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It was a horror story for one Yellowknife resident who described to city council an ongoing problem with her neighbour, who kept anywhere from two to seven large dogs unattended in the backyard. The animals would bark for extended periods of time and the stench coming from the yard because of feces and urine was unbearable.

She went to council for a second time last year seeking a solution to the problem, which she said has existed since 2004, and accused the city of encouraging disputes between neighbours because of their lack of action. Her first complaint was made in 2010. One other person made a complaint to the city about a neighbouring property where dogs were left to bark excessively and the yard stank.

Finally, after the Government of the NWT made amendments to its Dog Act, city administration began revising the dog bylaw for council's consideration. The draft bylaw sets out the duties and obligations of persons who own or are in charge of an animal. It would make owners responsible for providing adequate food, water, care, shelter, ventilation and space. The draft bylaw proposes to increase penalties, including allowing a judge to ban an offender from owning or controlling animals. In response to comments from residents, the draft bylaw addresses concerns such as noise caused by excessive barking and the effects of the build up of dog feces.

Some councillors wanted to go further by placing a limit on the number of dogs that can be on one property. As a result, the city posted a survey online which asks residents, "Do you feel that there should be a limit placed on the number of dogs a person may own or possess on their property?" Respondents can answer yes or no, then add a comment if they choose, in advance of a public meeting scheduled for May 16.

We sympathize with the plight of the two people who live next to problem neighbours, especially in light of the long delay for action to be taken. But, in our view, the issue centers around just that, the neighbours. It is not the dogs' fault that no one has cleaned up after them, or that an irresponsible owner leaves them alone and unattended in the yard for hours on end.

There are numerous dogs and dog owners in the city and there have been two complaints.

City councillors should keep this issue in perspective. The draft dog bylaw has enough teeth for action to be taken against the few irresponsible dog owners.

Many responsible dog owners, on the other hand, cherish their pets, consider them a member of the family and don't want to be restricted on the number of dogs they choose to own.

Imagine 24 big bags of garbage strewn throughout downtown, including cigarette butts, soggy cardboard, fast food containers and a winter's worth of other disgusting detritus.

That gross mess would still be snaking through the streets today were it not for 55 residents who collected about two dozen large bags of trash in the centre of town on Earth Day, April 22.

The receding snow and ice revealed the blanket of litter last month, and a record number of volunteers signed up to help clear it away alongside organizer Paul Falvo and Ecology North's Earth Week co-ordinator Cat McGurk.

Staff at Javaroma, one of the businesses that regularly supports the summer community cleanup events, treated the volunteers to free coffee and tea when the job was done. It was a team effort!

Unfortunately, curbside garbage is like the many-headed hydra of Greek and Roman myth - pick up one piece of trash and two more will soon appear to take its place. In the absence of a hero such as Hercules to slay the problem for us single-handedly, keeping our downtown clean will require more collective efforts similar to that seen on Earth Day.

Tidy streets elevate our civic self-esteem and help polish the impression tourists take home after visiting our exciting subarctic city.

Hopefully the 55 volunteers who showed up last month will return for the next cleanup along with a few family members, friends and neighbours to help.

The next community litter pickup event is planned for May 22.

Kudos to the Government of Nunavut (GN) for upping the $100,000 to have a third consecutive population survey done this month on the Southampton caribou herd.

The herd has been fighting for its very survival the past few years, and has found a pair of worthy allies in GN regional biologist Mitch Campbell and the Coral Harbour Hunters and Trappers Organization (HTO) led by chairperson Noah Kadluk.

The drop in the Southampton population during the past few years has been nothing short of staggering, as the herd has fought against two of its oldest foes; the brucellosis disease and the hunter.

Less than two decades ago, the Southampton herd numbered more than 30,000.

The 2011 survey placed that number at about 7,500 animals. The news from the following survey in 2012 was even worse, with the population dropping to less than 6,000.

It was only then, when the numbers dropped so low, the Coral HTO was finally able to convince most local hunters on the need to place a 1,000animal limit on the harvest.

Kadluk and the rest of the Coral HTO members deserve a lot of credit for their bravery in pushing through the limit.

It is not easy to make such a decision in a small community, especially one that relies on tuktu as much as Coral Harbour.

Add to that a number of hunters lining their pockets with good money by taking advantage of the low shipping rates on country food to sell caribou meat across Nunavut, and there can be little doubt a tense situation had developed in the community.

It's not easy to have your voice heard on what's right at the best of times, but throw a healthy dose of greed into the mix and things can get downright scary.

But, if the annihilation of the herd isn't stopped and the caribou given the chance to recover, where does that leave the many Coral Harbour families who depend on tuktu to make up a substantial part of their household food?

Campbell has been an absolute bulldog in drawing attention to the plight of the herd during the past few years.

He has not been shy about calling out the wildlife management partners on their lack of action in addressing the emergency, nor showing up in person to back the Coral HTO during public meetings.

The Coral HTO needed the backing of Nunavut Environment Minister James Arreak to get the existing 1,000 limit in place, and it may require the GN's muscle again in setting a quota by July 1, should the current survey come back with less-than-encouraging numbers.

Hopefully, the survey will show the Southampton herd has, at least, stabilized. But, even so, the road to a full recovery is a long and rocky one at best.

If a repeat of the 1950s extinction of the herd through over-harvesting is to be avoided, the Southampton caribou will need people like Campbell and Kadluk to keep fighting on their behalf.

Hopefully, enough people have finally got the memo on how perilous the situation is, and more voices will be added to protect such a valuable resource to the people of Coral Harbour.

Horizontal fracturing, or fracking, for oil and gas ranks in public perception with the oilsands as the earth-destroying monsters of all time.

All resource development presents real dangers to the environment. Even the relatively environmentally-friendly diamond mine has a 30-square-kilometre footprint.

The more known about hydraulic fracturing, the more support industry will have as it applies for exploratory licences.

Vertical fracking has been going on in the Sahtu for decades. Horizontal fracking, being used in other North American jurisdictions, has drawn fierce opposition from environmental groups warning of harmful effects to ground water. There is also the troubling secrecy surrounding the additives in the water pumped at high pressure into the earth to crack open rock and get that oil and gas flowing.

There are companies lining up to explore this opportunity in the territory, development that could bring jobs, contracts for local businesses and hundreds of millions of dollars in work commitments.

The GNWT is wisely getting involved, promising to put forward best practices policy guidelines for the Sahtu by the fall through researching the drilling method in other jurisdictions. It is also working to ensure transparency when it comes to horizontal drilling - including what chemicals are added to water blasted into the ground.

While this might be too late for some - Calgary-based energy company MGM already pulled its application to conduct exploratory horizontal drilling after the Sahtu Land and Water Board referred it to an environmental assessment - it is a critical step.

More research and conclusive science is needed to assess the real risks and environmental costs of fracking.

By taking these first steps, the GNWT is taking a leadership role in balancing environmental safety with resource development.

The Northwest Territories is a huge landmass, 1.17-million square kilometres, with 43,400 people dispersed throughout 33 communities. The Beaufort Delta Education Council's E-Learning program is making the distance shrink.

The program, currently offered in Tuktoyaktuk and Fort McPherson, is bringing classroom content to students via Internet with two-way microphones and video.

Students can stay in their home communities and take courses not offered at their local school.

Distance learning doesn't stop at high school. Alberta's Athabasca University reports a 67 per cent increase of online course enrolment from 2001-02 to 2009-10. The university also reports 100 per cent of its undergraduate students were enrolled in an online course in 2009/10.

Distance education works. This coming fall, courses will be offered to students in communities without a high school, such as Trout Lake and Sachs Harbour.

Teaching online offers Northern youth a world of education options without forcing them to dole out funds to live away and often alone far from home.

If emotion is behind decisions made by international organizations to attack the seal industry, our best line of defence is cold, hard fact.

The European Union's dismissal of an appeal of the ban on seal products last week was not based on fact. The main stock hunted commercially in Canada on the East Coast, the harp seals, are estimated by the federal government to number at 7.3 million.

Ringed seals, more commonly hunted in Nunavut, do not have as firm an estimate, but based on the amount harvested annually, the North Atlantic Marine Mammal Commission numbers them at about 1.2 million.

As of last year, the Government of Canada estimated close to 16,000 of the world's approximately 25,000 polar bears fall within Canada's borders. A 2011 aerial survey of the polar bear subpopulation of Western Hudson Bay estimated 1,013 polar bears, despite earlier predictions the population would dip to 650 by 2011.

Though this number was touted by Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. as an indicator the population is healthy, GN polar bear biologist Stephen Atkinson warned the survey only spotted 50 cubs under a year old and 22 yearlings, a troubling indicator of the bears' future survival.

We need to maintain a clear picture of Nunavut's polar bears, informed by both traditional knowledge and non-traditional science, for two main reasons: Inuit can't claim ownership of the polar bear population of the world, and it's clear the international community will make decisions affecting us based on emotion rather than fact.

If Nunavummiut want to defend and maintain hunting practices without international intervention, we need to have an arsenal of facts and figures to back up claims the population is healthy.

Last week, Nunavut News/North published a story on a petition circulating on Facebook calling for an end to collaring practices, which it argues are causing undue harm to bears, as does the trauma of being tracked by a helicopter and tranquilized ("Collar opposition mounts," April 29).

A major concern was that collars might become tight and cause harm to a bear as it gains weight. These concerns should be investigated. What shouldn't happen, though, is any decrease in the amount of polar bear monitoring . In fact, this should increase, working with hunters and elders to identify the bears' movements and historic population fluctuations.

While it is essential the bears are not caused undue harm by monitoring practices, it's important not to let emotion guide our own decision-making, not only to defend ourselves from the pressures of animal activist groups, but to ensure the population's health.

The North is changing. This past summer saw the least Arctic sea ice - and weakest - on satellite record, which indicates a threat to polar bears' natural habitat. If we are seeing a large population of adults but few cubs in the Western Hudson Bay population, that could be a problem and we must keep an eye on it.

It's vital to Inuit to be able to hunt and to Nunavummiut in general to keep their communities safe from problem bears.

It's also vital we keep international pressures at bay. The only way this can be done is through sound science and traditional knowledge working in tandem. Relying solely on one without the other would be a risk not worth taking.

If the city were to poll residents living in single-family households, they would probably find overwhelming support for its efforts to reduce the amount of garbage going into the landfill.

The problem is, beyond this group, the city has few ideas about how to cut down on the enormous pile of waste being created by all the other trash contributors in Yellowknife.

The latest trial balloon floated by city councillor Rebecca Alty targeting homeowners yet again with curbside garbage restrictions is further proof of that.

Alty, who chairs the city's Solid Waste Management Advisory Committee, wants homeowners to separate organic waste from other household garbage, which would be picked up at the curb on alternating weeks. Compostable waste is taken away one week. The rest of the garbage is picked up the next.

By itself, there is nothing wrong with this proposal. This is common practise in many communities down south, including in the neighbouring capital of Whitehorse, Yukon.

"Just getting curbside pickup would be substantial," said Alty, while adding that 20 per cent of trash entering the landfill is made up of organic waste. Alas, Alty ought to know this latest scheme will hardly make a dent in the amount of trash getting landfilled at the dump.

The city's 2007 Solid Waste Composition Study found that the lion's share of trash going into the landfill - 59 per cent of it - comes from multi-family unit apartment buildings, condominiums and the small commercial sector. Thirty-eight per cent of this sector's trash, it should be added, was made up of paper, such as cardboard, boxboard and newspapers - the very stuff single-family households spend hours sorting and dumping into centrally-located blue bins to keep their weekly garbage output under the two-bag limit mandated by the city.

The composition study found single-family dwellings produced only 19 per cent of the trash. No doubt this percentage has shrunk considerably since the writing of this study, which was authored before city council lowered the weekly curbside garbage limit to two 77-litre bags. To add insult to injury, the city's long-promised curbside recycling program remains a faraway dream.

A city survey in 2006 found a majority of residents were willing to pay an extra $6 a month on their solid waste levies for curbside recycling pickup. But we are no closer to having a program today than we were back then. Nonetheless, the lack of a curbside recycling program hasn't stopped council from raising the solid waste levy by $5.50 (since 2006) to $16.50 a month now.

When council first put a limit on curbside trash in 2006 - to three bags - it also created tipping fees that reward apartment and commercial building owners for diverting recyclables from the trash stream. Sorted recyclables cost a reduced rate of $30 a tonne, down from $99 a tonne for unsorted trash.

The problem for apartment building owners, and even the owners of condominiums, is the difficulty that comes with trying to enforce communal responsibility. Homeowners manage their waste because it will cost them more and be more of an inconvenience to get rid of it if they don't. But how do apartment owners get their tenants to sort their trash?

If trash costs $99 a tonne to throw away, landlords will simply pass the costs on to tenants and likely not think twice about dumping unsorted trash. Increase that amount to $500 a tonne and there would certainly be a little more contemplation on what to do about it. It would be an unpalatable rate for both landlords and tenants.

The first necessary step for condominiums and apartment building owners is to make sure tenants can recycle and divert organic waste easily with all the necessary bags and bins available to them. Next comes education on the benefits of recycling and how it is necessary to keep rental costs and condominium fees down.

Single-family households are certainly part of the trash equation, but council must consider the city's main trash contributors to be effective. Otherwise, council will yet again be picking at the well-plucked, low-hanging fruit while doing little to keep trash out of the landfill, which is the main goal.

So often people take for granted things they have easy access to.

That's why it would be a wonderful experience for people from the Deh Cho to be able to see the Aurora Boreawesomer exhibition that is on display at Gallery 101 in Ottawa. The exhibition is part of the much larger Northern Scene Festival that is taking place from April 25 to May 4.

More than 200 people went through the gallery on April 26 during the exhibition's opening day. They had the opportunity to see a variety of artwork from 20 artists who are from the Deh Cho or have been inspired by the region.

By going to the gallery, Deh Cho residents would likely gain a new appreciation for the artistic talent that abounds in the region. Most residents only get to see bits of the talent at a time. They may see a painting a local resident did or visit an exhibition at the OSC Gallery in Fort Simpson.

Right now at Gallery 101, however, artwork from across the Deh Cho is on display. In one location, people have the chance to see a cross section of the work that is being produced in the region.

What is also important about Aurora Boreawesomer is the variety of artwork that has been selected. There is everything from contemporary paintings and photographs to traditional items including a spruce root basket, a moosehide doll, moose hair tufting and moccasins.

When people see a painting, even if they don't necessarily like it, they generally recognize it as art and the person who painted it as an artist. The same is not necessarily true for traditional items such birchbark baskets and moccasins.

When Deh Cho residents see items like those, they may acknowledge that they are nice to look at, but lifelong familiarity with such creations has usually taken away some of the awe that comes from seeing them for the first time. Visitors to Gallery 101 are seeing traditional items from the Deh Cho displayed as works of art.

Aurora Boreawesomer is bringing both contemporary and traditional artwork from the Deh Cho to a broader audience. It is a boost that many of the region's artists need.

The exhibition can also serve as a reminder to Deh Cho residents of how much talent there is in the region and how people who create things such as moccasins are artists in their own right and that their creations, even though they are meant to be worn or used, are as much art as a painting hanging on a gallery wall.

I love semantic debates and arguments. One of the best things about them is the passion they stir.

That's why I've been listening with considerable amusement to the Gordian knots being woven locally by people who get bent out of shape debating whether Inuvik is in the Arctic or not.

On the face of it, it's a silly kind of question. Since we're well inside the Arctic Circle, it seems obvious that we're in the Arctic.

Not so fast, others say. The Arctic Circle is an artificial designation imposed to track where the polar night and the midnight sun occur, but there are other definitions of Arctic, they note. You can define it by wildlife and climate and topography, they say.

Let's not get started on the midnight sun argument either. That will initiate the argument about whether cities like Yellowknife can say they experience the midnight sun. The answer to that one is a definitive "no," by the way. Yellowknife experiences what the Russians call "white nights" rather than the midnight sun, but that's a term that's never caught on in Canada. The midnight sun refers to latitudes where the sun doesn't set for at least one day a year.

Specifically, some people argue that the true Arctic lies in the Arctic island archipelago, or at least above the tree line where one finds tundra. To them, the essence of the Arctic is what many people think of as barren-ground, windswept wasteland.

On that basis, many parts of Nunavut, including Iqaluit, should be called Arctic because they have the climate and terrain. However, those regions don't fall within the Arctic Circle.

I don't know about you, but at this point my brain begins to shrivel at all of the semantic hair-splitting and logical lambada going on.

There is no one authoritative and accepted definition, obviously, of what Arctic means or where one finds it. The only reason we debate it is because the term itself is loaded with meaning and has an almost mystical cachet. It means something, in fact a great deal, to many people, including marketers, and that's why there's such fervent interest in it. It's as if being in the Arctic is something you have to earn.

My solution is a simple one. I like to think of Inuvik as a very pleasant Arctic oasis, where one can go from creature comforts to bush country in less than 30 minutes.

Not to mention that I've sent far too many social media posts out bragging that I'm in the Arctic to retract now. So I say Inuvik is in the Arctic, whether any of you like it or not.

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