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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Ecology North celebrated its 40th anniversary this week. Members of the environmental organization scheduled a special event to honour the milestone last night at Northern United Place.

Dawn Tremblay, program co-ordinator with Ecology North, and the organization's co-founder, Bob Bromley, stand in front of Ecology North headquarters on Wednesday. Ecology North celebrated its 40th anniversary yesterday. - Kevin Allerston/NNSL photo

Shannon Ripley, an environmental scientist with Ecology North, has been with the group since 2007.

"In terms of the anniversary, it's pretty amazing to me to think that Ecology North began 40 years ago and it's equally amazing to me the number of different people who have been really active in the organization over that time."

The environmental group has grown a lot since it was started in 1971, when it was based out of co-founder Bob Bromley's family home.

Bromley said he got the idea for Ecology North after working with a PhD student from Iowa State College who was studying wildlife in the late 1960s.

"We were noticing that a lot of trees were dying around the mines and the lichen was disappearing from the rocks," he said.

Bromley learned a lot from the experience and at the same time saw a growing interest in environmentalism in Yellowknife, which spurred the idea to form an organization dedicated to ecology.

"We actually had it in my parent's house in the old rumpus room down in the basement and I think it was there for about the first decade," said Bromley.

Eventually, Ecology North struck a deal with the Northern Frontier Visitors Centre to use its space for a reduced rent, which lasted another decade, before moving to the Roman Empire Building.

"Our focus initially was on particularly arsenic and mercury and contamination with the mines, and at the same time there was a lot of concern being expressed by the communities across the NWT, along the Arctic Coast, which then included Nunavut, and about the garbage," Bromley said.

At the time, coastal communities would send garbage out into the ocean on sea ice.

Bromley said the issues facing the environment, and by extension Ecology North, haven't really changed, but have simply gotten bigger, which he said reflects on the record of Ecology North "not having achieved very much."

But there are a few notable achievements members of the organization are proud of. In 1973 Ecology North was successful in compelling the territorial government to draft its first piece of environmental legislation, which was called An Ordinance to Provide for the Conservation of the Natural and Human Environment of the Northwest Territories. Ecology North was focused on the need to clean up the Giant Mine area back in the 1970s. Then there is Yellowknife's blue bin recycling program, another Ecology North initiative.

As for the new generation of environmentalists, Bromley said he is happy with how young people have embraced environmentalism.

"Oh, it's really fantastic and they bring much more expertise to the table than I think we did in the past and instill lots of enthusiasm," he said.

One of those young people is 27-year-old Dawn Tremblay, who has served as a program co-ordinator with the group for about a year.

"It's great to be part of an organization that is long-standing and has a very good reputation in the community and an organization that has clear values," said Tremblay. "I started to become involved with Ecology North because I thought it would be a great opportunity to learn a lot and explore some issues that I'm interested in and was becoming more passionate about."

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