Inuvik (Mar 20/98) - In the North, perhaps only the ravens actually take stuff out of the dump.

Everything else winds up there, often whether it is still usable or not, and that is why a group of four men are spending two weeks up to their elbows in appliance parts in an Inuvik workshop.

"There is too much stuff being thrown in the dump for little things, like burnt-out wiring or a $20 thermostat or a socket," said Gordon Lichuk, an appliance technician with Dowland Contracting. The company, with assistance from the GNWT's Education Department, sponsored a course that is teaching workers from surrounding communities the basics of repairing items such as fridges, stoves and washer-driers.

The course came about because Lichuk didn't like going to the communities and seeing perfectly good appliances thrown away and hundreds of dollars spent on new ones because there was no one around who knew how to fix them. At the end of the course, places like Holman and Tulita will have people who know their way around the inside of the machines and be able to save residents there an expensive trip to the Northern to replace an appliance that may have very little wrong with it.

Many of those taking the course work for the housing associations in their communities and learned by doing, stripping apart various appliances and putting them together again with wiring diagrams by their sides. Lichuk says the insides of the machines are not very intimidating once they have been disassembled and put back together a few times.

"If you know what all the components are, you can figure out what's wrong," he said over the clatter of the students' tools.

"Everything is a loop. If it starts somewhere, it has to finish somewhere else and so you just have to follow it through."

Parts for the communities will be supplied from Dowland's extensive warehouse, but as most homes in the North are furnished with General Electric appliances and older ones at that, it will ease inventory demands.

Sometimes parts aren't even necessary. Lichuk went to the Inuvik dump to pull out a few appliances for the students to practise on but when he returned to the shop, found two of the fridges worked perfectly.

"I couldn't find anything wrong with them," he shrugged. "Maybe they were thrown away because something in them smelled bad or they didn't match the colors of the kitchen."