Yellowknife (Dec 06/04) - Yellowknife is run by volunteers.

Think about it. Sports, schools, charities, drama groups, aid agencies, clubs, the library, the food bank, the ski club, the hospital. You. Your kids. The entire community benefits from the extra, often unappreciated, work so many Yellowknifers do.

Volunteer Brad Hall, 19, shelves books at the Yellowknife Public Library when he's not in school at Aurora College. Oh, and he's been delivering Meals-on-Wheels since he was seven. "The best part is meeting new people," he said of volunteering. - Alex Glancy/NNSL photo

Where would Yellowknife be without volunteers?

The hard truth is that a mere handful of people go out of their respective ways to help the community while the other 93 per cent of Canadians could probably use a civics lesson.

According to Statistics Canada's National Survey of Giving, Volunteering and Participating, seven per cent of Canadians do 73 per cent of the country's volunteering.

Yesterday, Dec. 5, was International Volunteer Day. It was proclaimed by the United Nations in 1985, but this is the first year the NWT has recognized it.

It's about time, if you think about the impact of volunteers in Yellowknife. Take the Elks Lodge as just one example.

Formed in Yellowknife in 1948, the lodge boasts 350 members and 10 or 12 paid staff. Volunteers are the crux of the whole operation.

"Everything we do depends on volunteers," said manager Dave Hurley, "whether it's our bingo, our raffle, our dinners, or any other fundraising activity."

Without the Elks, Stanton Territorial Hospital would be lacking nearly $800,000 worth of equipment and there wouldn't be a hearing ward.

And would there even be a ski club if the Elks didn't own half of it? Ditto for any number of playgrounds, meals, motorized wheelchairs and the like.

And what of sports? In the simplest terms, said Ian Legaree, head coach of the Polar Bear Swim Club, if it weren't for volunteers, parents would be paying $20,000 a year so their kids could swim.

"We just couldn't do it (without volunteers)," said Legaree. "Absolutely not."

Legaree himself is a volunteer and has been with the club since 1989. He's also on the board of the Yellowknife Community Foundation.

The swim club employs 14 volunteer coaches and four paid students. Meets require an additional 30 people.

When asked to put a dollar value on the contributions of volunteers, most people hesitate and then give up. Legaree tried, and that's where the $20,000 annual membership comes in.

"If you were looking at it altogether, it's about 15 full-time jobs," he ventured.

So give it some thought -- seven per cent doing 73 per cent of the work.

Volunteer NWT's Aggie Brockman said comparable statistics don't exist for the NWT, but she reckoned they're about the same.

Maybe you feel guilty about not helping out. Maybe you just don't have time.

Whatever the case, be sure to thank the volunteers you know for the hard work -- the extra work -- they do for this community.

They've earned it.

The common characteristic among volunteers is humility. Ask them why they contribute, or whether they feel appreciated and they don't know what to say. It's just what they do.

Cappy Elkin has been in Yellowknife since 1972 and almost her entire family volunteers. "You call it volunteering, (but) you just do things that need to be done," said Elkin. "You give back to the community that gave to you."

Over the years, Elkin's family has volunteered with everything from the church, to the hospital, to the Girl Guides.

"It's community, that's all," she said.

Polar Bear Swim Club head coach Ian Legaree echoes that sentiment. "Yellowknife has been good to me and good to my family," he said.

"The best payback comes when you see a young person stay with the club for a number of years and grow into a strong, mature person."

"The groups I work with are very appreciative," said Legaree. "Those little thank you's go a long way."

"I think at the end of the day the biggest thing you can say is thank you," said Elks Lodge manager Dave Hurley."You get so much out of it. You get so much back," said Elkin. "I think you'll find most people are uncomfortable talking about it because they don't think about it," she said.