Yellowknife is facing extraordinary opportunity and very real pressure at the same time. My dad had a grade four education and came to Yellowknife as a young Irish immigrant. Before arriving here, he had travelled and worked labour jobs around the world. My mom came from Saskatchewan. She left high school before graduating, trained as a hairdresser and made the trip north with a girlfriend after hearing from friends that Yellowknife was a place of opportunity. They arrived in

The North has the opportunity. Readiness will decide what gets built. For most of my lifetime, Northerners have been making the same case to Canada: if you want a stronger and more secure country, you need to invest in the North. For long periods, that argument struggled to receive sustained national attention. Today, Arctic security, critical minerals, energy, transportation corridors and nation-building infrastructure have moved to the centre of the national conversation. T

By Cory Vanthuyne One of the first questions asked about a proposed Northern project is often fairly simple: “Who actually approves it?” In the Northwest Territories, the answer is usually, “It depends.” That is not an attempt to avoid the question. The answer may depend on where the project is located, who owns the land, how water will be used, which Indigenous rights and agreements apply, what environmental effects may occur, where the funding is coming from and which gover