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There is a beacon of hope in the distance for resident hunters of the NWT.

Earlier this month, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources announced it is considering a limited harvest of the Bluenose-East, Beverly and Ahiak caribou herds for resident, non-aboriginal hunters for the 2013-14 hunting season.

The proposal should be given the green light. The herds are healthy enough to sustain it, as ENR's research has shown, or this proposal wouldn't have materialized.

While the herds are open to aboriginal harvests, resident hunters have been left on the sidelines since 2009 for the Beverly and Ahiak caribou herds, and since 2006 for the Bluenose-East herd, when emergency conservation measures were put in place to allow the animals to increase their numbers.

Hunting is a territorial and traditional activity, a cross-cultural bridge, and those who enjoy it and do it for either enjoyment or sustenance may not stick around where they can't hunt. Those who know the rules, and responsibly carry them out while respecting the land and the animals, should be able to hunt. Drawing a line between those who can and cannot hunt creates a real divide.

The government has done its part by offering up a proposal to get resident hunters out hunting caribou. There is enough data to support proposing the hunt be open to more. It is now up to the renewable resources boards to review the idea, and make a decision that's best for the caribou and best for all people of the NWT.

Opening up the hunt to one bull per resident hunter on one of the herds is a reasonable compromise that shouldn't be lost in the politics.

There is no doubt Fort Smith was chomping at the bit to get its hands on the $25,000 prize money and a live broadcast of TSN's SportsCentre through the Kraft Celebration Tour. And it succeeded with flying colours.

It's quite the story of David and Goliath. The community of 2,500 raked in more than 250,000 online votes. Whitehorse, a city of 25,000 and Fort Smith's competition, only acquired about 35,000 votes.

The prize money of $25,000 will only be a drop in the bucket as the town focuses on picking up the pieces after a May 13 fire closed Centennial Arena, causing about $1.6 million in damages. But every little bit helps.

The real win here is the unity that is instilled when a community pulls together to get noticed, to work toward a common goal.

Whitehorse didn't see that community involvement. Why?

Perhaps its size worked against it. Perhaps its usage of the money was to be spread out too much, with the Yukon Curling Association hoping to put the prize toward a half-dozen clubs throughout northern British Columbia and the Yukon.

There are countless competitions asking communities to rally together to promote a project, and while the prize might not be big enough to make huge changes, the sense of community spirit generated is priceless.

It looks like taxpayers are on the hook for at least part of the cost of environmental cleanup at the Jericho diamond mine about 350 kilometres southwest of Cambridge Bay.

Things were looking good for its owner, Shear Diamond Corp., last spring when it began processing high-grade concentrate, recovering about 3,500 carats of rough diamonds from more than 350 metric tonnes of stockpiles in only 10 days. Then the price of diamonds sent to the company's Belgian marketing company decreased. In the ensuing months, Shear started to spiral downward.

By October, Shear announced it had temporarily suspended operations at Jericho. Then things went from bad to worse. The marketing company gave notice of the company's loan defaults and said it intended to enforce security to get repayment. The Alberta Securities Commission issued a cease trade order on Nov. 1.

The company did not respond to questions from the Nunavut Impact Review Board and this past spring the federal government took action, ordering the company to return employees to clean up tailings, fuel, hazardous waste and a big hole in the ground left at the mine site.

Shear management did nothing and now the federal government's Contaminated Sites Program has become involved. With Shear still owing $2.3 million in security to the federal government, we are wondering if about $8 million that was paid in security will be enough to fix the environmental damage.

What is frustrating is that recent changes to federal environmental legislation won't affect Shear Diamonds. Bill C-47 will require companies to clean up a site regardless of the costs but the new rules only apply to mining activity that begins after the bill is made into law at a yet to be determined future date.

One has only to look at the remediation of the Giant Mine site in the NWT to realize how much costs can add up. The latest estimate is $903 million to address the contamination from 237,000 tonnes of arsenic trioxide used, discarded and stockpiled in the gold mining process.

Clearly, the mining industry is risky business, not only for shareholders but taxpayers. Canada made only $454 million from Giant - in 2002 dollars - in its 56 years of gold production, not counting the costs of forever maintaining the site.

For those reasons, we welcome the changes coming with Bill C-47. Placing responsibility solely on mine owners should have been done years ago.

There is an outside chance the company will face fines for violations of the Nunavut Surface Rights Tribunal Act but it seems likely that the federal government will be faced with millions of dollars in costs to address the mess Shear Diamond Corp. left behind. And that is outrageous.

By failing to evacuate neighbours during a deadly armed standoff with a suicidal woman March 14, 2012, Yellowknife RCMP put the public at risk.

The RCMP has finally admitted it.

Last week, G Division Supt. Wade Blake confirmed Glick Court residents were "in jeopardy" during the four-hour standoff. He was answering reporters' questions at an RCMP press conference called to respond to recommendations in a coroner's report into the Karen Lander shooting.

Three officers fired 12 bullets at Lander as she ran toward them with an unloaded rifle. Four bullets struck and killed Lander. Eight bullets missed, including five rounds that hit a neighbouring home while the occupants, oblivious to the danger outside, watched television in their living room.

One bullet shattered a large bay window and pierced a coffee table. Another landed in a bedroom, a third penetrated the kitchen, lodging in a bookcase. Two more bullets hit exterior walls of the home.

Even though the ordeal lasted several hours, RCMP merely phoned nearby residents, neglecting to send an officer door-to-door to warn of the danger in the street.

Although the coroner's report did not address the failure to evacuate residents, an investigation by the Medicine Hat Police Services did note the error. While finding the officers' actions lawful, the investigators highlighted the lack of due diligence.

"Resources are always an issue but when it comes to evacuating, those people's lives are potentially in jeopardy and that's kind of the foremost one of our considerations. So we would do that as soon as reasonable, as soon as we're able to," Staff Sgt. Brent Secondiak of the Medicine Hat Police told Yellowknifer earlier this year, adding in a similar situation in his community residents would be taken to a bus, an arena, a school or perhaps a church.

There was no mention of the potentially fatal blunder in the RCMP's official statement last week. Blake offered no apologies and fell short of admitting the force made a mistake by not evacuating neighbours.

The omission is perplexing because Blake welcomed for the third-party investigation immediately after Lander's shooting to bolster public confidence in his officers, which is essential to the RCMP's ability to protect and serve the public. When the Medicine Hat investigators concluded their work, he said the circumstances of the shooting had been examined fairly and thoroughly, yet there was no mention of corrective actions on a key finding.

By ignoring the obvious mistake made, Blake undermines his own efforts to regain public confidence, letting down both those officers he leads and the public they serve.

When you're learning to drive, or even well before then, you learn that many parking lots have spots designated for those with disabilities. It's only fair, after all, that someone who may not have the same mobility be able to park closer to the places they are trying to access.

You also learn that to park there, you need a tag in your front window. No tag, no parking spot. The rule applies to Yellowknifers, just as it does to any other Canadian.

So why is it that we have a resident splitting hairs over the wordings of a bylaw?

Last fall, Donald Weston successfully fought off a $250 parking ticket because he noted the city's bylaw dictated residents are to obtain parking stickers for spaces reserved for people with disabilities from the Yellowknife office of the Northwest Territories Council for Disabled Persons, an office that has since changed its name.

Name change or not, Weston should have known better than to park in a spot designated for people with mobility issues if he didn't possess a parking tag.

Whether the office distributing disabled parking tags has changed its name is irrelevant, you don't park in a parking space reserved for people with mobility issues unless you are a person with a disability. To do so deprives people in need from an essential service to accommodate laziness.

Likewise, if you're helping your wife with luggage at the airport, you don't leave your truck unattended in the passenger drop off area. Plus, parking at the airport is free for the first hour, so why not just park and walk the extra 15 metres and save $29?

If you break a bylaw, just pay the fine, because nitpicking over wording doesn't help anybody.

No one likes to be told their community has a problem.

Whether it is a prevalence of alcoholism, youth getting into mischief or loose dogs running in packs, communities often want to keep their issues to themselves. Sometimes, communities don't even want to deal with glaring issues and are willing to sweep them under the rug or look the other way or just use outright denial.

Unfortunately, it often takes a tragic event to shake residents from their complacency. Usually this event involves the death or serious injury of a community member.

All too often, when the event finally occurs, people comment that the incident didn't surprise them, that they'd been expecting something like this to happen for a while. Comments such as these are disheartening in a way, because they suggest the problem that caused the incident had been identified, but that no one was able to or willing to try and make changes before the inevitable tragedy struck.

Fort Liard might be on the cusp of just such an incident.

In this community's case, it is arson that seems to be the problem. Robert Firth, the chief of fire and emergency services for the hamlet, said since he's joined the volunteer fire department in 2009, he's seen a variety of intentionally-set fires that are apparently increasing in severity from grass fires to vehicle fires to house fires.

Firth is concerned that someone, likely a firefighter, will end up getting hurt by one of these fires. There is also a chance that if abandoned houses that are known locations for parties are burned, such as the one destroyed on June 6, someone will eventually be trapped and killed by a fire. Arsonists, said Firth, are unlikely to check carefully to make sure intoxicated people are out of a structure before they flick a lighter.

Even the hamlet's mayor, Morris McLeod, said there are a few other party houses in the community that may be burned if they aren't demolished first.

It seems that Fort Liard has been given a chance to dodge a tragedy, to avoid being a community where people can say they saw it coming after someone dies or is seriously hurt as the result of an intentionally-set fire.

It won't be easy. The hamlet will have to face what is happening, realize there is an issue, and deal with it as a community.

With effort, the hamlet can continue to be a safe place for all of its

It may be wrong, but I've never had much interest in becoming a blood donor.

Our local insects, though, are intent on having me change my ways.

I've always been an ambulatory bug smorgasbord, but outside a foray into Labrador 10 years ago, I haven't seen anything like the Inuvik black flies, gnats and mosquitoes. On that visit, I grew claustrophobic from not being able to see past the black flies covering my bug jacket, but at least I didn't get eaten alive.

It's not the numbers here that's the problem. Nor is it their size, which is also admirable. I laughed out loud recently reading a Facebook post that said Manitoba has two sizes of mosquitoes. The first was small enough to squeeze through a screen, and the second didn't bother because it could open your door. The wit that came up with that line could have been here.

I don't think I'm getting bitten any more than normal, either. I remember going on a hike with my family when I was maybe 11-years old and being feasted on by a regiment of mosquitoes while the rest of my family sauntered nonchalantly along enjoying the tranquillity.

My parents upbraided me regularly for my complaints about the bugs until my father turned to me and saw how the back of my yellow T-shirt had turned black from the bugs.

The only person I've ever known to be consistently more attractive to bugs is my wife. I love hiking with her, since it gives me the chance to amble along in relative comfort through the woods.

What's really different here in Inuvik, though, is the allergic reaction I'm having to these critters.

Over the long weekend ,I spent a fair bit of time at the softball tournament. I even managed to watch some games in between drenching myself with Deep Woods Off and swatting the little so-and-so's. More than a week later, I'm still nursing a variety of welts that make me look as if I have some unpleasant skin disease.

That's a first for me. Normally, the bites disappear within hours to a day at the most, but these have some true long-term staying power. My skin is still crawling from them.

That's why Sunday, after being turned into hamburger again at the ball diamond, I outfitted myself with head-to-toe bug gear. It might look ridiculous, but I'm past the point of caring.

And I took great comfort in watching the people who smirked at me begin swatting as my personal swarm of little demons started looking for a new home. Turnabout is fair play indeed.

It was a disappointing start last week to the government's preparations to make Long Lake Beach safer following the tragic drowning death of seven-year-old Lodune Shelley on June 27.

Granted, the territorial government has contracted the Alberta-NWT chapter of the Canadian Lifesaving Society to come to Yellowknife and assess the beach July 15, which in the great scheme of things is not an intolerable delay when one considers the government's lackadaisical response to previous close calls at the beach. It's too bad it took a child's death to finally acknowledge that the status quo is no longer acceptable.

Nonetheless, the great divide between government and ordinary people was exposed last week when residents and businesses bandied together almost immediately and formed a beach patrol group and began designing lifeguard chairs in the perhaps vain hope that some level authority will finally take responsibility and fill them with real lifeguards.

Lifeguards for Lodune, a group of 20 concerned citizens who have taken it upon themselves to monitor Long Lake Beach until lifeguards are hired, were cautioned by Mayor Mark Heyck and the GNWT to be careful they don't get themselves into hot water should another swimmer get into trouble on their watch - even though the NWT's Emergency Medical Aid Act protects Good Samaritans from lawsuits. Meanwhile Yellowknife contractor Trevor Kasteel, and businesses he has partnered with, were dissuaded from rushing ahead with building the lifeguard chairs.

In ordinary circumstances, at public, government-run beaches, it would seem prudent to leave matters such as monitoring swimmers and installing lifeguard chairs up to the proper authorities, but what do people do when the government has abdicated these responsibilities?

That's what the city and GNWT did when they tore up an agreement to staff Long Lake Beach with lifeguards nine years ago. They couldn't agree on how to split up the $21,000 bill to pay for them so the impasse continued despite several close calls, including a near drowning of another young child last year.

If a squabble over money was the issue 10 years ago, liability appears to be the primary one today.

Richard Zieba, the director of tourism and parks for the Department of Industry, Tourism, and Investment, says the government might have to limit the number of beach-goers if lifeguards do return. That's because today's life-guarding requires a certain number of lifeguards in ratio to the number of beach-goers, depending on the beach.

It's a sad indication of how risk-adverse governments have become when they're more worried about lawyers than people drowning on their beaches. Take a look at the 1967 photo of McNiven Beach and the lifeguard chair on page A13 of today's Yellowknifer. What were governments more concerned about back then? Their liability, or providing taxpayers with safe, comfortable recreational areas to frolic in?

Driving people away from Long Lake Beach to other unmonitored beaches on busy summer weekends shouldn't be a precondition to bringing back lifeguards.

Long Lake is where people, especially parents with young children, should be encouraged to gather and swim. It should be fully staffed with lifeguards, even if it does cost more money, and its drop-off areas should be located and marked - which would be a simple short-term solution.

Anything short of that will only prove to people that the GNWT and city, while quite capable of regulating just about everything, are increasingly unable or unwilling to do what's necessary to keep people safe.

There's an old adage: if you don't use it, you lose it. The phrase rings especially true when it comes to language.

There are many Canadians who become fluent in French after taking immersion all through elementary school and high school and yet years later struggle to use the language. Why? They rarely, if ever, use it.

If a language is to remain vibrant and widely spoken, it needs to be a part of everyday life. It's not enough to just learn it in school.

That's why the newly-formed partnership between Isuma TV and community members in Arviat is so exciting.

Isuma TV is an organization which provides Inuit and indigenous people a multimedia platform to express themselves in their own languages. There are plans to set up equipment at Arviat's high school so a TV channel can be run starting this fall. Residents will be able to broadcast community events, music videos, programs about social issues and whatever else they can dream up.

However, for the channel to be a success, it has to have the support of the people in Arviat. When it gets going, residents should lend a hand by watching, creating content, agreeing to an interview or offering to share a story in Inuktitut.

It's important to get involved because if the project gets off the ground, it has the potential to positively impact the community in many ways.

First, it will encourage greater use of Inuktitut by getting youth and other community members excited about creating videos in their mother tongue and by promoting the language in the home. Instead of sitting down to watch an English show, residents can view culturally-relevant programming featuring faces they recognize. In a time when Inuktitut is being spoken less and less in the home, this is key.

Second, those who participate in the creation of content are likely to gain valuable skills and knowledge from the process. Technology is becoming more and more a part of the business world and everyday life. Someone with the ability to use editing software, audio equipment and a video camera would be a great asset in various workplaces.

Furthermore, participants would learn communication skills through conducting interviews, writing scripts and creating songs. Knowledge such as this is so essential and it can't be bought.

Thirdly, by integrating more culturally-relevant knowledge into day-to-day life, the community will help to instil a sense of identity and pride in youth that will give them confidence. As they say, you have to know where you came from in order to know where to go.

Finally, those who leave Arviat will still have access to the channel through the Internet. This means they too can share in the learning and keep up to date with what's happening in the community.

In short, Arviat has been given a special opportunity and the community needs to take advantage of it. Don't let it go to waste.

• Miranda Scotland is interim editor of Kivalliq News while editor Darrell Greer is on vacation

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