IT ENDED WITH A BANG and a bargain. When the Capitol Theatre drew the curtains on March 31, it did so to a full audience lured by nostalgia for the downtown Yellowknife icon and the cheap Tuesday pricing of
$7 tickets.
Chris Wood, the Capitol’s general manager, announced the closure on February 3. He told Cabin Radio that McCor, a national chain of property managers, would not renew its lease, which was running into thousands of dollars a month while the theatre hadn’t been profitable for years.
Over the decades, the Capital gave hundreds of Yellowknife teens their first part-time jobs. Julian Morse, now a Yellowknife MLA, was one of them. He sold pop, Smarties and Oh Henry! chocolate bars, took tickets and spliced together spools of 35-mm film to thread through ancient projectors. He says the experience was formative in an era when mega-blockbusters such as Star Wars, The Lord of The Rings and Titanic packed the place.
“I got my first taste of what it was like outside of school… my first paycheque ($7.50 an hour and free popcorn) and the freedom that gives you. I was able to buy my first car,” he says.
Jen Walden’s kids loved the place so much that, during the waves of COVID lockdown from 2020 to 2023, they re-enacted movie night at home—complete with fake tickets, a concession stand and a rule against phone use.
“From a professional standpoint, it’s devastating for me,” says Walden, a film producer with a feature coming out in 2026. “We’ll still show those projects, but it’s not the same as when you have a purpose-built space with the screen, the sound, the popcorn.
She hopes the theatre will come back in some form. The building’s joint owners, national investment group KingSett Capital and Yellowknives Dene business arm, the Det’on Cho Corp., have only said that they’re seeking a viable new tenant serving “a similar purpose” for the prime downtown space. But they did not go so far as saying that a new movie house was among its criteria. Still, Walden doesn’t believe the theatre is gone forever.
“There really is a strong arts community here, ingenious in how it’s managed to survive. It’s why I still live here.”
