Latest news with #FortGoodHope
Globe and Mail
30-05-2025
- Business
- Globe and Mail
The Hudson's Bay Company lost its heart and soul decades ago
Lee Harding is a wildlife biologist formerly specializing in fur-bearer ecology in the North. On April Fool's Day in 1972, I stepped off the floats of a bush plane onto the dock at Fort Good Hope, NWT, and walked up the street looking for the band office. A wildlife biologist, I was working for a consortium of oil companies hoping to build a natural gas pipeline from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, up the Mackenzie River to Alberta. Having been sent to study beaver ecology in Sahtu Dene territory, I explained to the Chief the purpose of our study and asked to be introduced to the trapper whose trapline covered our proposed study area. This was our modus operandi: meet the Chief, meet the trapper, and make accommodation with the trapper for our intrusion into his or her trapline. In this case, the trapper and his friend, who had another trapline nearby, invited me on their spring beaver hunt. They would get the furs, and I would get the beaver teeth (to determine aging by counting growth rings) and uteruses (to count placental scars, an indication of fecundity). In return, I would pay for gasoline for his river boat, groceries, and a little .22 rifle ammunition. For this, we walked down to the Hudson's Bay Company trading post. I had previously performed this ritual in several upriver communities near my study areas and would later perform it in Dene villages in the Mackenzie Delta and Old Crow, Yukon, and in Inuit villages along the Beaufort Sea coast. Every town had an HBC post. Little had changed since 1804 when the Northwest Company (NWC), fiercely challenging the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) for supremacy in the fur trade, began pushing posts down the Mackenzie. In 1821, after amalgamation, Fort Good Hope became an HBC trading post. In 1972, it still sold traps, rifles, ammunition, clothes, camping gear and groceries to trappers and bought their furs when they came in from the bush. We Canadians are proud of our history, and HBC's mystique – trappers and traders speaking Cree, Dene, and other Indigenous languages bringing furs into distant outposts; voyageurs braving rapids and wilderness to forward the furs to Montreal and Hudson's Bay; the intrigues between NWC and HBC rivals – resonated with all of us. But all that ended in 1987 when the once-proud Company of Adventurers closed or sold all its northern trading posts. The posts were the heart and soul of the company. Hunting beavers in 24-hour daylight, I learned to change my diurnal rhythms to crepuscular – active morning and evening – as Dene and Inuit hunters do, following the rhythms of the wildlife: We set off each day at about 3 a.m., as the sun was rising over the spruce trees in the northern sky, and hunted until mid-morning, before finding a sunny river bank for lunch and a long siesta. In the afternoon, we hunted until dusk, when we would roast bannock and beaver meat and sleep for a few hours. My colleagues had an interesting way of going upriver when the stream got small enough for beavers to build their dams from bank to bank: The guy in the stern would aim straight at the dam, gun the motor to raise the bow, and just as the bow hit the dam, he would tilt the motor up, raising the propeller, and the boat would just jump over the dam. Meanwhile, the guy in the bow kept watch for beavers with the rifle and showed me the meaning of the word 'marksman.' When ducks would flush, he would shoot them down with the .22. To understand what districts produced which species of fur, I spent the winter of 1972-1973 in the basement of the Yellowknife game management office compiling government trapline records and HBC fur sales receipts. Prices were up and down, but let no one tell you that trapping was in decline. Every kid in every village could snare a hare, weasel or squirrel, sales of which made up most, numerically, of the fur receipts. The real money was in wolf and wolverine pelts, although few of the latter made it to market because the trappers kept them to line their parka hoods (wolverine fur does not frost up like other furs). But the bulk of trapping income was from marten, fox, mink, lynx and beaver – and in the Mackenzie Delta and Old Crow Flats, muskrat – which were abundant and fetched decent prices. The fur industry grew from $51-million in wholesale shipments in 1970 – the HBC's 300th anniversary – to $320-million in 1992. In 1986, 200 factories tanned pelts and 3,700 furriers made fur garments in Canada. But the advent of commercial fur farms and the increasing distaste of consumers about wearing the skins of dead animals evidently frightened the HBC owners. Selling off the fur business in 1987 was the end of the HBC of our collective consciousness. Their fear was short-sighted, however, because prices stayed high, and in 1997, the HBC reopened its fur salons to meet consumer demand. In any case, after 1987, the HBC was just another department store.
CBC
16-05-2025
- Business
- CBC
Sahtu residents open to MLA's food bank idea. But who will do the work?
Social Sharing Heather Bourassa says the food bank she helps run from the basement of the church in Fort Good Hope, N.W.T., has the potential to do more for the community – if it were to have more support. She and her friend, Nadine Tatchinron, volunteer to make up food hampers as they're needed. They don't advertise what they do – and they respond to referrals and requests for help. "There's definitely a need for the groceries. For, like, homes with unemployment, or just because of the high cost of living. Definitely we have requests for food on a regular basis," she said. Sahtu MLA Danny McNeely said he wants to build off existing services – like the food bank in Fort Good Hope, but also the pantry in Norman Wells – as he pushes ahead with his idea for setting up a food hub in the region. That hub would store donated food for distribution on a regular basis to the other four Sahtu communities. Food Banks Canada is partnering with McNeely on the idea. Two representatives of the organization who travelled the Sahtu region with McNeely and Nutrition North Canada last week said one of their goals is to identify a champion in each community who will help them set it up. Nolan Wadsworth-Polkinghorne, a northern programs officer for Food Banks Canada, knows human capacity will be a challenge. "People in the North wear a lot of different hats all the time and it's, I think, something I've come to greatly admire about folks," he said. "What I hope to do is make myself available ... and supportive so that we can make things as easy as possible." McNeely, who also knows capacity might be a challenge, wants to get a co-ordinator to oversee the project. Food Banks Canada says it can fund part-time staff related to some of its grants, but it can't support full time staff. McNeely said he's talking to Nutrition North Canada about splitting the cost of the position between the territorial and federal governments. "We're going to explore and exhaust all options to have a staff member representing the Sahtu region," he said. Site for distribution hub not chosen yet There aren't a lot of details about what, exactly, a food distribution hub in the Sahtu would look like. Jason Stevens, the northern network manager for Food Banks Canada, said one of the next steps is to make sure each community is on board with the idea. Other steps include letting funders and stakeholders know about the project and ironing out where, exactly, the hub would be. Stevens said Norman Wells is one option being discussed, because of the ability to ship cargo by plane. Food Banks Canada has said it will supply the food to the hub, while Matt Bender, an outreach manager with Nutrition North Canada who also joined the tour last week, said his department could subsidize the cost of transporting donated food by $3 per kilogram. McNeely said he's been talking to Buffalo Airways about transporting food and to Sysco Canada about buying food in bulk. There's also a discrepancy about whether people will need to pay for the food items: Food Banks Canada said food will be free, while McNeely said some of the goods will be provided for free. "We have to do the calculations and take into account what contributions Nutrition North is going to offer towards airlines. At the end of the day, we would like to see as minimal amount of pricing of products at the community level." Stevens described visits to each Sahtu community last week as a listening exercise. He and Wadsworth-Polkinghorne also touted Food Banks Canada's grants – which are separate from the idea for the hub – during those visits. They said the grants are flexible and can be used for a broad range of food security projects, like shelving for food bank storage, to ammunition for hunting caribou and moose. 'Is this another burden?' Heather Bourassa in Fort Good Hope says the community meeting there with McNeely, Food Banks Canada and Nutrition North was really encouraging. Asked if she had the capacity to grow the food bank she's running now, she paused and thought about how to reply. "I do believe that there's a lot of potential for the food bank here to do more. We would have to be more organized and … we would need more volunteers," said Bourassa, who is already wearing many hats in the community including co-owning a business, being part of the local school board, chairing the Sahtu Land Use Planning Board and being a mom. Tiana Spilchak, of Norman Wells, also wonders who in her community will apply for Food Banks Canada's grants or help set up the food distribution hub. "Everyone's working to make ends meet … everyone's burnt out," she said. "It's hard to come together as a community when we're all worried about ourselves." Meanwhile, Joseph Kochon, the band manager for Behdzi Ahda First Nation in Colville Lake, wondered if what was being pitched would make more work for his community. "Is this another burden that's going to come to us here?" he asked. "If it's going to be an independent thing and somebody easily running the program and we don't really have a connection to it, then it's OK … by all means, we'll give it some thought."
CBC
08-05-2025
- Health
- CBC
Health officials warn of dangerous drug combination detected in N.W.T.
The office of the chief public health officer (CPHO) in the N.W.T. has issued a public health advisory warning about a dangerous combination of drugs detected in the territory. The advisory issued on Wednesday says drugs were seized during a vehicle stop between Fort Good Hope and Norman Wells in mid-March. The drugs tested positive for fentanyl, crack cocaine and methamphetamine. This week, Health Canada confirmed that there was also a rare benzodiazepine detected in the fentanyl, called desalkylgudazepam. Desalkylgudazepam is more resistant to the anti-opioid drug naloxone, which could make it difficult to treat someone who is overdosing. The advisory says this is the first time it has been found in illegal drugs in the territory; it was first detected in Canada in April 2022. The CPHO is also warning that the territory is seeing an increased presence of methamphetamine and higher quantities of fentanyl. "All of these incidents show a shift in the N.W.T.'s illicit drug profile that is concerning," the statement reads. The advisory says there are no visible warning signs that street drugs contain opioids or benzodiazepines; they can't be detected by sight, smell or taste. Signs of benzodiazepine intoxication include excessive drowsiness, loss of balance and coordination, partial amnesia, and not being able to follow conversations. High doses of drugs like fentanyl that mix benzodiazepines and opioids increase the risk of overdose, which can lead to breathing problems, unconsciousness or death. The CPHO has had an agreement with the City of Yellowknife since July 2024 to test Yellowknife's wastewater on a monthly basis for illegal drugs; it posts the data on Health Canada's website. The CPHO has said cocaine and crack cocaine are the most-used substances in the territory after alcohol and cannabis. In 2024, there were five opioid-related deaths in four N.W.T. communities, according to the CPHO.
