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Why Two New Highways Are a Very Big Deal for the North

They would connect remote communities, but also boost access to minerals and resources

Why Two New Highways Are a Very Big Deal for the North

They would connect remote communities, but also boost access to minerals and resources

WORDS AND PHOTOS BY PAT KANE

Published 6:30, JULY 23, 2026

A few years ago, the British Broadcasting Corporation assigned me to photograph a story in Taloyoak, Nunavut, a remote community tucked into a bay on the edge of the Northwest Passage. Given the broadcaster’s environmental mandate to keep CO2 emissions as low as possible in their reporting, I was told that they “try to avoid flights.” The implication was that I should try driving there from Yellowknife, and I nearly fell to the crusty snow beneath my feet laughing at the idea. I would not be driving. For one, the distance between Yellowknife and Taloyaok is 1,220 kilometres. But most importantly, there is no road.

I’m not sure if anyone at the BBC had bothered to look closely at a map of Northern Canada to see where, exactly, Taloyoak is located; the community is accessible only by air or, if you’re really experienced or a little unhinged, by water. I pictured myself trying to cut through the dense boreal forest of the Canadian Shield north to the rocky tundra, navigating endless lakes, rivers, marsh, outcrops, and crevasses in my 2010 Honda CRV. I never went to Taloyaok, and the assignment was cancelled.

But I’m not going to put my dreams of driving to that corner of the Arctic Ocean on hold just yet. On June 24 in Yellowknife, the federal government announced the first three major projects that could be fast-tracked under the Building Canada Act, two of which are highways northward through the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. If you’re reading this anywhere South of 60, this might sound like a colossal “meh” moment, but I can assure you that this is a huge deal for Northerners—and a potentially big deal for the country.

The Mackenzie Valley highway has been talked about in the NWT at least as far back as 1958, when then Progressive Conservative prime minister John Diefenbaker laid out a vision of nation-building infrastructure projects across Northern Canada to stimulate the economy and connect the country.

The Roads to Resources program started with a boom of around 100 projects on the docket. Government funding helped build the highway (mostly a dirt road) between the Alberta border and Yellowknife, construct a railway to the southern NWT, develop various pulp mills farther north, and create landing strips to remote communities and mines. One of the most noteworthy projects, the iconic Dempster Highway, was built in Yukon, making it Canada’s first all-weather road to cross the Arctic Circle. By 1963, development on other various projects stalled due to high costs and logistics. Even though Diefenbaker’s grand Northern Vision was ultimately stopped in its tracks,........

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