Latest news with #Yellowknifers
CBC
29-04-2025
- Business
- CBC
Yellowknife's new aquatic centre to open next Monday
Social Sharing The new aquatic centre in Yellowknife will open May 5, according to the City of Yellowknife. Grant White, the city's director of community services, made the announcement at a committee meeting Monday afternoon, which led to a cheer and a short round of applause. He said a date for the grand opening of the $71-million dollar build would be announced in the near future. The new space features an 8-lane lap pool, leisure pool, waterslide, splash pad, hot tub and steam room. It'll also have a meeting room, a locally-run canteen and a patio. Construction started back in 2022, after Yellowknifers voted in a November 2021 referendum to support the city borrowing $10-million for the project. The rest of the project has been covered by federal grant funding and other government funding streams along with some city savings.
CBC
13-04-2025
- General
- CBC
Ruth Inch's daughter on saying goodbye to Yellowknife's 37-year-old pool named for her mother
Sunday is the last day the Ruth Inch Memorial Pool will be open — a place where Yellowknifers have been able to swim, soak and steam for nearly 37 years. The daughter of the building's namesake said she'll probably mark the day by visiting the space, shedding a tear and taking some photos. The city is gearing up to open its newly built, $71-million Yellowknife Aquatic Centre and although it hasn't said when, exactly, that'll happen — it's closing the Ruth Inch pool so that it can train staff in the new space. Jennifer Inch, one of Ruth's five children, wishes the building had been given a more exciting title but said it doesn't have to bear her late mother's name for Ruth's legacy to be remembered. The pool was named after Ruth when it opened in 1988. How the pool got its name It wasn't until Jennifer was an adult that she learned why her mother had wanted all of her children to learn how to swim – even though she, herself, could not. Before coming to Yellowknife, Ruth had been involved in a boating accident in her early 20s in which someone had died, said Jennifer. "She was determined that any children she ever had would all be strong swimmers, and she was a strong advocate for that. So we were," said Jennifer. Jennifer said both of her parents did volunteer work — Ruth worked with the public library, the Girl Guides, the YWCA and Sport North. She had also been on the board for the Polar Bear Swim Club and the N.W.T. Swim Association. Her mother had died around the same time that the city had decided to build its own pool — moving on from the old Fraser Tower pool. Jennifer remembers a "lovely" naming ceremony in the fall of 1988 after the swim club and swim association pitched that the space be named after Ruth. "It was very humbling because the community had asked for this to happen. As far as I know, it was a unanimous decision at the time. So we were very grateful. It was very nice." What's next? As for what happens next with the facility, Jennifer has some ideas. She'd love for the building to be used for the city's library, with a coffee shop. "Something that takes advantage of that view," she said. Mairi Barrow, 8, and Gwendolyn Kirby, 9, also had suggestions about what the space could be turned into. They both attended a celebratory event on Saturday to mark Ruth Inch's closure. Kirby's dream is that it be turned into an amusement park while Barrow — siding with Jennifer — is hoping it can be a new home for the public library. As for the name – Jennifer hopes it becomes something with meaning. "Lots of people have done lots of volunteering over the years since mom has died … I think it would be neat to recognize somebody else too." Though, she added with a laugh, "'Ruth Inch Library is kind of nice."
CBC
06-04-2025
- General
- CBC
Extended Yellowknife power outage caused by breaker failure: Naka Power
A broken breaker at a power distribution substation caused Saturday's extended power outage in Yellowknife, Naka Power says. Jay Massie, the utility company's vice president, told CBC News that the city-wide outage was caused by the failure of an "integral" piece of Naka Power's equipment, a "big breaker" at one of its three power distribution substations for Yellowknife. "It just failed completely," Massie said. The outage began around 3 p.m. MT. Some Yellowknifers got their electricity back around 5 p.m., but many were without power for much longer. The last Yellowknife customers had power restored around 10:30 p.m., leaving them without electricity for over seven hours, Massie said. The outage also affected Behchokǫ̀, N.W.T., leaving residents there without power for about an hour Saturday afternoon. Massie said the failure of the "integral" breaker, which was located at Naka Power's Niven Lake substation, was the "root cause" of both the Yellowknife and Behchokǫ̀ outages. He added that Saturday's outage was unrelated to another extended outage in Yellowknife that occured several weeks ago. Unanswered question about outage The breaker's failure was "unexpected", Massie said, and Naka Power still doesn't know what caused it. He added that crews have not yet found any indication that anything was wrong with the breaker leading up to the outage. "It's not typical that we see that piece of equipment fail as it did," he said. "It's about 15 years old. Still, we test and maintain them on a yearly basis." Massie said it was also "unexpected" that the failure of this breaker would cause a city-wide outage at all — let alone an outage in Behchokǫ̀, a community more than a 100 kilometres northwest of Yellowknife that has a different power distributor. Naka Power doesn't know yet why the broken breaker caused such a serious outage, but it and NTPC — the power distributor for Behchokǫ̀ — are investigating, he said. CBC has requested an interview with NTPC about the cause of the Behchokǫ̀ outage. Confusion around the unexpected severity of the power outage was part of the reason it took so long to fix, Massie said. Technicians originally thought an issue with the power generation in Yellowknife caused the outage, he said, adding that NTPC would have had to fix that. Naka technicians started repairs after 4:30 p.m., once they realized the company's own broken equipment caused the outage, he said. Breaker still needs to be replaced Massie said Naka was able to end the outage by rerouting Yellowknife's electrical grid, to bypass the Niven Lake substation altogether. But the part that broke still needs to be replaced. The company hopes to replace it and get the substation back online by the end of this week, he said. Until then, Massie said Yellowknife will be getting all of its power from Naka's two remaining functional substations. Massie said there shouldn't be any reliability or demand issues on the city's power grid as a result of this setup. "The distribution system is designed for this," he said. "Fortunately, it's not -40 C. But even in that time, when there's a lot of load on the system, the system is designed to back itself up."
Yahoo
06-04-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Extended Yellowknife power outage caused by breaker failure: Naka Power
A broken breaker at a power distribution substation caused Saturday's extended power outage in Yellowknife, Naka Power says. Jay Massie, the utility company's vice president, told CBC News that the city-wide outage was caused by the failure of an "integral" piece of Naka Power's equipment, a "big breaker" at one of its three power distribution substations for Yellowknife. "It just failed completely," Massie said. The outage began around 3 p.m. MT. Some Yellowknifers got their electricity back around 5 p.m., but many were without power for much longer. The last Yellowknife customers had power restored around 10:30 p.m., leaving them without electricity for over seven hours, Massie said. The outage also affected Behchokǫ̀, N.W.T., leaving residents there without power for about an hour Saturday afternoon. Massie said the failure of the "integral" breaker, which was located at Naka Power's Niven Lake substation, was the "root cause" of both the Yellowknife and Behchokǫ̀ outages. He added that Saturday's outage was unrelated to another extended outage in Yellowknife that occured several weeks ago. Unanswered question about outage The breaker's failure was "unexpected", Massie said, and Naka Power still doesn't know what caused it. He added that crews have not yet found any indication that anything was wrong with the breaker leading up to the outage. "It's not typical that we see that piece of equipment fail as it did," he said. "It's about 15 years old. Still, we test and maintain them on a yearly basis." Massie said it was also "unexpected" that the failure of this breaker would cause a city-wide outage at all — let alone an outage in Behchokǫ̀, a community more than a 100 kilometres northwest of Yellowknife that has a different power distributor. Naka Power doesn't know yet why the broken breaker caused such a serious outage, but it and NTPC — the power distributor for Behchokǫ̀ — are investigating, he said. CBC has requested an interview with NTPC about the cause of the Behchokǫ̀ outage. Confusion around the unexpected severity of the power outage was part of the reason it took so long to fix, Massie said. Technicians originally thought an issue with the power generation in Yellowknife caused the outage, he said, adding that NTPC would have had to fix that. Naka technicians started repairs after 4:30 p.m., once they realized the company's own broken equipment caused the outage, he said. Breaker still needs to be replaced Massie said Naka was able to end the outage by rerouting Yellowknife's electrical grid, to bypass the Niven Lake substation altogether. But the part that broke still needs to be replaced. The company hopes to replace it and get the substation back online by the end of this week, he said. Until then, Massie said Yellowknife will be getting all of its power from Naka's two remaining functional substations. Massie said there shouldn't be any reliability or demand issues on the city's power grid as a result of this setup. "The distribution system is designed for this," he said. "Fortunately, it's not -40 C. But even in that time, when there's a lot of load on the system, the system is designed to back itself up."
CBC
01-04-2025
- Politics
- CBC
Yellowknifer's talk about what matters to them this election season
With less than a month remaining until Canada's next federal election we talked with Yellowknifers about what matters to them this election. Take a listen.
