John Argue, whose life will be celebrated in Yellowknife on Saturday, brought a love of the wild, a commitment to community and a streak of impulse to his half century in the North.
Offered a job in Iqaluit – then Frobisher Bay – in 1970, he returned home to inform his girlfriend, Marsha.
“We had been going out, I think, for about four months,” she recalled last week. “We decided to get married and move right away.”
Marsha and John took everything they owned to Iqaluit two days after their hastily arranged wedding. Fifty-six years later, she said she had no regrets.
“He had so much positive energy,” she said. “I could tell it was going to be fun.”
After a decade in Iqaluit and Rankin Inlet, the Argues arrived in Yellowknife in 1980 with their son, Chris. A second son, Mike, would follow.
Professionally, John had worked with the North’s smaller communities to help develop their governance. Yellowknife represented a move to “headquarters” and he built a lifelong career in the civil service, working alongside the likes of Commissioner John Parker.
His biggest impact came as a passionate supporter of community groups like the Rotary Club, Yellowknife Ski Club, Yellowknife Guild of Arts and Crafts, and the board of what is now the Lakeshore Co-op.
He “was always there for myself, my brother and family, but also for the community,” said son Mike.
Born in Ottawa on July 10, 1943, John Alexander Argue’s first experience of the North came in the mid-1960s in Churchill, Manitoba. Yellowknife, however, came to be home for more than half of his life.
Peter Allen met John as their children knew each other. Soon, Allen was part of what he called “the cabin boys,” a circle of friends who congregated at John’s cabin to celebrate each spring breakup or get snowmobiles on the ice the moment it was safe each fall.
John, extremely social, created all manner of opportunities both for this group of friends and other circles he either joined or simply summoned into being.
For example, he conceptualized a course in which he and friends would learn how to carve birds from wood. People signed up and it became a tiny institution among a certain group of people.
“Some, they do it to this day,” said Allen of the carvings, “and there’s some beautiful products of that work.”
Mike remembers his father having “endless energy.” When that wasn’t being channelled into his friendships or family, it was expended outdoors, often in the company of the same people.
John and friends navigated three northern river systems together, voyages that Allen said brought out John’s philosophy of nature.
“You never conquested a river,” Allen said, describing that approach. “It was the zen of the river. You found harmony with it and formed a relationship with it.”
The impulsive streak also showed itself in the wild. Mike recalled a day that passed into family legend during which his father set off on an unannounced snowmobile mission to conquer a rock at the top of a Prelude Lake island.
“We were ice fishing on Prelude Lake – quietly, during the day in the sun – and then out of nowhere, my dad fires up the Ski-doo and tears off with abandon,” he said.
“He just started tearing up the side of the highest point of this island, spinning out and shooting dirt off the side of the hill, sliding backwards but still gunning it full throttle. And we’re all just wide eyed. What is happening here? No warning, no nothing.”
Back on dry land, that exuberance and drive was channelled into the likes of Lobster Fest, the Hay River event that the Rotary Club supported and which inspired a similar event back in Yellowknife.
John was also instrumental in helping to get Yellowknife’s ski chalet built, Marsha remembered.
“One day in the 1990s he ran into Joe Walsh outside the post office downtown. They started talking and the ski club needed a building, some kind of chalet, and the cadets were looking for somewhere new to train,” she recalled.
“That was the beginning of a collaboration that ended up being the beautiful ski chalet we have, with many, many people contributing.”
Bill Braden went to see John in 1999 when he needed someone to help knock on doors as he tried to become the next Great Slave MLA.
Not only did John help the campaign, he became Braden’s constituency assistant after his successful election to office.
John had “huge experience and knowledge of the workings and the depth of the civil service here in Yellowknife,” Braden said, which made him an extraordinary asset to constituents.
“He knew everybody and when somebody came to us with a problem or an issue, he almost instantly knew how to thread those needles and how to arrive at a solution.”
That experience also helped Braden on plenty of occasions.
“He was my compass. He grounded me. Once in a while, he rescued me from the abyss in a political sense,” Braden told Cabin Radio.
“He peered at me over those little specs that he wore all the time, and he said, ‘Bill, are you sure about this?’ And that’s where we were a great team.”
Celebration of life
John passed away aged 82 on October 31, 2025 shortly after being diagnosed with cancer.
A celebration of his life will take place at the Yellowknife Ski Club on April 18 from 2pm.
He leaves behind Marsha, Mike and partner Sarah, and grandchildren Red and Lucy. He was predeceased by son Chris, mother Margaret and father John.
“He was very caring and very humble. He didn’t look for recognition or anything like that. He just wanted to do good things,” said Marsha.
Mike remembers him for his kindness, his sense of community, and his stubborn optimism about the North.
“Yellowknife and the North, in my dad’s eyes, could never be seen in any sort of negative light,” Mike recalled.
“It’s a -45C day and his response is, ‘It’s blue sky out there! This is great.'”
