The story is all too familiar: a family history that starts in pain and neglect and ends that way.

Children raised by parents who are unable to assume the duty, often because their own parents were in the same situation, find themselves unwanted and ill-prepared to handle the rights and responsibilities that come with adulthood.

Foster parents do what they can to help these children. For only modest financial compensation, they take troubled children into their homes while the government looks for a more permanent solution.

But foster parents are a rare breed, and growing rarer by the day, it would seem. In Yellowknife just two years ago there was more than one foster home for every two children that needed one. Today, there's fewer than one for every three.

Foster parents don't grow on trees. The only way to break the cycle is to attack the problems that separate children from their original homes in the first place. That means offering pregnant mothers more help, more counselling -- even mandatory counselling when the case suggests it would help -- and better long-term attention.

While it would be preferable that only those couples and single mothers who are financially, emotionally and socially prepared to handle the burdens of raising a child let themselves get pregnant, that isn't the way the world works.

So we have to recognize that more home visits by social workers might be necessary. And we're not talking about just checking to see if baby is healthy. Right from the diagnosis of pregnancy, expectant mothers should be able to draw on the generosity of the government of city and the territories to ensure they are ready for what comes ahead.

That will cost money, but it will save much more down the road in health, policing and foster care costs.

Many Keewatin business operators are fuming over the recent GNWT announcement of a pipeline construction that will change the way fuel and dry cargo has been shipped to the region for more than 20 years.

And so they should be -- they need answers to how the change will affect the way they operate now and whether or not they can continue to operate at all once the resupply routes change.

They are scared and are questioning the government's move that they say is being rammed through the legislature so quickly that no one has time to stop the multimillion-dollar venture.

The GNWT is certainly cutting through all the red tape and not wasting any time on this one. The request for proposals will be issued in November for the private sector to construct the fuel delivery pipelines in Arviat, Chesterfield Inlet, Coral Harbour and Rankin Inlet.

The $5 million pipeline will be constructed in time for the 1999 resupply.

All communities in the Keewatin except Repulse Bay rely on Northern Transportation Company Ltd. (NTCL), which has had the contract for the movement of supplies by tug and barge since the mid-1970s.

What's wrong with the existing system?

The Keewatin Resupply Committee study that was chaired last year by Kivallivik MLA Kevin O'Brien pointed to the pipeline option, but also stated that the tug and barge system, while more expensive, offers the highest level of service in terms of the number of deliveries, the length of the shipping season and shortest supply routes.

How much will service drop with the proposed freighter/tanker system that will be used with the extended pipeline?

The GNWT has said the price of fuel will drop from 23 cents a litre for transportation this year to about six cents under the revised resupply plan.

This translates into a $3.5 million saving even after a $1.4 million lease payment is made annually to the GNWT for five years following the completion of the pipeline.

And according to the GNWT, the saving will also mean that the government can stop subsidizing fuel as they do now under the petroleum products division. But once the subsidies stop, will fuel still be cheaper to the consumer?

Furthermore, the pipeline won't be finished until after division, so the GNWT won't realize any of the saving it may bring in future years, namely the elimination of the fuel subsidy.

Why is the Department of Public Works and Services willing to spend the money for the project before division? It will be the Nunavut government that will either save money from it or have to live with the decision to switch systems.

Business people say their consultation with the government on this issue isn't over. They want the government to know loud and clear that they oppose such a move so close to division.

It would seem that there are plenty of questions about this project that need to be answered, and let's hope that happens sooner, rather than after its too late to stop.

Coffee anyone? Those words couldn't be sweeter to Yellowknife's own business wonder kid, Brendan Bell, who was recognized earlier this month by the Business Development Bank of Canada for his entrepreneurial spirit.

Bell, 26, runs the city's two Javaroma locations, the L.A. cafe at the legislature, Heritage Cafe at the Prince of Wales museum, a concession at St. Pat's high school and has most recently gone into the office-catering business.

It is the young, adventurous and the bold who made Yellowknife what it is today. And in a climate of economic uncertainty, its a relief to see those like Bell rising to the surface to usher Yellowknife into the next century.