Monday, November 29, 1999
In a move more noble in its gesture than in its application, Royal Oak will be held accountable for the environmental disaster known as the Colomac mine.
At least that is what officials at DIAND are saying.
Colomac, on Indin lake about 200 kilometres north of Yellowknife, was a gold mine owned by Royal Oak. The mine was mothballed in 1997. Royal Oak, you will recall, is bankrupt.
The company is now in receivership and the receivers are PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Royal Oak is accused of allowing cyanide-laced tailings to leak into neighbouring lakes. There has been more than one crisis at the mine's tailing ponds, the most desperate being in 1998, when the tailings pond came within inches of overflowing.
Charges have been laid against the defunct owners, alleging that they misled water resources officers and that they violated the terms of their water licence.
It is important that these charges have been laid. What will be interesting to see is where the ultimate responsibility for the mess lies. Lawyers working for PricewaterhouseCoopers will represent Royal Oak at the hearings.
Should fines be levied, for instance, who will pay them? Will the principals of Royal Oak be held liable? Some are still in the mining business.
When mine operators act irresponsibly, they should be held accountable, and shouldn't be able to hide behind shrouds of corporate closures and things such as numbered companies.
After all, negligent fathers are chased down for childcare payments, regardless of their current financial state. This is a good opportunity to set a legal precedent for environmental responsibility. With the mega-projects under way in the North in search of diamonds, it will be useful to have some tested laws in place.
That isn't to suggest that the diamond mines are environmentally unsound; it is to say that we need environmental laws with teeth.
Northern dentists are faced with what they're calling a disaster in dental care. Throughout the North, dentists are filling and pulling baby teeth -- a practice rarely performed in the rest of Canada, but reaching epidemic proportions here.
Well-meaning parents are feeding their kids too much sugar, the dentists say. Appeasing children with a baby bottle may quiet a crying baby, but soaking little teeth in sugar rots teeth.
The problem isn't in the diagnosis, dentists know what is wrong. The problem is in getting the message across.
While an earnest effort has been made to inform parents, perhaps a more radical approach needs to be taken.
Perhaps using role models to speak to their peers in parenting would work. Or, failing that, how about pulling the parents' teeth at the same time? That lesson might sink in.
Too often in Nunavut, we see grief and loss overcome our friends and family members and the effects, if not fatal, can be permanently debilitating.
That's why it's important for us to look to the Seltzer family for an important lesson.
Mark Seltzer and Marilyn Chan drowned at sea in Pond Inlet in July of 1998 while they were kayaking. Family members traversed the world to get to the North Baffin hamlet to take part in the search and rescue.
The news was not good. The pair were lost at sea.
While the event was indeed devastating, the surviving family members managed to see through their pain. Part of the reason why they were so successful was because of the warmth and empathy they were treated with in both Pond Inlet and their own community of Toronto.
That helping hand, that sense of understanding, grew and finally culminated in the establishment of what has come to be known as the Seltzer Chan Pond Inlet Foundation.
An incorporated charity, the foundation strives to financially assist residents of Pond Inlet in projects or endeavours that will benefit individuals and the community as a collective.
In keeping with the spirit and respect that so guided the lives of Mark and Marilyn, foundation members consulted with the hamlet and it was decided that a local committee would be the best way to ensure that funds were appropriately and most effectively spent.
The end result?
A family that found a way to deal with the loss of their loved ones in a manner that kept their memory alive while channelling the sadness into a productive and tangible project.
Not everybody will be able to rally in such a way, but if we all managed to find the silver lining in such a sad event, we might very well find a way of changing the negative impact grief has on Nunavummiut.
Moving the Mackenzie River Basin Board secretariat North to Fort Smith is good news for the people of Smith and also makes sense.
The river systems in the NWT flow North from the 60th parallel. The danger is that our rivers become a sewer system for pulp mill effluent, heavy metals and toxins from southern industry.
Besides the good news about jobs, the monitoring agency should have always been near the rivers affected by pollution, not the polluters.
The mayor of Smith, board member Sonny MacDonald and MP Ethel Blondin-Andrew deserve the credit for bringing the jobs North. Common sense is not always easy to explain to southern bureaucrats.
Let the rest of the world have the Stanley Cup and the Super Bowl. When it comes to the true test of who's a champion, we'll be watching the finish line in Arctic Bay next spring.
That's where you will be able to see the winner of the second annual dog race. The mushers will start from Pond Inlet, head to Iglulik and then head back up North to Arctic Bay.
First prize is a whopping $20,000.
That's big money, but whoever gets it will have earned it, there's no doubt about that.
As well as being a great sporting event, the race is a wonderful way to revive the challenges and the dignity of traditional life on the land.
We wish all the racers good luck.