Outgoing N.W.T. premier remembered as unconventional leader, champion for marginalized people

More than half of the people in the Northwest Territories now have an evacuation story — how they got out, what they took with them, where they went.

As premier, Caroline Cochrane's evacuation story was always going to be different, but it was ultimately so unusual that it made national news.

The morning after Yellowknife's evacuation was ordered, Cochrane said, she recruited a man who is homeless in the city, and the two of them drove all over town, searching for people who were still on the streets.

"From eight in the morning until after midnight, the whole day … we drove through Yellowknife over and over, to every single place, trying to find people," she told reporters at a wildfire briefing the next day. 

"We were going into places that I normally wouldn't go — behind buildings, into bushes — so I really have to give a shout out to homeless people as well, because without the support of that young man, I'm not sure we would have rounded up as many as possible."

The pair found nine people, she said, and brought them to where they could get on a plane out of town.

While Cochrane's government would later be pilloried for scattering the city's homeless population across western Canada with no support and no firm plan for how to bring them home, one of her supporters says her actions on that Thursday exemplify her commitment to people on society's margins.

"There's no other leader in Canada that would have done it," said Arlene Hache of Cochrane's Aug. 17 drive around the city. "So that is Caroline in a nutshell." 

Hache, a social justice advocate who worked with Cochrane in the 2010s at the Yellowknife Women's Society, said Cochrane maintained her commitment to vulnerable people everywhere she went, and straight up into the Legislative Assembly. 

"Caroline has an incredibly strong ethic coming from that lived experience," she said. "So her heart is always with the people, always with Northern people."

Cochrane, who is Métis, experienced homelessness herself as a teenager and spent more than two decades in social work before entering politics. When she was elected leader of the N.W.T. government in October of 2019, she was the only woman premier in Canada, and the second female premier of the N.W.T., after Nellie Cournoyea.

But after two terms in office — including one at the helm — Cochrane, who represents Yellowknife's Range Lake riding, announced in the legislature on Sept. 28 that she will not seek re-election.

"I don't know what I will do next," she said, "but my passion for public service continues."

Cochrane didn't make herself available for an interview for this story, but CBC spoke with more than half a dozen N.W.T. leaders, activists and political observers about her tenure as premier.