NNSL (Aug 24/96) - A final effort to save the Char Lake Lodge from destruction has failed.

Located 84 kilometres northwest of Cambridge Bay, the lodge was set to burn nearly two weeks ago at the hands of the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development.

But the department delayed destruction plans until NWT’s Supreme Court ruled on an injunction sought by the lodge’s owner. The lodge is owned by Alberta-based aviation businessman and Northern pilot Mike Hackman.

In making her ruling, denying the injunction, Justice Virginia Schuler said evidence before her pointed to Hackman knowing at least as early as 1987 that leases on the property had been cancelled.

And while Hackman and his company, Arctic Outpost Camps Ltd., tried to get new leases on the property, Schuler said it appeared the effort stopped after 1989.

"The plaintiff may believe that it does, or that it should, have a lease or leases, but in my view, the lack of any real action in pursuing that casts doubt on that assertion," Schuler said.

In an affidavit presented to the Court, Hackman said he believed he had a Crown lease on the property and had sunk $350,000 into the lodge since first buying into it in 1969.

But that was not enough to sway the Court to grant an injunction.

Any trace of the lodge is expected to be erased by a DIAND-contracted cleanup crew that has been stationed at the lodge for more than a week, awaiting Court decision.

"I'm expecting an update on progress, but the cleanup is expected to be finished in about two weeks," said Arnold Enge, an official with DIAND in Yellowknife.

His department is supposed to level the lodge and return the Char Lake property to its pre-development condition earlier this month, as part of the 1992 Nunavut Land Claim Agreement.