BY JAMES HRYNYSHYN

Great Slave Lake isn't quite warm enough in early summer to dive into for houseboat anchors, but sometimes, that's what life requires of us "aquabillies" who live on Yellowknife Bay. Fortunately, my duties in the operation didn't oblige me to test the waters. It was Alan, my future neighbour, who wore the wetsuit and took the plunge.

Alan's first choice of a site for his new home, as it happened, was ruffling the feathers of some who feared for their own houseboats, should one man's castle collide with another's during the inevitable autumn storms. Alan didn't have to move, but he did. On Yellowknife Bay, there are no zoning requirements or building permits. It's anarchy, really. Within a football field of the city of Yellowknife's taxable properties float our 20 habitable testaments to Northern individualism.

The peace we keep is sometimes tenuous, but I can think of no other place that so convincingly gives the lie to the tragedy of the commons. Those who share the waters of the bay are unlikely candidates for an experiment in laissez-faire politics. There's the failed politician turned Masonic conspiracy theorist, the former helicopter pilot, jacks of all trades, artisans, a schoolteacher, one Crown prosecutor and me, a science writer who has yet to put down a real anchor. We have little in common beyond a willingness to ferry double-thick, plastic-lined pails of human waste between our floating homes and the city sewage-treatment pond. We don't even agree on the safest method of traversing the ice in the spring and fall, when neither cars nor canoes are viable options.

But we do get along. Alan eventually found a secluded spot for his new houseboat on the far side of Jolliffe Island, which bifurcates the neighbourhood. He no longer poses a threat, but when word got around that the anchors he had fabricated from used grader blades might not be up to snuff, there was no shortage of ideas and offers of help.

In the 27 years it's been since the first intrepid malcontent put a shack on a block of Styrofoam, an average of one new houseboat a year has joined Yellowknife Bay. Do-it-yourselfers assemble the floats and flooring in the summer, finish the interior over the winter, when the ice makes it possible to deliver items like stoves and chesterfields, and pray that come breakup the following spring, everything stays upright and where it's supposed to be. Some survive the extreme seasons better than others. You can still find the odd piece of Styrofoam wreckage on the island, and Alan missed his best friend's wedding this spring for fear of not being on guard for the first big melt.

Gary, who owns the houseboat I live on, has been here almost from the beginning. He sometimes wonders whether this self-regulating organism can expect to survive much longer. Life is pretty damn attractive out here. Gary talks of plasma physics and the forces of molecular repulsion -- one or two more houseboats, and the whole thing could enter some kind of phase transition. Others are more upbeat and less cryptic. "Everybody's got something to say when a new houseboat moves in," says our neighbour, Tony. "Technically, the new guy can say, 'I'll put it wherever I want.' But they don't."

Maybe enlightened self-interest will keep the peace. Maybe the spectre of turning the bay into a high-density suburb will deter the further migration of those most likely to consider a life on floats. The best spots in the bay are taken, and you can't set anchor on the approaches to a bush-plane floatbase. In other words, maybe the very things that make this place special will make sure no one else, as Gary says, "spoils the party."

I'm not convinced the party isn't about to end. But it's hard to worry much when you commute by canoe. OK, I get to work by canoe only in summer, but then thanks to the absence of street lamps, we get northern lights to die for.

According to the address on his NWT driver's license, James Hrynyshyn lives on the brown houseboat in Yellowknife Bay.

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