Richard Gleeson
Northern News Services

Sachs Harbour (Mar 20/00) - If the NWT was one big happy family, Holman and Sachs Harbour would be the two brothers who live on the far side of town who don't call home often enough.

The two are the most expensive to live in and remotest of the territory's many remote communities.

In the interests of tightening up family relations, News/North decided to check in on how things are going on the other side of town.

"For myself I don't really feel left out of the NWT," said Holman resident Adam Kudlak. "In a way, though, I feel like Holman and Sachs are the two brothers who don't visit each other enough."

Kudlak said apart from some business travel between the two communities and the annual muskox harvest, there are very few meetings between the two communities, Kudlak said.

Mayor Peter Esau said cost of living is what really separates his Banks Island community from the rest of the NWT.

He said a litre of milk goes for about $7. And heaven help you if your Ski-Doo engine blows up in the middle of winter.

On top of the price of a new one, you'll have to get it up there.

"It costs $700 to fly up a Ski-Doo, and sometimes you have to when these things happen," said Esau. "In Inuvik you buy a Ski-doo and that's it."

Esau said his community's efforts to fire up self-government negotiations may be a solution to the long-standing dilemma.

Helen Kalvak Elihakvik school principal, Frieda Maskaant, has only been in Holman since last summer, but said she hasn't sensed any feelings of neglect among the people there.

"I don't sense that. For us things are new because we're now part of the Beaufort Delta, and we were always part of the Kitikmeot. So we're feeling like the new kid on the block," said Maskaant.

The beauty of the community and the environment around it is one of the advantages of its remoteness, said Maskaant.

Kudlak agreed.

"Down in Yellowknife you look out your door and you see your backyard and a fence. When we go out our door and behind the house, you can see the land for as far as you can see."

In the summer time you can watch seals in the bay from your house, Kudlak added.

Of course, there is a solution to reducing the negatives and maintaining the positives of the communities' isolation.

Push Banks Island a couple of hundred kilometres south so Sachs would be local dialing distance from Tuktoyaktuk, then spin around Victoria Island to put Holman within a day's snowmobiling of Kugluktuk.