I know someone who lives in Yellowknife, and it's the only place in the Northwest Territories that even remotely looks like a city, and it's a city along one or two streets for several blocks, a number of suburbs sprawled out around, and that's it. Summer is still pretty mild there so it's not like you're wearing thick jackets in July.

I've visited Whitehorse in the summer, it was nice, I really loved the 2 hour sunsets, it was like time stopped while I took in the river. I bet both places are much different in the winter.

Because of long days in the summer, every bedroom has blackout curtains to fully block the sun. Many people work or study seasonally then fly to Edmonton, Vancouver or Calgary in the winter or travel back and forth. Air North is expensive-ish but is the best service I have received from a domestic airline.

Stuff is a bit more expensive there. Nobody follows the speed limit because outside the city there's like one mountie (police) for 100s of km.