Yellowknife is the capital and only city of Canada's Northwest Territories, sitting on the north shore of Great Slave Lake just 400 kilometres south of the Arctic Circle. It is one of the best places on earth to see the northern lights — the aurora borealis is visible here on an average of 240 nights per year, and a small industry of viewing tours runs from late August through April.
The city grew up around gold mining in the 1930s and still has the rough-edged character of a frontier town. Old Town, built on rock outcrops along the lakeshore, is a jumble of houseboats, log cabins, and bush pilot shacks, while the New Town up the hill looks more like any modern Canadian small city. The Wildcat Cafe, a restored 1937 log cabin, serves northern comfort food and is worth a stop for the atmosphere alone.
In summer, the sun barely sets — Yellowknife gets 20-plus hours of daylight around the solstice. The surrounding landscape of boreal forest, tundra, and countless lakes offers canoeing, hiking, and fishing. In winter, temperatures drop to minus 40 and the frozen lake becomes a highway; the ice road to Dettah across Yellowknife Bay is one of the more surreal driving experiences in Canada.