There’s a particular kind of man who looks at a map of northern Canada and thinks, “Yeah, let’s raise a kid there.” My mate Drew is one of them.

We were at school together from 9 to 18, bonded over a shared disregard for authority, a love of football, and channeling Muddy Waters on the guitar (he could rip, I mostly sat nearby and nodded enviously).

He lives in the Yukon now, where moose outnumber people 2:1, winters tickle -30, and the wildlife could end your bloodline with alarming efficiency. He’s a university professor, adventure froth-lord, and all-round grabber of life’s proverbials who inspires me immensely.

What impresses me most is how he’s raising his 7 year-old son, B. Backcountry skiing, wild camping, paddling into very remote places with no signal or easy exit. Most of us are trying to squeeze a bit more nature into family life but Drew’s built the whole thing around it. I wanted to see what that actually looks like, and what the rest of us can steal.

I’ll come at this one from a different angle as a slightly older parent who had maybe established a few priorities by the time we had our kid.

Western Canada in general has incredible access to mountains, lakes, rivers, trails, and coastlines, and back when my partner and I were kid-free, we enjoyed all of those opportunities — backcountry skiing, hiking, paddling, surfing and camping — within a few hours’ drive of North Vancouver, BC, where we were based at the time.

With a baby on the way, however, we very deliberately decided we wanted to move to a smaller northern community with even easier access to the kinds of activities we hoped to do as a family.

We landed even further north than intended, in Whitehorse, Yukon, where our son was born back in 2018.

Seven years later, our gambit has definitely paid off.

Living in this remote, spectacular and sparsely populated northern territory has taught me much more about the value of being outdoors, and just about everything I know about being a dad.

The Yukon is a place where people get out on the land not because it is a recreational choice, but because it’s how you live here.

We don’t have much “indoor” space in town. The bowling alley shut this year, we have an ancient but charming cinema that shows one kids’ movie a month, the internet can be sketchy, there isn’t a mall or shopping centre to speak of, the bright lights of Vancouver are a two-hour flight or 27-hour drive away, phone service disappears on the edge of town for many, many hours of road time, and toys take a good while to get here via Amazon Prime.

Instead, in a territory twice the size of the UK with barely 40,000 people, we have hundreds of kilometres of cross-country ski trails right in town, wild rivers and huge lakes in every direction, some of the highest and most remote mountain ranges on the continent, and incredibly diverse wildlife including black and grizzly bears, bison, moose, caribou, elk, mountain sheep and goats.

There’s a family-friendly little ski hill, boreal forest in every direction, and endless trail networks for mountain biking and running.

A large part of what makes the Yukon different is the 14 Yukon First Nations, who have a major cultural, political and social presence on their traditional lands. It would be impossible to live here and remain unaware of the huge importance the land and water have for Northern Indigenous peoples, and the ethics of Yukon First Nations are embedded in institutions in all kinds of ways.

Yukon families can be rather ‘hardcore’, taking newborns on multi-day canoeing excursions, winter camping in -30°C temperatures with toddlers, boating, sledding, ATVing with kids, fishing and hunting as a family activity. Many, perhaps most, children here grow up viewing land-based activities as the norm rather than the exception.

As a general rule, Yukon kids on a Monday morning are less impressed by who completed the newest video game than who went ski touring on a 2,000m peak, ice-fished an impressive lake trout, or harvested their first bison.

Being a dad here has simply taught me how important being outdoors is for children. Out here, it isn’t something you schedule or squeeze in around everything else, it’s just part of life.

And as this is all my 7 year old has ever known, I’m unsure how he’d cope with a more urban lifestyle.

I’m lucky because my son is very rarely, if ever, reluctant to get outdoors.

When he was three years old, his daycare would still take the kids outside even on -30°C February days, and so as a typical Yukon kid, he is pretty resilient to most things the “wild” can throw at him.

He’s truly happiest outdoors and, as our yard backs onto essentially limitless wilderness (with plenty of apex predators wandering through) sometimes keeping him inside where we can watch him is the greater challenge.

There have for sure been weekends this summer when my partner and I wanted to get jobs done around the house and garden, but instead we’ve ended up going on an arduous hiking, canoeing, camping or fishing trip because our six-year-old demanded it. Reluctance is not a problem we have to deal with.

Once out, though, the old tricks have been useful: a bucket of stones for your toddler to chuck off the canoe, make every hike a treasure hunt, take the time to stop and build dens, shelters, snow caves, squirrel traps…basically, experience the land at their pace, not yours. You already succeeded in getting out there with them.

And leave the camera in your pocket. The only people you’re trying to impress should be your kids.

I’m a big fan of the “20 second hug”.

My wife started it to help us all chill out.

Try it.

Trail running together is awesome.

Need a break? Mum needs some quiet?

Grab the running shoes, a few gummies and some water and get out the door.

We don’t always run fast, or in the same direction, or continuously really, but we cover ground, see stuff, talk, pick up sticks and get to spend a good hour or two in the woods with very little purpose other than to be out.

B is a good little skier at our local ski hill, and this past spring we did some mellow backcountry skiing together in the big mountains, thanks to friends who towed us out on snowmobiles.

I’m a long-time ski tourer, so it’d be really good to get to ski a big objective with him one day. Maybe a gnarly Yukon north face, a Pacific Northwest volcano, or a steep couloir somewhere deep in the Alaska–Canada boundary ranges.

When I’m 50 he’ll be 15, so if my body is holding out, we’ll make it happen.

That I was always ready to throw stuff in the car and figure out a plan on the way.

I hope he realises that being outside with him is always the priority.

The plans just fall into place.

Relocating to the Yukon isn’t on many of our bingo cards, but raising kids who get as excited as B does about being outside probably should be.

You don’t need to overhaul everything either, just tilt it. A bit more time outside every week, starting now. The small decisions: launching rocks into the pond after school, picking the campsite instead of the hotel, clambering up a climbable tree together because, why not? It all adds up quicker than you think.

Next thing you know, you’re bouncing across a frozen lake on a skidoo to see your grandkids.