Rebecca Alty

As the first Indigenous person ever to lead the federal department responsible for delivering services to First Nations, Inuit and Métis, Mandy Gull-Masty knows she has a daunting task ahead.

The charter plane, a British Aerospace Jetstream 3212 operated by Northwestern Air Lease, was headed Tuesday morning to the Diavik Diamond Mine, some 300 kilometres northeast of Yellowknife.

Wildfires threatening communities in the Northwest Territories were kept at bay on Wednesday, Aug. 23, 2023, as politicians continued grappling with “astronomical” costs of fighting the blazes and how to eventually get people home.

The mayor of Yellowknife says it's not safe for residents to go home to the territorial capital, but notes city officials are working on a return plan as a fire continues to burn about 15 kilometres away.

Behind a fence sit cans containing remains of the mine's old roaster building, its every beam and timber steeped in poison from more than a half-century of separating gold from the arsenic that held it.