Wednesday, January 15, 2001
According to a recent survey, residents of the Northwest Territories are among Canadians least likely to say they will give up smoking.
The territory showed up as a black swatch at the top of the country -- like smoke-choked lungs in those graphic warnings that adorn cigarette packs.
In recognition of national anti-smoking week, we propose a short reality check for smokers who still go at it as though it's an Olympic event.
Go to the mirror. Smile.
Remember when your teeth were white, and your breath didn't smell like something a dog would roll in? Think about the damage you can't see, and how much it costs to smoke.
Now list three good things smoking has done for you, or the people in your life -- especially if you are a parent and your kids seem inclined to pick up your habit.
We share the relief with the folks at the Yellowknife Women's Centre on its acquisition of the former detox centre on Franklin Ave.
Owned by the NWT Housing Corp., the building had been under utilized since Northern Addictions Services closed the centre in 1999. Meanwhile at the women centre's 47 St. shelter, battered women were living in sub-standard conditions -- two beds and a couple of couches -- a building the centre's director admitted had become "inhumane to house women" at. For the first time ever, the new shelter will offer private rooms and the protection these women deserve.
The fact that the NWT Housing Corp. is kicking in three months free rent to help them get started is also worthy of note. What remains to be seen is if the centre can meet the $3,000 monthly mortgage payments once the Housing Corp. steps back.
When an isolated community is limited to only air, snowmobile or boat traffic, the absence of roads connecting residents to the outside world is amplified.
And so the passing of ice-road pioneer John Denison was recorded last week, marking the end of an era in Northern transportation.
Gone is the man who was instrumental in building the North's first ice-roads for wheeled vehicles.
Denison's roads changed the face of Northern development -- opening economical routes and establishing a land connection between communities and worksites.
Suddenly transport trucks could haul supplies or a person could simply experience the thrill of driving across the Barren Lands in the cab of a truck.
Thousands of kilometres of ice highways now exist, but it all started half a century ago with John Denison.
One of the first questions southern relatives ask neophyte Northerners is how much snow there is.
The answer, until this year at least, is that it's too cold to snow very much at all. Well what happened this year?
The first white stuff fell in September. It melted. The second dump stayed. Then it got cold. When it warmed up, more snow fell. And more. We've still got a ways to go before we match the 76 cm record, but there's 51 cm on the ground. The city has plowed to the brink of breaking the budget and we've shoveled and griped about it.
Even so, the temperature is comfortable. Snowmobilers, skiers and snowshoers love it. The Snow King is especially happy. And in the spring, we can look forward to high water and ... possibly a mosquito population boom.
What more could we want?
Nunavut Sustainable Development Minister Olayuk Akesuk is probably not having too much fun at his job these days.
The ruling of Justice Robert Kilpatrick on a "traditional" polar bear hunt has put Akesuk in a tight spot.
Akesuk is the third minister to deal with this issue and knows the decision made by the first two ministers to deny the hunt was the right one.
When one reads Kilpatrick's decision, it comes across as more of a ruling on contract law, than one on rights and tradition.
Our biggest problem with Kilpatrick's ruling is that it doesn't fit the spirit for which it was intended.
The whole point of the agreement is to protect Inuit hunting rights.
A hunting lineage is drawn from past to present, meant to show Inuit have long depended on their hunting skills for survival.
Basically, the agreement guarantees Inuit a right to harvest, which we totally agree with.
But, we can't buy -- "...an Inuk shall have the right to harvest up to the full level of his or her economic, social and cultural needs..." -- translates into it's OK to go out and kill a polar bear with a spear to collect a fast buck from a southern production company wanting to film the event for no other reason than exploitation in the name of profit.
By ruling the hunt OK, Kilpatrick is also saying the use of an outdated weapon which rarely, if ever, produces a clean kill, constitutes the humane killing of wildlife as contained in Article 5.1.42.
We wonder if Justice Kilpatrick would rule the same way if he were to actually attend the hunt.
We wonder, for that matter, what he would rule if he sat down and talked with the American hunter and experienced Arviat guide who almost lost their encounter with polar bears a little over a year ago. Both were armed with a high-powered rifle.
Finally, while culture and tradition must always be preserved in a historic and practical sense -- Akesuk knows his two predecessors were also worried about how such a hunt would be viewed by a modern society.
And while lawyers for Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. may have won a battle of words in a courtroom, we still have not heard one single way Inuit culture will benefit if a bear is killed with a spear.
We expect we will never know.
If this situation was not a battle to the death, one would almost be tempted to cheer for the bear!