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Friday, October 3, 2008
Time to gauge recycling commitment
Yellowknifer

Recycling options in Yellowknife took a step back last week, when Yellowknife Recycling Services - a private operation established five years ago - folded.

Residents will now have to get by without curbside pick-up of their recyclables. The six drop-off points located throughout the city remain but this will require more effort to recycle for some.

The onus is now on the city to offer curbside recycling as an added means of lightening loads at the dump, which is in its best interest as the landfill nears capacity.

Yellowknifers must then ask themselves whether they want this pick-up service enough to pay for it.

Owners of Yellowknife Recycling cited personal reasons for closing, so it remains unknown whether such an operation is financially viable for the city. At its height the business served more than 100 customers throughout town, including city hall. More than half the people asked in a citizen's survey made it clear four years ago they support curbside recycling.

Yellowknife Recycling was itself founded by a citizen out of frustration at the lack of pick-up service.

An opt-in program offering the service from the city for a reasonable fee would best gauge that level of demand but critical mass is required. Yellowknifers can thereby show how much they value such a service and how important it is to limit the trash load that goes to the dump.


Friday, October 3, 2008
Deadlines serve a purpose
Yellowknifer

We don't blame Jennie Bruce for being peeved her four-year-old son Carter missed the registration cutoff for kindergarten because he is 26 minutes too young.

If Carter had been born before midnight on Dec. 31, 2003 rather than Jan. 1, 2004, he would be in kindergarten right now instead of facing another year of preschool.

Not only does Carter have to wait another year but the cost of preschool and daycare comes directly out of parents' pockets unlike taxpayer-funded kindergarten. Bruce will be paying for more daycare than parents whose children were born in November or December. The inflexibility of Yk Education District No. 1's kindergarten's enrollment date would surely irritate any parent put in her shoes.

However, most of the world works on cutoff dates and deadlines, otherwise people wouldn't pay their taxes on time or finish their homework or know when to sign their kids up for swimming lessons. Without absolute cutoff dates, exceptions to the rules would get out of hand to the point where the rules have no meaning.

The most important question to ask is whether the rules concerning the age cutoff for kindergarten are applied consistently and across the board. So far there is no evidence they are not.


Thursday, October 2, 2008
My first bison experience
Editorial Comment
Andrew Livingstone
Deh Cho Drum

So a bison almost killed me. It's a funny thing to say, especially from someone born in Eastern Canada where we only see bison when we pay our admission fee to the city zoo, or in the form of a $30 steak at the local eatery. So instead of gazing in amazement of the glorious bison, or dousing it in A1 steak sauce, I was watching my life flash before my eyes, albeit slow, due to the fact I was going 30 clicks.

From the side of a house it streaked out in front of me as I hit a small turn in the road. Bison seem like slow, stupid animals, but man, they can really move when they want to, probably faster than myself. Actually, if I were a betting man, I'd be putting my money down on the hairy beast (for those that might be thinking otherwise, I meant the bison). I cursed at the burly mammal as it gave me a blank stare. Talking to locals afterwards however, I learned they couldn't see you when they are looking straight ahead but can only see you from the side. The Creator must have had an error message pop up during the bison-making process and had to restart the animal design system.

It was my first encounter with a bison and I can tell you now, if I lived around them for a long period of time, I would dislike them just as much as people in Fort Providence do. I was at the local saloon having a 'sarsaparilla' that evening and the barkeep told me they had actually thought about putting them all on trucks and shipping them out of town. Seems like a good idea to me, I thought, I would get quite tired of stepping in their conveniently placed steamy piles of - well - you get the point, every time I took my dogs out.

It's odd being an East Coast boy and seeing a large animal, a wild one at that, somewhat domesticated. They're like big, ugly cows that just roam the streets, pooping where they please and going where they want - hence the high number of broken fences in the hamlet, two for every normal one by my guess.

If I had a fence around my yard, it would be electrically charged, not a deathly big charge but enough to make there eyes bulge. I'm not promoting cruelty towards the bison, but an example has to be set. Hopefully they aren't really stupid, like the lemming and copy what their counterpart has done. My power bill that month would make my bank account cry a little.

Or maybe, I would just train them to do my every bidding, the first point of order being to stop eating my lawn. I wonder if they could produce a paper for me?

Andrew Livingstone is the interim editor for the Deh Cho Drum while editor Roxanna Thompson is on holidays.


Thursday, October 2, 2008
Will it ever be enough?
Editorial Comment
Dez Loreen
Inuvik Drum

Where can we go from here? Another rash of youth vandalism has the town talking about change and questioning policing efforts such as the curfew.

For a lot of people in this community, youth violence and vandalism is nothing new. We all grew up with it.

Some of us were the ones who lived in fear of bullies and wouldn't dare to walk the streets at night.

Others were involved in shady activities such as senseless damage to public and private property and worse.

Now we have a new member of our community who won't go out at night for fear of ridicule and harassment (see story page 16).

That nice young woman is scarred by the actions of bad apples.

Every year we have to deal with angry cab drivers who are being abused by youth.

Our lives are being affected every day by roving bands of unruly teens.

Years ago, the community had meetings about youth activity. Last year, there was a massive meeting about the effects a curfew would have on the town.

All of the major players in town met again last week to discuss what could be done.

I'm all for finding a solution but we can't keep bringing the same people back to the drawing board because, frankly, they can't find a way to fix this.

The sad thing is that most of the problem lies in the values of our region.

People were brought up a certain way and now they're raising their kids the same way.

Nobody is learning anything new which is something that needs to be addressed.

I would suggest training be offered to parents on how to discipline their offspring, without resorting to violence.

Somewhere in the last few decades, people stopped disciplining their kids and now we have a generation of smart-alec young people who think they're untouchable.

People are talking about how most of the population is suffering from the actions of a minority of the people in town.

With no bylaw officer on the streets and a lack of police presence, people are losing faith in the justice system.

We need to make a stand against this sort of behaviour. Of course, we can't have people taking the law into their own hands but something needs to be done and soon.

I've typed my fingers sore in past editorials about youth, at first backing them up and giving them the benefit of the doubt, but things are looking bleak.

Yes, most kids are good but they need to start taking action, too.

I've said it many times before that our little society is ruled by factions and peer pressure.

If the youth of the town were convinced we as adults were united against their bad behaviour, it would change.

Unless we're all willing to get our hands dirty and change the way we live and act with each other, there's no use in getting worked up when our kids turn into hoodlums.


Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Dumbing down at the top
Editorial Comment
Darrell Greer
Kivalliq News

Anyone paying attention for the past decade knows the gap between the haves and havenots in Nunavut is growing wider all the time.

Now it appears, judging by Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. (NTI) president Paul Kaludjak's remarks this past month concerning Nunavut's Education Act, the gap between those with a firm grasp of reality in this territory and those living in their own little world has also widened.

Kaludjak claims the legislation is flawed and was passed against the advice of all Inuit organizations.

But, what was truly shocking was the president's contention that local district education authority (DEA) members and teachers do not represent ordinary Inuit.

NTI seems set on hiding behind the shield of what it views as southern curriculum and the pervasive English language as the sole reasons why only 35 per cent of all Inuit who start Grade 10 graduate.

NTI is obsessed with lowering teaching credentials to increase the number of Inuit teachers and dumbing-down the curriculum as an illadvised way to increase the number of graduates. The land claims organization has lost touch with reality.

And statements like the ones made this past month show NTI as teetering on the edge of relevance with territorial policy making.

We're not in the business of embarrassing anyone, but has NTI noticed the number of educators and affluent Inuit who have sent their kids to the south to finish high school and prepare for postsecondary studies during the past few years?

Does that indicate our educational standards are too high? Too high for whom? The ordinary Inuit NTI refers to? If that's what NTI is selling, we're not buying.

Most educators and DEA members who supposedly do not represent ordinary Inuit have a much firmer grasp on the issues than NTI, judging by the path it wants to follow.

Those frontline educators and involved community members know many of the problems facing our educational system have little to do with legislation.

Small schools lacking more qualified local teachers could be seen at the top of the heap when it comes to the challenges faced by education, but that's mainly because there's far too much reliance on the system itself.

Too often, teachers are expected to be guidance counsellors, disciplinarians, athletic coaches, group leaders and advice givers while there is next to no focus being placed on family support or management in the home.

Add the abnormally high number of specialneed students who are receiving next to no specialized instruction and the territory's terrible literacy rate, and you don't have to be a genius to realize there's no magic bullet dressed up as an Education Act.

And we don't need to spend millions to discuss the matter for another 10 years to arrive at the same conclusion.

NTI should continue to pressure the Nunavut government to increase the power of local DEAs to match the level of responsibility they shoulder, rather than start viewing them as not representing ordinary Inuit.

Maybe if its leaders spent more time with the little people, NTI may realize how connected teachers and DEAs truly are to ordinary Inuit.

Of course, that would take a whole lot of smartening up instead of dumbing down.


Corrections
An error appeared in a photo caption in last Friday's Yellowknifer ("Elder frozen out of home," Sept. 26). Paul Laserich was incorrectly identified. Also, in the article "Brotherly business celebrates milestone," Sept. 24, GAP Electric co-owner Greg Rogers was misidentified. Yellowknifer apologizes for any embarrassment or confusion these errors may have caused.