Delivery Areas
Northwest Territories
The Northwest Territories- Imagine a region of vast tundra, forests and sloping mountains; a place run through with some of the cleanest rivers and clearest lakes anywhere in the world. Imagine a bouquet of all the colours of the rainbow painted onto fields of flowers that extend for miles and miles. And when you’ve done the imagining, look up at the skies to find the aurora borealis silently whispering in breath taking views against the earth’s atmosphere.
This is the country of the Northwest Territories, one of the least spoiled areas on this planet with a semblance of its beauty exhibited in its territorial flower, the Mountain Avens (Dryas integrifolia/octopetala). The flower is also known as the arctic dryad, alpine dryad and white Mountain Avens and is a species with a taste for barren rocky areas as well as alpine meadows. Its white circular to oval flowers average 2cm in width and grows on stalks between 2cm and 15cm.
Capital City
The capital of the Northwest Territories is Yellowknife, a name derived from the Yellowknives Dene First Nation who used copper to make their tools. It is a city located just 400km south of the Arctic Circle on the shores of the Great Slave Lake and has 11 official languages. Some of the more commonly spoken languages include Dene Suline, Dogrib, French, South and North Slavey and, of course, English.
Yellowknife, also known as Somba K'e in Dogrib ("where the money is"), became the capital of the Northwest Territories in 1967 after an intial settlement due to gold in the area. A subsequent transition of mining town to government services-oriented city took place as gold production declined but has started to reverse after the recent discovery of diamonds in the area.
History
The Northwest Territories initially comprised an immense area of land and water with its creation in June, 1870. Its size was however destined to shrink as a number of Canadian provinces acquired pieces of its land area. The provinces that benefited from this acquisition include Manitoba, Quebec, Saskatchewan, and Ontario. The boundaries of the Northwest Territories were however extended to include the North Pole in 1925, giving it an area larger than that of India; however this would be only temporary as more than half of its eastern territory would later in 1999 become became another individual territory called Nunavut.
Following the creation of Nunavut a question of name change of the Northwest Territories came to attention. Among the possibilities was the name of "Denendeh" which is a Dene word for "Our Land". Another possibility, initially only entered as a jest, was the name "Bob". For a time, however, it seemed as if "Bob" stood to be a serious contender for the new name. In the end the people of the Northwest Territories decided to stick with what they knew best, subsequently keeping their old name.
Geography
Consisting of more than 1.14 million sq. km, the Northwest Territories plays host to a vast number of geographical variations. Among its geographical features are the immense Great Bear and Great Slave Lakes as well as a number of canyons within the Nahanni National Park Reserve which has been added to the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites. Additional points of geographic interest include Mount Nirvana with its highest peak at 2,773m as well as a number of islands.