Yellowknife (Apr 11/03) - A 15-year Inuvik tradition almost came to an end this year with a bad crop of daffodils on British Columbia's lower mainland.

The daffodil is considered to be the first flower of spring and was adopted by the Canadian Cancer Society's flower of hope.

Each spring, friends of the society canvas their towns selling the flowers to raise a bit of money, but also to bring awareness to cancer. The society has held the annual sale throughout Canada for the past 48 years.

The Inuvialuit Regional Corporation have been doing the daffodil promotion for the past 15 years, but that almost came to an end this year.

Arlene Hache, the Canadian Cancer Society's program co-ordinator for community services for the NWT, said the flowers had a bad start this year.

"There was poor growing conditions this year," Hache said. "When the daffodils are usually being cut to be sent to us, they were in mud."

The society doesn't want to distribute poor quality, but the demand prompted Hache to petition the growers for a later delivery.

"I just had so many people calling, wishing the daffodils were still coming, because they are such a symbol of hope and spring is coming," she said.

When she called the grower, he said that they crop had improved and his sales had slipped so he was glad to take an order from the North.

Peggy Jay, communications advisor at the IRC, said Inuvik normally takes 23 boxes, but because of time constraints they only took 16 boxes this year.

"Normally we bring in about 24 boxes for Inuvik and region," Jay said. "It was harder to organize transportation to the outlying communities, so we are just going to do it for Inuvik this year, just so there is a presence here."

She said they will take a box down to Fort McPherson and one to Tsiigehtchic, but there won't be time to get flowers shipped to Tuk, Paulatuk and Holman as they have done in previous years.

The IRC staff have done the flower sales as a corporate initiative for the past 15 years.

"It's to bring awareness to cancer and also so people have a chance to do something for cancer prevention," Jay said.

When she heard that the program might not happen this year, Jay said the staff got upset they were going to break the tradition.

"We asked for at least some flowers, if they couldn't give us the whole order," Jay said.

"They told us they'd find us some flowers as long as they were good quality."

Jay said the 1,600 daffodils were sold out Monday afternoon and they raised $3,200.