Le Refuge

A Yellowknife gardener channels her grief into the land—and works through the seasons of healing

By Hannah Eden

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May 01

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2017

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From the May 2017 Issue

“I’m a firm believer in working with what you’ve got,” says France Benoit as she drives across a wood-plank bridge and up a modest gravel driveway, winding around the pine trees that lead to her house. “Agriculture is not just big, hundred acres of land—big, flat land with lush soil,” she says. “We can design and develop our own system to feed what we have and work with that.”

Benoit’s home ‘Le Refuge’ sits on the shore of Madeline Lake outside Yellowknife. Her quaint wooden cabin is surrounded by rows of greenery and homemade planter boxes perched on top of the sharp Canadian Shield rock. Benoit has carefully constructed everything on the land in order to feed herself throughout the year. Whatever is left over is lovingly picked, washed and driven the 30 kilometres back into town for the weekly summer-time Yellowknife Farmers Market, of which Benoit is a founding member.

“If you are to die, it’s a beautiful spot to realize
that you’ve done all you can do. You wish there
was more time—but you did it anyway.”

Rows of seedlings sit on windowsills around the house in the dead of winter until they are ready to be transported to the beds and boxes come spring. In a world of its own, nestled in the trees, sits her magnificent centerpiece: the greenhouse. In summer, a canopy of tomato plants hang from the roof in handcrafted planters, green fingers reaching down toward the lettuce, spicy greens and radishes that grow below.

Benoit bought the home in 1992 and began to build the gardens and greenhouse with her husband Doug Ritchie, a local environmental activist, known in Yellowknife as “the gentle giant” for his tall stature and kind demeanour. Ritchie passed away in January 2015, mere weeks after a pancreatic cancer diagnosis. “I don’t want to keep this place as a shrine to him—but we had a vision, of what the world could be. He used to say that he was the ideas person and I was the implementer,” says Benoit. “So, I’m implementing the vision we had. Of trying to live a simple life.”

“There is a magic to this place and it changes people if you are open to it.”
“I don’t have curtains in my house,” says Benoit as she looks out to Madeline Lake from her kitchen window. “From every window I see trees or a garden. I am in complete harmony with the seasons.”
After Doug died, Benoit says she was on sensory overload. “I went through a year of simplifying my life in absolutely every way you can think of. Cleaning and cleansing in many ways, which is a very healing process.”
Fresh radishes from the garden.
Rocky outcrops make it difficult to plant directly into the ground in Yellowknife. Hence the array of planter boxes.
During the winter, the greenhouse lays barren. In March, when daylight increases but temperatures can still plummet, Benoit spreads snow onto the beds, allowing the sun to melt it into the soil.
Lush greenery bursts from Benoit’s greenhouse in the summer months, when the longer days let her experiment with different seeds.