Wednesday, November 24, 2004
Floatplanes remain crucial to the NWT's tourism industry, providing the only access to back-country lakes and remote areas. They're also the plane of choice for hobby flyers like John Eckert of Salt Lake City, Utah, and Dr. David Adams of Knoxville, Tennessee.
They have been flying to the North for years.
Both complained to Yellowknifer recently about a lack of services for private floatplanes.
Both would like to see more places for visiting pilots to dock their aircraft, fuel up and load provisions.
The fledgling NWT Floatplane Association wants to help and is testing its wings on this issue. It hopes to present some ideas to city council in the near future.
Mayor Gord Van Tighem says the city is open to suggestions.
The City has an important role to play, but it can't do the job alone.
Key to accommodating floatplane tourists is deciding where on Yellowknife's waterfront they can go. That won't be easy, given the City's difficulty in getting any kind of waterfront development going.
It shouldn't be up to the City to provide refuelling or resupply stations. This could be a case where business can partner with the city to provide services to tourists. Uncertain, however, is the level of need.
Yellowknife should encourage all tourists, but must do so carefully. The city must work with the floatplane association, NWT Tourism and RWED to define the market and understand the need.
Once the market is understood, we can build facilities to meet the current demand, and plan ways to develop it into a bigger piece of our tourism economy.
This problem isn't going to be solved by next summer, but it must be addressed because as Dr. Adams says, Yellowknife is a "float flyer's paradise."
Before the discussion over how to spend $16 million in school cash becomes a tug-of-war, the territorial government needs to ask itself one very important question:
Does Yellowknife need a new school?
It's not about whether Yellowknife Catholic Schools or Yk Education District No. 1 needs a school.
Both have good arguments why they should get the money. YCS schools are bursting at the seams and the district has proven itself to be a great money manager. Yk No. 1 has room to spare in its classrooms, but many of its buildings need renovation.
So, pick up Solomon's sword, Education Minister Charles Dent, you're going to need it to make this decision.
Just make sure you make the right decision for all of Yellowknife.
Editorial Comment
Darrell Greer
Kivalliq News
Being an official with Hockey Canada is almost always a rewarding experience.
There are times, however, when being a hockey referee in the North can be a trying experience.
No, I'm not talking about abuse from the fans, players or parents.
In fact, the rate of such instances in Nunavut has dropped dramatically during the past three years.
Yes, there's still the odd player who uses a certain appendage to let me know I'll always be No. 1 with him.
And there will always be, whether we like it or not, a group of players who, if you leave out all the swear words, never say anything to an official.
That being said, Nunavut has come a long way with behaviour at our arenas.
Actual physical encounters between players and officials and unacceptable personal and/or racial remarks have all but disappeared.
As hockey lovers, that is reason to celebrate, and it is also cause for our zone (Hockey Nunavut) and branch (Hockey North) to continue to back their officials with zero tolerance for such behaviour.
Refs in a bad situation
The frustration comes when directives from the south -- no matter how well-intended -- have to be enforced to the detriment of Northern hockey.
Those who play the game remember all too well the great earpiece debacle of a few years ago.
During that time, officials were put in the unenviable position of telling players in the adult recreation and old-timer brackets to leave the ice if they had removed those little pieces of plastic that came with their helmets.
Have you ever asked an old-timer wearing a leather helmet where his earpiece was?
Shortly after that came the sticker fiasco, when we found out a $100 helmet was rendered useless by applying a 50-cent sticker.
In an area where a number of people -- especially parents with kids playing the game -- have difficulty purchasing equipment, such directives can put a financial strain on entire families, whether the big boys in the south want to believe it or not.
Limiting movement
Now, with all the discussion about the perils of body contact, there are new directives in place aimed at limiting a player's ability to move up an age bracket from, for example, atom to peewee or peewee to bantam.
In small Northern communities, where an age bracket may only have six or seven players, such directives have the ability to doom kids to a year of practice without feeling the joy of competition.
Hopefully, our Northern hockey leaders will continue to make their voices heard at national assemblies to remind those in the south of our unique situation.
As with most topics, dialogue leads to understanding and understanding leads to compromise.
Our younger players have been hit hard enough with the exclusion of peewees from the Arctic Winter Games.
With further restrictions being placed on their ability to play the game, we run the risk of having them skate away from it forever.
Editorial Comment
Jason Unrau
Inuvik Drum
If you happen to pass by the Drum office on Monday and Thursday afternoons, you will no doubt see youngsters gathered in front of the doors waiting to sell newspapers.
Believe it or not, we actually have to enforce a policy, which is not to sell papers to anybody until after 3:40 p.m., at which time the kids from Sir Alexander Mackenzie school and Samuel Hearne secondary school have been dismissed.
Why is this necessary, you may ask? So as not to give an unfair advantage to the kids who are not attending school over the ones who do.
When I first started working in Inuvik a little more than a year ago, I was surprised -- no shocked -- that so many of the community's youth, some of them perched outside the Drum office doors as early as 1 or 2 p.m., did not attend school.
A year later, I've become somewhat accustomed to the drill that happens week in and week out, playing out like a bad re-run.
Mervin from Matco arrives with Monday's News/North or Thursday's Drum usually around 2 p.m.
Minutes after Mervin leaves for his next delivery, or sometimes while he's still in the office, a child -- or several -- will enter and ask to buy papers. (We sell editions for half the cover price and the paper boys and girls keep the difference.)
When I ask why they aren't in school, answers vary from the indignant to outright lies and most are delivered with the straight face of deception.
"I didn't have school today."
"We got out of school early."
"I don't go to school."
"I don't have to go to school."
"I quit school."
What's wrong with this picture?
On Monday, one girl aged 12 actually said that she knew everything and didn't need to attend school any more.
"I quit school," she replied with confidence to my query.
This town can have all the meetings it wants to discuss combatting alcohol and drug abuse, but until this issue of truancy is addressed, I'm afraid that the cycle of abuse will likely continue. Uneducated people are generally the ones most at risk of making unwise decisions and, sadly, these include getting mixed up in the vortex of drugs and alcohol.
Already it is happening amongst some of our youth. The view from my apartment looks down on the rear of the liquor store and several times during the summer I witnessed kids -- not teenagers but younger ones -- loitering around waiting for somebody to buy them booze.
There is absolutely no excuse for 10, 11 and 12-year-olds to wander the streets when they should be in school. None whatsoever.
Often, when kids come to the office to buy papers, they will hand me an amount of money but not say how many papers they want.
As papers are 50 cents a piece, I ask them how many they can get for their money. In my experience, very few can actually come up with the correct answer. Not wanting to bring ridicule, I make a game out of dispensing papers first to those who can give a correct answer to how many papers they can buy.
If this isn't reason enough to get the kids in class and keep them there let me say this: the Inuvik Drum office is not where the youth of this town should be gaining simple math skills. That's what school is for.
Alcohol more widespread
According to RCMP statistics, alcohol abuse is a far more widespread problem and occupies the lion's share of police resources.
While not trying to downplay the seriousness of crack, addiction to this drug must be viewed in the context of the larger issue of alcohol addiction and addictions in general.
For a person hooked on booze, the ride from normality to rock-bottom can be a lifelong affair. Slowly, yet surely, the alcoholic becomes the shell of the person he or she once was. For the a person addicted to crack, this degrading process can happen in a matter of months. The dramatic change witnessed in many loved ones using crack in town perhaps explains the reason for such robust attendance at the Ingamo Hall crack think-tank.
Word is that another meeting to talk about the crack problem is being planned. What may provide for a more proactive approach at this upcoming gathering would be discussing ways of dealing with all addictions in their unique, yet ugly forms.
All Twin Lakes MLA candidates should make getting an addictions treatment centre the forefront of their platforms for election, but without the people's support, their promises will be nothing more than hot air.
Hopefully, the community can channel its energy into lobbying the territorial government for an alcohol and drug treatment centre and not relent until this is realized.
Pipeline construction has not even begun and the swelling economy anticipating this coming gas boom has brought hard drugs in its wake.
What will the future hold in store for Inuvik?
Things look bleak unless changes are made and soon.
Editorial Comment
Darrell Greer
Kivalliq News
Practically everyone likes to debate salary issues.
The topic is in the news these days relating to NHL players. They want to avoid a salary cap, which would limit their lofty incomes. Many fans view the millionaire players -- or even those earning mere hundreds of thousands -- as greedy.
Far removed from the NHL labour dispute, the Deh Cho grand chief's salary was one of the items for discussion at last month's Dehcho First Nations leadership meeting. Delegates approved the $85,000 annual rate for Herb Norwegian.
Whether that's a lot of money depends on how you look at it. As grand chief, Norwegian oversees 13 aboriginal groups in 10 communities.
There are two MLAs who split most of those same communities between them. Kevin Menicoche, as a regular MLA for the Nahendeh, receives a salary comparable to Norwegian's. Michael McLeod, who oversees two ministerial portfolios in addition to being MLA for Deh Cho, gets tens of thousands of dollars more than the grand chief.
All are essentially paid by the federal government. Ottawa is the source of most of the DFN's funding, and most territorial government dollars are derived from Ottawa as well -- although the hand is always out for more.
So Norwegian could be viewed as a relative bargain, that is unless you completely disagree with what he stands for politically and the tactics he employs in his quest to attain the Deh Cho's objectives.
If that's how you feel, then remuneration isn't really the issue, ideology is.
In the smaller communities, the chiefs make very little money, or, in the case of Lloyd Chicot, receive no salary at all. While a base salary may be in order, others would be quick to point out that most mayors and Metis presidents in the Deh Cho toil at unrelated full-time jobs. They generally take care of their mayoral/presidential duties in their spare time.
Do the chiefs deserve more? That's something for their band members to examine closely.
Precipitation please
It's been a dry year in the Deh Cho. Rain was at a premium for most of the summer and water levels were desperately low in rivers and creeks throughout the region. It's been a pleasantly mild winter, but now we're into the third week of November and there's little more than a few inches of snow on the ground.
Snowmobilers are itching for more powder. Close to two feet of the white stuff came down in parts of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island earlier this week. If only they could package some of it and send it our way...
In the Nov. 19 issue of Yellowknifer, the story "Just remember it's for charity" contained two errors. The CD A Christmas Gift was a project by Dancing Sky Studios, not the Recording Arts Association of the NWT. Also, the price of the CDs is $20, not $10.