Yellowknife says goodbye to its only cinema

The manager of Yellowknife’s Capitol Theatre says he has mixed feelings about the public reaction he’s seen to the theatre’s upcoming closure.

“I’m inspired on one hand, and then I’m kind of disappointed on another, when I see this outpouring of emotion … I’m going, ‘where were you?’” Chris Wood said in an interview on Wednesday with CBC’s The Trailbreaker host Shannon Scott.

“I don’t want to put this blame squarely on the population up here, but for the last few years we’ve been struggling.”

The independent theatre’s owners announced on Tuesday that the Capitol will be closing for good on March 31. That means that for the first time in more than seven decades, Yellowknife residents won’t have a local cinema to go watch movies.

The COVID-19 pandemic shut the theatre down for months in 2020. That, followed by the Hollywood writers’ strike and Yellowknife’s wildfire evacuation in 2023, hit the cinema hard.

“Business has not come back and there’s no guarantee that business will ever go back to where it was in 2019,” Wood said.

Yellowknifers were quick to react to the news. Yasemin Heyck told CBC News she was disappointed.

“When I was in high school many years ago I worked there at the candy bar and it was a great place,” Heyck recalled. “One of the perks was you got to see movies for free — as a high school student, that was very cool.”

She said she hadn’t been to the theatre much recently, but she recognized the impact the closure would have on the community.

“I think it’ll be a loss for, you know, families that take their kids for a special night out, and of course just people who want to go out for a night,” Heyck said.

Yellowknife filmmaker Pablo Saravanja said losing the theatre is also a hit to the city’s film community.

“We desperately want this place to exist. It’s a cultural touchstone. It’s a place where art matters. It’s a place that brings people together,” Saravanja said. “It’s one of the few places where intergenerational togetherness happens and that it’s mostly alcohol-free.”

Amber O’Reilly met her partner for the first time at the theatre.

“This was our first date. We celebrated our one year anniversary at the movie theatre during the Yellowknife International Film Festival. So I’m really sad to see it go,” O’Reilly said.

Jonathan Lafferty, another moviegoer, said the theatre has been there as long as he can remember.

“That’s where I took my wife on our first date. Before they close, I gotta take her to that same seat,” Lafferty said.

Yellowknife’s cinema for 79 years

In a statement issued Tuesday, theatre management said their lease was not renewed, and they weren’t sure what would happen with the building after next month. The three-screen theatre currently occupies a second-floor space over the RBC branch.

“The decision wasn’t ours … the landlord decided not to renew our lease,” Wood said. “We were negotiating, then the hammer fell anyway.”

A statement to CBC News on Wednesday from Det’on Cho, the building’s owner, confirmed the lease will not be renewed.

“We recognize the importance of entertainment venues, especially indoor spaces, to the Yellowknife community. Our focus is on moving forward with a new leaseholder who will continue to use the space for a similar purpose,” the statement reads.

The Capitol Theatre has stood on the corner of Franklin Avenue and 52 Street since 1975. It originally opened in 1947 in another building nearby and was the second movie theatre in Yellowknife.

The Pioneer theatre was the first to open in Old Town in the late 1930s and closed years ago.

As for the future of a cinema in Yellowknife, Wood is aware people may want to try to save the theatre — but he said that would be up to someone else.

“There is nothing they can do to save the theatre at this point, at least not under our management,” Wood said.

“They would have to build their own, or they would have to find a space they could renovate into a movie theatre. [It’s] cost-prohibitive though — that’s the problem.”

An article by Julia Parrish

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