As residents flee a wildfire, the community store stays open

During the evacuation of Fort Providence, virtually all of the hamlet’s 700 or so residents were ordered to leave. The Northern store? That mostly stayed open.

Northern is a brand operated by The North West Company. Northern stores are a common sight in many smaller communities around the NWT and northern Canada.

Arlene and Marc Evans manage the Northern in Fort Providence, one of a couple of small stores in the hamlet that stock groceries.

The pair kept their store open for firefighters and RCMP officers who had remained even as officials urged everyone else to leave when wildfire SS014 came within a kilometre of the hamlet late last month.

But with virtually everyone gone, the job of running the store doesn’t become any easier. Not only were the staff out helping to feed Fort Providence’s remaining dogs on many days, but they were also opening the store early in the morning and late at night to accommodate shift changes among emergency responders.

During power outages, they carried on work at the store with head lamps.

Arlene and Marc left Fort Providence for two days before returning to open the store for emergency workers. They stayed for the remainder of the hamlet’s 11-day evacuation.

In an email conversation with Cabin Radio, they described being busy over the past week stashing 12 skids of product received in anticipation of residents being able to come home.

On Thursday, when the evacuation order was lifted, the store opened that evening and witnessed a rush of people heading in to stock up on what they could.

“The community showed great appreciation for the efforts we put in feeding the dogs twice a day while they had been evacuated,” Arlene and Marc said by email, adding they turned up the music in the Northern to welcome everyone home on Thursday evening.

‘We got really scooped out’

Fort Providence is by no means the first NWT community that needed to figure out what would happen at its grocery stores mid-evacuation.

The tale of how Yellowknife residents collaborated with grocery store staff and others to feed essential workers during the city’s 2023 evacuation has become the stuff of legend.

In smaller communities like Łútsël K’é, that same Yellowknife evacuation caused concern as it disrupted the supply lines that run through the territorial capital to stores serving places where there are no roads.

“Usually we get bread Fridays, as well as more produce and milk, but they just said no more planes, and we couldn’t get an answer out of them,” Łútsël K’é Co-op general manager Joe Yatkowski told us two years ago when Yellowknife fell under an evacuation order and resupply flights were disrupted.

“I didn’t have a whole lot in stock when all this went, and then to be suddenly cut off? Man, everybody kind-of ran on the store.”

Andrey Kharitonov is the director of store operations in the NWT for the North West Company.

Speaking this week, Kharitonov said it’s rare for food to go to waste when a community receives an evacuation order.

Any surplus of produce is normally donated to the fire department or community members left behind, he said.

“We got really scooped out right before the community was evacuated,” Kharitonov said of the Fort Providence evacuation, adding there wasn’t much fresh produce or dairy left behind.

“We aim for nothing really getting wasted from the product perspective.”

The North West Company says it worked closely with Fort Providence leadership in the hours leading up to the evacuation. “In a lot of instances, leadership do ask us to stay behind because we need to provide food for the essential workers and firefighters,” Kharitonov said.

He pointed to last year’s evacuation of Fort Good Hope, which also has a Northern store. In both situations, he said, part-time staff were urged to leave but management stayed behind to ensure emergency responders had the access they need.

A grocery store, he said, can help with “those little gestures that are happening with people to make sure they’re all supported, and supporting each other.”

“I think that really brings communities together,” Kharitonov said, “and that really brings all our emergency workers team together.”