Jennifer McPhee
Northern News Services

Iqaluit (Jan 21/02) - On a Sunday afternoon at the Arctic Winter Games complex in Iqaluit, a 14-year-old girl sits in a chair, leafing through a beauty magazine.

The baby-faced kids around her play pool, video and board games, and look too young to be dabbling with drugs and alcohol.

But looks can be deceiving. The magazine-reader, for example, says she only gave up weed, hash and alcohol eight months ago.

"I quit cold turkey," she says, asking that her name and photograph not end up in print because her mom doesn't know about history with drugs.

The girl says she quit because she heard on television that "it was bad."

She figures about three-quarters of teenagers she knows take drugs and drink -- but not the kids who hang out at the centre.

Seven youths who come here belong to a committee that empowers them to plan events and take charge of the centre.

"Kids and young people complain about how bored they are," says youth co-ordinator Jason Currie. "It leads to them getting into trouble and breaking the law."

But by mid-February Iqaluit will house not one but two youth centres -- one at one end of the city and one at the other.

Iqaluit planners included a youth centre in the Arctic Winter Games complex, which opened Oct. 20.

Over on the other side, Qikiqtani Inuit Association youth workers and Inuksuk high school students are busy painting the Dome Building -- the future site of Iqaluit's second youth centre.

It will be a four-level building with a workout room, pool and games room, research library and soup kitchen.

Both centres give teenagers a safe and drug- and alcohol-free place to go at night and on weekends.

"A lot of them say they are getting into less trouble," says Amy Elgersma, youth co-ordinator for the city.

Elgersma says kids who have problems at home appreciate having a safe but interesting place to get away.

But why did the city go so long without a youth centre?

The usual obstacles, says Iqaluit's director of recreation, Dave St. Louis. "Money and resources."

St. Louis says city councillors addressed the need for a youth centre in its last five-year plan about seven years ago.

When the city built the $4.5-million Arctic Winter Games complex, "it was an opportunity to add something the community needs," says St. Louis.

And what young people in the community say they need are places to call their own.

Miali Coley, assistant regional youth co-ordinator for QIA, says getting funding for the second centre was not a problem.

The Department of Canadian Heritage provided the core funding.

Finding an available building for the $250,000 one-year pilot project was not so easy.

"Everyone said we need a youth centre, but we didn't get a lot of offers from the city of Iqaluit or anywhere," she says.

When the Dome opened up, QIA youth department officials wrote a proposal and submitted it to the QIA board, which approved the plan during an hour-long teleconference.

Potential visitors say they are excited about the new Dome.

"It's somewhere to go," says Jason Sudlovenick, while sketching a mural inside the Dome building.

Will he spend lots of time here?

"Oh yeah," he says. "Definitely."