OPEN SPACE: BOREAL FOREST, BEDROCK AND LAKES

JMB: Few towns are defined by Open Space like Yellowknife - possibly because of the stark contrast with its modern functional design.

Open Space in Yellowknife blends through the urban environment. The open space is made up of boreal vegetation - black spruce and aspen - the hilly bedrock of the canadian shield, and lakes everywhere. Yellowknife sits on the shores of Great Slave Lake, and five major lakes organize the city's footprint: Frame Lake, Jackfish Lake, Range Lake, Niven Lake and Long Lake. In addition, Kam Lake to the South defines the southern boundary.

The Tin Can hill area, as it is known sports a communication tower which can be seen, slender-like from just about all parts of the town. It sits on a bluff on the edge of marshy grounds that define the southern edge of suburban residential areas and the Con Mine site, and separates them from the shores of Great Slave Lake.

The interminable beauty of the wilderness creates a special experience of the urban place, which follows the climate, daylight and the seasons, even where it meets - as in this view - with the unforgiving utilitarianism of foreboding towers at the Con mine site.

While they can be called anything but beautiful, the towers and the mine site are a part of the meaning, history and culture of the town, as are the weather and the isolation.

In the winter, when the mercury drops well below -40C, the air takes on an indescribable quality - all is still, and the light plays off in pinks and blue through the frost from a sun that strays never too far, nor too long from the horizon.

From Old Town, the Canadian shield provides contrasting views as the weather changes, and urban developments terminate at the Niven Lake Subdivision.
This part of the open space marks the dividing line between Old Town which sits on the shores of a peninsula on Great Slave Lake, and the town which has developed around Frame Lake.

A rest stop on the outskirt of town gives the visitor a delightful view to Jackfish Lake. The lake shore and bedrock are all accessible in minutes from downtown via marked wilderness trails that wind up and down the bedrock.

This continuity with the wilderness brings everyone a sense of freedom known only to northern towns.

And in your backyard, the parking lot or on the pathways, count you will run into a fox and her brood, a bobcat, even sometimes a bear, maybe wolves in the distance, and ravens always and everywhere.