The Wildcat Cafe The Wildcat Cafe The Wildcat Cafe is a vintage log cabin structure in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada and represents the mining camp style of early Yellowknife. The structure, which houses a summer restaurant, is located in what was then the central business district of the city. It is a City of Yellowknife Heritage Building, designated in 1992. First opened in 1937 by owners Willie Wylie and Smokey Stout, it is the oldest restaurant in Yellowknife. Subsequent owners were Carl and Dorothy Jensen (1939-1942) and Mah Gow (1942-1951), Yellowknife's first recorded Chinese resident. The cafe closed in 1951 with the illness
Yellowknife Yellowknife began with the discovery of diamonds north of the city in 1991. The last of the gold mines in Yellowknife closed in 2004. Today, Yellowknife is primarily a government town and a service centre for the diamond mines. On April 1, 1999, its purview as capital of the NWT was reduced when the territory of Nunavut was split from the NWT. As a result, jurisdiction for that region of Canada was transferred to the new capital city of Iqaluit. Consequently, Yellowknife lost its standing as the Canadian capital city with the smallest population. Yellowknife is on the Canadian Shield,