by Chris Meyers Almey
Northern News Services

NNSL (May 16/97) - A Yellowknife working mother of three is going to wage war on booze houses that get kids drunk.

Carol Rideau - not her real name - began planning her battles shortly after an encounter with police. Rideau's 13-year-old daughter was brought home recently by RCMP at 1:30 a.m.

"She was puking and drunk," says Rideau.

Rideau says she knows of three such "booze cans" so she is going to make signs and stick them in their front yards, letting the neighborhood know what goes on inside. She says these illicit places even hold keg parties for kids.

Rideau is not alone --the RCMP regularly haul kids home in drunken states. RCMP Staff Sgt. Dave Grundy says they are aware of different houses that hold parties for youth, but it is difficult to lay charges.

Mounties need reasonable and probable grounds that people are allowing minors to consume alcohol in order to obtain a search warrant.

They also need to have kids testify in court, but none will come forward, Grundy says. But he hopes the community will get involved.

Grundy cites a street in town where there was a problem with drug dealing in a house and it was through the efforts of neighborhood residents that RCMP were able to shut the operation down.

Rideau, 33, is distraught over the life her daughter is living because "there is not a damned thing I can do."

"You can't beat them, you can't handcuff them to the stove and the alcohol treatment centre has a long waiting list," she says.

"There are a lot of kids involved in this.... I get frantic calls from other mothers asking have you seen my daughter?"

So far this May she's received three such calls, she says.

Carol Rideau doesn't blame "lousy parents" for the behaviour of kids and youth on Yellowknife streets. She says there is not much they can do with the kids.

"If they decide not to go to school, what are you going to do? If they hang around the mall, what are you going to do? If they refuse to come back when you let them out the door, what are you going to do?"

"There should be a curfew for children under 16. If it was city-wide, if kids had to be in by 9:30, we'd have a lot less problems."

Rideau's daughter will take off for a couple of days at a time so she goes looking for her. All the kids know her daughter so she can ask them if they have seen her.

"I'm getting tired of hunting," Rideau sighs.

She said a boy came home with her daughter and he refused to go to his home, so Rideau called his mother, who didn't know what to do with him.

"Is it a problem because there are so many single parents or is it a problem because you can't spank children?" Rideau wants to know.

Showing just how desperate she is, Rideau says she is going to frequent a place in town where kids hang out -- and where she says drugs are sold.

"If you can't keep them at home, go where they are."

Rideau does have a dilemma though, because with two other kids at home she can't spend all her time trying to save one child without putting her other children at risk.

"It's like you become apathetic after a while. But it happens with other parents, too."

There is one small consolation for Rideau. "She's not one of those rude, obnoxious (teens). She's still relatively polite but does what she wants."

Rideau says she left home herself when she was 15.

"But I never did this. We didn't go to a keg party. We never heard of a keg party. I never heard of drugs until I was in my 20s, but I grew up in the bush."

The parents she talks to who have problems with their kids have good jobs and the 100 to 150 kids that hang around in the downtown don't all have bad parents.

This is a huge problem because there isn't much for kids to do who aren't into organized sports, Rideau says.

Kids need something to focus on and need to be taken out of town. There are programs for children under 10 but you can't stick a 14-year-old in day care, she says.