In pictures: Building a tiny Yellowknife

At a Yellowknife school, half the library is gone. It’s been replaced by Yellowknife.

Where the library entrance would be at St Pat’s high school, a huge scale model of downtown Yellowknife has been created by dozens of Grade 9 students.

Students had to use math skills to devise scaled-down blueprints that were as precise as possible, then build the resulting structure, which introduced the additional artistic challenge of trying to make the finished building look like the real one.

That’s fine if you were assigned one of Yellowknife’s many downtown rectangular office blocks. But the YK1 office? Mildred Hall, with its tipi? The Legislative Assembly? Those are a level up.

Kali Brasseur, a math instructional coach at the school, said the model came about in part through the NWT’s ongoing shift to base its education system on BC’s school curriculum rather than one from Alberta.

The new curriculum is “all about developing competencies rather than just learning the math, like developing problem-solving skills, collaboration, communication skills,” Brasseur said.

“We thought about how we could do that, and we thought maybe a project-based thing rather than doing the normal drill-and-test.”

Below, check out photos of the model city plus interviews with students Mairin Campbell, Gabrielle Pineda and Char Crowe, who helped to create some of the structures.

This interview was recorded on April 29, 2024. The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Ollie Williams: Why did you put this together?

Mairin: We were doing our scale modelling unit in math. As soon as we finished going over the notes, we were assigned buildings and we had to scale it using formulas. Then we got to build it.

Which model were you assigned?

Gabrielle: I was assigned to Mildred Hall School.

What were the challenges of trying to bring Mildred Hall to life in paper and cardboard?

Gabrielle: Unfortunately, Mildred Hall is a quite intricate building. The blueprints were quite difficult to create because of the intricacy of the architecture and overall structure of the building. It was difficult to even just piece them together, because of how fragile each piece was.

Would it be fair to say that you’re slightly bitter about being assigned Mildred Hall when you could have just had the Northwestel Building, which is basically a giant green rectangle?

Gabrielle: Absolutely. We had so many corners to build. And they had a rectangle.

What was the hardest part of Mildred Hall?

Gabrielle: The tipi was very difficult to create. It has eight panels and we had to find the measurements of each panel and then stick them together – and it wouldn’t, for a little bit. It was very fragile to put it on the building as well. It was not the best part of our structure.

Char: I built Sir John Franklin High School. The front has a lot of different slants and sizes, so it was difficult figuring that out. And then the painting – figuring out which sides were painted which colours – like, next to NACC, I didn’t know that was blue and brown, so I had to find different pictures of perspectives of Sir John.

Did you go out and study it in person?

Char: I should have, because that would have been easier.

It’s literally there.

Char: I just tried my best to find pictures on Google.

Kali: This is five by five metres, so 25 square metres in size. Even putting the base together was a challenge.

For this unit, the goal was for students to understand the idea of scale, similarity and solving proportions. It’s been a big thing this year that we’re moving toward using the BC curriculum – the new adapted NWT curriculum from BC. It’s all about developing competencies rather than just learning the math, like developing problem-solving skills, collaboration, communication skills. We thought about how we could do that, and we thought maybe a project-based thing rather than doing the normal drill-and-test.

Five of our Grade 9 classes participated, so it’s about 100 students. We have about 60 buildings, so they mostly worked in pairs. Almost all of them got handed in. There’s a few that are, you know, still being built somewhere – in a locker, maybe.

That’s where the Cabin Radio building is? We’re in a locker somewhere?

Kali: It’s possible that that’s what happened. Our students have done a fantastic job – we can see some amazing artwork, we can see a lot of great math if you take a look at the blueprints. It’s a great way to bring things together. I think the YK1 office is remarkably good. It’s so small but it’s super on. And then the Legislative Assembly, just because I know how hard it was, is something that I’m impressed by.

What did you learn from doing this?

Mairin: I definitely gained a greater appreciation for architects because at first I thought it was just math, and that wasn’t very enjoyable. But I really liked the building, the colouring. The design part was really fun. And I didn’t know that was part of an architect’s job. So it was really insightful, it gave me a new perspective.

Gabrielle: Overall, I’m very happy that we made this project. It gives us an idea of what our town actually looks like without just strolling through the streets. And it gives us a new sense of appreciation because of how many buildings we have here in Yellowknife, despite it being quite small. We can see how intricate and individual each building is.

Are we a beautiful city or not?

Char: Yeah, we’re a beautiful city.