Mike W. Bryant
Northern News Services

NNSL (Aug 16/99) - Ben and Fran Greenfield of Paradise, NWT, have just celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary and are feeling pretty good about it.

"Sometimes I think the modern generation just doesn't put the effort into it anymore," Fran Greenfield says.

"You have to just stick with it. I think it helps when you're both reaching for the same goal."

In the 33-and-a-half years since the couple moved up North with their four children, they have established a campground, a small market garden and the only U-pick Saskatoon berry operation in the Northwest Territories.

"We moved up here from Calgary into a log cabin with no running water," Greenfield says. "We bought the place known as Paradise Gardens then. It was originally owned by Joe Namy Crausse.

"It was just a small market garden then. Since then, we've expanded and put some greenhouses up."

The Greenfields once supplied vegetable produce to Pine Point, but since the hamlet was abandoned in 1987, the Greenfields had to concentrate on other ventures, such as the Saskatoon berry U-pick.

"Business has been very good," Greenfield says. "On a Saturday or Sunday we might have 25 people come down. We give them an ice cream pail and charge them by the pound.

"On a good day we might have 700 pounds go out."

Having celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary on Aug. 1, it was hardly surprising that there was many in attendance for such a monumental occasion.

"The anniversary went very well," Greenfield says. "The weather cleared up just in time.

"We had the party on Aug. 1, even though it was not really our anniversary, but it was close enough. It gave people a three-day weekend to travel. At least 70 people showed up. It was a good crowd."

According to Fran Greenfield, her and her husband's life in the North has been too good to think about moving anywhere else.

"I don't think I could ever live in the city again," Greenfield says. "It just wouldn't work."A