History of the Northwest Territories 'no-see-ums,' to push the road through." Elections returned in 1951, but rather than being fully elected body, the Councils and Assemblies were a mix of elected and appointed members. In 1953-1955, during the Cold War, Canada sent Inuit families to the far north in the High Arctic relocation, partly to establish territoriality. In 1967, the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, the Honourable Arthur Laing, announced that Yellowknife would be the capital of the Northwest Territories. On September 18, 1967, the Government of the Northwest Territories relocated from Ottawa to Yellowknife. Commissioner Stuart Hodgson, and eighty-one employees of the
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,