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Although much of Canada still has the flavour of the "last frontier", it's only when you embark on the mainland push north to the Yukon that you know for certain you're leaving the mainstream of North American life behind. In the popular imagination, the north figures as a perpetually frozen wasteland blasted by ferocious gloomy winters, inhabited - if at all - by hardened characters beyond the reach of civilization. In truth, it's a region where months of summer sunshine offer almost limitless opportunities for outdoor activities and an incredible profusion of flora and fauna; a country within a country, the character of whose settlements has often been forged by the mingling of white settlers and aboriginal peoples . The indigenous hunters of the north are as varied as in the south, but two groups predominate: the Dene , people of the northern forests who traditionally occupied the Mackenzie River region from the Albertan border to the river's delta at the Beaufort Sea; and the Arctic Inuit (literally "the people"), once known as the Eskimos or "fish eaters", a Dene term picked up by early European settlers and now discouraged. The north is as much a state of mind as a place. People "north of 60" - the 60th Parallel - claim the right to be called northerners , and maintain a kinship with Alaskans, but those north of the Arctic Circle - the 66th Parallel - look with light-hearted disdain on these "southerners". All mock the inhabitants of the northernmost corners of Alberta and such areas of the so-called Northwest, who, after all, live with the luxury of being able to get around their backcountry by road. To any outsider, however, in terms of landscape and overall spirit the north begins well south of the 60th Parallel. Accordingly, this section includes not just the provinces of the "true north" - Yukon and parts of the western Arctic and Northwest Territories - but also northern British Columbia , a region more stark and extreme than BC's southern reaches.
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