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A surprising announcement came earlier this month as AVENS senior housing administration released plans for a $33-million expansion to its senior's housing complex in Yellowknife.

The need for seniors housing is not surprising, although the scope of need is staggering. The population of elders who need living assistance in the NWT is surging as the Baby Boomer generation ages. In fact, AVENS CEO Jeff Renaud estimates the population of NWT residents aged 65 to 74 will double by 2026 - and in Yellowknife that number is expected to triple within the same timeframe.

To put this into perspective, there are currently 173 long-term care beds in the territory with a 19-bed waiting list. Thirteen years from now, it is expected that 600 such beds will be needed.

As Maureen Hall, president of the Yellowknife Seniors Society, told Yellowknifer last week, she would not have been able to afford to stay in the North if she had not secured a seniors housing unit at Aven Ridge after nine years on the waiting list. Her monthly rent before moving into the subsidized facility was $1,600.

Aside from the cost of living, most elders require regular medical and housekeeping support. For this and so many other reasons, the new Aven Pavilion is wonderfully designed to offer everything from semi-independent supportive living units to palliative care beds.

What was most surprising about the announcement was who is expected to pay for the proposed 60-bed facility. Through a campaign called Moving Forward, AVENS hopes to attract private and government donations.

While we should encourage the public to help with fundraising, as has been done in the past with projects such as the Betty House, is it not ultimately the government's responsibility to ensure there are infrastructure dollars to support seniors who want to stay in the North?

With an annual budget of roughly $1.5 billion, let's hope our government can find it in their hearts and their pocketbooks to "donate" a healthy portion of the funding needed for such an important facility.

On July 12, the city lost one of its most visible citizens: Walter Edgi. A look into his past found a treasured history for Edgi, but what most people will remember about him was that he had no home. Like many in the city of Yellowknife, Edgi was homeless.

It's hardly a secret that Yellowknife, along with other communities in the North, has a homelessness problem. It's near impossible to walk downtown without encountering it.

Study after study has shown the homeless population of any town is made up of people who tend to have or in the past had issues with addiction, alcoholism and abuse.

A report by Nick Falvo of Ottawa's Carleton University made a number of recommendations about solving homelessness in Yellowknife and the NWT, including setting up a secretariat for homelessness, develop better shelter standards so as to not repeat a tuberculosis outbreak that hit the men's emergency shelter in 2007 and 2008, and to help create affordable housing.

That same report found that as many as 400 families were on the waiting list for affordable housing.

In the meantime, the GNWT has filed reports and findings on what to do about homelessness and poverty in Yellowknife and the rest of the territory. But what about action on the problem?

The creation of the city's day shelter was a good start but more must be done to address the core issues of why these people are homeless in the first place. Services need to be made available to help those on the streets with their issues, which often include addiction and alcoholism. Perhaps the GNWT's new plan for mobile addictions treatment programs will help in that area.

At the end of the day, we're talking about helping people. People with a story, such as Edgi's. The sole solution can't be to just put them in a shelter at night so that they're out of view. The core of the problem needs to be addressed.

Every child deserves some fanfare to mark their birth but the hype around the arrival of Prince William and Kate Middleton's little bundle of joy went too far.

Really, the world doesn't need to know how the Queen's visit with the new baby went or that he cried when he met Prince Harry.

And it certainly wasn't necessary for the media to stake out the hospital for weeks waiting for little Prince George to be born. (Frankly, it was an embarrassment to the profession.)

Hundreds of thousands of babies are born into the world every day.

All it takes is a sperm and an egg - people don't even have to have sex for a woman to get pregnant anymore.

The point is, there are so many other topics that are truly newsworthy and that deserve the attention of the masses.

Instead of CTV National making its top story the birth, how about putting some real attention on high food prices in the North?

Canadian media can even stake out the local Northern store while I do my shopping.

I'm happy to put on a polka dot dress and emerge with my receipt all wrapped up in a blanket if that's what it takes to get some coverage on the issue.

I can see the headline now: "It's a big one!"

How about filling people's Twitter feeds with stories of a mother going to bed hungry because she wanted to make sure her children were fed first?

Why not discuss the ongoing request from politicians in Nunavut, the Yukon and the Northwest Territories to have Nutrition North investigated by the auditor general because it isn't working?

Talk about how the program is benefiting big retailers, not the citizens it's supposed to be helping.

Or maybe cover Northerners' struggle to pay the ridiculous costs they face for housing.

No doubt many Canadians are unaware that a single bedroom apartment typically costs more than $2,000 a month up here.

They should know that for some residents, if they don't receive assistance, it means living on the streets in -40 C to -50 C temperatures.

These are the stories that need to be told. They are the stories that can make a difference.

Only one article or clip about the baby prince was needed. He was born, it's a boy, yay, the end.

Save the ink for something that matters or at least until little George makes a gaffe or gets a little too wild with his uncle Prince Harry.

Miranda Scotland is interim editor of Kivalliq News while editor Darrell Greer is on vacation.

• Miranda Scotland is interim editor of Kivalliq News while editor Darrell Greer is on vacation

The annual report that determines where NWT students stand when it comes to education and attendance was released earlier this month and the results weren't stellar. The numbers weren't a surprise either, which was bad news in itself.

The report gives a historic snapshot of how students in the NWT fared over the years. The proportion of students at or above grade level has stayed quite consistent since 2006/07, falling or rising by a per cent or two over the school years. The lowest figures, in the smaller communities, were hard to swallow.

Thirty-eight per cent of Grade 9 students in the communities were performing at or above grade level in 2011/12. More than half are slipping through the cracks of the education system, and have three more years to go before they are supposed to graduate.

Attendance rates didn't bring anything to celebrate, either. The average attendance for NWT students is 84.4 per cent. The report puts the numbers into perspective.

A student with 80 per cent attendance means they might have missed one day a week for the entire year, and adding that up, miss one year of schooling over five years.

There might be a silver lining. The kinks are being looked at under a microscope. The government's Education Renewal Initiative is currently attempting to revamp the education system in the territory through research and analysis of what must be improved or changed all together. And at the rate grades and attendance are going, major improvements are needed. This project will hopefully shed light on how the NWT's young academics can perform better. The students are our future and without a good education, the ripple effect is far reaching.

As the Department of Health and Social Services did with the recent Minister's Forum on Addictions and Community Wellness, the department of education should act quickly on recommendations that will come from the renewal initiative. Money is constantly being pumped into the structures that hold the students, such as Inuvik's East Three School and its whopping $126-million price tag. It's time to invest in who is inside these buildings - the young residents of the NWT bettering themselves for a successful future.

It wasn't all about scores when it came to picking the NWT boys golf team for the upcoming Canada Summer Games. This factor allowed all participants to be on more common ground when competing for spots on the team during the Golf NT Championships in Fort Smith.

Jake Roche of Deline, Jeffrey Groenheyde of Hay River, and Brandon Tuckey of Fort Smith are now practising their swings harder than ever before heading to Sherbrooke, Que., next month.

If the team had been formed based on scores alone, Gray said it would have given the Fort Smith players an advantage, since they know the course better than the other NWT golfers.

Instead, Gray looked at each athlete's development, how they performed on the golf course, and how close they came to attain a number Gray wanted them to shoot.

Gray isn't setting athletes up for failure by not choosing the top scorers for the boys team.

He looked at their progress and their game, fair and square. It's a refreshing system that will hopefully be used again.

Gray knows what he's looking for in the team and the boys he's chosen have a right to be there. The boys heading to Sherbrooke are ready for the experience of a lifetime, seeing the best junior golfers in the country compete and being a part of the action.

Diametrically opposed forces are butting heads in an Ellesmere Island community in a battle that smacks of David vs. Goliath kind of controversy.

On one side is the tiny Inuit community of Grise Fiord, home to about 130 residents, according to the 2001 federal census. On the other is Canada Coal, a Vancouver, B.C.-based company which is publicly traded on the TSX Venture Exchange and whose president and CEO is a chartered accountant with training in South Africa, England and Wales, and 17 years of corporate finance experience, much of it in the mining industry.

At issue is the company's 75 exploration licences on the Fosheim Peninsula, located on Ellesmere Island not far from the Eureka Weather Station, and on Alix Heiberg Island. Both locations are within traditional Inuit hunting areas. That's why residents of Grise Fiord, the closest community to the exploration area are up in arms. Beginning with a community consultation meeting in October 2011 and continuing to meetings in June 2012, the message from community leaders was clear -- resource exploration would not be allowed or tolerated in the area.

The problem for residents of Grise Fiord is that as long as the well-financed company does everything by the book, it will likely get the authorization it needs to proceed with exploration drilling, the next step on the property.

There is no question that an abundance of coal exists, with at least 21 billion tonnes of inferred resource in the licence area, which spans an incredible 2.4 million acres.

On the other side of the equation are the animals the Inuit use during their traditional hunting and trapping activities, including Peary caribou, muskox, Arctic wolves, Arctic foxes, lemming and ptarmigan.

Although the hamlet of Grise Fiord is perched on the southern tip of the island, and the exploration area is close to the Eureka weather station in the northern region, Inuit travel far and wide during their hunting trips and migration patterns could put herds at risk. With that in mind, there are legitimate concerns about the impact of further exploration.

Despite the opposition, Canada Coal was granted its exploration licences and its chief executive officer is confident the company will be able to proceed. The next step, he told News/North last week, is in regards to minimizing the impact on wildlife. A followup meeting is being planned with mayors and local representatives to deal with their concerns.

Given that Canada Coal's exploration is intended to eventually result in a mine, it would be well advised to listen carefully to the concerns of the people in Grise Fiord and make a sincere effort to develop a relationship with people in the interest of meeting its corporate goals while embracing the Inuit traditions of caring for and respecting the land and all its inhabitants.

The people of Grise Fiord must also ensure they make their voices heard and ensure any development does not do more harm than good. Jobs are great, but you can't eat coal.

"Go North, young Canadians ... It's where the money is."

So read posters plastered around downtown Vancouver and other major Canadian cities earlier this year.

This recruitment campaign by the GNWT highlights an increasingly popular adage: the Canadian North is full of high-paying jobs that are ripe for the taking.

But just how well does this clever slogan play on manifest destiny - the idea that opened up the American west in the nineteenth century - stand up to the realities of living in Yellowknife?

According to the most recent employment numbers, pretty well.

In June, 81.9 per cent of the Yellowknife labour force held jobs, an increase of 600 jobs since April, when roughly 12,500 Yellowknifers were gainfully employed.

Compared to the rest of the country, where effects from the 2008 recession drags on and the average employment rate was 62.3 per cent in June, Yellowknifers have a much greater chance of landing a job - and our jobs really do pay more.

Territory-wide, the average worker earned $1,260 per week in May, while the average employed Canadian earned $912 weekly.

Adding to this rosy economic outlook are promises of even more well-paying jobs on the horizon. Six new development projects surrounding Yellowknife predict more than 1,600 jobs and $2 billion in investment.

Two proposed projects would have Yellowknife return to its golden years - Tyhee Gold Corps' Yellowknife Gold Project, currently before the Mackenzie Valley Impact Review Board, is expected to open two mines roughly 50 km north of the city and create about 200 jobs.

TerraX Minerals Inc.'s Yellowknife Gold project, located 15 km north of Yellowknife, is approximately 10 years away from development. TerraX promises to keep more secondary jobs in the North by establishing its operations base here, instead of shipping core samples south for analysis.

But (and here's the but), as any true Northerner already knows, a high salary does not equal riches.

Perhaps this is why, despite the availability of well-paying jobs, Yellowknife's population dropped by roughly 500 people in 2012.

While living in Yellowknife is far cheaper than living in smaller Northern communities, housing and goods continue to cost much more than they do in the south and this gap continues to grow. The June 2013 NWT consumer price index shows a 1.6 per cent increase in the cost of basic goods since the same month last year, compared to a 1.2 per cent national increase.

As of October 2012, the average two-bedroom apartment cost $1,641 per month, compared to the national average of $901. And renting is pretty much all the average Yellowknifer can afford to do as the cost of real estate continues to balloon.

On a more positive note, the draw of well-paying jobs should attract new people to the North but it will take getting the cost of living under control to keep the best and the brightest here. More importantly, those who already live here should have no trouble securing a job, although they may have to re-train to get it. Barring another global crash, it looks like our economy has recovered - and that makes us the lucky ones.

The new chief of Deh Gah Got'ie First Nation made an interesting point while speaking to the Deh Cho Drum about his Fort Providence election victory.

At the end of the interview, Joachim Bonnetrouge said the community needs to stand behind the decisions made by voters during the election. Sometimes, people get divided by politics, but the band members have to strive to continue working together and do what is best for the members and the whole community, he said.

Bonnetrouge has a good point. Elections in communities of any size can divide residents.

People get behind different candidates for different reasons and once the election results are made public, the supporters of the person or people who didn't win can often feel disappointed or angry with the results. In less stable countries around the world, violence often breaks out before, during and after elections as backers of different candidates and parties clash.

Things aren't as volatile here, but elections can still be divisive.

One of the factors leading to division is that most First Nations in the Deh Cho have small memberships, many of whom have close family ties. Oftentimes, support for candidates for the position of chief or band council are made along family lines. That can leave whole family groups feeling badly if their relative isn't elected.

There can also be issues if the vote is close. If only a few votes separate the new chief from their closest competitor, it doesn't paint a picture of a community united under one leader.

After the election results are announced, the people whose choice for chief or band councillors didn't get elected need to decide how to proceed. Feeling upset for awhile is understandable, but those feelings shouldn't be allowed to linger.

Like Bonnetrouge said, regardless of how band members vote, they should ultimately respect the decision made by the majority of the people and support the chief and council who are selected. It is only with the majority of the community's support that First Nations can make positive progress during each new leadership term.

Odd things can happen to a person under the glare of the midnight sun.

That's why I found myself Saturday morning at 2:30 a.m. eagerly rising from bed in anticipation of the first sunset in two months.

I freely admit I've had some monumental problems getting used to the midnight sun. I've been sleep-deprived, disoriented and sometimes outright grouchy over my first experience with the 24-hour sunshine.

There's a long list of things I've missed, including sunrises and sunsets, watching the stars and the moon, looking for the aurora, the sounds of crickets and so on.

Even one of my favourite summer traditions fell by the wayside here. For years it's been my habit to linger outside on the first day of summer, the longest day of the year, and soak up every last drop of sunshine. The midnight sun takes all the fun out of that one, let me tell you.

The worst part of the midnight sun here, though, is trying to sleep and adhere to some kind of a normal work and life schedule around it. It's problematic to convince myself to sleep when the non-rational part of my brain is whispering (or maybe shrieking), "Let's go play!"

Maybe I should have given in but that's a hard sell in a profession dominated by the need to meet deadlines. I'm not sure my bosses would be very sympathetic to me "phoning in tired."

In fact, I know they wouldn't, although they might understand it.

So on Saturday morning I sat perched at my window in my pyjamas watching as the sun sank lower and lower in the sky, camera clutched tightly in one hand.

I don't know if I expected some grand epiphany or not, or just some sense of relief to see even a hint of darkness.

I won't say I was disappointed, but there was some sense of "huh, that was hardly worth it" thoughts floating through my head as the sky barely darkened to even a twilight before the sun popped up again.

Monday morning I was awake again around 3 a.m. and was considerably more satisfied to see something approaching twilight. My comfort zone, it seems, falls somewhere along the lines of long days with the sun setting around midnight or so.

I'm left with the uneasy sensation, though, that I've missed out on a lot of fun over the last two months under the midnight sun.

So I've resolved next year, when the opportunity presents itself, I'm going to follow an old cliche.

"When in Inuvik, do as the Inuvikites do."

In the meantime, I'm looking forward to a long winter's nap ... or at least a late-summer one.

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