Daniel MacIsaac
Northern News Services

NNSL (Jun 23/99) - In the hopes of bringing the Northwest Territories and the rest of the country closer together, the Council for Canadian Unity held its inaugural round-table meeting in Yellowknife this week.

Organized by Michele Stanners, the council's regional director out of Calgary, Monday's meeting at the Explorer Hotel attracted some 40 Yellowknifers and guests -- including visiting federal minister Stephane Dion, Western Arctic MP Ethel Blondin-Andrew and former NWT premier Nick Sibbeston, who will represent the council in the NWT.

"We're hoping to let the community know what the council does and all about our programs," said Stanners before the meeting. "We're hoping to help foster knowledge of Canadian institutions."

Since 1963, the council says it has tried in a non-partisan way and through research, public meetings and its youth education programs, to help people better understand how Canada works.

In practice, the council is about fostering unity and keeping the country together. Blondin-Andrew introduced Dion as "a proud Canadian and a proud Quebecer" -- before Dion spoke about battling against separatist tendencies and later turning to talk of "the advantages of being a northern country."

Ottawa's minister for Intergovernmental Affairs, Dion had just arrived in Yellowknife from his first whirlwind tour of the North, on which he accompanied 17 foreign ambassadors.

After stressing the need to improve education and acknowledging the North's levels of social problems and substance abuse are "unacceptably high," Dion said he nevertheless feels optimistic about the region's future -- but not because of its untapped resources.

"The source of my confidence in the North is you Northerners," he said. "You are a diverse group -- and there's strength in diversity."

Aiming to build on that diversity, the council includes the Encounters with Canada youth exchange among its many programs.

Present at Monday's meeting was Kyla Kakfwi, a Sir John Franklin graduate who spent a week at Ottawa's Terry Fox Centre last April when she studied business and entrepreneurship through the Encounters program.

"It was incredible," Kakfwi said. "The focus was to understand Canada better and how it works politically and they even showed us a film about Terry Fox that makes everybody cry."

Sibbeston said the NWT chapter would work to uphold the council's objectives and expand its work North of 60.