Yellowknife (Oct 03/03) - Sucking back a cigarette outside Sam's Monkey Tree Pub -- and peeved he had to do so -- Craig Clark recalled his late grandmother's deathbed advice.

Harley's Hard Rock Saloon performer Mia Santiago takes a smoke break outside her place of employment, Wednesday. - Chris Woodall/NNSL photo

"Before she died she said one important thing to me. She said, 'Dear Craig, every day we lose more and more of our birthrights'," Clark said on the first evening of the new city-wide ban on public smoking.

While Clark paralleled the ban with an Orwellian Big Brother mentality, pub owner Harvey Bourgeois said the city is being inconsistent in its healthy-living approach. "I go into a drug store which is a place where I am supposed to buy medications and healthy things. I get to the front counter and the first thing I face is cigarettes," Bourgeois said.

Several other bar owners and patrons across Yellowknife echoed concerns and annoyances, Oct. 1, about having to step outside for a quick drag.

At the Gold Range bar, several patrons surrounded in blue smoke lingered around the front entrance.

Inside, patron Cornelius Tetso said she has friends who may not want to even go out to bars if they cannot smoke.

"If Sam would let people smoke, he would make a lot of money," she says of the staff.

Another patron, Jim Armstrong, a former smoker, said he could care less about whether or not people smoke.

The new smoking bylaw doesn't hold much water with the owner of The Black Knight Pub, either, where it held a protest of sorts, Oct.1.

"To put a ban on a city with a greater population of smokers makes no sense. It's a lack of imagination," co-owner Bogus Zdyb said.

To mark the first day of the new bylaw, two chairs covered with empty ashtrays graced the front entrance of the pub outside on the sidewalk.

A line up of ashtrays on the ground at the front of the pub symbolized the property line of the city and the 49th Street pub.

But while no ashtrays are on tables inside the pub, Zdyb still expects to see non-compliance.

"And we're obligated, once we notice (someone) is smoking, we'll ask them to extinguish it," he explains.

"Our only problem, according to the bylaw, we haven't figured out how or where they will extinguish that cigarette."

Ironically, several smokers in the pub did not want to comment on the smoke-free environment.

Non-smokers such as Robin Miller, however, were pleased.

"It's great. Now we don't have to put up with the smoke," Miller said.

Another non-smoking patron, who did not want to be named, was also elated.

"It will be nice to go out and have a nice coffee or drink where you don't have to breathe other peoples' smoke and go home stinking of cigarettes," the person said. While bar patrons may grumble, some bar staffs are supportive of the ban.

"I'm for it," says Mary-Alison Lyman, a server (and smoker) at Harley's Hard Rock Saloon. "Health-wise it's better for everyone."

"It's disgusting," says Harley's bartender Joe Patton of smoking, although he admits to an attachment to the "evil weed."

There will be an adjustment period for bar patrons, Patton says.

"The smoking ban is going to cause havoc at first, but sooner or later it'll just be a normal thing," Patton says.

Debbie Euchner, Yellowknife city clerk, said it is a misconception to think bylaw enforcement officers will be more lenient for the first few weeks in doling out fines to smokers.

"But enforcement is working with proprietors trying to get voluntary compliance," she said of the approach the city plans to use.

Nevertheless, if bar staff call enforcement about a stubborn smoker, officers will be on the scene.

"But if patrons refuse to put out a cigarette, they can be charged. And depending on the circumstances, the proprietor can be charged."

Fines for lighting up can be steep.

A $1,000 fine can be slapped onto a business for a first offense and up to $5,000 for a third.

An individual may have to dole out $100 for a first offence.

A lot of cigarettes could be bought with the $500 smokers will have to shell out the third time they smoke inside.

A call to city hall Oct. 2 revealed two incidents where officers caught smokers, but did not lay charges.

-- With files from Chris Woodall