The original 21 Giant Mine claims were staked by C.J. Baker and H.M. Muir in July 1935. Both prospectors were at that time working for Burwash Yellowknife Mines, Ltd. In August 1937, Giant Yellowknife Mines, Ltd. was incorporated. In 1941, Frobisher Explorations, a subsidiary of Ventures Ltd. examined the Giant claims and signed an agreement with Giant in which they gained control of Giant. The first gold brick was poured in May 1948. In 1962, Ventures Ltd. merged with Falconbridge Mines, Ltd. In 1986, the Pamour group of companies began acquiring shares in Giant Yellowknife Mines Ltd. and bought the company from Falconbridge for $200 million dollars. In 1990, Royal Oak Resources Inc. purchased the Pamour group of companies along with all of its subsidiaries, including Giant Yellowknife Mine, Akaitcho Yellowknife Gold Mines and Supercrest Mines Ltd. Royal Oak Mines Inc. was formed through the amalgamation of these companies. Royal Oak Mines Inc. declared bankruptcy in 1999 and Giant Mine was put into receivership and officially closed in the fall of 1999.
Beryl Clemetsen Gillespie was born in Evanston Illinois on June 18, 1938, the daughter of Erling A. Clemetsen and Florence Clemetsen. Her father owned a wood working plant in Chicago, and she grew up in the small community of Long Grove, Illinois. She received her B.A. at Cornell University in 1960 and her M.A. in Anthropology at the University of Iowa in 1969. Beryl Gillespie was a research associate of northern anthropologist Dr. June Helm for several years, conducting ethnographic fieldwork with Dene consultants in Detah, Behchoko (Rae), Deline (Fort Franklin), and Tulita (Fort Norman) between 1968 and 1981, as well as archival research. Beryl's M.A. thesis was an ethnohistory of the Yellowknives Dene, and she continued graduate studies at the University of Iowa Anthropology department for several years. She contributed to several anthropological texts, including the Handbook of North American Indians, Subarctic volume. She was also a consultant for the Indian Brotherhood from 1973-1975 and the Berger Commission in 1976. In 1981, Beryl Gillespie participated in the project to build the mooseskin boat currently on display at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre. Shortly thereafter she retired from academia. Beryl was first married to Dr. Robert A. Gillespie in 1961, later marrying Eugene S. Rave in the late 1970s. She died in Iowa City, Iowa, on September 22, 2002.
Until 1964, all Girl Guides of Canada activities in the Northwest Territories were under the jurisdiction of either the Alberta Council that controlled Girl Guide activities in the Western Arctic, or the Quebec Council that oversaw activities in the Franklin and Keewatin Districts. In 1965, after lobbying from Local Guiding Associations within the Northwest Territories and the Yukon, the Girl Guides of Canada organization created the Yukon and Northwest Territories Council, which assumed responsibility for all guiding activities throughout the Northwest Territories and Yukon.
In 1965, there were 64 groups of guides and\or brownies in the Northwest Territories and Yukon with a combined membership of 1,200. In 1966, the Yukon Territory was organized into one division with two districts and the Northwest Territories divided into three divisions: Mackenzie Division, Franklin Division and Keewatin Division. By 1968, the Yukon Division was still organized into two administrative districts, which had a combined membership of 350. The Northwest Territories Division had been sub-divided into eight districts with a combined membership of 1,356. The Northwest Territories districts were: Yellowknife, Great Slave Rapids, Southern Slave, Arctic Circle, Nunakput, Keewatin, Frobisher Bay and Baffin.
In 1974, the Yukon and Northwest Territories Council was divided into two distinct entities, the Yukon Council and the Northwest Territories Council. At that time, the Northwest Territories Council reorganized its districts, creating four new administrative divisions: Great Slave, Eastern Arctic, Midnight Sun and Keewatin. In 1983, the Keewatin Division was renamed the Central Arctic Division. In 1985, the Nunakput Division was created. In 1986, the Northwest Territories Council organized its activities into five administrative divisions: Kivaliq, Midnight Sun, Nunakput, Great Slave Lake and Eastern Arctic. In 1988, the Northwest Territories Council reorganized its divisions again, creating the Eastern Arctic, South Great Slave, North Great Slave, Kivaliq, Midnight Sun and Kitikmeot Divisions. In 1990, the Northwest Territories Council again reorganized its administrative body, creating the following divisions: Eastern Arctic, North Great Slave, South Great Slave, Kitikmeot and Midnight Sun.
Harold Glick was born in 1925 in Sudbury, Ontario to Jacob Isaac (J.I.) Glick and Sadie Glick. He described his upbringing as not overly religious, but his parents did keep a kosher household. He was raised in Sudbury until 1938 or 1939, at which point the family relocated to Montreal. He completed schooling through Grade 10 as well as two years of an electronics apprenticeship through Ecole Polytechnique, after which he worked for Northern Electric Company (1944).
He served in the Second World War in the Royal Canadian Corps of Signals (1944), and upon discharge moved to Yellowknife to be near his parents. He arrived via plane in March 1946 during Operation Muskox, and worked at his parents’ business, the Veterans Cafe, for about a year. For three months in 1947 he worked as an electronics helper at Giant Mine, and then went to Toronto to study radio technologies. In October 1948 he returned to Yellowknife and went into business, starting Yellowknife Radio and Record Store Ltd (YK Radio) in a wall tent next door to the Gold Range Hotel. The store initially sold records, radios, and appliances, and also offered repair services, and by 1952 had moved into a new building. In 1958 an addition was added to the shop. The store’s offerings expanded to include jewellery and furniture. As of 1968-1970, the company had three directors: Harold Glick, Zelda Glick, and Jacob Isaac Glick.
In 1952, Harold Glick married Zelda Vinsky of Vegreville, Alberta, who he had met in Edmonton. Harold and Zelda had four children (Murray, Jeffrey, Leah, and Marilyn), who they sought to raise with a Jewish education. Zelda kept a kosher household in Yellowknife, and brought meat from Winnipeg and Edmonton. The family belonged to Beth Israel Synagogue, a Modern Orthodox synagogue in Edmonton, Alberta. Harold and Zelda sent their sons to Pine Lake (a B’nai B’rith Camp near Red Deer, Alberta) and their daughters to Camp Hatikvah (Lake Kalamalka at Oyama, near Kelowna, British Columbia).
Harold volunteered with Yellowknife's first radio station, and also served on the Yellowknife municipal council (Town Council) during the 1960s, including 1960-1961. He became a director of Hidden Lake Gold Mines Ltd., which was established in 1968.
In 1986, Yellowknife Radio was sold to Roy Williams, and Harold and Zelda Glick moved to Kelowna, British Columbia, where there was both a Yellowknifer community and a Jewish community. Harold passed on April 20, 2009, in British Columbia.
Jacob Isaac Glick was born in 1899 or 1900, possibly in Galicia or Montreal, and was raised in Montreal in a family of 11 children.
When he was a teenager, his father attempted to establish a homestead near Rosetown, Saskatchewan through the support of the Baron de Hirsch Institute and the Jewish Colonization Association. The homestead was unsuccessful, and he reported that his brother and father were the first two people to be buried in the new Jewish cemetery in Saskatoon. The rest of the family returned to Montreal. His mother died during the influenza epidemic, and he and his older siblings worked together to care for the three youngest children.
From the fall of 1920 through the 1930s, he worked as a prospector and fur trader in northern Ontario. He wrote that he had long dreamed of working for the Hudson’s Bay Company, but was told at the head office in Montreal that they did not hire Jewish staff. From then on, he was determined to work against the HBC: “If they don’t let Jewish people work for them, then it was my ambition to work against them.” After working for a fur trader for several years in Sudbury, Gogama, and Low Bush, Ontario, he entered into a business partnership with A. Brown of Sudbury.
While in Toronto with his trading partner, he met Sonia (Sadie) Nicholeavsky and her family. They had arrived two years prior from Russia, where they suffered during pogroms, war, and revolution. He and Sonia married on January 16, 1925, moving to Gogama and then Sudbury, where Sonia had extended family. On October 26, 1925, their only child Harold was born. That winter Glick began prospecting near Red Lake while Sonia and Harold stayed with Sonia’s mother in Toronto. When he returned to Sudbury, he and Brown established a fur business there while maintaining an office in Gogama. The family experienced significant financial difficulties during the Great Depression. By 1931 he began work in Oba, Ontario on behalf of Glick Mining Syndicate and Troy Consolidated Gold Mine Limited, and appears to have continued this work through 1935 on behalf of Steepe Mining Syndicate.
In July 1935 he shot and wounded William Denomer, an employee, near Horne Payne, Ontario. The case went to trial in August 1935, and after an appeal in September 1935 Glick was sentenced to three years in Kingston Penitentiary. Glick maintained that the shooting was in self-defence, and that the trial had been laced with antisemitism. While incarcerated in Kingston, he attempted to maintain his mining claims and syndicate and wrote an autobiography. He was released in November 1937, and returned to Oba.
In June 1938, Glick was charged with illegal fur dealing in Gogama, Ontario. He was released on bail and then arrested in Rouyn, Quebec, with nearly $10,000 of furs. After he was released on bail in Quebec, the Ontario Provincial Police launched a land and air search for him. There was a moratorium on selling beaver pelts in Ontario, and Glick was purportedly part of an international ring purchasing furs illegally from First Nations hunters for sale to markets in the United States and Great Britain. In July 1938, Glick was convicted on 21 charges and sentenced to two and a half years in Burwash Reformatory.
Upon release from Burwash, Glick enlisted in Montreal on June 20, 1940, and went overseas in August 1940, serving as a cook with the 1st Canadian Survey Regiment through 1944. He was discharged from the military and returned to Montreal in January 1945.
J.I. and Sadie Glick moved to Yellowknife in April 1945 with the encouragement of Hon. Charles McCrae, the president of Negus Mines and former Ontario Minister of Mines who had acted on behalf of Glick during his mining disputes. Upon arrival, Glick worked at Negus Mines as a cook, and the couple spent their first winter in a tent.
J.I. Glick's first business venture in Yellowknife was the Veterans Restaurant (also known as the Veterans Cafe), which was in operation from approximately 1946-1953. He started the business with the support of Re-Establishment Credits from the Department of Veterans Affairs. The cafe was in a building in ‘New Town’ downtown Yellowknife, and he also sold vegetables from a root house. By 1953 he was reporting income from property rentals and a second hand store. He sold the Second Hand Shop in 1955 and ventured more deeply into real estate, owning and operating Central Real Estate from 1954 onward to around 1971.
In 1957 he built the Gold Range Hotel on the same site as the Veterans Cafe, and worked as hotel manager from 1958 onward. He and his wife owned half of the business and their business partners were in Edmonton. The hotel property was owned by Central Real Estate. Around 1958-1959 J.I. Glick introduced the first telephone that had more than local service. He ran a radio telephone from his office in the hotel that connected out to the south, which locals could use to call out. In 1966 the Glicks sold their shares in the Gold Range Hotel to Hymie Weisler (Edmonton). J.I. Glick stayed as a public relations manager for the hotel for two years. Glick was also a Director of Premier Electrical, a local utility company, ca. 1967-1970.
Glick was involved as a member of the Yellowknife Ratepayers Association and Yellowknife Town Council in the 1960s, and was also a member of the Northwest Territories Progressive Conservative Association.
J.I. Glick passed on March 20, 1973. A service was held at Park Memorial Chapel on Spadina Avenue in Toronto, and interment took place at Lambton Park Cemetery.
Frank S. Gonda was born in Hafford Saskatchewan on April 6, 1934. He grew up on a small farm and attended a nearby elementary school. He attended high school at Battleford Scholastics, a school run by Oblate fathers. He finished his secondary schooling at age 16 but was too young to go to university. A shortage of teachers for rural areas led him to supervise a school in Alberttown. He taught there for two years before attending the University of Saskatoon. Upon graduation, Mr. Gonda taught school in Saskatchewan for two years. In 1959, at the age of 24 he left Saskatchewan and spent the next 18 years teaching in the Northwest Territories. He worked in a variety of communities including: Fort Simpson, Pelly Bay, Yellowknife, Wha ti (Lac La Martre), Iqaluit (Frobisher Bay) and Repulse Bay. He was the first teacher in Pelly Bay. He gave occasional lectures, slide shows and wrote a story entitled "Christmas in the Big Igloo," which was later used as the title of a book. Frank Gonda returned to Saskatchewan in 1976 to care for his ageing mother and taught for several years in various residential schools in Saskatchewan. His hobbies included photography, painting and archaeology. He died on his farm in Hafford, Saskatchewan on April 3, 1989
John W. Goodall, born September 1890 in England, immigrated to Fort Simpson in 1927. He worked in agriculture raising potatoes and livestock commercially and fulfilled the role of postmaster for the community until 1954, when he became an elected member of the NWT Council for Fort Simpson until 1967. During this time, Goodall played a pivotal role in the activities of the council, including the construction of the residentail school and hostel in Fort Simpson. After retiring from politics in 1967, he was awarded a Medal of Service from the Order of Canada. He continued to play an active role in Fort Simpson, sitting on the Fort Simpson Local Advisory Committee until his death on September 12, 1971.
Gordon Robertson Education Centre (GREC) opened in 1971 as a junior and senior high school and vocational school. In addition to local students from Iqaluit, its enrolment included students from other communities who were housed in Ukkivik Hall, which opened along with GREC and closed in 1996. In the early 1990s, the school was renamed Inuksuk High School.
Peter Lockhart Gordon and his brother, Hugh Donald Lockhart Gordon travelled down the Nahanni in the summer of 1961 by canoe. Hugh drowned while on the trip.
The Great Bear Lake Co-operative Association was the first co-operative in the Northwest Territories. Co-operatives now operate in many communities in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. The Great Bear Lake Co-operative Association's Secretary-Treasurer and/or Manager from 1963-1966, Rene Fumoleau (OMI-retired), is a well-known author, photographer and voice of support for aboriginal issues.
The Great Bear Lake Oral History Project was sponsored by the Fort Franklin Radio Society and was conducted in 1992. The purpose of the project was to collect information from Fort Franklin elders on settlement patterns around Great Bear Lake before Fort Franklin was established, record traditional place names in the Great Bear Lake area and to record the movement to and settlement of Fort Franklin. Hunting, trapping and fishing areas would also be recorded. The project coordinator was Jane Vandermeer and interviews were conducted by Dennis Kenny and Rose Mary Yukon.
On October 23, 1979, a group of individuals concerned with northern content in the Northwest Territories education system met and established themselves as the Great River Cultural Resources Committee. Committee members felt that the Department of Education was not living up to its responsibilities to have materials on the history and culture of the Dene included in curriculum. This ad hoc body defined its purpose as being "to aid in providing assistance, organization and policy development for community cultural groups." The intent of the group was to encourage groups in the communities to produce information packets on local history which might be utilized by their schools in creating a greater sense of cultural awareness. The last meeting of the Committee appears to have been in 1980.
Grollier Hall was established in Inuvik in 1959 as a student residence for children between the ages of 5-19 from communities within the Sahtu, Beaufort Delta and Kitikmeot Regions. It was operated by the Roman Catholic Church. Stringer Hall was an Anglican Church residence built in Inuvik at the same time. The students from both residences attended the Inuvik Federal School (renamed the Sir Alexander Mackenzie School) that had both Catholic and Anglican wings, ensuring the separation of the children and the faiths. Grollier Hall was a huge facility for its time; it accommodated approximately 200 students. It contained separate dormitories and gyms for girls and boys, a cafeteria, a chapel, an infirmary and three major outdoor facilities: a covered hockey rink, an enclosed swimming pool (summer use only) and a ski shack. Sport and recreational activities were offered, such as inter-mural hockey, basketball and volleyball. There were also exchange visits between the girls and boys and the occasional social dance. The children were supervised by clergy or staff hired by the Roman Catholic Church. Grollier Hall was taken over by the Territorial Government in the 1970's and operated until 1996.
The Gruben family of Tuktoyaktuk have lived, hunted and trapped in that area for generations. Frequent trips to Mary Sachs, near Sachs Harbour on Banks Island, were made by the family, usually aboard the North Star. The family hunted polar bear, fox and other animals on Banks Island, then returned to the Mackenzie Delta to trade. John William Rubin[sic] and Mary (Mercy) Talegomik wed May 1, 1914. Mary was the daughter of Nalrakbaaluk, born in 1865, and Ananaq. John and Mary Gruben's children are Emma, Helen, Charlie, Willie and Eddie. Emma's son is Charles Gruben (Angun). Helen's daughter was Nellie Gruben. Charlie Gruben married Persis and had two daughters, Sarah and Agnes. Eddie Gruben married Alice Cockney, daughter of Nuligak, who had a daughter, Millie. Many other family members continue to reside in Tuktoyaktuk.