ABSTRACT
The cold regions of the world provide some unique play opportunities and challenges to children and adults and to those who wish to develop play settings and programmes. This chapter looks at the special challenges, problems and advantages; some unique settings, facilities, activities and programmes; and a few possible implications related to play in a polar or sub-polar climate found in Canada's Northwest Territories. It begins with a brief, generalized overview of the annual seasonal cycle. It then looks at play settings, activities and programmes season-by-season in the context of their particular type of northern human settlement in the traditional nomadic group on the land, in the transitional native settlement, in the new northern town or city and in the new northern national parks. The new Euro-Canadian northern town takes the kind of formal, institutionalized approach to planning and programming play found in southern Canada and elsewhere.
