Stare into the soul of Canada at Northern House.

Vancouver must be a puzzle to lots of visitors here for the Games.   Imagine coming from halfway around the world – from Japan or Australia or Brazil – and discovering a part of Canada with no snow.  You might see a Mountie or two around town, but where are the polar bears, the sled dogs and all that other iconic stuff ?

At the Northern House, of course.  Located just a block from the city’s busy Waterfront Station, the Northern House – which represents the Yukon, Nunavut and the Northwest Territories – is filled with more Canadiana than you can shake a stick at.  There’s all kinds of stuffed wildlife, from caribou to musk oxen.  There are Inuit singers and dancers, robed in thick furs.  There’s even an exhibit where you can pan for real Yukon gold.

The Olympic Inukshuk is a symbol derived from the Inuit peoples of Canada's northern territories.

But while these things might add up to a parade of tired cliches in other pavilions, in the Northern House they work.   So much of Canadian imagery – from the dramatic snowcapes to the wildlife to the Olympics’ own Inukshuk – is drawn from the Far North.  There’s something satisfying about finally seeing it all in context (well . . . more or less).

I stopped by this afternoon just in time for a drum and dance show by members of the Inavialuit peoples.  Hailing from the Northwest Territories, the few dozen members of the troupe were clad in robes trimmed with fur and feathers.  What distinguished the performance from so many other Aboriginal offerings at the Games was the authenticity factor.  The matriarch of the group – a stout, gray-haired woman with a broad smile – had learned these dances as a child and then taught them to members of her community years later.  Accompanied by guttural chanting and the pounding of drums, the dancers recreated scenes of feeding sled dogs, breaking trails through fresh ice and preparing hides.

Inuvialuit dancers perform at Northern House.

In between dances, I slipped downstairs for a glimpse of another side of life in Canada’s North.  At a big table, visitors were busy panning for gold, sifting through piles of Yukon river sediment shipped in especially for the occasion.  Every so often, someone would cry out after finding a tiny golden speck, usually no bigger than a pencil point.  I talked to Cheryl Rivest, a goldsmith who runs a jewelry studio in the Yukon outpost of Whitehorse.  She informed me that gold mining is indeed alive and well up north.  In fact, every spring she’s deluged with small-time miners who come to sell their nuggets and flakes at her store.

Visitors pan for Yukon gold at the Northern House.

I wandered back upstairs and, on the way out, had to stop and admire the exquisite taxidermy on display.  I’m not usually a fan of stuffed animals, but there was something compelling about seeing Canada’s ferocious menagerie up close.  The polar bear, towering on his hind feet with teeth bared, looked nothing like the cuddly creature in Coca-Cola commercials.

I was taking photos of an Arctic wolf – who looked lean and hungry, a killer with yellow eyes – when one of the Inuvialuit dancers from the show approached me.  He looked about 15 years old and was wearing a baseball cap cocked sideways.  “I shot four of those,” he said, pointing to the wolf.  I looked at him and nodded, sure that this was as close to the “real Canada” as I’d ever get.