A bleak outpost several hundred miles beyond the back of nowhere, Yellowknife is a long way to come for a game of hockey.
Just 300 miles from the Arctic Circle, and twice as far from the nearest city, it is the last stop in a big expanse of nothing.
But today this was where the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge came for a game of street hockey, or shinny, on the shores of Lake Frame.
The Duke, being the have-a-go sort who rarely needs much encouragement to indulge in ball sports, had a few shots at goal, under the tutelage of the Premier of the Northwest Territories, Floyd Roland, who happens to be a former hockey player.
The Duchess, being of a slightly more retiring disposition, explained that she was wearing high heels, and restricted herself to starting the game by dropping the ball.
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While the Duchess managed to resist the calls from the crowd to “take a shot, Kate”, the Duke was determined not just to take a shot at goal, but to score. He told the 6ft 3in goalkeeper Calvin Lomen, 20: “You realise you’ve got to let one in!”
Mr Lomen said: “I tried to let it go in but it hit my stick instead.”
It is, however, not entirely clear whether the Duke was aiming for the goal at all. When Mr Roland showed him how to do it, he asked the Duke which one he wanted to hit: meaning, of course, the cameramen and photographers lined up behind the goal.
“The one in the top corner,” said William. The one in the top corner duly received a ball right in his autofocus.
The Duke was clearly inspired by his mentor. His own score? Two saves and a cameraman.
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Perhaps he was just getting one in for his wife. The Duchess, who was wearing a cream linen three-quarter length sleeve dress by the high street designer Malene Birger, told one of the players: “I’m not used to the cameras, there are so many!”
During the traditional greeting ceremony, members of the Inuktitut and Chipewyan tribes were among those who welcomed the royal couple to the regional capital of the Northwest Territories, a province the size of France, Spain and Portugal combined, but with a population of just 43,000.
They danced and performed a prayer song on caribou-skin drums.
William, perhaps emboldened by the success of his schoolboy French, thanked them first in the local Dene language (“Mahsi cho”) and then in Inuvialuit (“Kay-na-nuck-puck”). And, of course, in French.
He told them: “This place is what Canada is all about - vast open beauty, and tough, resilient, friendly people.”
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Then local teenagers demonstrated their skills in Arctic sports including the Alaskan High Kick, which involves balancing on one hand and kicking a target. A group of young people played hand games, which seemed to be a cross between a hand jive, rock-scissors-paper and air guitar: the Duke and Duchess, who had a guide to explain what the perplexing game was all about, seemed to find it all extremely diverting.
The Duchess was given by the regional government a diamond polar bear brooch and the Duke a pair of diamond polar bear cufflinks: Yellowknife, once a gold town, now bases its wealth on diamond mining. In the Dogrib language its name is Somba K’e, or “Where The Money Is”.
The couple were also given Canadian Olympic hockey jerseys - “Cambridge 1” for her and “Cambridge 2” for him.
Later in the day they were due to take a float plane to a Ranger station at Blachford Lake Lodge, a remote outpost used for surveillance patrols in the vast wilderness of the north of the region.
However the northern leg of the couple’s Canadian tour is not just about recreational pastimes. Yesterday the Canadian government announced an additional visit in their itinerary to the fire and flood-ravaged town of Slave Lake in northern Alberta.
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In May hundreds of buildings were destroyed and the whole population of 7,000 evacuated when wildfires swept through the area. It was the largest evacuation in the province’s history.
Then, last month, just as residents were starting to rebuild their homes, torrential rain caused widespread flooding.
The announcement is further evidence that the Duke sees visits to areas affect by natural disaster as an important part of his role. In March he visited Christchurch, the New Zealand city devasted by an earthquake, and the survivors of the Australian floods in Queensland and Victoria.