Canada's Northwest Territories Travel Guide • The Art of Travel: Wander, Explore, Discover : The Art of Travel: Wander, Explore, Discover

Canada’s Northwest Territories (NWT) is a vast wilderness area that is a part of Northern Canada. The North of Canada consists of three territories: Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut.

Note: Northern Canada extends into the Arctic and has just over 100,000 inhabitants spread across a land area larger than India.

The majority of the inhabitants are the First Nations indigenous people, Inuit Eskimos, and Metis.

Ice Castle, Yellowknife

Its terrain includes the boreal forest of Taiga and Tundra, and its most northern regions form part of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.

Summer in the Northwest Territories offers open water, camping, hot weather, and the midnight sun.

Autumn offers vivid colors in the mountains and bountiful berry-picking in the barren lands, and excellent opportunities to see the Aurora Borealis.

Winter is an even better time to see the Northern Lights when the sky is clear and the nights are long.

Springtime is ideal for snowmobiling, dogsledding, ice-fishing, and skiing.

A Brief History

Yellowknife

The Northwest Territories was created to encompass all of the Canadian territories to the west and north of Ontario (hence the name ‘Northwest’ Territories).

All of the lands which drained into Hudson’s Bay once belonged to the Hudson’s Bay Company as “Rupert’s Land”. That land later became part of NWT, which covered a vast area.

Through the late 19th and early 20th centuries, NWT lands were transferred to various Canadian Provinces or separated to create the Prairie provinces. For instance, all of Lloydminster used to be part of NWT; it was divided on longitude 110°W upon the creation of Alberta and Saskatchewan.

For a century, the name was a bit of a misnomer, as the Northwest Territories contained the Arctic Archipelago, which extended far east. The Yukon Territory was carved out of NWT in 1898.

Most recently, the primarily-native Nunavut Territory seceded in 1999.

Sub-Regions of NWT

The Northwest Territories is divided into five regions, which roughly correspond to the territories of the original native inhabitants:

South Slave (South of Great Slave Lake) — the main community in this region is Fort Smith.
North Slave (North of Great Slave Lake) — the main community in this region is the capital, Yellowknife.
Deh Cho — the main communities in this region are Hay River and Fort Simpson.
Sahtu — the main community in this region is Norman Wells.
Beaufort Delta/Arctic Coast — this region can be further broken down into the Gwich’in and Inuvialuit settlement areas. The main community in this region is Inuvik.

Top Cities in Northwest Territories

View from Bush Pilot’s Monument, Yellowknife

Yellowknife — the territory’s capital and largest settlement, with several scenic walking trails, and the territorial museum
Hay River — a destination for ice fishing and sport fishing
Inuvik — the most populous town in the Canadian Arctic, almost 200 km north of the Arctic Circle, at the inland end of the Mackenzie Delta and the northern end of the Dempster Highway
Tuktoyaktuk — an Inuvialuit village, the only village on the Arctic Ocean connected by road to the rest of the country
Enterprise — an important stopover on the road from Alberta to Yellowknife, Hay River, and other NWT settlements
Fort Smith — the gateway for visitors to the Wood Buffalo National Park
Deline — erected in 1825 by the Hudson’s Bay Company as Fort Franklin, the staging area and winter quarters for Sir John Franklin’s second Arctic expedition of 1825–1827. Sir John Franklin’s diary records that his men played ice sports very similar to what we now call hockey. As such, the modern-day town promotes itself as one of the birthplaces of the sport of ice hockey.

Things To Do in Northwest Territories

Aurora Borealis

You must see the Aurora Borealis (northern lights). They are best seen in wintertime when the nights are long. They cannot be seen at all during the short “white nights” around the summer solstice.

Tour companies in Yellowknife offer snowmobile, sled dog expeditions, photography workshops, and tractor rides to see the northern lights from places outside of town.

Dogsledding & Snowmobile

In winter, you can take dogsledding trips from Yellowknife and other towns.

Great Slave Lake

Great Slave Lake, on the shore of which sits the town of Hay River, is the deepest lake in North America at 614 m.

The Igloo Church

The Igloo Church is Inuvik’s best-known building. It was built in 1960 with a distinctive dome and exterior painted to look like an igloo.

Pingos

The Pingos near Tuktoyaktuk are domes of earth-covered ice found only in the high Arctic.

Aurora Camping

Northern Life Museum

The Northern Life Museum in Fort Smith exhibits traditional work of the Inuit, Inuvialuit, Dene, and Metis.

It displays include an authentic northern trading post, a typical northern kitchen from the 1940s, and, a traditional trapper’s cabin, a 1965 Polaris Sno-Traveler, and a riverbank scene featuring a birch bark canoe.

The museum also hosts an outdoor Aboriginal cultural center that showcases Canada’s First Peoples’ ways of traditional living before European contact occurred in the early 1800s.

Northern Heritage Centre

The Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre in Yellowknife houses the territorial museum and archives.

Pristine Waterfalls

Within 40 km of Enterprise, you can hike to three sets of waterfalls. In summer, you can see pelicans and endangered whooping cranes nesting near Fort Smith.

Hiking in Northwest Territories

Hike or paddle the NWT sections of the Trans Canada Trail.

You can also hike to the three waterfalls in the region around Enterprise (mentioned above).

Festivals of Northwest Territories

Yellowknife hosts many festivals year-round, including the Snowking Festival, Long John Jamboree, and the dog sled races in winter, and in the summer, the Summer Solstice Festival, Raven Mad Daze (and 24-hour golf tournament), and Folk on the Rocks, a popular music festival.

Inuvik hosts a Sunrise Festival in January combining native traditions with modern ones. And its Great Northern Arts Festival in the middle of July draws artists come from across the north, other parts of Canada, and Alaska.

The Beluga Jamboree in Tuktoyaktuk in April is a large cultural festival full of games, food, and a Jamboree King and Queen competition

Ice Fishing

Tours are available from Hay River for summer and ice fishing on Great Slave Lake for whitefish, lake trout, and perch.

There are also several fly-in lodges that take you fishing in almost untouched wilderness.

Hunting

From Tuktoyaktuk, local guides will take you hunting for caribou, polar bear, beluga whale, fox, and wolverines.

Note: The polar bear populations are strictly controlled through selective hunting to ensure sustainability.

Aulavik National Park

Located on Banks Island, Aulavik National Park is accessible only by chartered plane, it is known for the Thomsen River, one of the most northerly navigable rivers in North America.

Nahanni National Park Reserve

A UNESCO World Heritage site; the South Nahanni River, one of the most spectacular wild rivers in North America, also accessed by chartered plane.

Naats’ihch’oh National Park Reserve

Naats’ihch’oh National Park Reserve is intended to protect the South Nahanni River watershed, it has no services and is accessible only by chartered floatplane.

Thaidene Nene National Park Reserve

Plenty of freshwater lakes, rivers, and pristine waterfalls. The Thaidene Nene National Park Reserve is a striking archipelago of islands, peninsulas, landscape formations shaped by ancient ice sheets, dramatic red granite cliffs.

Note, it has no services and is accessible from Łutselk’e which has scheduled flights from Yellowknife.

Tuktut Nogait National Park

Located ~ 170 km north of the Arctic Circle in the northeast corner of mainland Northwest Territories; scheduled flights from Inuvik.

Four Corners of Canada

The Four Corners point is where the provinces of Saskatchewan, Manitoba and the territories of Northwest Territories and Nunavut meet. Located hundreds of kilometers from any road or railway.

How To Get to Northwest Territories

By plane

Flights connect Yellowknife with Edmonton and Calgary in Alberta, and Vancouver, British Columbia. There are seasonal flights from Whitehorse, Yukon, and Ottawa, Ontario.

By road

From Alberta, the journey is about 1,450 km (900 mi), and there are long distances between gas (petrol) stations. Do your research, and be prepared.

The Dempster Highway connects Inuvik with the Klondike Highway near Dawson City, Yukon.

Getting Around in Northwest Territories

By Car

One of the best ways to get around the Northwest Territories is by car. This gives you unlimited freedom to choose your own itinerary.

Picture the scene: you’re driving down the highway and you look to your left, you see a vast expanse of wilderness, maybe a picturesque sunset, and even a herd of caribou (reindeer) going about their business.

You look to the right and a black bear is peeping out from behind trees. With uninterrupted views of the wide-open space and wildlife, you will be alert to all the new sights and sounds until you come across a sleepy little community that offers a camping ground with a small restaurant of home-cooked delights and a welcoming atmosphere.

Charter Planes

Another of the best ways to travel around the Northwest Territories is by plane, due to the airports dotting the landscape, as well as the lack of roads and rails throughout many parts of the Northwest Territories.

Yellowknife essentially began partially through the efforts of bush pilots, and floatplanes can presumably land on the territories’ many lakes (they are known to land in Yellowknife Bay).

Airline service can be had to Yellowknife, Fort Good Hope, Fort Liard, Fort Simpson, Fort Smith, Hay River, Inuvik, Norman Wells, and other communities, and bush pilots presumably reach further.

Local Cuisine

Fish: Northern fish from the Great Bear and Great Slave Lakes includes Northern Pike, Pickerel, Grayling fresh, and Lake Trout. Arctic Char is a specialty of the northern coast.

Muskox are moose steak are specialties, sometimes flavored with spruce buds, or with locally sourced morels.

If you’re brave, look for Maktak (beluga whale), reindeer, dry fish, or muskrat, which are considered delicacies.

Bannock, a popular tea biscuit, is widely available, often made with delicious local berries, and baked over a wood fire.

Notes on Drinking

Yellowknife is really the only place you’ll find nightlife of the bars-and-pubs variety, although other settlements may have a bar or two.

Some communities have banned all alcohol while a few others have restrictions on importing and possessing alcohol. Check to see if you are allowed to bring alcohol into the community.

Local Inuit Souvenirs

Local Inuit handicraft (stone carving, fur mittens).

Northwest Territories is locally famous for its diamond mining. Purchasing diamonds here will ensure that they are non-conflict diamonds where the profits are used for war activities (for example, as is the case with most African diamonds).

Safety Tips

There is no 911 emergency number in most communities in the Canadian high Arctic.

Use the seven-digit local numbers for the individual services in each community to summon help in an emergency.

In winter, the temperature can get down to -40 °C/F without the winds. The Arctic’s cold weather, winter driving, and dangerous animals all have advice that will be relevant to many travelers in the Arctic.

Canada’s Northwest Territories Travel Guide