Friday, May 15, 1998
At first glance NWT Transport Minister Jim Antoine's plans to overhaul the Motor Vehicles Act provisions on drunk driving might seem a little harsh. For one thing, he is talking about cutting legal blood-alcohol level in half. Goodbye point-zero-eight. Hello point-zero-four.
Harsh? Yes. Too harsh? No. Not when we face the fact that NWT residents get charged with drunk driving at twice the national rate.
If the package Antoine has proposed survives public and legislative scrutiny, those who don't take their driving privileges seriously and still cling to the idiotic notion that they can handle "just one more for the road" could find themselves without a licence, without a car or even without their freedom.
Indeed, it is the proposals regarding licence suspension and vehicle impoundment that we find most provocative, because deterrence is really what the law is all about. The point is to get the potential drunks off the road in the first place, and not have to worry about whether 40 or 80 milligrams of blood is enough to impair the ability to drive responsibly.
Losing a driver's licence for a year on a first conviction should be enough to convince anyone thinking of driving home without the help of a sober outlook to call a cab. Those who drive at work will find themselves in double trouble.
Of course, it is a sad truth that many a driver who have lost his or her licence ignores court-ordered driving bans and instead prays nothing happens to attract police attention, making a mockery of the suspension. But do that under the new plan, and say goodbye to your car or truck for a month.
Unforgiving measure like these are necessary to impress the message that drinking and driving is anything but a victimless offence.
Just ask anyone who has lost a loved one to an intoxicated driver. About three are added to the list every year.
Starting with a casual suggestion from her father to give hockey a try, Ally Simpson has risen to the ranks of the elite at the ripe old age of 15.
She has been invited to the women's national team training camp and is looking down the road to a hockey scholarship at a university in the United States.
Perhaps her success comes in part from playing in boys' leagues since the age of eight, when she was met with grittier competition.
With her achievements, perhaps women's hockey will get the full recognition it deserves as a sport.
We can all think of more fun ways to spend our free time than with a "service organization." There's fishing, watching the playoffs, whipping up a gourmet meal, working on the truck, taking up skydiving....
But without the Elks, the Lions, Rotary and other such groups, this city would be a poorer place. We've said it before and we'll say it again: what would this place be without volunteers?
The Yellowknife Elks' 50th anniversary is testimony to the strength of a good idea. We look forward to another 50 years of good deeds, generous contributions of time and money and unbridled love of community. Hear hear.
Inuvik needs a facelift
Ian Elliot
Inuvik Drum
Is there anything more enjoyable than taking a spring walk in town on one of those calm spring evenings with the sun just thinking about setting at 10 p.m. and enjoying the sight of last year's garbage working its way out of melting snowdrifts?
Or driving around the borders of town, seeing plastic grocery bags adorning the scrub like a low-budget haunted house around Halloween. Or the sight of garbage cans -- thoughtfully placed around town to reduce the litter problem -- that haven't been emptied in so long you'd probably find copies of the Drum at the bottom from the days when it was printed on letter-sized paper.
This town is a mess at this time of year. Never has a spring cleanup been so badly needed, and Sunday's fire at the dump doesn't count. Although you have to think that when even the town dump is identified as an eyesore that has to be cleaned up, there's a problem.
And the worst thing about litter, like minor acts of vandalism left unrepaired, is that it tends to feed on itself. A famous example is Disneyland, which is utterly spotless. Researchers did an experiment where they dropped candy-bar wrappers and other junk to see how long it took staff there to clean it up. Less than a minute, but it wasn't employees who did it -- it was other visitors, people who would think nothing of tossing an empty pop can out the window where they lived and who would no sooner pick up someone else's trash than they would stick their hand into a running woodchipper to clear a jam.
We're not Disneyland -- Bannockland, maybe -- but the principle is the same. Clean streets, a few coats of paint and a bit of collective pride in our surroundings do more to reduce littering than an army of street sweepers, which we don't have, or garbage bins on every corner, which wouldn't be a bad thing.
A few common-sense things come to mind. Garbage bins in town are overflowing and never seem to be emptied. Mountains of trash overflow the bins and spills down the sides. Empty the things and give people somewhere to toss their trash.
Fix the big bins in town to prevent ravens from making an even bigger mess of the town than we're doing by ourselves. Get involved in the annual spring cleanup campaign.
The town has hired someone to go around in the summer cleaning up the worst of the ongoing mess, but that doesn't mean the problem is taken care of -- that is the problem. We assume someone else is going to clean up our mess, and it remains our mess.
Visiting the "zoo"
Arthur Milnes
Deh Cho Drum
Last Friday, I embarked on a trip to Fort Liard and then on to Fort Nelson, B.C.
Little did I know that just about every animal imaginable was going to make an appearance during my trip.
About an hour out of Simpson, something told me to slow down. Lo and behold, a black bear came into site. He was happily munching away on some berries on the side of the road and didn't care less that I was stopping to stare at him.
Being the enterprising journalist I am, I reached for the camera and came right up close to him. Then, I bravely aimed my camera at the beast to preserve the moment for all time. He looked my way as if posing and I pushed the shutter button.
Alas, I hadn't put film in my camera. Buddy the bear wasn't going to pose twice and took off. I continued.
About 40 kilometres from Liard, I came around a corner to see something I could hardly believe. In front of me were 26 bison -- I know, I counted -- and they were in no hurry to move.
So, I honked my horn
like all good city folk and waited for the bison to move for me.
They didn't.
This monstrous bison kept turning around and glaring at me.
Oh boy, I thought, another media paranoid Northern resident. Just what I need.
So, I waited. If they crept toward Liard, I did too. When the herd swung back, so did I. When they decided to spend 35 minutes simply doing nothing in the middle of the highway, that's what I did.
We were in sync.
The bison gang was more than happy to pose for the camera. So, I shot off a bunch of pictures. They seemed to like that and made a path for me to drive by as soon as my last picture was done.
After visiting Liard -- where I saw two more bison in hamlet limits -- I was on to Fort Nelson. Just north of the border, I met up with five bison. This group was a little more polite than the first herd and quickly moved into the ditch as I approached. Good bison.
A rabbit was the next to come into view. From a distance, I thought I had made an important natural discovery. Squinting through the windshield, it looked like a kangaroo was standing in the middle of the road. Visions of a freelance piece to the National Enquirer danced about my head.
Now, that would have been a story. Even Farley Mowat never -- unless it's in his next book -- said he'd met kangaroos in the North.
Alas, it was a rabbit and he moved quickly into the forest as I got closer. My Enquirer dreams had died.
A fox came into view near Fort Nelson and then, for my final animal visitor of the day, I had a bear run in front of me shortly before I hit the Alaska Highway.
It was a bear of a day all round.