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The old saying about Yellowknife's gold being paved with streets may have to bear the addendum, "but the road on the way is littered with poop," unless there's a serious attitude adjustment.

Blair Weatherby, president of the NWT Motor Transport Association, says there is a lack of washrooms on Highway 3, leaving drivers to answer nature's call at roadside pullouts and anywhere else as the occasion demands.

While there are certainly fewer washroom facilities - especially flush toilets - on NWT highways compared to those further south, the situation doesn't appear to be entirely unreasonable.

Richard Zieba, director of tourism and parks, says the Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment has committed to working with the Department of Transportation to ensure there are washroom facilities about every 80 km. But the number of washrooms on the highway, all the way from the NWT border to Yellowknife, is already close to that range.

The longest stretch without a washroom is about an hour's drive - 108 km - from outhouses at North Arm Territorial Park to Yellowknife. All other distances between public washrooms along that route are 86 km or less.

The problem is that no one is maintaining the washrooms during the winter and that some people using them are acting like pigs.

Industry, Tourism and Investment and the transportation department need to sort out whose responsibility it is to keep them clean and make sure they're accessible during the winter months.

And for those who think it's appropriate to defecate on the side of the road or on washroom walls and floors without cleaning it up, get a grip.

In Yellowknife, Earth Week is more than just an incentive to go green. It's also a reason to celebrate the city's tremendous efforts to protect the environment.

There's no masking the litter problem in the city, but in spite of a few litterbugs, groups and individuals have done some amazing green work.

One of the fastest growing green practices is the use of reusable shopping bags.

Local grocery stores are encouraging it by putting reusable bags on sale and charging fees for plastic bags.

Other groups around town, such as the Department of Environment and Natural Resources' Green Team, are making their workplace more environmentally-friendly through reducing paper usage, buying fair-trade coffee and even composting with worms in a filing cabinet.

Worm composting was also the focus of one of the many Ecology North events this past week. The nearly 38-year-old group's efforts to educate the public and soften Yellowknife's environmental footprint have not been in vain; residents are taking notice and following the group's example.

When you add the individual efforts in simple things such as turning off lights and avoiding idling, the city's future is looking greener and greener.

With its geothermal plans and EnerGuide 80 standards, it's no wonder Yellowknife is attracting national attention as a green city.

So Iqaluit's Seeka Veevee Parsons was quite upset this past week because the majority of New Zealanders were out of sorts with her.

She simply couldn't understand why so many disapproved of her remarks and how unpopular a person she had become in their country.

Well, let's see. At the worldly age of 21, you visit another continent for a working vacation and the people who live there welcome you with open arms.

Within two months you stumble upon the dreaded Eskimo Lolly, which has only been one of that culture's favourite treats for more than half a century, and proceed to insinuate they're an insensitive, politically-incorrect society that is purposely insulting Inuit with a product that has racist connotations.

Geez. Why would they be upset?

Well, first off, they're not Canadians. So that means they don't like it when you come to their country, enjoy their hospitality, and then proceed to insult their culture, try to change the way they live, and get them to adopt your way of thinking and your cultural beliefs.

Do any of us truly believe there's any kind of racist malevolence behind a 50-cent marshmallow candy?

We all know we live in a time when political correctness has gone mad, but c'mon. It's a candy.

Parsons went on to attack the back of the candy wrapper which, apparently, suggests you try Eskimo pie for another culinary pleasure.

She didn't like how the company directs you to cut the pie into little pieces before enjoying it.

How many times in the past decade have we seen people carry in special cakes during celebrations, decorated as some form of Inuit or Nunavut icon?

My very own eyes once saw a drum dancer (it was a cake!!) cut up into pieces and enjoyed by a large crowd of people, mostly Inuit.

Oh the horror of it!

But enough on the silliness of a marshmallow candy being anything but that.

A very dark side begins to emerge when someone speaks in racial terms about something so innocuous, and it creates a media frenzy on a slow news day.

Parsons prompted numerous responses on media sites and message boards across the Internet, the majority of which were pointed and angry.

Some suggested Inuit should worry more about the baby seals they butcher than the candy New Zealanders eat.

That's the type of ill-informed and stupid notion words like those spoken by Parsons can elicit from people.

How would you like to be the person to stand up in New Zealand tomorrow and try to explain the difference between the East Coast seal hunt and the importance of the mammal to Inuit culture?

Harsh words are circular by their very nature.

I wonder when Parsons is home in Nunavut if she ever wonders if the term qallunaat upsets anyone?

Can bushy or pampered eyebrows be any more, or less, offensive than eater of raw meat or snowshoe?

Or, is it really more a case of don't do as I do, do as I say -- the same type of colonialist thinking that so many profess to abhor?

Hard debate for such a soft candy.

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.