Samia Madwar

For centuries, newcomers to the Arctic have marvelled at its powerful stillness. But as the ice melts away and shipping traffic rises, can the Arctic fight back against noise?

For refugees, the North might as well be another planet. Can the right flavours make them feel at home?

My first attempt at a science comic examines the effects of increased precipitation in the North.

Want to develop the agility to hop over cracks in the ice? Want to train your knuckles to withstand the freezing pain of creeping up to a seal hole on the ice? Practise the Inuit high kick and the knuckle hop several times a day, and you might be ready.

You don’t need a weight room to get fit; just spend a season hauling fish nets, chopping wood, or sawing blocks of snow. Or at least pretend to.

I assisted Hannah Eden, Up Here's photographer/videographer, with this shoot. Lesson learned: always wear the right boots if you're going to spend more than five minutes shooting outdoors in a Yellowknife winter. 

Most official maps today show the North to be a vast, empty land, with scattered communities and various geographical features named by European explorers who once passed through. Communities and researchers are teaming up to change that.

How one RCMP officer and pilot did it with his bare hands.

There’s a half-built aluminum two-seater plane in Chris Holloway’s garage, and he’s hoping to have it in the air by the summer. “Some people build airplanes because they want to build airplanes,” he says. “Some people want to build airplanes so they can fly. I fit into the latter category.”

Ian Stirling received the Weston Family Prize for lifetime achievement in Northern research in December 2015. I interviewed him about his polar bear research.

For Up Here's annual travel issue, I wrote about artist residencies in the North. Playwright Reneltta Arluk reveals how spending a couple of weeks aboard a tallship helped break her writer's block.

The Revenant, the Oscar-winning film by Alejandro Inarritu, featured a Dene actress from Yellowknife, NWT. She played the role of Powaqa, an Arikara warrior and daughter of Elk Dog, played by Duane Howard. Here's the story of the day the casting crew came to Yellowknife.