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A neighbourhood like any other

Home-owners want to stay where they are

Jorge Barrera
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Jan 12/01) - Where Con Road ends in a cul-de-sac Soren Thomassen's house sits beside an empty lot. Someone used to live there once, but then there was a strike at the mine.

Then again, that's the story of Con Camp trailer park - they come and go, and no one can ever really say this is mine, I'm staying here.

Con Mine's Robertson Shaft is muted in smoke and lights. It's visible from every angle in the trailer park. Snow is deep on the edges of its street. Chimney smoke, slow in the cold, hangs over clusters of houses and trailers. A snowmobile roars across a street and into the bush as a pick-up truck pulls into a driveway, lights dim, motor dies and someone goes home for supper.

Here, beside Thomassen's house is an iron swing-set half lost in snow. The lights are on inside, walkway shovelled bare to the door.

Tonight two of Thomassen's neighbours are sitting around his dinner table drinking coffee and talking about the neighbourhood. They nod when Thomassen mentions home.

Thomassen works underground at the dying Con mine. If the price of gold stays or drops, it will close in four years. If the mine goes, so goes his neighbourhood. He and his neighbours don't want to leave and they're asking the city of Yellowknife to support them through an acquisition of the land. He says he's tired of living with a moving van tagged to tomorrow.

"We want to own the dirt that are homes are on," says Thomassen.

None of the residents in the trailer park own the dirt. It's leased by their employer, Miramar, from the territorial government.

These lots are for workers only, the trailer park is technically an industrial site. Once a worker leaves the mine they have to move. It's a reality the residents have lived with and accepted. But things have changed. With the mine closure looming, residents like Thomassen and his neighbours want the stability of private title.

Dave Comeau and Kathryn Stuckey have lived in the trailer park for a long time.

Stuckey -- whose husband Gerry has worked at the mine for 14 years -- grew up on Rycon Rd. She moved to the trailer park five years ago.

"This is a great place for kids to grow up," she says. "I don't have to worry about them."

Even though no one owns the land they all own their trailers and houses and over time they've built additions, invested money in creating home.

Twelve-year resident Comeau is one of these people.

"I have a lawn, a fence, a garden and a yearly skating rink," he says.

"This is my home, I don't want to live in any other part of Yellowknife," says Comeau.

The future of their neighbourhood rests on the deal-making the city can pull off with Miramar and the GNWT.

Thomassen, Stuckey and Comeau want the city to take over the land and resell them their lots. They broached the issue with council on Monday.

The idea is not new. In 1998 the homeowners approached the city with a similar request but a mine strike pushed it to the back-burner.

The city can't purchase the lots because the trailer park lands are designated as commissioner's land.

The GNWT has a land-lease only policy over all commissioners land which are still bound up in outstanding land-claims.

But Thomassen, Comeau and Stuckey are determined to do what they can to save their neighbourhood.

"We'll do whatever it takes for us to be landowners," says Thomassen, "We want to be in control of our own futures."