Here are some of CBC North's most-read stories of 2024
Grolar bears, paragliding mishaps, and an emergency flight landing feature in our most-read stories of 2024
Every year, CBC North publishes thousands of stories online — breaking news, investigative reporting, political coverage, community features, longform storytelling, and much more.
Some of those stories reach a huge audience, with hundreds of thousands more readers than actually live in the North.
Here are some of CBC North's most-read stories of 2024.
Yukon woman recounts grizzly attack
In June, Vanessa Leegstra of Haines Junction, Yukon, had the sort of wildlife encounter that many Yukoners dread, when she was charged and attacked by an aggressive male grizzly bear.
"He grabbed my head and wrapped his paws around me. And I just remember the claws digging into my back... I could feel him biting my arm, my head," she later recounted to CBC News, from the hospital where she was recovering from her injuries.
Leegstra credits a large plastic hair clip she happened to be wearing that day, for saving her life. She said it shattered when the bear bit down on her head, forcing him to let go and allowing Leegstra to scramble away.
Read about Leegstra's terrifying encounter here.
Sentencing of woman found guilty in Inuit identity fraud case
It was a story that generated a lot of anger and anguish, in Nunavut and beyond.
Karima Manji pleaded guilty early this year, for falsely claiming her twin daughters had Inuit status in order to defraud the Kakivak Association and Qikiqtani Inuit Association of grant and scholarship money that was only available to Inuit beneficiaries. Charges against her two daughters were dropped.
Manji took "full responsibility for the matters at hand," a Toronto courtroom heard, and was sentenced to three years in prison. She was also ordered to repay the $158,000 her daughters received from the Inuit organizations.
Read more about the case here.
How one 'strange' female polar bear made a family of hybrid grolars
A research paper published last spring in the journal Conservation Genetics Resources shed more light on an unusual northern family tree.
The researchers used a new tool to look at samples from hundreds of grizzly and polar bears across Canada, Alaska and Greenland, collected between 1975 and 2015. They expected to find more polar and grizzly bear hybrids, or grolars, in the data — but only found eight, all of them descended from the same "strange" mother, a polar bear that apparently had a thing for mating with grizzlies.
Read more about this story here.
Air India emergency landing in Iqaluit
It's not uncommon for aircraft to make emergency landings in Iqaluit, as the city is close to many transpolar flight paths.
In October, an Air India flight landed in the Nunavut capital, citing an online bomb threat and saying the landing was a precautionary measure.
That left more than 200 passengers stranded for 18 hours at the Iqaluit airport's international security zone.
Read more about the incident here.
Yukon paraglider's high-altitude mishap in the Himalayas
Ben Lewis of Watson Lake, Yukon, had given himself up for dead as he got pulled higher and higher into a violent storm over the rugged Himalayan landscape in India, in October.
But somehow, the paraglider survived. A bit battered and bruised, but mostly OK after his harrowing ordeal and grateful to be alive.
Read about Lewis's misadventure here.
The challenges of charging an electric truck in Yellowknife
When Ben Baird purchased a fully electric truck, he expected to install the Level 2 charger it came with at his Yellowknife home.
But in order to provide enough power to his home for that charger, Baird said, power distributor Northland Utilities told him he'd have to pay $12,000 to upgrade the transformer in his neighbourhood as well.
Read about Baird's experience and some of the challenges of owning an EV in the North, here.
U.K. man's 510-kilometre non-stop swim down frigid Yukon River
Ross Edgley has done many long-distance swims all over the world, and is most famous for becoming the first swimmer to circumnavigate the British mainland, over 155 days in 2018.
But in June, the U.K. man set himself a new sort of challenge: a non-stop long-distance swim down a remote northern river. He chose the Yukon River, and managed to swim 510 bone-chilling kilometres over two-and-a-half days.
"Often I say with swims like this, you have to outsource common sense," Edgley said, back on dry land.
Read about his amazing feat here.