Traffic passes a small spot fire in a slash pile metres from Highway 1 near Alexandra Falls on September 15, 2023. Photo: Bill Braden
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Thousands of people are driving home through a much-changed Northwest Territories landscape this month.
Most Yellowknife residents made the trip earlier in September. Residents of Hay River, the Kátł’odeeche First Nation and Fort Smith are just starting their journeys now.
In the small hamlet of Enterprise, which was devastated by a mid-August wildfire, that trip home may be some time away – and there may be little left to come home to.
Yellowknife photographer Bill Braden, driving home to the city with his family, documented the trip with his camera.
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On this page, explore his images from the highway of a journey home that now looks significantly different.
A sprinkler head at the NWT-Alberta border, one of hundreds set up all over the NWT to ward off wildfire. Photo: Bill Braden
On Highway 1 near Virginia Falls, a southbound truck transports one of dozens of pieces of heavy equipment that were employed to build fire breaks. Photo: Bill Braden
Atco Utilities line crews replace burnt power poles around the community of Enterprise. Photo: Bill Braden
From the ashes, life is quick to return. Mere weeks after being scorched by wildfire, grasses and shrubs are creating carpets of green along Highway 3. Photo: Bill Braden
This roadside sign for the Escarpment Creek campground, near Enterprise, narrowly escaped a fire that burned some 90 percent of the community of 120 on August 13. Photo: Bill Braden
Power comes back to Enterprise: big spools of new cable and boxes of power line fittings share a loading site with dozens of wooden power poles to replace those lost. Photo: Bill Braden
Flames scorched the metal control shed at the base of this microwave tower (now back in operation) near Enterprise. Photo: Bill Braden
A fallen forest along Highway 1. Photo: Bill Braden
Shrubs return at the base of a forest burn area. Photo: Bill Braden
McNallie Creek Day Use Park, on Highway 1 west of Enterprise, has a small but pretty waterfall. The surrounding forest, however, was wiped out this summer. Photo: Bill Braden
An interpretive sign at McNallie Creek didn’t survive the wildfire storm. Photo: Bill Braden
A burnt board was hastily nailed across the gate at McNallie Creek, telling visitors the popular roadside stop was unsafe and closed after a wildfire destroyed much of the viewing barrier around the creek’s steep walls. Photo: Bill Braden
A spot fire at the side of Highway 1 west of Kakisa on the morning of September 15. Photo: Bill Braden
Travellers are stopped on the Deh Cho Bridge to observe one-lane traffic rules. The restrictions came into effect on August 8, when one of the bridge’s 24 massive cables failed, and were still in effect more than a month later. Photo: Bill Braden
An aura of calm at the once-chaotic fuel pumps of the Big River Service Centre, near Fort Providence. An evacuation order a month earlier sent thousands of Yellowknife families surging down the Mackenzie Highway through one of the only gas stations for hundreds of kilometres. Photo: Bill Braden
Wood bison munch grass along Highway 1 on September 15, seemingly unperturbed by wildfire smoke. Photo: Bill Braden
Hay River fire crew SS6 makes a daily stop at the NWT-Alberta Border welcome station on the morning of September 15 to start a network of sprinklers set up to protect the camp from nearby wildfires. From left: Clarence Tonga of Fort Providence and Nathan Fabian and Ton Farcy, both of Hay River, tended pumps at a number of sites-at-risk since fires raged over the region from mid-August. Photo: Bill Braden
