SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Yellowknifer came home from Calgary last month with three first place wins at Alberta's annual weekly newspaper awards dinner.

Reporter Tim Edwards won first place in the Best Trades Technology for his reporting on a last minute reprieve for a much needed trades training program that had its "funding cut in the territorial budget. Headlined Skills Canada breathes new life," Edwards was praised for a well-written story that chronicled the importance of trades in the North and the difficulty of providing training in a time of tight budgets.

Deh Cho Drum editor Roxanna Thompson in Fort Simpson won third place in the same category for her "interesting story about women in non-traditional roles and the value of bringing trades training to a remote community."

Yellowknifer editor and columnist Mike W. Bryant won first place for Best Feature Column with his piece headlined "Copenhagen or bust."

Last year's gathering of global environmentalists in Copenhagen was the last straw for Bryant who lambasted territorial MLAs for their love of travel on the public dime, calling one MLA the Marco Polo of the Mackenzie Delta.

NNSL Online took first place in the Newspaper Web Site Awards category. Called "content-rich," judges further complimented the site for being "staff designed and operated" and noted that "top news, current editorial opinion, member newspaper portals and classifieds link were all within easy reach on the landing page."

Yellowknifer and the Deh Cho Drum competed for the industry awards among 118 community newspapers of the Alberta Weekly Newspaper Association.

Another Northern winner was Fort Smith's Slave River Journal which took first place for Excellence in Community Service, second place in Excellence in Arts and Culture Writing, and third place for Best Local Editorial.

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