When it came to having a good time, no one missed the boat at Yellowknife's annual Beer Barge festival held June 28.
And although the barge that once brought ice-cold beer from across Great Slave Lake to thirsty Yellowknifers during the town’s golden years was absent this year, the precious cargo arrived without a hitch.
The re-enactment festival has been a longstanding tradition in the former gold mining town and it's a primary fundraiser for the Yellowknife Historical Society, said Walt Humphries, a member of the society's board of directors.
“When we formed the historical society…the idea was to try to preserve and display the early history of Yellowknife and what it was really like, which was a frontier town in the middle of nowhere, quite different than a government-run town,” Humphries said, adding that the idea of having a beer barge event arose during Yellowknife’s 75th anniversary.
“The beer barge was a natural because that time of year, when the first barge had come in after the lake had cleared of ice, they brought beer with them because it was an essential item to a frontier town,” he said.
Humphries said it's important to preserve the history of Yellowknife, a transient community that often sees many people migrating in and out.
“History has a lot of important things," he said. "One is that you can see the changes over time. That gives you a better idea of what the future will be.”
