The Northwest Territories is one of Canada's three territories — with the Yukon to the west and Nunavit to the east. Aboriginal people comprise over half of the overall population of about 42,000 and approximately 20,000 people live in the capital city of Yellowknife. Beyond Yellowknife, there are about 20 different communities that are a mix of settlements, towns, and villages.

In 2009, I was hired by the Northwest Territories Health Authority to develop a prototype health center that could be replicated to serve remote communities of less than 1,500 people — some of which are accessible only by air. The goal was to develop a community-oriented, culturally-sensitive facility to accommodate a team of nurses, social workers, mental health and addictions counselors, and other community-based and visiting staff. In the fall of 2009, I visited the remote communities of Jean Marie River, Fort Providence, and Normal Wells to tour the existing healthcare centers.

I started my adventure by flying from Edmonton, Alberta to the capital city of Yellowknife which is located on the north shore of the Great Slave Lake about 250 miles south of the Artic Circle. Yellowknife was named after a local Dene tribe once known as the "Copper Indians" or "Yellowknife Indians" who traded copper tools forged from copper found near the Arctic Coast. The community of Yellowknife was founded with the gold rush of 1934 and became capital of the Northwest Territories in 1967. As gold production began to wane, Yellowknife shifted from being a mining town to a center of government services. However, another boom took place in 1991 with the discovery of diamonds north of the city.

It was already winter — limited daylight, cold, and windy but with very little snow. Yellowknife has a few multi-story office buildings which primarily accommodate government workers but generally looks like the boom towm that it is. This time of year Yellowknife is host to tourists from around the world — with many from Asia — who come to see the Aurora Borealis.

Mona, one of my associates — also an avid dog lover — arranged for the two of us to go for a late night dogsled ride. We arrived at Beck's Kennels at 7:00 p.m. to meet our woman musher and to be suited up in insulated parkas, pants, gloves, and boots. Once our (all-female) dog team was hitched up, we departed for a two-hour long adventure through the pristine wilderness. We then stopped at a log cabin for hot chocolate before our return back to the kennels. Surprisingly, the dogs were not the fluffy huskies that you see in the movies, but short-haired, lean, and muscular. They were happy to be chosen to accompany us on our evening outing. The quiet and solitude were amazing — all we could hear was the panting of the dogs as we traveled under the starlit sky in the wilderness.

I visited Yellowknife again in the summer of 2011 when I was asked to join the design team engaged to replace Stanton Territorial Hospital — the largest healthcare facility in the Northwest Territories. Compared to my visits in the fall of 2009, with barely six hours of daylight, visiting over the summer was quite disorienting with 20 hours of sunshine each day. Peter accompanied me on one of my trips to Yellowknife and we continued west to Vancouver for a week of vacation.