Dawn Ostrem
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Jan 23/02) - Bill Holden, 74, sits at his kitchen table sipping a coffee and looking out his window at the pristine frost-tipped trees outside his unit at Aven Court.

NWTsmoking stats: - 42 per cent of the population of the NWT smokes - Over 60 per cent of aboriginal adults (25-to-44) smoke - About 1,400 school children (10-to-14) smoke - Two-thirds of aboriginal children (15-to-17) smoke - More than half of girls (15-to- 17) smoke. - Second-hand smoke in kids has been linked to asthma, ear infections, bronchitis and pneumonia - 80 per cent of all children are exposed to second-hand smoke - There are over 7,000 adults who have successfully quit smoking.

It's one of the few moments during the day that he isn't breathing in the pure oxygen dispensed through plastic tubing and a mask from an oxygen tank.

"I'm on oxygen most of the time," he says, breathing slightly heavier than most people, with on elbow propped on the kitchen table. "If I'm sitting here and don't talk too long, I'll be alright."

Holden doesn't attribute his condition all to smoking. His condition is not emphysema, but chronic bronchitis and sarcoidosis -- a growth in the lungs, he says he attributes to inhaling industrial dust during his years working in construction and for the mining industry.

"There is no doubt smoking had some part," he added.

Holden quit smoking 15 years ago, after learning his condition had left him with 20 per cent lung capacity.

Holden is quick to sympathise with smokers, claiming just because he quit he's not going to tell others they should, too.

"How can they talk?" he says about activists who were never lured to light up. "I feel sorry for the person that smokes but I am not going to condemn them.

"Because of what I went through and what I had to do to stop, I have walked in those shoes."

It took a lot for Holden to quit after 25 years of the habit. His condition was worsening and after a cold turned into pneumonia he quit cold turkey.

"I wish I had never started smoking but at my time, in our generation, it was sort of a classy thing, I suppose."

Now, years later, it is hardly popular to be a smoker when popularity is gauged by where one can find an indoor smoking corner. Gone are the days of lighting up on an airline or in a hospital waiting room.

More people are quitting. More people outside the Northwest Territories, who are not teenagers, that is.

The NWT's chief medical officer, Dr. Andre Corriveau, said smoking tops the list for causing the most health problems in the NWT. It is expected to be the root cause of $10 million worth of health care expenditures here per year.

"It counts for a third of the cancers and a quarter of our deaths," Corriveau says.

"I think we have made some progress compared to other issues but we still have a long way to go."

The 2000 report called Smoke Alarm, released by the Department of Health and Social Services, paints a scary picture because of its statistics. But perhaps that has little effect yet because of the bleak picture it paints about attitudes.

It is suggested that smoking is considered a normal, acceptable and social behaviour making findings -- such as 69 per cent of women smokers continuing to puff during pregnancy -- less likely to be absorbed.

That report lays out three ways that public health officials can encourage individuals to make the individual choice to quit.

One community at a time

Public health should demystify the idea that smoking is acceptable for kids, that smoking is acceptable in the presence of kids and find succession aids, Corriveau says.

"There is no one person that claim to do it all," he adds. "Most battles have been won one community at a time."

Holden sees the situation more as one person at a time. He has a 12-year-old granddaughter who is against smoking, he says proudly.

If she decided to take it up, "I would not say to her to quit because it is like waving a red flag in front of a bull," he says, regarding most teenagers. "I would say, 'have a look at me. This could happen to you.'"