Love and loss at the northern movie theatre where everybody worked

For decades, Yellowknife’s Capitol Theatre provided a connection to the rest of the world, a gathering space for community members and, for many, their first jobs.

The theatre announced on Tuesday it will close permanently at the end of next month, citing high costs and a change in movie viewing habits.

While the owners of the building housing the theatre say the facility may yet stay open “for a similar purpose,” its future is unclear. Right now, the city looks set to lose its only movie theatre.

In the 10 years he worked there, Jacob Charpentier said he occupied nearly every role: usher, box office, concession and, eventually, manager.

“Me and my twin brother, we would go there every week when we hit high school age – every week – and hand in our résumés until they finally accepted our applications,” said Charpentier.

“Since then, that place was like a second home.”

The idea of the theatre closing leaves him heartbroken, he said, and considering whether he even wants to stay in the city where he was born and raised.

“There’s a lot of young people who are seeing more and more things close down here,” he said.

“It feels like a bad sign of what’s to come. I know a lot of young people now – for the first time, I think – have considered moving. How can we not when we see this town slowly becoming a little unfamiliar from what we grew up with?”

‘Torture pit’

Garett Cochrane is a Yellowknife city councillor. He, too, worked at the theatre. It was his first job, aged 14.

Cochrane said the imminent closure is “incredibly concerning,” though he’s holding out hope.

“It’s had many iterations over its time and I thought it would carry on for the rest of the city’s history,” he told Cabin Radio on Wednesday. “And who knows? Maybe it still will.”

Cochrane spoke fondly of his time working at the theatre, even though many of his stories stemmed from incidents that may have been less than ideal at the time.

He described the cotton candy machine as “a torture pit” and recounted how a customer, alleging they had been served the wrong type of soda, “proceeded to throw it on all of us and then walk away.”

But Cochrane also remembered the midnight screenings that would let him be one of the first to take in a new Harry Potter or Star Wars movie, calling the theatre a place that “allowed us to remain indoors and see a little piece of the outside world,” even in the dead of winter.

“I would really hate to have to drive to Hay River, even though I do hear they have great popcorn,” he said of the Riverview Cineplex, which may be Yellowknife’s nearest theatre after March 31 and is a five-hour drive away.

Even so, he doesn’t think City Hall has a role to play in avoiding that outcome.

“I don’t think the city has a place of being able to directly intervene here,” he said. “I am hopeful that somebody, or someone other than a government, will come in and be able to fill this void.”

Where community comes together

Jesse Wheeler believes he is “part of the problem.”

A host and co-owner at Cabin Radio, Wheeler said he has been going to the theatre since the late 1980s. He, too, briefly worked there. (“I was probably not the best employee. I got fired after a few months,” he said.)

Though he is a self-described movie fanatic, Wheeler said he hadn’t been going to the theatre as much lately.

“It’s a loss that is really felt in a town like this that I think loves going to movies,” he said, but he acknowledged that his aren’t the only viewing habits to have changed as streaming takes over.

Even so, he said, the escapism of a movie theatre is important.

“Not just to be surrounded by the sights and sounds, but also to disconnect from other things and share in an adventure, share in a love story, or share in our collective sublimation of horror,” said Wheeler.

“All those things are so connected to the moviegoing experience. That is what we’re going to lose and I think that’s a very important part of our shared human experience.”

Julian Morse, now the Frame Lake MLA, worked alongside Wheeler.

He described the thrill of getting to run the old film projectors as a teenager and seeing the original Aladdin and Lion King alongside A Muppet Christmas Carol.

“We’re in a time right now where people are losing touch with each other, people are feeling more politically divided,” he said.

“I think the only antidote to that is community involvement, and that theatre has been a place where the community comes together for a very, very long time.

“There’s an industry, a very small but burgeoning industry growing here and now we don’t have a theatre to celebrate and showcase those films. That’s a huge loss for the community and I’m concerned about it.”

Morse shared Cochrane’s view when it comes to his own level of government intervening.

“I don’t think it’s up to the GNWT to start running a theatre,” he said.

‘A place for misfits’

Yellowknifers were near-unanimous in describing to Cabin Radio a relationship with the theatre that involved emotion. Sometimes, it involved lust. Sometimes, it involved love.

Kaitlin WhiteKeyes described “canoodling in the projection room, porn in the office when the real grown-ups left” and lights-out hide and seek games at Christmas parties.

“It was a place for misfits,” she said. “What a good place to have grown up. I’m so sad for the northern teens that will miss the experience.”

Tina Schauerte found her future husband, Gary, working the projector there. She insists he doesn’t even remember meeting her back then, “but I always remembered him,” she said. They were reunited at the territorial government a decade later and have now been married for 25 years.

At the other end of the emotional scale, one former Yellowknifer remembered the droves of people who walked out of The Exorcist when it first screened in Yellowknife.

Now, the emotions relate to loss – of not only the theatre but a slice of many people’s shared heritage.

“It’s up to the people of the community to figure out what we’d like in this town,” said Charpentier. Many residents have expressed a desire to find a way to keep the theatre open, even as general manager Chris Wood insisted the time for that kind of intervention had long since passed.

“It feels like the community needs to come together and figure out a way to open up a new one,” said Charpentier. “Because this is a big loss.”