Henry George Cook was born on October 12, 1906 in Walthamstow, England. At the age of 23, he began his studies for the ministry at Huron College and the University of Western Ontario, where he obtained a degree in theology and a Bachelor of Arts degree. Cook met fellow student Opal May Thompson who became his wife on June 4, 1935 in St. Thomas ON. She passed away in 1987. Cook began his ministry in 1935 in the Northwest Territories at Fort Simpson. He later became archdeacon of James Bay and in 1949 became superintendent of the Indian School Administration in Ottawa, which oversaw Anglican residential schools. The position lasted 15 years and in 1963 Cook was consecrated as the first bishop suffragan of the Diocese of the Arctic with responsibilities for the Athabasca district and later the Mackenzie River area district. After his retirement in 1974, he assisted in establishing the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre. The centre opened in 1979 and the NWT Archives Reading Room is named in Cook's honour. In 1979, Cook finally retired to Stittsville, Ontario. He died in Ottawa, Ontario on October 18, 1995.
While attending law school at the University of Alberta, Ernest A. Cote, was employed by the Northern Transportation Company, Ltd. in the summers of 1936 and 1937. In 1936, he was the agent responsible for Fort Smith and Fort Fitzgerald operations. In 1937, he was purser aboard the "Northern Prospector," which brought construction materials to Yellowknife. Mr. Cote later became the Deputy Minister for the Federal Department of Northern Affairs and National Resources and the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development.
Robert A. Coutts was born in Elmvale, Ontario in 1896. He worked as a prospector and a miner in the Great Bear Lake region of the Northwest Territories between 1932 and 1934. He spent the remainder of his working life in the mining industry and went on to manage mines in northern Quebec and in the United States. He died in Whitby, Ontario in 1981. His son, Robert C. Coutts, passed away in January 2004.
James Cree was born in Dundee Scotland in 1904. In 1925, he immigrated to Canada and began working for the trading company Revillon Freres, Ltd. He left the employ of Revillon Freres in 1929 to work for the T. Eaton Company in Edmonton. In 1932, he was hired by Northern Traders, Ltd. to run a trading post in Fort Smith. While working in Fort Smith, he married Gladys, who had moved to Edmonton in 1918 and had worked for Revillon Freres. Between the years 1932 and 1938, Gladys and James Cree operated trading posts for the Northern Traders, Ltd. in Fort Smith, Fort Rae, Fort Norman and Fort Simpson. In 1938, they ended their association with Northern Traders and established an independent trading post in Fort Simpson. They ran this post until 1963 when they retired to Victoria, British Columbia. During these years as independent traders, they also acted as local agents for Imperial Oil and Canadian Pacific Airlines.
Ron Cree lived in the Fort Simpson area with his family. The family left the North in 1963. Ron Cree died in 1987.
Lt. Colonel Frank Cunningham arrived in Yellowknife in approximately May 1946 to become Stipendiary Magistrate. He also became Chairman of the Local Trustee Board of the Yellowknife Administrative District.
The Daughters of the Midnight Sun was established on November 11, 1938 to fill the needs of a social club for women in Yellowknife. The first President was Mrs. Ivor Johnson. The organization was involved in fund-raising activities in Yellowknife and raised funds for the Red Cross, the supply of a hospital ward, playground equipment and library at the Stanton Yellowknife Hospital. It also raised funds to provide Christmas hampers to be distributed to communities outside Yellowknife each year. It raised money by sponsoring dances, Christmas parties and publishing cookbooks. The society began to wind down in 1985, and ceased to exist in 1987.
John Davids was born in Stornoway, Saskatchewan on July 23 1915; he was the eldest of seven children. His father was employed by the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) as a maintenance man and tracklayer. Early in John's life, CPR transferred the Davids family to Hartney, Manitoba. In 1931, John developed an interest in constructing airplanes when he assisted Maurice Fry with the construction of Peintenpol CF-ARH. Later they constructed a Monocoupe. Although he enjoyed building airplanes and barnstorming, financial considerations required he take a job with Continental Auto Supply. During his employ with Continental he moved from Brandon to Regina and finally to Edmonton as Branch Manager. In World War II, he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force where he served as a staff pilot and later as a conversion instructor. Soon after the war, John Davids began flying with Associated Airways Ltd., which later became Pacific Western Airlines. While working with Associated Airways, he met and married Coral Enzenauer. He was eventually promoted to the position of Chief Pilot of PWA's Northern Division, VFR Department. With a keen interest in the history of aviation, he researched and taped interviews for the Canadian Bush Pilot Flying Story Project. He was Secretary-Treasurer for the Edmonton Quarter Century Aviation Club (EQCAC) for many years and later became the Club's President. An avid writer and photographer, he published the EQCAC Newsletter for many years and compiled a collection of over 20,000 photographs including 10,000 slides and a few hundred feet of movies.
Mary Ellen Salmon (nee Davies) was born in Brockville, Ontario on February 20, 1946. She was raised in Burritts Rapids, Ontario, where she attended public school. She attended high school first in Kempville, Ontario, and then in Prescott, Ontario, after her father passed away and her mother remarried.
After Mary Ellen graduated South Grenville District high school in 1965, she went to work in Ottawa for the federal government. She started in the Department of Health and Welfare, but her final job in Ottawa was on Parliament Hill as an executive secretary for Allan MacEachen. She was keen for adventure and to find something different than Ottawa, so she signed on to join the Government of the Northwest Territories in 1967, and was on the first airplane to Yellowknife on September 18, 1967.
Mary Ellen worked as Secretary for Deputy Commissioner John Parker. She accompanied Commissioner Stuart Hodgson on his tours to the Arctic communities as Commissioner Hodgson's secretary did not like to travel in small aircraft. She participated in at least four tours. Mary Ellen also helped with the first Arctic Winter Games in 1970. Shortly after, in the spring of 1970, Mary Ellen returned south and enrolled at Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario to study english literature. She graduated in 1973. She worked for the Western University Health Network following graduation until marrying Peter Salmon in October 1974. She then returned to studies at Sheridan College in Oakville, Ontario to study journalism, graduating in 1976, though she did not work as a journalist. The Salmons were transferred for work in 1979 to Edmonton, Alberta where Mary Ellen worked at the YWCA. In 1988 the Salmons moved again for work to Vancouver, British Columbia, and again back to Ontario in 1990. In 1998 Mary Ellen was diagnosed with liver disease, and passed on June 22, 2006 in Oakville, Ontario.
Arthur Patrick Davis was born in Calgary, Alberta on August 25, 1914. From November 1935 to March 1937, Davis lived at Contact Lake, N.W.T., near Cameron Bay, and worked as a radio operator for Bear Exploration and Radium Limited (B.E.A.R.). He also worked as a relief radio operator for Canadian Airways during the summer of 1937. He graduated from the University of Alberta in 1941 with a degree in Engineering Physics.
Velma Ursula Daws (nee MacDonald) was born in Manitoba in 1926. She attended the Manitoba Normal School for seven years and then spent three years training to be a nurse at Grace Hospital. She graduated as a Registered Nurse in 1959. In 1959, she moved to Inuvik and worked as a teacher at Sir Alexander Mackenzie School until 1971. In 1971, she left the north with her husband, Reginald, who was a member of the Royal Canadian Air Force. After leaving the north in 1971, Velma Daws resumed her nursing career. Velma and her husband retired to Yorkton, Saskatchewan in the late 1980s.
Harry L. Day, born on July 4, 1880, entered Wycliffe College in Toronto in 1905 in preparation for the Anglican ministry. In 1907, he married Elizabeth Albinia Marshall and together they traveled to Fort Simpson. Between 1907 and 1909, Harry and Elizabeth Day assisted Archdeacon J.B. Lucas, the Anglican minister responsible for Fort Liard, Fort Norman and Fort Wrigley. In 1909, Day was appointed to St. Saviour's Anglican parish in Vermilion, Alberta, where he spent the next two years. In 1911, the Days settled outside of Elk Point, Alberta to homestead. Harry Day remained there until his death on July 21, 1964.
John Reid Day was born in Dealy, Saskatchewan on April 19, 1912. In 1937, he was hired by Cominco to assist in the construction of the camp at Yellowknife. In 1938, he worked as an independent contractor in Yellowknife and employed by various companies, including Cominco. In 1939, he worked for Cominco and Thompson-Lundmark in Goldfields, Saskatchewan. He left the north in 1940 but returned in 1945 to supervise construction at Negus mine until 1948, when he again left the north. From 1959 to 1960, he worked at a Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line site in the eastern arctic. In 1970, he retired to Anglemont, British Columbia.
Mark Murray de Weerdt was born in Cologne, Germany in 1928, but was a Belgian national at birth by virtue of his parent’s nationality. His family emigrated to Belgium in 1933 and then moved to Scotland in 1935 where Mark de Weerdt spent most of his childhood. After immigrating to Canada in 1949 with his parents and siblings, he completed his post-secondary education in British Columbia. His early career included stints with both the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the federal justice department in Ottawa. He married Anne Hadwen in 1956 with whom he had four sons. Anne studied occupational therapy and physiotherapy.
Mark de Weerdt relocated to Yellowknife in 1958, just two years after completing his law degree from the University of British Columbia. Upon his arrival, he discovered that he was one of only two lawyers in town. He undertook to complete the unfinished work of the Honourable John Parker, who had recently been appointed as a judge of the Territorial Court. In due course, Mark de Weerdt was sworn in by Justice J.H. Sissons. He later accepted the appointment to the position of Crown Attorney for the Northwest Territories and Agent for the Attorney General and Minister of Justice of Canada. As a member of Judge Sissons' circuit court, Mark de Weerdt journeyed to the remote communities of the Northwest Territories. These trips into small villages, provided him with a glimpse into the daily lives of the indigenous population, and the opportunity participate in cases involving both affiliates of northern Canada’s diverse aboriginal population and non-aboriginal residents.
In addition to the Crown work, Mark de Weerdt assumed a growing case load of other work, including document preparation and advisory services. He left his own legal firm in 1971 to become Magistrate and Juvenile Court Judge for the NWT. He held that position until 1973. In 1974 he joined the Legal Division of the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia in Vancouver where he remained until 1976. He rejoined the federal justice department’s Vancouver office in 1976 and remained with federal Department of Justice in Vancouver until 1981,
Mark de Weerdt returned to the Northwest Territories in 1981 when he was appointed as a Judge in the Supreme Court for the Northwest Territories. During his time on the Supreme Court, Mark de Weerdt presided over many cases including the first degree murder trial that followed the Giant Mine explosion that resulted in the deaths of nine men. He remained in that position until his retirement in 1996. At that time he and his wife Anne returned to Vancouver, British Columbia.
Mark de Weerdt died in September of 2003.
The DehCho Division Board of Education was established under the authority of the revisions to the Archives Act and the related establishment regulation in 1995. It was renamed the Dehcho Divisional Education Council (DDEC) with revisions to the regulations in 2002.
The Dehcho Divisional Education Council (DDEC) is tasked with setting policy for the operation of schools within the Dehcho region, with financial decisions and setting broad education goals for the region. Each municipality that has a school also has a District Education Authority (DEA). The DEA is responsible for the operation of the school or schools within it's municipal boundries. The DDEC works in conjunction with the District Education Authories (DEAs) to ensure that provisions of the Education Act and regulations pursuant to the Act are fulfilled. Each DEA must select a member to represent them on the Division Education Council.
The Dehcho Health and Social Services Board (DHSSB) was incorporated in May 1997 as part of the Government of the Northwest Territories' (GNWT) initiative to transfer responsibility for the administation of services to the communities. Prior to 1997, the administation of health and social service programs to communities in the Dehcho was managed by Mackenzie Regional Health and Social Services. Through a Memorandum of Agreement, the GNWT delegated responsibility for the administration of health and social services to the DHSSB. The new Board became accountable for setting the direction for health and social services to nine communities in the Dehcho region: Fort Liard, Fort Providence, Fort Simpson, Hay River Reserve, Jean Marie River, Kakisa, Nahanni Butte, Trout Lake, and Wrigley. The Authority administers all public health, home care and general physician services throughout the region, as well as all regional health and social services program delivery to approximately 3,300 residents.
In June 2002, The Board officially changed its name to the Dehcho Health and Social Services Authority (DHSSA). The regional office of the DHSSA is located in Fort Simpson and is governed by a Board of Management comprised of nine Trustees representing the nine Dehcho communities under its jurisdication. The formal mandate of the DHSSA is to "plan, manage, and deliver a full spectrum of community and facility-based services for health care and social services." The regional office is responsible for the overall administration and management of health and social services program delivery. Delivery of health and social services programs in the communities are most commonly delivered at community health centres or other health-related facility.
In August 2016 health and social services were unified under the Northwest Territories Health and Social Services Authority (NTHSS), and the DHSSA was renamed the Northwest Territories Health and Social Services Authority, Dehcho Region.
Concerns over the written terms of Treaties 8 and 11 prompted the formation of the Indian Brotherhood of the Northwest Territories. Incorporated to represent the Dene people of the Northwest Territories in 1970, it changed its name to Dene Nation in 1978. In July 1975, the Second Dene Assembly, a representative assembly of Dene from all communities in the Mackenzie Valley, adopted the "Dene Declaration" at Fort Simpson. Beyond its work in negotiating land claims, the Dene Nation also oversees programs regarding Dene land and resource development, legal issues, health, community development and education.