Scavenge in the Municipal Dump
Yellowknife, Northwest Territories
The Yellowknife city dump is one of the few in North America where people can legally scavenge. And who could resist? Yellowknife is a frontier city, so far from anywhere that stuff is expensive to bring in and equally expensive to bring out. People who leave usually just dump what they have: furniture, tools, clothing, appliances, TVs, computers, even cars and boats. And the city's population of thousands of transient diamond miners means that people are always leaving and dumping.
The Yellowknife dump is such a popular destination that it has trash heap directional signs and charges a five dollar admission fee. Locals view the scavenging as recycling or "shopping" -- and as a proud Yellowknife tradition -- and have fought all attempts to end it.
