yellowknife is not all about cold. The city comes out on top in the warmer months as well.

“You have the sunniest summers and the sunniest springs,” Phillips, of Environment Canada says. “That's something that should be on your bumper stickers.”

In the spring, Yellowknife sees almost 100 more hours of sun than the second place city, Winnipeg.

 

Yellowknife the coldest, sunniest city in Canada

                                      

Tourists in Yellowknife brave -40 C and ice fog on New Year's Day to get a view of Great Slave Lake from Pilot's Monument in Old Town. Environment Canada calls the city the Coldest Capital in Canada. (Sara Minogue/CBC)