KUGLUKTUK (Jan 13/97) - "You'll enjoy it," said the flight attendant as the plane began its descent to Kugluktuk airport. "Everyone is very friendly."

That they are.

Elderly men and women smile greetings as they pass on the roads and snowmobile paths that lace the town. Children, seemingly impervious to the frigid temperatures, stop playing to ask your name.

There are no outward signs of the tragedies that have beset this community over the last year.

According to the Department of Health and Social Services, there were five suicides here in 1996.

Intertwined with the problem of suicide is rampant alcoholism and drug abuse. Most adults are either active or recovering alcoholics.

It's a lot to deal with in a hamlet of just 1,200 men, women and children.

According to the local RCMP detachment, more than three per cent of the population is currently serving time in custody, 18 in federal penitentiaries and another 23 at the Yellowknife Correctional Centre.

The difficulties this community wrestles with are no more visible to an outsider than the tundra hidden beneath a fresh blanket of snow.

There are no bars in Kugluktuk and alcohol is sold in no stores. When some is flown in, the drinking takes place in small parties, generally of 8 to 12 people, in private homes, behind closed doors.

Crime takes place behind closed doors as well. Much of it is domestic, almost all of it, according to the RCMP, is alcohol-related.

The young men and women -- the pride of the community -- who take their lives, meanwhile, make their final decisions with little or no warning.

"Our lives revolve around our dread of the four o'clock in the morning telephone call," said Anglican minister Michael Maclachlan, who is responsible for laying out the bodies of victims and helping families through their grieving.

Only the families directly touched by any of these problems could know more about it than Maclachlan and his wife, Kit, who runs the community awareness centre.

"Although there are a wealth of underlying problems, when people commit suicide it's a very immediate problem they are responding to," said Kit Maclachlan.

The root problems are well known, almost all of them a product of the tremendous change Inuit society has experienced over the last half-century.

"The whole civilized world has come to them in the last 50 years," said Kit Maclachlan. "It's not surprising they've got a few problems along the way."

Helping people develop the life skills to survive that shift, and dealing with the problems that result from it, is a job that falls mainly to the church and the awareness centre.

Just as suicide and alcoholism are problems of individuals, the solutions must be found on an individual level.

"It's very difficult to deal effectively with an entire community," said Kit Maclachlan. "You have to deal with people one-on-one and hope you can make a difference in their life and that they will pass it on to the next person."

Though they are few in number, several families in the community have managed to bridge the gap between the old and new ways.

Charlie and Marion Bolt are one such couple. The two have experienced the downward spiral of alcoholism, but it is now a part of their past.

The two live for half the year in a outpost camp 240 kilometres from town, hunting and trapping, preparing furs for sale, and sewing their own clothes.

"It's nice and quiet. There's no alcohol or drugs or trucks, only us," said Charlie Bolt, flashing the same easy smile the visitor has seen so often during his stay.