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NWT yellowpages has a murder section

Peter Crnogorac
Northern News Services
Wednesday, February 7, 2007

YELLOWKNIFE - Relax, your Yellowpages has it all covered, including murder.

Turn to page 189 of the current NWT telephone directory and in the Yellowpages section you'll see the heading Murder.

However, the only mention of the age-old crime is at the bottom of the page under the section Murder Mystery Dinner Theatres. Directly under this is written: See restaurants.

The other advertisements on the page are for moving and multimedia companies.

With another edition of the phone book due out in March, some companies are hoping a revision can be made.

NorthwesTel puts out the Northwest Territories Directory.

Anne Kennedy, media relations for NorthwesTel, was unaware that the Yellowpages has a murder section.

When asked to turn to page 189, she said, "Oh yeah, there it is. I guess we didn't catch it."

Kennedy explained that the page headers are chosen by a computer program that picks the first word of the last company listed on the right-hand page, and the first word of the first company on the left page.

When asked what would happen if the last entry on a right-sided page was for a rape-crisis centre, she at first said the page header would be Rape Crisis.

But when reminded that the computer program picks one word, she admitted the header would be Rape.

"That's a good point," Kennedy said. "We maybe should look into it."

Matco Transportation Systems' advertisement takes up the top half of the murder page.

When contacted, Marc Parent, branch manager for Matco in Yellowknife, was asked to flip to page 189 of the phone book.

It took a few moments for him to find the page.

"Holy &@#!, you've got to be kidding me," he said.

"Wow, Matco is under murder; that's a little disturbing."

Other companies to have the dubious distinction of being on the murder page are Westlock Movers, U-Haul, Shippers Supply Inc., Total Service Moving, Cold Mountain Computing Inc., Inkit Ltd. and the Native Communications Society of the NWT.

When Dane Gibson, executive director of the Native Community Society of the NWT, was told his organization is under the murder page, he asked, "...the what page?"

Eventually he looked at page 189.

"Oh my God," he said. "Why would they do that?"