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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Dean Da Corte is looking for work but it's not here in Yellowknife.

The lifelong Yellowknife resident - born here 47 years ago - has set his eyes southward where wages are lower but taxes and bills are less.

Yellowknife has a reputation as a transient city. People come and go. They work for a couple years, endure the harsh winters, bank some money in the highest wage-earning city in the country, gain a little job experience they might not get elsewhere and then head south, back to their roots and warmer weather.

Dean and Trish Da Corte gather in the kitchen with daughter Macayla and five-month-old son Jordy. They say the schools are great and they love their house but they can no longer afford to live in Yellowknife. - Mike W. Bryant/NNSL photo

But that attitude about Yellowknife doesn't apply to Da Corte. The husband and father of two doesn't want to move. His parents live here, his childhood friends live here. Like many lifelong residents, his centre of gravity is in Yellowknife where you can go boating and fishing all summer and snowmobiling and hunting in the winter - cold weather and mosquitoes be damned.

"I want to be buried here, this is my hometown," says Da Corte.

"It's not as safe as it used to be but I don't like big cities. Here I know everybody. I know the place is good. There's lots to do."

Two years ago, Da Corte and wife Trish bought a brand new, three-bedroom home in the Niven Lake subdivision. It was an expensive purchase - close to $500,000 - but the couple wanted room for their growing family and it didn't seem overly unreasonable at the time.

Both work: Da Corte as a corrections officer at the North Slave Correctional Centre, and Trish as a bookkeeper with Coldwell Banker. If they watched their spending and reduced their energy consumption, they figured they could make a go of it.

But it no longer seems possible now, says Da Corte.

"Everything they've said and we've done for the last couple years about conserving energy, going florescent, and shutting things off when you're not using it, we've done all that," says Da Corte.

"We were doing good for two years but now that the fuel has gone up, that really hurt us. It used to cost $700-800 to fill up your tank. Now it's costing $1,400-1,500 to fill up the tank."

Five months ago, Trish gave birth to the couple's son Jordy. Rather than go on maternity leave, Trish continued working so she could continue earning her full salary and help pay the bills.

Her employer allowed her to do her work from home so she could be with the baby but Trish says she still puts in long hours.

"A lot of the times I'm still working at seven at night," she says, adding she worries what will happen when she does return to the office.

"Am I going to send him to daycare and spend $1,000 a month?"

It's death by a thousand cuts. Yellowknife has always been an expensive place to live but Da Corte says costs seem to be on the rise everywhere he turns, and they're much harsher than they used to be.

The latest consumer price index in September reported an overall five per cent increase in the price of goods and services in Yellowknife from the previous year - mostly for home heating fuel and gas, which rose by 46.6 per cent. The consumer price index rose 3.4 per cent nationally, and 3.6 per cent in the neighbouring capital of Whitehorse.

City property taxes, meanwhile, have risen every year for the last four years - up nearly three per cent this year - with another two years of tax increases expected to come.

Power bills are due to rise by 10 per cent in December; and the territorial government is entertaining a wide variety of possible tax increases, including some new ones such as a retail tax, to make up for a $40 million shortfall over two years.

Parallel to these figures is Statistics Canada's most recent population survey which, while it doesn't show specific numbers for Yellowknife, shows a decline for the Northwest Territories in 2008 at 0.6 per cent from the previous year - the only jurisdiction to record a drop in population.

At the time of this interview late last month, the Da Cortes were preparing for a going-away party for friends who have lived here for 20 years.

"A lot have left a long time ago and people are still leaving on a daily routine honestly," said Da Corte. "Just at work alone at least 10 people have left."

Tucked in a corner of the Range Lake subdivision is Piro Court - named after Mike and Jean Piro, who came to Yellowknife in the mid-1940s. The Piros were honoured with the street name for the great contributions they made to the city over the years.

Mike Piro was a partner in the decades-old freighting company Frame and Perkins. He was a founding member of the Yellowknife Chamber of Commerce and the Float Plane Fly-In and was the posthumous co-recipient of the 2006 City of Yellowknife Heritage Award.

The Piros' four children went on to make their own mark in the community and raise families here. But one son, Brian, says his days in Yellowknife are numbered.

"We like it here but a friend of mine has got a 130 acres outside of Edmonton and his tax bill is $1,000 a year," said Piro. "Mine is $10,000 and I don't get a lot of services."

Five years ago, Piro and his common-law partner Lisa converted the top level of his garage in the Kam Lake industrial zone into an apartment to save money. He said it was too expensive to maintain a separate house and the garage, where he builds cabinets and repairs vehicles.

The 51-year-old says that was an OK arrangement for a while, yet he predicts it won't be long before the continuing rise in taxes and bills push the couple right out of his hometown.

"I can't retire here, that's for sure," says Piro.

"Last year, the heating oil for this building was $530 a month. This year, it's $830 a month. Last year I thought it was extremely high because when we originally decided to put this building here we were paying about $300 a month.

"You can't slow down working. You got to keep going full speed here."

Like Da Corte, he's astonished that no matter what attempts he makes to save on energy and reduce costs, the power and fuel bills continue to climb.

He's particularly irked at the news that while being encouraged to reduce energy consumption, senior staff at the NWT Power Corporation collected $600,000 in bonuses last year.

"I understand Power Corp had some of the largest bonuses collected last year but yet profits are down. It doesn't make a lot of sense, especially when people are cutting their power usage," says Piro.

Dave Ramsay, who represents Kam Lake in the legislative assembly, says it's troubling to hear when even the city's most die-hard residents are planning to pull up stakes.

"We're not encouraging people to stay when we're talking about taxing people more and raising power rates," says Ramsay.

"When (lifelong residents) start saying they've had enough, that's a good indicator that the government has got to get its act together and do something to encourage people to stay.

"We can't afford to raise the cost of living or even suggest that it will happen. It just scares people."

Ramsay says his government must work with mining companies - aside from the territorial government, the principal employers in the NWT - and the mayors of larger centres to find ways to attract more people to stay.

He said the territorial government must also demand that Ottawa stop charging the GST on home heating fuel.

Da Corte, meanwhile, says he's looking for work in the Winnipegosis area of Manitoba, where is wife is from. Up until now, he has resisted his wife's urgings to move but he says he has run out of arguments to stay.

"Everything's here for me but now we've really been thinking about moving to her home town where prices are cheap," says Da Corte.

"I would probably lose $10-15 an hour in wages but I'd be able to live better."