BOOKS IN REVIEW Yellowknife founders tell their stories

The first volume of Yellowknife, N.W.T., an Illustrated History, published recently, is a project initiated by Susan Jackson to commemorate the city’s 50th anniversary celebrated in 1984. Although she was unable to complete the book before the time of the 2-week “homecoming,” this entertaining collection presents the true stories of the men and women who founded Yellowknife and helped it grow between the 1920s and the summer of 1967. The early northerners have written their experiences as pilots, engineers, signalmen, geologists, doctors, waitresses, farmers, housewives, policemen, bartenders, priests, prospectors and entrepreneurs who came north to start life anew or to “make a stake.”

Their original writings make up the content and style of this book. The editor has not altered or condensed the contributors’ stories, but allowed them to tell their experience as they lived it.

Fortunately, they brought cameras north with them, as the pictures — all in black and white — are of good clarity. Just about every page in the book has a picture or map that refers to the experiences described.

As the contributors have come from diverse backgrounds, the book will have a broad appeal to those interested in the romance and history of how a great mining community was made. Those involved in developing the Negus, Con and Giant mines in Yellowknife Bay must be proud of their accomplishments in what was then a remote part of northern Canada.

The strength of Yellowknife lies in the fact that there are so many stories from which to choose. One does not have to read each of the 48 stories to appreciate the history and its people. Yellowknife, N.W.T., an Illustrated History, Volume I. Edited by Susan Jackson. Published by Nor’West Publishing, Box 379, Sechelt, B.C. 272 pages. $29.95 (paperback), plus $2.50 for postage and handling.005 0000,0606 William Knutsen, raised in Yellowknife, is a professional engineer based in Winfield, B.C.