IF YOU SPENT an afternoon counting cars on the streets of Yellowknife, you’d find local drivers like their pickup trucks. Or, if not trucks, then SUVs. Vehicles like Wayne Guy’s silver Porsche 911 stand out on northern roads.
Guy, the founder of Guy Architects Ltd., has been shaping the signature look of the NWT and Nunavut since 1990. Landmark buildings in his firm’s portfolio include projects such as the Canadian High Arctic Research Centre in Cambridge Bay, the Kivalliq Regional Visitor Centre in Rankin Inlet and the Islamic Centre
of Yellowknife.
To local motorheads, however, Guy is also known as Yellowknife’s premiere Porsche enthusiast. He bought his first one—a 924, for those keeping track—more than 25 years ago, after spotting it in the parking lot of a suburban restaurant called Sam’s Monkey Tree. He’s owned three others since then, including his current 911, which he bought new in 2018 as a milestone birthday present to himself.
There aren’t many places to drive in Yellowknife, and the lone road out of town was a ragged 600-kilometre stretch of gravel and dirt until 2006. But Guy proved himself fearless in taking them out, regardless of conditions. “Some people are of the opinion ‘let’s get a nice car and park it and polish it,’” he says. “I’m of the opinion it’s about performance. There’s nothing like the feeling when you start to rev it up... I don’t mind a little road rash.”
Guy’s driven his Porsches pretty much everywhere, and he’s willingly paid the price with a few cracked windshields. In recent years, however, he’s found a different way to explore the capabilities and nuances of his high-performance cars. For the past few winters, once the ice has formed on Yellowknife Bay, Guy has built a one-to-one scale replica of the Circuit des Écuyers, a racetrack in France famous for its array of turns and technical sections designed to test the skills of those who drive it. “It’s got everything... hairpins to chicanes to a 40-metre skid circle—everything you need to hone your driving skills,” Guy says.
The inspiration for the project came to Guy around the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. A few years earlier, he’d taken part in a Porsche winter driving event in Estérel, Que., a popular outdoor destination in the Laurentian mountains north of Montreal. Now, with time on his hands, he decided to build something for himself.
Starting with a photo of the Écuyers track from Google Earth for reference, Guy plotted a scale map of the track on Great Slave Lake. Next, he went out to the ice and calculated the location of the famed circuit’s curves, turns and other features. “Écuyers is a two-kilometre track, and when I walk mine, it’s bang on two kilometres,” he says. “It’s a pretty accurate process.” Finally, he attached a shovel to a quad and plowed out a track to call his own.
Guy has used the same process ever since, typically starting each year in early November, when the ice is at least six inches thick. The track is usually ready for driving in the lead-up to Christmas. The only substantial change in the process over the years is that he now uses a snowblower to clear the ice, finding it leaves him with a better track and softer banks than the quad and shovel. Otherwise, Guy says the results are surprisingly consistent from one season to the next.
Behind the wheel, Guy enjoys exploring and mastering the techniques of driving on ice. It’s a fairly safe activity. The surface makes it hard to go much faster than 40 to 60 kilometres per hour, depending on the conditions. The small ridges of snow lining the edges are also forgiving for those who might miscalculate a turn. And there are drivers who might do so. Guy’s track has become a popular destination for other motorists, including truck owners, who put their vehicles through their paces on the ice.
“It’s a lot of fun to take the traction control off. You do better cornering when you take the control off and drift,” Guy says, adding that some parents bring their teens to the track for driving lessons. “We’re a winter country. It’s good to know how to drive and control a skid and a slip, and how a car reacts on ice.”
Mushers sometimes run their teams on the track, too, and unusual as Guy’s winter hobby may be, it’s not wholly unique. Finland, for example, is home to an Arctic resort for ice drivers that features six replicas of famous F1circuits, as well as several training courses and a luxury hotel and spa for the hours off the track.
As for Guy, he believes his cars have proven themselves to be well suited to the climate. As long as you keep the batteries charged, they start reliably on the coldest mornings, even if you don’t plug them in. They are fuel efficient, don’t require a lot of extra maintenance and, with a good set of snow tires, handle well in any conditions. “I can drive through two feet of snow and I never get stuck,” Guy says. “It’s a fun, safe car to drive.”
Based on his experience over the past decades, that assessment applies both on and off the track.
