Southern reports of civil war in Yellowknife greatly exaggerated
Kevin Wilson
Northern News Services
Yellowknife (Apr 11/01) - Relax, Yellowknife. That massively wet noise you heard Saturday was just the sound of city residents simultaneously spitting out their first sip of morning coffee when they opened up the National Post.
James Cudmore, the Post's reporter in Edmonton, caught a glimpse of CBC North's coverage of our Caribou Carnival co-queen dustup. On Saturday, the story Yellowknifer broke last week about controversy over who really won the carnival crown made the front page of the Post.
Yellowknife, Cudmore wrote, "has been rocked by a scandal."
In retrospect, Cudmore said he was "not sure" if Yellowknifers are actually being rocked or not.
"There was," said Cudmore, "a little bit of torque applied to the story."
However, since the story ran, he said he has "received calls from CJCD. I've received a reply from Ms. Forget, and from Christiane Boyd."
Mayor Gord Van Tighem was in Edmonton when the story broke.
In his absence, deputy Mayor Dave McCann said, "Bet it makes us look like real hicks, eh?"
He hadn't seen the article yet, but promised to call back as soon as he looked it up on his computer.
When McCann called back, he said that he had just spoken to Van Tighem. His Worship, it seems, had a copy of the Post article thrust at him.
Van Tighem did manage to find a silver lining in L'affaire Caribou.
"They did really well on explaining what goes on at carnival," he said.
A not-very exhaustive search of southern daily papers shows that Caribou Carnival was the impetus for two stories last week.
Everyone knows the Caribou Queen saga, but the city also merited a brief mention in the Edmonton Journal for our bulging drunk tanks during carnival weekend.
For his part, Cudmore thinks the drunk tank story is the worse of the two. Of course, he didn't write that one.
For the record: The Carnival committee has never said who sold the most tickets, and, no, there will not be a recount.
