The Gold Range is a Canadian hotel located in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories.[1]
The Gold Range, on 50th Street, is a notorious location with a reputation stretching across the Canadian Arctic. It was built on the site of The Veterans Hotel, which was destroyed by fire in 1956. The Gold Range is commonly known as "The Strange Range", having housed a rough and tumble bar, strip joint, boarding house and cafe complex since it opened in 1958.
In 1977 entrepreneur Sam Yurkiw purchased The Gold Range. In 1988 The Gold Range sold more beer than any other bar in Canada, according to its former general manager, Harvey Bourgeois. In 2007 The Gold Range was sold to an Edmonton businessman named Jay Park. On April 16, 2009 Sam Yurkiw died at age 83, but the bar and the beer live on.
In 2011, the city announced that it was considering purchasing the building in which the Gold Range is housed. News articles began to appear about how this would put the bar at risk of closing.[1]
In Mordecai Richler's 1989 novel Solomon Gursky Was Here, the protagonist Moses Berger makes several visits to the Gold Range during his trips to Yellowknife. Aritha Van Herk's novel The Tent Peg also begins in a Yellowknife bar which, while not named, is believed to be the Gold Range.