North to the Night: A 1990s sailing trip into an Arctic winter

One of my favourite books about the Eastern Arctic, in no small part because of the earnest honesty of the author.

North of Nowhere: Song of a Truth and Reconciliation Commissioner

Read this for a terrific recap of a hugely important moment in Canadian history.

Umingmak: A fine new memoir of N.W.T. Commissioner Stuart Hodgson

I enjoyed this detailed, first-person account of peak colonialism in the N.W.T.

From Lishamie, Albert Canadien’s memoir of a village that no longer exists

I didn’t know that Treaty Day in Fort Providence, N.W.T., was also TB testing day, and I wouldn’t have known it if not for this highly detailed memoir.

An Arctic Arab, or, the story of Peter Baker, free trader

“I, Peter Baker, known as the Arctic Arab, came from Lebanon during the Turkish conquest,” begins this 1976 memoir.

Old Town, by Fran Hurcomb

A concise, charming book that definitively documents ‘Yellowknife’s defining neighbourhood.’

The Right to Be Cold: Sheila Watt-Cloutier’s urgent memoir

Earnest memoir recounts minute details of a fascinating life, bureaucratic tussles included.

I, Nuligak: A memoir of Inuvialuit life in the last heyday of the whalers

‘Because I was an orphan and a poor one at that, my mind was always alert to the happenings around me. Once my eyes had seen something, it was never forgotten.’

My Name is Masak, a childhood memoir by Alice French

This book is so spare, it’s nearly impossible to get through without wanting to read between the lines.

George Blondin’s quest to write the Dene universe

Even though I like talking to people, I never really learn anything until I read about it. If you’re anything like me and you live in the NWT, you need to know about George Blondin.