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Alexander Halley Low was born March 29,1892 in Kensington, London, England, the son of Alexander Graham Low and Annie Halley. He received a Master of Arts degree from Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge and studied geology at the Royal School of Mines, London. He served in World War I, mostly in Ireland.

Around 1914, Alexander went on an oil prospecting trip in the Northwest Territories with Dr. T. O. Bosworth. Following the War, he returned to the Northwest Territories as an oil prospector in the Great Slave Slake region for the Imperial Oil Company. While there, he was approached by Bishop James R. Lucas to teach at the St. Peter's Mission (Residential) School in Hay River ca. 1918-19. In the early 1920s he continued oil exploration in the Fort Norman (now Tulita) area of the Northwest Territories with Mackenzie River Oil Ltd.

Alexander also did some oil prospecting in Peru and was a member of the Royal Geographical Society. He married Dorothy Lindesay Gregory in 1933 and had two children, Jean Mary Lindesay Low and Alexander John Stewart Low. Alexander Halley Low died July 2, 1974 in Ferring, Sussex, England.

Nancy Oestreich Lurie was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on January 29, 1924, the only child of Carl Ralph Oestreich and Rayline Danielson Oestreich. Her father served on the engineering faculty at the University of Wisconsin and also volunteered at the Milwaukee Public Museum and engendered Nancy's early interest in anthropology and museology. Lurie received her Bachelor of Arts degree in anthropology and sociology from the University of Wisconsin in 1945, her Masters from the University of Chicago in 1947 and went on to receive her PhD from Northwestern University in 1952.

Lurie's fieldwork included work with the Wisconsin Winnebagos during her undergraduate studies. She focused her research on culture change and on teaching white society respect and fairness toward Aboriginal peoples, and this would persist as a theme in her professional work. The Winnebagos continued to be research partners through her career.

Lurie's doctoral work at Northwestern University from 1948-1952 compared culture change in the Wisconsin and Nebraska Winnebagos and combined ethnohistorical research with fieldwork. At Northwestern she met and then married Edward Lurie in 1951; they divorced amicably in 1963.

Between 1954-1957, Lurie worked as an expert witness on seven cases for the United States Indian Claims Commission and in 1957, she began teaching applied anthropology at the University of Michigan, where she obtained a tenure-tracked position in 1961. Between 1961-1962 Lurie also served as Sol Tax's assistant in the American Indian Chicago Conference, which involved ninety tribes gathering to draft the Declaration of Indian Purpose, later presented to President John F. Kennedy. Lurie's work with Sol Tax and his 'action anthropology' methodology gave her a national profile.

Starting in 1959, Lurie conducted fieldwork in the Northwest Territories with fellow Chicago graduate student June Helm. Together they worked with the Tłı̨chǫ, making trips to Behchokǫ̀ (Rae) and Wha Ti (Lac La Martre) in 1959, 1962 and 1967.

In 1963, Lurie joined the faculty of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee as associate professor, where her first major task was establishing a Masters program with a certificate option in museology in collaboration with the Milwaukee Public Museum. She was promoted to professor three years later and was department chair from 1967-1970, when she helped to establish a doctoral program in anthropology. In 1972, Lurie fulfilled a childhood aspiration and became curator and head of the anthropology section of the Milwaukee Public Museum, where she worked until her retirement in 1993. She continued to serve as a volunteer there until 2015.

Throughout her career, Lurie was committed to the four-field tradition of anthropology in teaching and museum work. The emphasis in her own specialty of cultural anthropology was on community consultation, local control of development plans, respect for her consultants, training Native American scholars and educating mainstream society to respect Native American person and traditions. Her many honours and accomplishments include being a Fullbright-Hays lecturer at the University of Aarhus, Denmark from 1965-1966, and President of the American Anthropological Association in 1982.

In retirement, Lurie lived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She passed away on May 13, 2017.

Ann arrived in Yellowknife in January 1990 by way of Edmonton and brought with her experience working in film and video as a film festival coordinator although she had no educational background in the field. Finding work with Yellowknife Films and later CBC TV she gained hands on experience in the industry. In the early 1990s there were a number of people and companies in the NWT in the film/TV/ video industry but there was no one really doing “art” projects.

With a lot of confidence (or the exuberance of youth) and faith that if you start something others will help, Ann created a script, raised a little bit of money through the NWT Arts Fund and got a lot of very kind people to help realize this little film.

“The Road to Rae” is an ode to road movies crossed with a hommage to drive-ins! Of course in the north neither exist like they do in southern Canada. Drive-ins don’t work well as it is too bright up here in the summer time for them. Road movies usually are lengthy plant drives on paved highways whereas The Road to Rae captures the state of the highway in the 1990s just as the last of the gravel section was replaced with asphalt. Before then driving the highway was a risky undertaking.

It was quite a grueling experience making the film and at times rather dangerous as not all the traffic stopped while filming on the highway! Thankfully no humans or animals were hurt.

The Road to Rae screened in Yellowknife, on CBC North and at several Canadian festivals winning a Special Jury prize at the Yorktown Short Film Festival,

Ann continued making art films for another decade. She helped make the videos for several theatre projects with Tracy Riley (Nunsence and Confessions of the Cabin Dweller) and edited a singing group “Aurora and the Boring Alices” and their hilarious evening on stage in Yellowknife. Ann was instrumental in founding Western Arctic Moving Pictures (WAMP) and securing the initial funding to get them started. Ann still lives in Yellowknife.

Construction of the Mackenzie Highway system began in 1946. Work on the highway from the Alberta boundary to Hay River was completed in 1948.

The Mackenzie Regional Health Service (MRHS) was a health organization created in 1988, providing public health services to Northwest Territories residents in the Deh Cho, North Slave, Tlicho and South Slave regions. Health units operating under the Service included the Fort Providence health centre, Fort Liard health centre, Fort Wrigley health centre, Fort Simpson hospital, Fort Simpson public health clinic, Hay River Public health unit, Fort Resolution health centre, Lac La Martre (Wha Ti) health centre, Rae Lakes (Gameti) health centre, Snowdrift (Lutsel K'e) health centre, Yellowknife Public Health unit and the Rae-Edzo (Behchoko) health centre, as well as lay dispensers in Trout Lake, Nahanni Butte, Kakisa, Jean Marie River, and Dettah. Headquartered in Yellowknife, the Service was enacted with a board governance model, however it was only ever managed by a public administrator as trustee. It reported to the Territorial Hospital Insurance Services (THIS) Board on matters of funding and service delivery, and received administrative and coordinating support from the Department of Health.

Reporting to the Public Administrator, the MRHS was led by an Executive Director. Divisions included Finance and Administration, Personnel Services, Nursing Administration (regional health services), Medical Travel, and Environmental Health.

The Mackenzie Regional Health Service was discontinued as an organization with changes to the Territorial Hospital Insurance Services Act and the Medical Care Act, and the creation of the Department of Health and Social Services in 1997. New regional health boards and authorities, including the Deh Cho Health and Social Services Authority (DHSSA), the Yellowknife Health and Social Services Authority (YHSSA), and the Deninu Community Health and Social Services Board assumed management of health units previously under the MRHS.

On March 21 1974, Mr. Justice T.R. Berger was appointed by the government of Canada to conduct an inquiry and report on the terms and conditions that ought to be imposed on a proposed Mackenzie Valley Pipeline. Berger's first action was to visit communities up and down the Mackenzie River and over the mountains to the Yukon Territory, in order to meet the people whose lives he was going to inquire into. It was a 10,000-mile trip by helicopter, canoe, jet and bush plane that took Berger to Tuktoyaktuk, Aklavik, Fort McPherson and almost all of the 27 communities that would be affected in some way by the proposed pipeline. The inquiry commenced with preliminary hearings in Yellowknife, Inuvik, Whitehorse and Ottawa in April and May 1974. The formal hearings began in March 1975 and lasted until November 1976. Community hearings were also held in the Northwest Territories and almost all of the provinces between April 1975 and August 1976. Mr. Justice Berger's report was submitted to the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development in 1977.

Marion MacPhee was born in South Uist, Scotland in 1922. She transferred from Goldfields, Saskatchewan to Yellowknife in July 1941. She was employed by Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company of Canada Limited, and worked in the company hospital. Marion left Yellowknife in October 1942, but returned in July 1946 to work in the Lakeview Café, run by Lil Bretzlaff. In April 1947 Marion married Edward Limoges in a service performed by Father Gathy. They left Yellowknife in August 1947.

George Frank Magrum was born in Ohio on June 12, 1891. He moved to Saskatchewan to homestead land in 1914. In 1915, he married Ann/Elizabeth Brooks of Eton, England (d. July 12, 1957 Camrose AB). They had eight children, Madeline (Toots) (d. 1958), Bill (d. 1973?) John, Jim (d. 1975) and Wade, and Joan, Coleen and Marvel (Wally). George was well known as a barrenland trapper in the NWT after moving north in 1927, spending much of his time trapping near Aylmer Lake. After retiring in 1963, he remained active by taking part in walk-a-thon events to raise money for charity. He also provided noted author Ray Price with an interview which formed the basis of his "Trapper George" manuscript, which was never published. George Magrum died in January 1978.

Theodore H. Maranda worked as a Carpenter Foreman for Con Mine when it was first being established.

Janice Elizabeth March (nee Hurlbert) was born on January 3, 1938 in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. She obtained her Bachelor of Arts at Dalhousie University. In September of 1959 Ms. March moved west to pursue her Masters degree in Anthropology at the University of Toronto. In May of 1961 Ms. March was offered a summer grant to do research in the community of Fort Good Hope into the the effects of age and sex groupings on the process of socialization of the individual. The grant was financed by the Department of Northern Affairs and National Resoures. She was partnered with Hiroko Sue, a student from Bryn Mawr College. The two students went into the community on June 14th, 1961 and left on September 21st of 1961. The photographs in this collection were created during this research venture.

Thomas Jabez Marsh was a missionary with the Anglican Church Missionary Society. He began work in the Diocese of Mackenzie River at Fort Liard in 1892. In June 1893, the church moved him to a small Dene community at the mouth of the Hay River where he established St. Peter's Anglican Mission. By June of 1894, with the assistance of the local Dene and Sheridan Lawrence, a missionary who had been sent to assist him, a mission house was constructed. This was later transformed into a boarding school that opened on October 11, 1894 with five students. In 1895, the Anglican school at Fort Resolution was closed and all its students were transferred to the boarding school at Hay River. In September 1895, Miss Anna B. Marsh, the sister of Thomas J. Marsh was sent to Hay River to assist him. Miss Marsh was a trained nurse but she also assumed the responsibilities of teacher at the mission. On August 7, 1897, Mrs. Marsh also moved to Hay River to join her husband. By 1900, the mission station was in contact with seven groups of Dene: the Dëne Sųłıné (Chipewyans), Tłı̨chǫ, Yellowknives, Dane-zaa (Beavers), Shúhta Gotʼı̨nę (Mountain Dene) and the Gwich'in. In 1904, a small church was constructed at the mission and a small hospital was added. In 1901, Thomas Jabez Marsh was ordained as a Minister in the Anglican Church by Bishop Reeve. Reverend Marsh continued to run St. Peter's Mission until 1907 when he was transferred to the Diocese of Caledonia. His replacement at St. Peter's Mission was Reverend A.J. Vale.

John Fraser Marshall was born in Toronto on January 26, 1917.

After graduating from Central Technical High School with a diploma in Aircraft Meachanics in the fall of 1936, he was given the opportunity to got north as the flight engineer for Bill McDonough, a bush pilot based in Yellowknife. Bill McDonough, who flew supplies to prospecting camps located in the Great Slave Lake area wastaking an aircraft from Toronto to Yellowknife.

Fraser Marshall flew in the north from 1938 to 1939. With the onset of World War II, he enlised in the Ferry Command and moved to Montreal, Quebec. He flew missions from Montreal through the war, on routes varying from the North Atlantic runs though Gander over to the United Kingdom to the southern passages through Bermuda and across the Atlantic to North Africa and as far east as Pakistan.

Fraser Marshall passed away in Toronto on January 8, 1978.

Charles Wesley Mathers was born in Ontario to Irish immigrant parents in 1868. In 1892, the photographers Boorne and May hired Mathers to work at their Calgary studio. Mathers purchased their Edmonton studio in 1893 and opened it under his own name. Mathers traveled extensively in western and northern Canada. In 1901, a trip with trader William Connors, took him along the Athabasca River north. He traveled to Fort Smith, Fort Resolution, Wrigley, Hay River, Fort Providence, Fort Simpson, Fort Norman, Fort Good Hope and Fort McPherson, keeping a photographic record of his trip. The album "The Far North" was produced from these photographs and marketed by Mathers' Edmonton studio. Mathers died in 1950.

John Phillip Matta was born in 1928 in Vancouver, British Columbia, the eldest of four children. His father worked in the mining industry and thus moved the family to mine sites in British Columbia and Quebec while John grew up. He graduated from high school in 1946, and worked in mines until 1953 when he chose to join the Royal Canadian Air Force. He spent 10 years in the RCAF as a photographer with photo intelligence. After leaving the Air Force he worked as a production manager for a photo finishing company until his retirement in 1991. He has lived in Calgary since 1954.