WEEKEND

Northern Exposure

By Craille Maguire Gillies

Fort McMurray is all business, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t some big city-style pleasure to be had in this Alberta boomtown.

“I can always tell when I ask people how they like it, and they say it’s interesting,” says Bonnie Jackson, a hostess at the Fish Place, a popular diner in Fort McMurray started by a couple of Newfoundlanders. Jackson is talking about the alligator appetizer – thin slices of Louisiana gator (tastes like chicken but with the texture of pork), bathed in a creamy whisky sauce. She could, however, be talking about Fort McMurray itself. Ask people what they think about this place, 250 miles north of anything urban, and they say it exists in a bubble. That’s their way of saying it’s unlike anywhere else in the country.

Nestled in a valley hedged by boreal forest, Fort McMurray began as a gateway to the Far North. In summer, floatplanes still line up along the Clearwater River to fly to Fort Chipewyan, an 18th-century North West Company trading post. Now it’s a 24-hour-a-day engine of commerce surrounded by wilderness. On one side of Fort Mac proper, the Clearwater River meets the Athabasca River, which flows north to the Arctic Ocean. On the other, a stream of white pickup trucks parades down Sakitawaw Trail. This is a city of 65,000 people, where rush hour never ends.

“That’s what we call Mortgage Mountain,” says Stu Ross, a mukluk-shod B.C. expat who’s lived in Fort Mac for more than 20 years, tipping his rabbit fur-hatted head toward the ample homes sprawled on a hill overlooking downtown. Ross, a photographer and northern lights expert who runs Aurora Tours, is showing me the lay of the land. This is a business town at heart, so you need a little inside intel to discover its more leisurely side.

Culture north of the 57th parallel

Fort Mac is full of transient people from all over the world. The result is a strange blend of blue-collar stereotypes and cowboy cosmopolitanism. BBC World News plays in coffee shops packed with men in coveralls. Check out the Keyano Theatre and Art Gallery, where past shows have included work by Sobey Award-winning Nunavut artist Annie Pootoogook. The collection is impressive for a town this size, but if you really want to be awed, you’d better bundle up. “Photographing the northern lights is like hunting,” says Ross. “It’s about knowing when to pull the trigger.” You’ll find Aurora Tours on Willow Lake, about 30 miles out of town. The best time to go is late at night and late in the winter.

Tasting notes

Even the most casual joints require reservations in this boomtown. Pesto’s, an intimate upscale Italian place, has a solid wine list – the Wild Horse Canyon 2007 cabernet sauviginon from B.C. is a good bet – a belly-warming menu and an urbane vibe signaled by the sounds of Feist. Along with the predictable Alberta tenderloin, you’ll find surprises like smoked duck breast with lingonberry and orange marmalade sauce. The biggest surprise in this northerly landlocked city, however, is the sushi. Locals favor the casual diner-style Fuji Japanese Restaurant, where, according to local radio veteran R.J. McNichol, the fish “couldn’t get any fresher than if you picked it up right off the docks in New Westminster.” Standouts include the deep-fried tuna roll, with ponzu sauce for a layer of spiciness, and an amusingly kitsch dragon roll with pieces arranged like a tail and a cucumber artfully carved into a roaring dragon head.

Home sweet hotel

Junior trapper Bob Packolyk (usually out snowmobiling in the backwoods) and his wife, Paulette, who traces her ancestry to Louis Riel, were refugees from Edmonton when they took over the rambling Chez Dubé seven years ago. The inn’s most notable feature – other than the homey hospitality and cooked-to-order breakfasts by their Thai chef – is the enormous games room, complete with cathedral ceiling and pool table.

(Edmonton-based Craille Maguire Gillies is a former editor at enRoute and the senior editor of Unlimited, a work-lifestyle magazine for twenty- and thirty-somethings.)

Useful info
Fort McMurray Tourism, 400 Sakitawaw Trail, 800-565-3947, fortmcmurraytourism.com
Fuji Japanese Restaurant, 8706 Franklin Ave., #200, 780-788-2128
Pestos Café, 330 Thickwood Blvd., #440, 780-714-9266

TOP IMAGE: STU ROSS, AURORA TOURS
TOWN SPRAWL & WINTER SCENE: GORD MCKENNA
CHEZ DUBE: TRAVEL ALBERTA