Wealthy Americans summered in this scenic region from the 19th Century onwards, as did many artists including the famous 20th-cntury Canadian painter Alexander Young Jackson.
Yellowknife Bay was named for an area in the Canadian Arctic where Grotzinger worked as a young man, which has rock formations nearly four billion years old.
Among the speakers were US actors Hayek and Matthew McConaughey, award-winning scientist and environmentalist Dr David Suzuki, Canadian astronaut Julie Payette and Bindi Irwin, the young daughter of the late Australian wildlife expert, Steve Irwin.
Things have changed since then, when Canadian university campuses and the coffee shops of Toronto's Yorkville hippie enclave were crawling with young Americans who had burned their draft cards.