NWT

In my job with Parks Canada I'm very lucky to have the chance to travel all over Canada and see some of the more amazing - if far flung - places this land has to offer. With last week's trip to NWT, I've now been to every province (minus the Labrador part of Newfoundland) and 2 of the 3 territories. Nunavut, it seems, will have to wait.

The Northwest Territories has been an enigma to me since I was a little kid. I mostly knew it as the only place "Canada" would fit on the cover those coloured Hilroy excercise books. My grade school teachers paid it about the same level of respect. At that time, NWT also included what is now Nunavut (whose creation, incidentally, made the map of Canada much more aesthetically pleasing). All my teachers really knew was that Eskimos lived up there somewhere but we were supposed to call them Inuit. That about sums up my Canadian geography education from grades 4-8.

Nevertheless, I have always been curious about NWT. I spent last week in Wood Buffalo National Park which is in the South Slave region of the territory and straddles the Alberta-NWT border. Fort Smith is the administrative centre for that region and was in fact supposed to be the capital until Yellowknife yoinked it away in the 1950s.

Fort Smith remains somewhat frozen in time. It is a small, quiet town of about 2,500 people by the rapids of the Slave River that has served as an important transportation hub since the 1850s. It is home to the only pelicans in the world that live, nest and feed on river rapids. The park itself is the largest in Canada (over 44,000 sq. km) and one of the largest in the world. It features salt plains and giant sink holes called karsts along with the Canadian lynx, wood bison, and the endangered whooping crane.

Wood bison, by the way, are big. And by big I mean huge. These 1,200 lb beasts are the largest land mammals in North America - a fact you can't really appreciate until you get up close to them. Being late August and prime rut season, I was lucky enough to see two bulls jousting in mock competition. It seemed playful and at the same time incredibly dangerous. I'm pretty sure the little 2-wheel drive Dodge Dakota I was driving wouldn't outrun one of those big boys, let alone survive a direct hit.

Wood bison are protected from hunting in the park which has allowed the population to recover to about 4,000 (there are about 10,000 in Canada). It is quite remarkable to see a free-roaming herd standing on the road, completely uninterested in your desire to pass through. It is equally remarkable to see 20-30 of these 1,000+ lb beasts slip effortlessly into the forest and simply disappear in a matter of seconds. They are as rugged, massive and beautiful as the land they inhabit.

So, after a week of being feasted on by giant prehistoric insects and nearly tearing off a couple of truck axles, I returned to Whitehorse with a new appreciation for the Northwest Territories and the people and places that make it special. I'm eager to take Krista there and explore some more - but this time in a much larger truck.