Up Here Magazine

Hot damn, it’s finally summer! Why is it so awesome? let us count the ways. Here, for each hour of each endless blissful day, are the 24 things we love about summer in the north. 1. GETTING A (SORT OF) TAN All winter, northerners scuttle around in the dark, cloaked in parkas. We become sun-starved: Our bodies can’t produce the “sunshine vitamin,” vitamin D, resulting in depression, obesity – even rickets (yes, it’s a real thing). Plus, we look ghastly. Our faces become cadaverous.

THE CATHEDRAL has repaid the $64,000 it owed the City of Iqaluit with the help of donations from other parishes in the North and across the country. The city also exempted places of worship from the tax in 2026. But Bishop Alexander Pryor says the church faces another round of uncertainty stemming from the “tax foolishness.” As of June 2026, the church and the city still disagreed on whether a portion of the cathedral's gravel parking lot is eligible for an exemption.

In the mid-1800s, interest in art and science became popular among Europe’s affluent upper classes. And that interest expanded to include delicate and attractive fossils. In the Solnhofen region of Germany, the fine-grained Upper Jurassic limestones were rich in fossils. Several doctors in this rural area accepted exquisite specimens in payment for medical treatments.

South of 60, young men’s thoughts may turn to love as April surges over the horizon with its promise of May flowers, green grass and balmy evenings under the stars. Not up here. Spring in the North doesn’t really get going till May, and it mostly means three things: muck, a shuddering halt to off-road travel, and skyrocketing food prices in highway-served communities of the Mackenzie Valley and the western Arctic.

The Behchokǫ̀ Cultural Centre is abuzz. Roughly 200 people gather in the centre’s main hall, a circular room with a large drum-shaped light fixture, on this snow-dusted day in November 2024. Indigenous leaders and community members from throughout the Northwest Territories sit alongside government representatives from Ottawa and philanthropists from Washington. They listen to speeches, share a roast beef lunch and dance to Dene drummers and fiddle jigs.

Published in Up Here June 2012 Tiffany Ayalik(Performer, Outdoor Guide) Depending on who you ask, Tiffany Ayalik is an Arctic butterfl y, or an underwater goddess, or a child of a residential school survivor, or a paddling instructor who rides serious rapids. That’s because this 24-year-old Yellowknifer is all of those: an actor, model, playwright and co-owner of an adventure company.

IN 1974, my mother was a 21-year-old fine arts student living in Montreal. She joined a woman-led team heading to the Northwest Territories to shoot a documentary film about Nahanni National Park. Over six weeks, she flew in a de Havilland Beaver from place to place, stopping at Kraus Hot Springs, Deadman Valley, Hole in the Wall Lake and Virginia Falls. As the audio recordist, she trekked around, recording everything from Arctic loons to soil defrosting on the tundra.

Are you one of the 2000 Inuit abducted by an alien spacecraft from the village of Anjikuni in 1930? If so, log onto the World Wide Web and leave a message with any of the sites devoted to your experience. They’d love to hear your story. For the hardcore UFO aficionado, the name Anjikuni is as famous as Roswell or Area 51. For those who live by the creed ‘the truth is out there,’ the tagline of the cult TV series The X-Files, the story of Anjikuni is as real as it gets.

AFTER COVID SHUTDOWNS, failed barge resupply, fly-in fuel at $5.50 a litre, forest fire evacuations and dodgy ice roads, the beleaguered oil town of Norman Wells thought its luck couldn’t get worse. And then, in January, Imperial Oil Limited stunned the community with its decision to cease pumping by the fall of 2026. “It’s just been hit after hit after hit for the last five years,” laments the town’s dogged four-term mayor, Frank Pope. “I just bought a small bottle of ginger ale for $7.99.

THE LITTLE white headphones that come with iPods don’t stand a chance in the minus-45-degree weather of Cambridge Bay, Nunavut. Take a pair outside and within moments the signature white cord stiffens — freezing solid — snapping with the slightest touch. From a design standpoint it’s safe to assume that the manufacturers — Apple Computers — didn’t think their now ubiquitous portable music player would end up in the Canadian Arctic. But it should come as no surprise either.