Cabin Talks (Cabin Radio)

All week, a new paper from a northern economist – warning of an "economic cliff" just years away when diamond mines close – has been reverberating around the NWT.

Do we really not have a plan? What's the vision for the territory's economy? If there isn't a vision, what should it be?

Hear from the economist who wrote the paper, one of the NWT ministers in charge of crafting that vision, an Indigenous business leader who expects a "wine glass economy" up ahead, and more. If you want the economic situation right now explained in half an hour, this is it.

Photographers Pat Kane and Amber Bracken are two of Canada's finest. Pat invited Amber to Yellowknife as part of the city's Far North Photo Festival, and the two joined Cabin Radio's Jesse Wheeler and Scott Letkeman to talk about how they see their identity as photographers – and what it takes to just switch off when your job is about framing the world around you.

Ryan Silke has spent half his life working on a new museum about Yellowknife. Take a tour with him on its opening day.

Recorded: March 2024.

Check out the museum's website for more information.

Listen to our full interviews with the NWT's candidates in the 2025 federal election: Rebecca Alty, Kimberly Fairman, Kelvin Kotchilea and Rainbow Eyes (Angela Davidson).

We'll have more next week, too, after our live election debate – which you can catch on Cabin Radio from 8pm MT on Thursday, April 10.

“When I got better, I realized I had nothing between the ears. There wasn’t anything there to take up the time, take up the energy.”

When Trent Stokes returned to his hometown in Fort Smith, he started a garden. He’s been sober ever since, and he walked Cabin Radio's Simona Rosenfield through that journey.

Read more about Trent on Cabin Radio's website. This episode also includes a missing pins update from all the way back in episode 4.

Up Here, a magazine that covers Canada's North, is coming back to the NWT less than a year after it was sold to a Yukon-based company. Meet the new owners.

What went wrong when Yellowknife evacuated last summer? Did some things go right? What has to change next time?

Listen to some of the residents who spoke at a public meeting about how the City of Yellowknife handled the summer 2023 wildfires and evacuation.

Recorded: March 2024. Read more on the Cabin Radio website.

A Nasa jet that just landed in Yellowknife is near the end of a decade-long mission to understand the changing northern landscape.

The project has the cute acronym ABoVE – which we'll explain – and Chip Miller is one of the scientists leading it. After 2023's disastrous fires, ABoVE is uniquely positioned to tell us what wildfires (and other factors like changing permafrost) are doing to the land, and maybe that can help us adapt.

Bonus: if you see this in time, there's an open house at the Nasa jet on Thursday, August 15. Find more details on the Cabin Radio events calendar.

When a wildfire hit a lonely highway, Dylan Jones and Scott Yuill were two of the only people who could help.

They told Ollie how they spent one night this month driving through burning debris, smashing down fences and calming terrified truckers to get everyone to safety when a fire engulfed the road.

NorthSideBaby is a rap artist from the Dene Tha' First Nation in northern Alberta. He recently played Gamètì in the NWT, where Tłı̨chǫ 19-year-old Kaylee Nitsiza interviewed him for Cabin Radio.

On this show: who NorthSideBaby is, his popularity in the North, his approach to writing songs about issues like suicide, and his advice for Indigenous youth who aspire to become musicians and creators.

Recorded in March 2024. This episode contains discussion of suicide that may be distressing to some listeners. The NWT Help Line is available at any time of day or night on 1-800-661-0844. Kids Help Phone is also available around the clock at 1-800-668-6868 or you can use live chat or text options instead of calling. If you’re trying to help someone who is talking about suicide, the GNWT has a list of resources.

Read more about NorthSideBaby on Cabin Radio's website and follow him on Facebook.

Yellowknife composer and performer Carmen Braden's fourth studio album, A Hard Light, just came out. Join a listening party featuring Braden, producer Mark Adam and Cabin Radio's Ollie Williams. We'll go track by track through the album: hear the music with commentary from the people who made it.

This is excerpted from Afternoons at the Cabin, broadcast live on Cabin Radio on the afternoon of December 10, 2024. Listen live via the Cabin Radio website or get the app.

Multiple Northwest Territories MLAs say the new Indigenous employment policy being rolled out by the NWT government gets it wrong.

Richard Edjericon and Kieron Testart, two MLAs who oppose the policy, join Cabin Talks to discuss their concerns. Caroline Wawzonek, the minister responsible for the policy, tells us why she believes it's the right path forward.

Fifteen minutes looking at Donald Trump's tariffs through the lens of Yellowknife's only bookstore. (And no, they don't carry any books on tariffs.)

The Northwest Territories has one type of snake – the red-sided garter snake – and it lives around Fort Smith, an area pummelled by wildfires last year.

How are the snakes coping with that? Are they in trouble or are things OK?

Johanna Stewart is a master's student in environment science whose job is to spend two years out there among the snakes, tracking them and learning what's actually going on.

We interviewed Johanna three times over the course of this year to figure out how that research works, what Johanna is looking for, and what we know so far. Plus you'll meet Big Bertha, a snake with a past.

Ali Kincaid describes her journey from being told to change in a Yellowknife broom closet to playing NCAA women's hockey at Cornell.

Learn more about Clams n' Moose, your hosts for this interview. You can also read about Indigenous representation in the new PWHL women's pro hockey league, and the huge girls' hockey camps now being held in Yellowknife.

Recorded: February 2024.

Lee Selleck was a journalist in Yellowknife when, after a bitter and months-long strike, nine people were killed in an explosion at Giant Mine in 1992.

He and Francis Thompson wrote a book about Giant, Dying for Gold, five years later. Now, the pair are releasing an updated version. Lee tells us what the updated book covers, how it felt to be a part of the recent CBC podcast series about Giant, and whether he and the city have ever really moved on from what happened on September 18, 32 years ago.

Kathleen Lippa was a reporter at Northern News Services in 2003 when she first heard the name Ed Horne.

More than two decades later – after many interviews, much research and a fight to unseal court records – she is publishing a book titled Arctic Predator.

Ollie hosts Cabin Radio's 2025 live election debate for candidates in the Northwest Territories. Here's the full show as broadcast from 8-9pm on April 10, 2025.

This episode is just for Yellowknife coffee freaks. Barren Ground Coffee is taking over Birchwood. What does that mean?

Need to catch up? Read our coverage of the sale. Then join Ollie as he questions Barren Ground's Eric Binion about how one of the city's best-loved coffee shops will look under new management and what you can expect.

Ollie asks national defence minister Bill Blair to explain the tangible differences northerners can expect from billions in promised defence spending that focuses on the North and the Arctic.

Plus Conservative northern affairs critic Bob Zimmer gives his response to last week's defence policy update.

Viking men have spent a millennium getting all the credit. What were the women doing?

We take a break from our usual northern news diet to meet Canadian author Heather Pringle, whose new book – The Northwomen: Untold Stories From the Other Half of the Viking World – uses archaeology, Icelandic sagas and even old cannabis seeds to tell us more about the power some Viking women held.

Spoiler alert: contains sorcery.

Amos Scott's new job is helping to run the Caribou Guardians Coalition, which coordinates different Indigenous Guardians programs that all have the same job: help the herd.

He spoke with us about what that job looks like, the health of Indigenous Guardians programs in the NWT, and how you bring the Guardians of the North together.

Here's an extra link we mention at the end of this episode: our report from 2022 on how scientists are studying what caribou can hear.

On August 12, 2023, Fort Smith was told to evacuate because of oncoming wildfires.

Everyone fled to Hay River – only for Hay River to be evacuated the following day. A weeks-long odyssey followed, with thousands of evacuees spread across Alberta.

Back in Smith, town councillor Dana Fergusson began providing regular video updates that became one of the main sources of information for the 3,000 or so people that call Fort Smith home.

She joined us exactly one year later to look back at the fires, the evacuation and what has happened since.

Witnessing the death of two fellow firefighters in 2005 was the start of Seann May's long journey into post-traumatic stress disorder and treatment.

Now a deputy fire chief in Yellowknife, Sean joined Ollie to talk about what happened to him and the importance of giving first responders help to process the work they do.

A review of how the NWT managed its firefighters and fought 2023's fires – the worst season on record – has landed.

Ollie gives you a guide to what the review says and asks the environment minister and senior officials how they'll use it to make changes.

Roseanne Supernault is the star of Cold Road, the new feature from NWT director Kelvin Redvers.

On this show: Making the movie on lonely NWT highways, the attention Cold Road is getting, authenticity in Indigenous filmmaking, and how Cold Road creates a map for Hollywood to follow.

Recorded in March 2024.

Watch the trailer for Cold Road or rent the full movie. Read more from the director on Cabin Radio's website.

What if there was a podcast that played new northern music and interviewed the artists? We're gonna do that podcast.

Consider this the pilot episode. Thoughts? Let us know.

On the show:

1:39 Brenden MacIntosh

24:40 Crook the Kid & Manshad

38:01 Lemon Bucket Orkestra (special northern-adjacent guests)

Yellowknife's Janet Pacey loves trading pins. She has thousands. Or she did, until they ended up 5,000 km away.

Janet explains how this disaster happened and what she ultimately wants to do with them – if she ever gets them back.

Recorded: March 2024.

A year after her city was evacuated because of oncoming wildfires, Mayor of Yellowknife Rebecca Alty joins Ollie to look back at those three weeks.

How did she see her job at the time? How did she cope? What lessons have the mayor and the city learned from last year's experience and the reviews that have followed?

Hot Frosty is a 2024 festive hit and Yellowknife's Dustin Milligan is the desirable ice sculpture-turned-man who stars in it.

Dustin joined Cabin Radio's Clams 'n' Moose to talk about the movie and more.

John Rodda is the president of the Arctic Winter Games international committee.

On this show: How the Arctic Winter Games might be about to change, the questions being asked about the games' future, the effect of climate change, and the possibility of a future games hosted in Norway.

Recorded in March 2024.

Discover more about the Arctic Winter Games on the Cabin Radio website.

Marie Wilson, a Yellowknife resident and former CBC North broadcaster and director, was the lone non-Indigenous Truth and Reconciliation commissioner.

Now, she has published a book about her central role in the TRC's years documenting the experiences of thousands of people in Canada's residential schools.

That book is North of Nowhere: Song of a Truth and Reconciliation Commissioner – you can order it from Yellowknife Books.

Marie joined Ollie to talk about the book, her experience on the commission, and Canada's response over almost a decade since the commission's final report.

"We play this giant game of Tetris constantly." Kyle Thomas talks about growing Bush Order Provisions, a Yellowknife market garden, bakery and farm store, and the health of the city's urban agriculture economy.

Sarah Erasmus describes the motivations driving her into "the next chapter" – which means closing her Erasmus Apparel storefront in Yellowknife after nearly 15 years.

We only just finished agreeing that the NWT's era of big mines is over – and suddenly someone disagrees.

Lithium company Li-FT (pronounced "lift") believes it can open a mine east of Yellowknife that, in some respects at least, rivals one of the biggest diamond mines for size.

Where did this come from? What has to happen for it to open? What would that look like, and where? And why does Li-FT say the mine has to open before 2030 (which is super quick, by mining standards) if it's going to open at all?

Chief Supt Dyson Smith is in charge of RCMP in the Northwest Territories.

How are police trying to meet the demands of northern community leaders? How are RCMP trying to close a 25% vacancy rate? What's the threat of drugs to small communities, should bail be reformed, and why do a significant number of cases collapse when they end up in front of a judge? We asked him.

When Shirley Coumont picked up a hitch-hiker in Enterprise, it turned out to be a German adventurer (and tennis coach) who's seen more of the Earth than virtually anyone else.

Now he's seen the inside of Cabin Radio, too. Sascha Grabow and Shirley stopped in for a chat before the next leg of his neverending journey begins.

Northern communities just dropped off the communications map. A wildfire took out cell, internet and landline – unless you had Starlink. The outage has lasted almost 24 hours and it's still going.

Chief Kele Antoine of the Łı́ı́dlı̨ı̨ Kų́ę́ First Nation says we're not paying enough attention to just how dangerous it is when small, isolated villages lose almost all of their ability to communicate. He found a Starlink to talk to us about it.

April's government payments to NWT daycares and dayhomes – designed to help introduce $10-a-day childcare – were late.

Some childcare providers say the federal and territorial governments are racing too quickly to make changes. Meanwhile, people trying to build new daycares in smaller communities like Norman Wells can't get the money they need.

Speaking to Cabin Radio, the territorial minister responsible apologized for the latest problems. Caitlin Cleveland told us how she wants to fix things and make NWT childcare better.

In this podcast, hear from the minister and people at the heart of the industry about what's going on.

Northern wildfires are changing so much that even their burn areas don't do what they used to do.

Previously, if an area burned, we figured that was good for a couple of decades' protection. That ain't necessarily so any more.

Marc-André Parisien is a Canadian Forest Service research scientist who's been studying this. He says we're seeing stuff that only just burned... burn again. "It's kind-of mindblowing."

We tried a lighthearted Youth Parliament story. Not everyone loved it. So we talked to the NWT's Speaker of the House about how we get and nurture politicians.