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Who can blame the people of Behchoko for wanting to vanquish the scourge of alcohol?

Just in the past few years at least three people have been found dead outside in the crippling cold of winter. Alcohol was suspected or proven to be a factor in two of those deaths.

So it's little wonder residents of Behchoko want to do something. But it was only a slim majority that voted in favour of an outright alcohol ban during an April 15 plebiscite. The tally was 256 votes for, 237 votes against.

It's a drastic measure. Those in favour of it can argue the obvious: if it's illegal to have it and harder to get, there will be less of it. It's not much different from a person on a diet – when there are chips and cookies in the cupboard, it's easier to give in to temptation. Tuktoyaktuk provided an example with a temporary ban on alcohol during the Beluga Jamboree earlier this month. The number of alcohol-related complaints dropped by almost half from 2008 due to a week of prohibiting alcohol.

Those against the move will counter that responsible drinkers will no longer be able to enjoy so much as a glass of wine among friends.

Of course, only the naive would believe that a law against booze will make it disappear altogether. Bootleggers will find a way to sell bottles of beer and spirits at exorbitant prices. There will always be a market.

The NWT has several dry communities – Whati, Lutsel K'e, Nahanni Butte, Tsiigehtchic, Gameti and Wekweeti – but they still have problems with liquor even though most of them are remote communities.

Behchoko, on the other hand, is on the road system. It's only an hour's drive from Yellowknife. As a former social worker pointed out, those with a thirst for booze will simply hop in a vehicle and less than 100 kilometres later they will have rum or whiskey in hand. The real danger, the social worker said, is that a growing number of intoxicated people may risk driving back home to Behchoko. The chances of carnage on that stretch of Highway 3 will rise.

It's a legitimate concern. But what can be done? Putting an additional highway patrol vehicle on the road, especially during weekends, would be a wise precautionary measure. People in Yellowknife will have to be ever more vigilant of people stumbling to their cars and getting behind the wheel.

As for the bootleggers, people in the community have to decide to turn them in to police.

Behchoko addictions counsellor Joe Beaverho said he doesn't expect magical results over the next year.

"People need to believe in themselves. We have to work together," he said.

He's right.

People in Behchoko don't want to trade people freezing in the snow for crash victims strewn on the side of the highway, but they had to do something and they've made their choice.

We know the consequences of doing nothing. We can anticipate the effects of the upcoming ban. As Beaverho says, we're going to have to work together.

"It sure the heck ain't Disneyland out there."

Those are the wise words of Peter Taptuna, a member of a Kugluktuk search and rescue team that tracked down two youths last spring who got lost while goose hunting.

With warmer temperatures, many people get the urge to get out on the land – and not all of them are prepared for what awaits them.

Weather changes. Snowmobiles run out of gas and break down. Ice melts. People get lost.

Last spring there were several searches for lost travellers and hunters, none of whom carried

a working emergency locater beacon, GPS unit or satellite phone.

Being safe requires the humbling realization that you are but a tiny dot on Nunavut's vast terrain, and that you may not be as independent as you'd like to believe.

When an Iqaluit man went out for a snowmobile ride a few weekends ago, he left a message with a friend about where he was planning to go.

But when his snowmobile got stuck, he was nowhere near where he had told his friend he was going. Convinced search and rescue volunteers would never find him where he was, he struck out on foot and headed for cabins marked on his GPS for survival necessities.

It took nearly two days for volunteers to find him by following his tracks from his abandoned snowmachine.

Search and rescue officials advise stopping if you get lost, and staying with the snowmobile or dog sled. Stay dry. Take emergency supplies with which to make camp, regardless if you only intend to be out for the day.

And this is very important: take an emergency locater beacon or satellite phone.

Nunavut has 100 such beacons available to be signed out for free from RCMP detachments and hamlet offices. When turned on, search and rescue personnel receive a signal that pinpoints the beacon's location to within 10 to 20 feet. It ensures the quickest possible rescue when something goes wrong on the land and saves the taxpayers' dollars spent on lengthy aerial and ground searches.

However, despite the beacons easy availability, Nunavummiut have not flocked to use them. Last year, the Cambridge Bay RCMP detachment said their locator devices had only been signed out twice over a period of a couple of years.

Signing out a beacon takes a few minutes but it can save you days spent stranded on the land, or even your life. Don't leave home without one.

It is city council's responsibility to tend to Yellowknife. With that, a recent resolution demanding the Alberta government meet certain water quality protection standards around the province's oil sands before proceeding further is out of line.

Seen from a territorial perspective, council's intentions are good. The intent is to safeguard NWT water supplies from pollution, for the sake of our health and the health of future generations.

Effects of water use by the tar sands operations are unclear. What is clear is the operation uses massive amounts of water from Alberta's Athabasca River, and everyone and everything downstream will be affected by the operation in some way. This concerns every living thing along that river and Lake Athabasca in northern Alberta.

The oil industry's use of the river basin may possibly - and this is unproven - be of concern to another river just northeast of Lake Athabasca - the Slave River -- which ultimately flows into Great Slave Lake from the south.

Yellowknife, however, cannot rightfully claim that its own water supply stands to be affected by the tar sands. This city's water supply flows out of the north from Yellowknife River, emptying into the north arm at the opposite end of Great Slave Lake. If tar sands pollution affects anyone in the territory at all, it would be those along the Slave River and southwest portions of Great Slave Lake.

So why pass such a resolution now? Yellowknife has had more obvious environmental issues at its own doorstep, concerning toxins from gold mines - some within city limits. Wagging a finger at Canada's fastest-growing province, cautioning them to contain water pollution in their own province is misguided, and moreover, outside of city council's purview.

If city council can't get administration to move on making sure stores have bus passes for sale, who will?

That's the question we have to ask after public works was on the hot seat last week for its unresponsiveness to retailers looking for more bus passes to sell.

City councillor Bob Brooks said he doesn't think administration is taking the issue seriously enough. We have to agree.

Two weeks after a Yellowknifer story appeared where store owners from Sutherland's Drugs and Reddi-Mart complained about fruitless attempts to get more bus passes from city hall, public works director Dennis Kefalas was blaming the problem on staff turnover in the finance department, even though it's his department that's in charge of public transportation.

Meanwhile Sutherland's, who appear willing to sell the passes again after giving up on the city back in February, are still waiting for someone from the city to call them.

Kefalas said he intends to talk to Sutherland's and other stores along bus routes. The sooner, the better.

One would think the city would feel some urgency in ensuring the stores have enough bus passes to sell considering that the service is subsidized with $1 million of taxpayers' money.

The organizers of a soccer coaching clinic held in Fort Simpson over the weekend took what otherwise would have been a normal event and turned it into something more significant.

As you would expect in any coaching clinic on soccer, the in-class and practical portions of the clinic focused on developing and strengthening skills related to the sport. Among other things, the participants learned about a variety of new soccer drills and how to tailor them to different age groups. All of this was to be expected.

What was different about the clinic were the people who attended as aspiring coaches. Mixed in among six adults were four youth who currently play on soccer teams in the village. The youth learned everything the adult participants did and applied these skills while helping to lead practices for two younger teams over the weekend.

By encouraging the youth to participate, the organizers purposefully changed the clinic into something more. It became a building block for a new foundation.

The village has a very strong soccer program that has produced some successful teams. The program, however, like many others around the Deh Cho, relies on the coaching and volunteer hours of people who have moved to the community. This in itself isn't a problem as long as the coaching staff diversifies.

The population of any Northern community is fluid, particularly among people who haven't been born or raised in that community. If new arrivals start programs, both sport and otherwise, they flourish while given attention but can quickly decline if the founder moves away. By offering youth the chance to attend the coaching clinic, the organizers are helping to ensure this decline won't happen with soccer in Fort Simpson.

The young coaches now have the necessary skills to lead a soccer practice if the regular coach isn't available. In time they will grow old enough to coach teams on their own.

The clinic, however, was good for more than just soccer in Fort Simpson. If the youth move away from the village they will carry these skills with them and can apply them in their new communities. The basic coaching theories can also be transferred to any other sport.

Developing young coaches is also a necessary step to address the general shortage of volunteers.

In many communities both in the North and the south, the same people end up stepping forward every time there's a call for volunteers.

Teaching teenagers how to coach instills confidence and a pattern of learned behaviour that could lead to a lifelong dedication to volunteering. If participation at the weekend coaching clinic had been restricted to adults it would have been nothing more than a soccer clinic. By including youth, the clinic opened up a world of possibilities that are needed in Northern communities.

Before getting down to write this week's sports feature on one of our youth leaders, Logan Ruben, I struggled with one of those fundamental questions every reporter should ask themselves as they approach each story: Why is this story important to you, the reader?

You'll notice there's no mention of an upcoming hockey tournament, no mention of an award being granted. There's no real news flash.

But the one thing it does illustrate is an important relationship between one volunteer coach and a teenager. I would like to think the story reflects many such connections in this community and how essential they are.

In part, I've tried to reveal what an adult's support and vote of confidence can do for a young person's self-esteem and growth.

Talking to Logan you can't help but notice his maturity, intelligence and good-naturedness. Obviously part of that comes naturally, but it doesn't hurt to have supportive parents and a committed volunteer hockey coach who believes in him so passionately.

In fact it was his coach Paul Grech who came up with idea to do a feature on Logan, to which I gladly agreed. Normally I'd be reluctant to do a column highlighting a community's commitment to volunteering with youth for fear of going overboard.

I went against that instinct because I think Inuvik is exceptional in this area. People may still accuse me of going overboard. That's OK.

Doubtless you would have trouble finding a community of similar size anywhere in this country that boasts as many volunteers and offers as many recreational activities as this one.

Like Logan said in his interview, without them, hockey just wouldn't happen.

It's pretty plain to see in the faces of the many kids I've seen signed up for speed skating, figure skating and curling, the positive effect volunteer leaders have had on them.

Many of them have no problem stating as much. In short, there seem to be a lot of Logans around.

Maybe all of this is obvious to the community, but there still deserves to be an acknowledgement of it.

I think most of us, including myself, think volunteers will simply just show up or appear out of the woodwork.

Of course, there's a reward for them, as in many ways it's a privilege to work with youth, but there's also a big time and emotional commitment involved. With all the current distractions, the need for such a commitment is greater than ever. That challenge is being met.

Clearly the confidence volunteers instil into youth spills over into other facets of the young person's life, whether in school or relationships, whatever.

It appears Inuvik provides a model for how it's done, showing clearly that youths are worth it. The benefits by far outweigh the challenges and stresses.

Two years ago, modular home retailer Regent Homes threatened to boycott Yellowknife after city council instituted rules requiring new homes to be more energy efficient.

Its sales manager Blair Turner said it wasn't worth it for the company to recalibrate its Lethbridge, Alta., factory just because little old Yellowknife wanted to out-green other cities in Canada.

He said if Regent or any of its sister companies under the SRI Homes umbrella tried to comply with the new rules, the homes would have to be built bigger, and would get stuck under bridges and overpasses on their way up North as a result.

Yellowknife developers such as Homes North and Premium Homes joined the chorus of condemnation for the high efficiency standards.

How times have changed, and quickly. Yellowknife resident Wade Friesen brought a SRI-built single-wide trailer into the city last week, which he says will meet the EnerGuide 80 standard.

The initial cost is higher, by about $25,000, but savings on heating will gradually offset that.

SRI now says, after figuring it how to do it, that it will only take a couple months to a build a mobile home it not long ago said was unprofitable and impractical to build.

Klassen Homes out of Enterprise, meanwhile, is marketing energy-efficient, manufactured homes in Yellowknife.

Two things have become clear: the market is showing that energy-efficient homes are the way of the future, particularly if heating fuel prices continue to rise, which they will.

Secondly, council was right on this one.

When Yellowknives Chief Fred Sangris handed a cheque to Yellowknife Mayor Gord Van Tighem on behalf of Dettah last week, he was doing more than settling a financial debt.

Sangris was paying back the city for the Yellowknife Fire Department's assistance when a man set his wife's home ablaze in August 2008.

The $3,171.72 cheque, in addition to paying for the service, was meant as a goodwill gesture, signifying an improving relationship between the communities.

This past summer, Yellowknife extended its hand to Ndilo when it committed to paving its roads, despite a lack of funding from the federal government. This opened a door for a new neighbourly relationship between the communities.

Another recent symbol of the area's developing unity was Van Tighem's attendance at a Dettah drum dance over Easter.

It was the first time a Yellowknife city official was invited to such a function - and hopefully the first of many.

It is encouraging to see trust and understanding developing. The communities' leaders should be commended for their efforts.

After a number of years of moving in the right direction, Kivalliq hockey took more than a few steps back this past season with the verbal harassment of officials.

I am also growing alarmed at the number of senior officials who are skating away due to the harassment.

Those who follow the game realize I am still an active Level 4 official who continues to work more than 100 games annually.

This past season included a number of firsts for me as an official.

It was the first time I ever stepped away from the action before all was said and done, needing a reprieve from it all with three games remaining in the final series of the Rankin Inlet Senior Men's Hockey League playoffs.

I am, by my own admission, a tough official who calls what players often refer to as a "tight game."

The reason is simple. It's what Hockey Canada (HC) asks of its refs with the new standard of officiating and I follow HC directives to the best of my ability.

So you can take me at my word when I tell you I've heard my share of creative and colourful expletives over the course of my career.

The 2008-2009 season was also the first time in my life I ever had a hockey player accuse me of cheating.

And again, you can take me at my word when I tell you such an accusation burns much deeper - and hotter - than "Hey ref, you suck!"

This season also marked the first time I was spit on by a player since 2002, and the first time I ever had a player shoot a puck at me on purpose.

The cumulative effect of these actions gave me a healthy dose of insight as to why so many refs are leaving the game.

Some - such as when a player told me the refs cost his team the game during an elimination match in the Avataq Cup in which they lost by a score of 8-3 - were so absurd as to be laughable.

There was nothing funny, however, about being called a cheater.

I cannot even fathom the thought of an official deliberately fixing the outcome of the greatest game on Earth.

Local hockey officials rarely get any kind of credit for what they bring, or add, to the hometown hockey scene.

But it's time for players to start giving some serious thought to what may happen to their leagues if they get up one morning to find there are no real refs left who want to officiate their games.

People who know the game and its terminology understand exactly what I mean when I say it's the players who have to start speaking up.

They stand to lose as much as the officials if it reaches the point where experienced refs want nothing more to do with their leagues.

Hockey is an emotional sport, and there's no escaping the fact frustration will often rear its head.

But like everything else, there are boundaries.

And when the boundaries are crossed by those with no respect for the game, it's the game itself that gets cheated.

For now, I'm left to an off-season haunted by the memory of a six-year-old girl smiling at my partner and I as we left the arena.

As we walked by she looked up and sweetly said, "One-sided referees!"

In the story "Voter concerned about mail-in ballots," News/North April 20, Cindy Harris was incorrectly identified. News/North apologizes for any confusion or embarrassment caused by the error.