Notes to the Future: Giant Mine Postcard Project

The Giant Mine Postcard Project invites you to bear witness. This project gathers written and visual postcards that speak to what Giant Mine has meant and continues to mean to you, your community, and the North. It reaches backward into memory, stands in the uneasy present, and looks toward uncertain futures. There is no single story to tell here, only many voices, held side by side.

Your postcard might carry grief for what was lost, anger at what was done, fear for what remains, or hope for healing that has yet to come. It may be quiet, furious, poetic, fragmented, or unresolved. All of it belongs. No authority will correct your tone. No conclusion is required. Through these small, personal artifacts, future generations will encounter Giant Mine not as a single narrative, but as a shared and contested legacy: environmental, human, emotional, and unfinished.

How to Participate

Participants may submit one or more postcards in any of the following ways:

Postcards may include:

  • Original artwork, collage, or photography
  • Written reflections, poems, or short messages
  • A combination of words and graphics

Participants may sign their postcards or remain anonymous.

  • Submissions may be visual, written, or mixed-media and fit within a standard postcard size (approximately 10 x 15 cm).
  • There are no restrictions on tone or emotion—honest reflections are encouraged, whether hopeful, angry, grieving, proud, or questioning.
  • No personal information about others (such as names or identifying details) without their consent.
  • Submissions must be your own original work (no AI-generated, copied, or plagiarized content).

Eligibility: Open to residents of Canada, of all ages and backgrounds. Individual and group submissions are welcome. No fee to participate.

Rights and Usage

By submitting a postcard, participants agree to the following terms:

  • You grant Alternatives North a non-exclusive, royalty-free, perpetual license to display, reproduce, and publish your submission in digital or physical form.
  • This may include exhibition, publication, educational use, media promotion, and archiving.
  • You retain full ownership of your work and may submit or publish it elsewhere at any time.
  • Alternatives North reserves the right to edit, crop, or reproduce images as needed for display, maintaining the integrity of the work.
  • Anonymous submissions may be displayed as “Anonymous” unless you provide your name or preferred credit.

Display and Publication

  • Postcards will be reviewed by a panel to select suitable and varied postcards for display and posting.
  • Selected postcards will be featured in a public showcase during Earth Week2026, as well as online and in potential future exhibitions or publications.
  • The public showcase will include a variety of other presentations about Giant Mine. Included in the past have been films, poetry, scientific presentations, information about the Giant Mine Oversight Board, historic presentations, and landscape design.
  • Submissions meeting rules, with particular attention to respectful participation, will become part of a collective public archive reflecting community perspectives on Giant Mine.
  • Alternatives North may contact contributors (where contact info is provided) for future project opportunities or permissions.

Consent and Privacy

Participants submitting work under their own name consent to the use of their name alongside their postcard, unless they request anonymity.

  • Contact information provided will be used solely for project administration and will not be shared publicly.
  • Anonymous submissions will be accepted and respected.

Respectful Participation

This project welcomes a diversity of emotions, opinions, and creative approaches. However, submissions that contain hate speech, personal attacks, or discriminatory content targeting identifiable individuals or groups will not be displayed.


Timeline: Submissions open: January 12, 2026 Deadline for submissions: March 31, 2026 Public showcase: Earth Week, April 2026


Inspiration and Additional Information

Your creation can be a:

  • Collage
  • photo
  • poem
  • story
  • drawing


Getting Started on Your Postcard

If you’re not sure where to start, try one of these:

• When I think of Giant Mine, I feel ___
• I wish people understood ___
• This place holds ___
• What was taken / what remains
• For the future, I hope ___

Your response can be a sentence, a list, a drawing, a collage, or a photo.
There’s no right length. No right format.

If it feels true, it belongs in Notes to the Future: The Giant Mine Postcard Project.

If words don’t come easily, you might begin with:
• a single feeling
• a colour or shape
• one honest sentence
• something you’ve never said out loud
• a question you don’t have an answer to

Your postcard doesn’t have to explain everything.
It just has to be yours.

If it feels true, it belongs in Notes to the Future: The Giant Mine Postcard Project.


For additional information about Giant Mine

A variety of online and published materials are available, along with virtual tours presented by the Giant Mine Oversight Board (GMOB). A good starting point is the GMOB website, https://gmob.ca/ which includes a history of the mine, regulatory information, the remediation project, and drone footage of the site.

The Toxic Legacies Project examines the history and legacy of arsenic contamination at Giant Mine. It is a partnership among researchers at Memorial University, Lakehead University, the Goyatiko Language Society (a Yellowknives Dene First Nation non-profit), and Alternatives North. It includes a link to the film Guardians of Eternity. www.toxiclegacies.com

An outcome from the Toxic Legacies Project is the book The Price of Gold: Mining, Pollution, and Resistance in Yellowknife, https://www.mqup.ca/Books/T/The-Price-of-Gold3 , which includes an extensive bibliography.

The Yellowknife Historical Society aims to preserve the socio-economic history of Yellowknife, and to educate the public about mining and geology. You can visit their website https://www.yellowknifehistory.com/ and their museum in the Giant Mine site.

On September 18, 1992 a violent explosion deep in Yellowknife’s Giant mine took the lives of nine miners. The book Dying for Gold https://www.dyingforgold.ca/ tells the story of this tragedy, including lessons from it.

CBC’s Rachel Zelniker hosts a seven-episode podcast about the bitter labour dispute and its lingering impact https://www.cbc.ca/listen/cbc-podcasts/1066-giant

The Mackenzie Valley Environmental Review Board has the foundational report on remediation: Report of Environmental Assessment and Reasons for Decision, June 2013, and related documents https://new.reviewboard.ca/en/registry

The Mackenzie Valley Land and Water Board has various authorizations related to the remediation of Giant Mine https://mvlwb.com/registry

The Yellowknife Health Effects Monitoring Program (YKHEMP) is a long-term study testing the levels of arsenic and other metals of concern in the populations of Yellowknife, Ndılǫ, and Dettah. The study is to find out if local residents are exposed to higher levels of arsenic and other metals compared to other Canadian and to investigate the long- term relationships between arsenic and health outcomes.  See https://ykhemp.ca/

The NWT and Nunavut Chamber of Mines advocate for responsible and sustainable mineral exploration and development in the NWT and Nunavut.  https://www.miningnorth.com. They have information on mineral exploration and mines.

Ryan Silke did a 2009 report on the history of other mines in the NWT. https://www.miningnorth.com/_rsc/site-content/library/NWT_Mines_History_RSilke2009.pdf

Other contaminated sites such as in the NWT, such as Indore/Hottah (Beaverlodge) Mines (Wek’èezhı̀ı) and Port Radium Mine (Sahtu) are part of the federal government’s program to clean up multiple sites. https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1100100026218/1617999632414


Questions or Support

For the postcard projects questions, group participation, drop box locations, or accessibility support, please contact:

Karen Hamre
Postcards Projects Lead, Alternatives North
Postcards.Giant@alternativesnorth.ca

867-873-8628