On March 21 1974, Mr. Justice T.R. Berger was appointed by the government of Canada to conduct an inquiry and report on the terms and conditions that ought to be imposed on a proposed Mackenzie Valley Pipeline. Berger's first action was to visit communities up and down the Mackenzie River and over the mountains to the Yukon Territory, in order to meet the people whose lives he was going to inquire into. It was a 10,000-mile trip by helicopter, canoe, jet and bush plane that took Berger to Tuktoyaktuk, Aklavik, Fort McPherson and almost all of the 27 communities that would be affected in some way by the proposed pipeline. The inquiry commenced with preliminary hearings in Yellowknife, Inuvik, Whitehorse and Ottawa in April and May 1974. The formal hearings began in March 1975 and lasted until November 1976. Community hearings were also held in the Northwest Territories and almost all of the provinces between April 1975 and August 1976. Mr. Justice Berger's report was submitted to the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development in 1977.

Mr. Hemstock was born in Hanna, Alberta in 1921. After graduating from the University of Alberta with a BSc in Mining Engineering in 1943, Alex Hemstock began working for Imperial Oil on the Canol project in Norman Wells. In 1945 Alex Hemstock met Emily Keeley, who was also working in Norman Wells for Imperial Oil at the time. They were married soon after. As an employee of Imperial Oil, Alex Hemstock was tasked with doing an assessment of the CANOL infrastructure in 1944 when the project was shut down. Following his time on the Canol project, Alex Hemstock returned to the University of Alberta and obtained a MSc in Soil Mechanics in 1947, and continued to do work related to geology and environmental studies for the remainder of his life. He passed away in 2010 in Calgary, Alberta.