Division of the NWT is easy enough, politically, but when it comes to money, breaking up will indeed be hard to do.

What to do with the NWT Power Corporation is a good example. The battle has begun over how to divide its eastern and western halves, over whether to divide them at all. There are good arguments on both sides, but whatever happens, someone is bound to be left unsatisfied.

Western NWT leaders say the assets of NWT Power should be split according to population and revenue, meaning the West should get more than 60 per cent of the spoils and the East the remaining 40. Nunavut would like to see a 50-50 split.

The thing to keep in mind is that Yellowknife rate-payers now subsidize a portion of almost everyone else's power bills, at least the first 700 kilowatt-hours, which are billed at the city rate even though actual costs can be many times higher.

The question is, should Yellowknifers continue to provide the subsidy to consumers who will be living not just in other communities, but another territory altogether?

On the one hand, division of the NWT changes little in the real sense. We are all still Northerners, sharing the same huge piece of geography, the same telephone network, airlines and history.

On the other, political independence is about a taking responsibility. Nunavut is about more than just a new legislative assembly. It's about assuming control over the things that matter to it's residents.

We find the second argument more persuasive. While bearing the full cost of electricity will, at least at first, mean higher costs for many Nunavut residents, it should also encourage innovation and conservation measures that can offset some of the increase. Perhaps NWT Power will learn that there are new ways of doing business, just as Nunavut's politicians are inventing new ways of running a territory.

Aurora College is busy teaming up with the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology NAIT, one of the country's better schools of technology, in hopes of boosting the number of Northern hires in the diamond industry.

The agreement, which will ensure Aurora College credits will be accepted at NAIT, will also see joint NAIT-Aurora programs delivered in the North by as early as next fall. Both colleges also signed an agreement with the NWT Mine Training Committee, to ensure these programs are geared to specific jobs as diamond mines develop.

Considering the workforce will only grow in the coming years, let's just hope this important agreement isn't too little, too late.

I'll never understand the phenomenon of teacher-bashing. Never.

First off, let me admit my biases and then move on. One, my dad was a teacher, principal and school board official. Two, my wife sometimes supply teaches at the local schools. Three, I sometimes wish I'd gone off to UBC as I originally planned to take that teaching degree. Instead, I chose journalism school, though I rarely regret that choice.

So, if you feel that any of the above significantly compromise my position, stop reading.

Last week, I had the good fortune to stop by a local kindergarten classroom. Stepping into it, I was in another world. Teacher Val Gendron was leading her excited students through the wonderful world of space.

Each kid was dressed in an astronaut suit and Gendron had a screen up on the wall where pictures of planets, moons and stars were flashed. Along the way, she asked the kids questions about what they were seeing and you could tell the little ones were enjoying the ride.

Here was a teacher in action who was doing the type of work that could truly spark a young mind.

In Fort Liard, it's been my fortune to get to know Leo Ehrenberg, computer guru. That man has opened the world of computers to kids like few can. There's a teacher.

The list could go on -- Donna in Jean Marie River, Ralph in Trout Lake, Barb and Barb in Fort Providence, in Kakisa John, Roy and Geri in Wrigley and Cindy and Wayne in Nahanni Butte and the numerous others I've met at both schools in Fort Simpson.

So, it was with these folks in mind that I greeted the latest grumblings about teacher's salaries, holidays and benefits I recently heard.

What bunk.

With few exceptions -- I know a few dud journalists, bankers, politicians, constructions workers and others, also -- I think we're served pretty well by our teachers.

I like to see how long some of those who shout loudest against teachers would last in the trenches. And, I doubt many of these complainers would have the dedication, like most teachers, to spend the thousands of dollars and invest years in university in order to have the honor of becoming teachers.

In the 1990s, they put up with a lot that they really shouldn't have to, often being asked to serve as social workers as well as educators.

Perhaps I feel an affinity with them as I learned a long time ago now in my job that some people find it easier to shoot the messenger than to examine themselves. It seems the same with teachers. It's sometimes easier for parents to attack them than it is to look at themselves.

Whatever the reason, I'm a fan of teachers.

And, I don't care who knows it.

You have to love Canadian banks. They are currently spending millions of dollars running a series of television ads that admit that, yes, in the past they haven't done such a great job in the customer service department and they now realize it and, gosh darn it, they're going turn that around and act differently from now on.

From the tone of the ads, it's apparent that public dissatisfaction with them is news only to them, and only quite recently.

The whole campaign plays quite strangely in Inuvik, 7where we're down to one bank and an automated teller -- the Bank of Montreal having announced earlier this month that it plans to close down its storefront, shed most of its staff and move in with another business where it will offer a limited range of services.

The move is part of a large-scale corporate reorganization, the purpose of which became apparent last week when the Bank of Montreal and the Royal Bank, Canada's largest, announced plans to merge and create North America's 10th largest financial institution. Presumably to better serve the needs of people like us with a few hundred dollars in a chequing account.

Canada's banks say they are listening to people now. They're certainly not listening to us, because no one up here was asking for fewer banks and less service.

So on a collective scale, they're not doing so well. But who knows, maybe they're making their policies a little less arrogant or lowering their service charges or something.

Well, I had some money in an account at another bank in Yellowknife and when I got here, I was told I could not transfer it up here unless one of the tellers in Yellowknife could confirm my identity with a physical description. Now I had been in Yellowknife just three months and never developed a close working relationship with any tellers, largely because the bank charged me extra to talk to them.

So the option that my bank and I agreed upon was I would withdraw the money at one bank machine and run across the street to deposit it in another bank machine over a period of several days. Not all of it, mind you; I have to leave some money in Yellowknife to pay the service charges the bank needs for allowing me to withdraw my own money myself because they won't do it for me.

And I had to fill out a set of papers to cancel the Yellowknife account because if I just withdrew my money, there would be nothing left to pay the ongoing service charges for not using the account and the banks would be forced to devastate my credit rating.

The whole experience serves as a nice little reminder of how important we little cogs are to the large machines of Canadian banks. Nice of them to let us know they've changed.