The North’s iconic eatery, the log-cabin Wildcat is where the world comes to dine. You’ll find that the ambience is rustic, the food is divine, the deck is bathed in sunshine, the beer is crisp and your fellow patrons are a wild array: Northerners and visitors both, gathered around communal tables, sharing tales about the North and raising a mug to the floatplanes buzzing overhead.
It began in the early 1980s when one or two families built their own houseboats out of old river barges on the waters off of Old Town. This colourful community has grown over the years into a kaleidoscope of brilliant designs representing a one-of-a-kind Northern attraction brimming with frontier spirit.
The houseboats are lived in year-round by Yellowknife residents, who commute by canoe in the summer or walk, ski or drive on the ice in the winter. You can view the wonderful homes via boat tours when the bay is open or stroll over on the ice in winter, but please respect the homeowners’ privacy.
Located in Hay River’s Old Town, this museum occupies the community’s former Hudson’s Bay store, built in 1949. In it, you’ll find displays showcasing the various eras of the town’s history, as well as exhibits on Métis and K’atl’odeeche Dene culture.
When you visit our Museum, one of our Staff will provide a friendly relaxed tour of our Old Hotel Building – Zoo and all the outdoor exhibits.
Every Saturday from 11am – 4pm we operate a small Ice Cream Shack, Ice Cream Cones for a Toonie. Surrounding the Ice Cream Shack, we have in a small park like area with Picnic tables where people tend to linger.
We have and are hosting the English and French Summer Camp Kids at the Museum. Their time here includes a Museum Tour, lawn games, art project, Scavenger Hunt and of course Ice Cream Cones.
All summer long we have tables set up with art supplies, visitors can paint a rock, a fish or a Bird House.
We have a Friendship Rock Garden (paint a rock and add to the garden, or take a rock if you are feeling down) and a Wiggles the Rock Snake (paint a rock and add to Wiggles, lets see how long he can grow) which our local Girl Guides created and presented to the Museum.
We are slowly covering our fence with painted wooden fish,(originally an idea by the Town’s Beautification Committee, they gave away fish to be painted then put them up all over town).
We have erected a frame to hold approximately 100 Wooden Bird Houses, built by staff and painted by visitors and community members to create a Bird House Hotel. We build and dispersed over 40 bird houses in one week last season, we will start attaching the bird houses tomorrow.
This idyllic park overlooks the confluence of the Mackenzie and Liard rivers, yet is within easy walking distance of the centre of town. Adjoining it are the Papal Site commemorating the 1987 visit of Pope John Paul ll and the ancient Ehdaa Historical Site, which has been a gathering place for the Łiidlįį Kų́ę́ Dene for generations.
This is a great location for bird-watching; dozens of species have been documented throughout the park, and migratory waterfowl can easily be spotted in season, including tundra swans and snow geese. You can also enjoy the chorus of frogs serenading the northern wildlife. A community trail is readily accessible from the park’s campsites and runs around the perimeter of Fort Simpson, linking several historic sites.
Here, on this rectangular peninsula jutting northward into Great Slave Lake, the Northern fur-trade got its foothold. Parks Canada has designated this 8.8-hectare expanse – long the site of a Hudson’s Bay Company post – as a national historic site. It and other trading posts in the region began operating as early as 1791.
The first was built by Cuthbert Grant Sr. of the North West Company, who had to move his Slave Fort trading post twice before settling near the mouth of the Slave River. In 1819, Aualay McAulay of the Hudson’s Bay Company built a competing post nearby, which he named Fort Resolution. After the union of the two companies in 1821 the two forts were merged and their structures moved to a small peninsula facing the Resolution Islands. The merged Fort Resolution became the Hudson’s Bay Company’s principal post on the lake, and remains an active community.
Though almost no trace of the original trading post now remains, visitors can enjoy the view of the lake and the Resolution Islands, imagining the hubbub here when Dene from throughout the Mackenzie Delta arrived to trade.
Just a few dozen metres from the heart of Enterprise, the earth falls away and a gaping chasm yawns. This is the Twin Falls Gorge, where sheer limestone walls glitter like shimmering sand, while the rim is lined with a dark wall of evergreens. Hundreds of feet below, the honey-coloured Hay River slides north on its urgent journey to Great Slave Lake. A walking path links the overlook here with the rest of Twin Falls Gorge Territorial Park.
Some 1350 pingos (ice-cored hills) dot the coastline near Tuktoyaktuk, Northwest Territories. The largest, Ibyuk Pingo, is 16 stories high – a real landmark on the flat coastal plain.
For centuries pingos have been used by Inuvialuit for navigation and as lookout points for hunting. Visitors to Tuk can’t miss these imposing hills, and eight of these massive hills form the Pingo Canadian Landmark, on the shore of the Beaufort Sea. Community tours may include a chilly visit to the interior of a pingo, where alternating layers of ice and soil are clearly visible, and where the ice is hollowed out into storage lockers – a place for community members to store frozen game through the summer.
Pingos originate in drained lakes, where groundwater seeps below the frozen surface, and forces it upward. The largest pingo is growing at the rate of about two centimeters a year.