The City of Yellowknife may have to wait until the end of 2025 for a clear sense of how ending some fees at its fieldhouse has changed the way people use the facility.
To save money on staffing, councillors elected during budget deliberations to eliminate charges for use of the fieldhouse walking track.
Anecdotally, that move has been a hit.
Any time a Cabin Radio reporter shows up in a desperate bid for health, the track has appeared a packed and vibrant scene. Earlier this month, users told the CBC they were thrilled by the free access.
But knowing for sure how the numbers compare to the start of previous years is tricky, the city said.
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Approached for fieldhouse usage data on January 30, the city responded on February 13 to say it was tracking how many people use the free walking track – but had lost access to month-by-month data from previous years.
“In early December 2024, the city changed its recreation program and facility booking software,” city spokesperson Saxon Chung wrote in an email.
“As a result, no historical data is available.”
Asked to confirm if this meant the city had lost all usage data up to December 2024, Chung responded: “Indeed no historical data is available.”
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The city did not release any data for January 2025. Chung said data “may be made available as time permits.”
‘We do have annual numbers’
Mayor of Yellowknife Rebecca Alty says it isn’t quite a lost cause, because council had already been given annual totals for previous years during its debate about whether to drop the fieldhouse fees.
“We do have those annual numbers because we have been asking those questions. So we may not be able to get month-by-month to compare 2025 to 2024 or 2023 but, in budget, they did give us numbers of users, so we could compare at least to that,” Alty told Cabin Radio late last week.
In budget meetings late last year, councillors were told the fieldhouse track had about 23,000 visits a year as a pay-to-use facility. Admission was $9 per visit, though that came down if residents bought multi-visit passes.
For now, Alty – a regular fieldhouse track user for years – is relying on anecdotal evidence and her own insights for a sense of how free access is changing usage.
“Everybody’s still on the New Year’s resolutions so January is one of our busier months to begin with, but it does look like there is an increase in track users,” she said.
“A lot of the other recreation opportunities in town do cost money, so being able to at least have this one free option is nice.”
When the end of the year does roll around, council will have to decide if it keeps the fieldhouse track free or reverts to charging.
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Alty is “definitely interested in seeing the data” at that point.
“The number of people I see on the track doing their rehab now? I’m not sold that they would have paid $9 admission to walk two laps for their rehab. That balance of the financial but also the social side is important when we decide what to do next year,” she said.
Alty noted the municipality can get away with some staffing reductions at the track that might not be achievable elsewhere, like the new pool that’s slated to open in the next few months.
“Every X number of people, we have to hire another person to be the lifeguard” at the pool, she said. “This is different, where an increase in usage doesn’t increase your operating expenses.”
Ultimately, she hopes free use of the track is helping some Yellowknife adults to refocus on their fitness.
“It’s great to see some folks who haven’t been there before,” she said.
“Just being able to introduce people to this recreation facility and they’re like, ‘Oh wow, I didn’t know there were bikes and weights and a track.’
“For parents dropping your kids off, instead of sitting in the bleachers, pack your shoes and come on up to the track. I think we focus a lot on the kids, but this is an opportunity for the adults to get up and get moving.”
