Adam Johnson
Northern News Services
Published Wednesday, September 5, 2007

YELLOWKNIFE - Usually it takes more than a cartoon to get Yellowknifers' backs up, but this one hit a nerve.

A recent editorial cartoon from the Edmonton Sun, mocking Yellowknife as the location for this week's Edmonton Oilers rookie training camp, has Yellowknifers fuming.

Faxes like this one have been popping up all over Yellowknife, urging Yellowknifers to fire off pictures of the city to the Edmonton Sun.

The Tim Dolighan piece shows Oilers assistant coach Rob Daum standing with another staff member beside a sign that reads "Welcome to Yellowknife, N.W.T."

"Of all the places to hold rookie camp..." the staff member quips

"It makes Edmonton look like great place to live" Daum retorts.

"Brilliant," is the response.

And that's it. But it has some Yellowknifers angry enough to e-mail photos of Yellowknife scenery to the Sun to show them just how beautiful the capital can be (that's mailbag@emdsun.com, if you're curious).

"It goes to show you how much these dumbasses in Edmonton know about our fair city," said Bob Ross, the owner of Surly Bob's Sports Bar.

The 28-year Yellowknife resident put the cartoon up near the cash register at his bar so other patrons could get a chuckle out of it.

He said he thought the one-sided dislike the comic evokes was quite unfair. After all, Edmonton is a Yellowknifer's gateway to, well, everywhere else.

"You don't see people here ..." he paused to think of a printable word, "pooping on the city of Edmonton.

"We're not that rude up here."

Ross had an urge to fire a few return shots over the bow, but "being an Oilers fan, it wouldn't be very polite," he said.

Of course, this isn't the first time mainstream southern media have thrown scorn at Yellowknife. Last year, a freelance column in the Toronto Star claimed one in 20 Yellowknifers are addicted to crack cocaine. It also said 50th Street was widely known as the "Gaza Strip," a "local" parlance actual Yellowknifers had never heard of.

This time, however, the cartoon stuck to the basics: a small wooden sign with 'Welcome to Yellowknife' written on it.

"It's bigger than that, and it's got an airplane on it," said Mayor Gord Van Tighem with a chuckle, referring to the city welcome sign on Highway 3 featuring an old Ward Air Bristol Freighter on top.

He said he wasn't taking the slight too seriously, though he had contacted Edmonton city council, who in turn planned to send in letters to the Sun.

"I'm focusing on looking forward to their (training camp) visit, and all our young players getting to meet their players," he said.

However, the city did get in on the campaign, which included sending photos of Yellowknife from the city's extensive archive.

"We're e-mailing some very nice pictures," the mayor said. "Ours are very big."Calls to Graham Dalziel, the Edmonton Sun's editor-in-chief, were not returned at deadline.

Sun columnist Kerry Diotte did write in his column Sept. 2 that the Sun's mailbag had been "inundated" with pictures of Yellowknife, however.

"The cartoon might have been a slight to northerners but it wasn't particularly kind to Edmonton, either," he wrote.

He then went on to poke a bit more fun at Yellowknife's buggy summers, frosty winters and "zero hours of daylight in the winter."

"Truth be told, we both live in frozen places most people wouldn't move to, but we find charms that others don't," he wrote.