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City council is clearly frustrated, as many residents are, about the amount of dog waste being left on city streets and public trails.

Administration had removed a provision in the redrafted dog bylaw that would have required dog owners to carry bags with them while walking their pets. Council wants it back in.

The controversial requirement was removed after members of the public questioned whether it was fair. A dog owner might be out with two dogs with four or five bags in pocket, or so the argument goes, but run out just as bylaw officer approaches with ticket book in hand.

To this we say, well, too bad. That would be a hassle but clearly something must be done because the status quo is clearly not working. The parks and trails are more full of poop than ever. A dog waste bag requirement might at least get people thinking about being prepared to pick up their pet's poop before heading out the door.

City councillor Adrian Bell had it right when he said, "To me, what's inconvenient, what is unsettling, is the amount of feces on our streets."

Whether feces on the streets and trails, in parks and schoolyards, is inconvenient, unsettling or disgusting is not the only point to be made.

Fecal matter improperly disposed of is a full-on public health issue.

Diseases can be transmitted to humans by direct contact and through flies and parasites. Worst, dog feces left to freeze does thaw eventually, becoming an even greater health hazard as it moulders and festers under our bright spring sun, multiplying bacteria and hatching parasites.

Aside from human health, there's that thing we call the environment. According to the Canadian Public Health Association, "pet poop that is left in yards, fields, parks and on sidewalks eventually ends up in rivers, lakes and other bodies of water. It is carried there by spring run-off and heavy rainfalls, either directly or via storm sewers."

This leads to higher nitrogen and phosphorus levels, encouraging oxygen-robbing algae to bloom, which kills fish and other organisms.

Yellowknife isn't the only city struggling with this problem. Municipalities across Canada, and the world, have to crack down on wayward and irresponsible dog owners.

In the U.S., it is reported that 78 million dogs create 10 million tonnes of fecal waste annually. In 1991, the Environmental Protection Agency placed dog feces in the same health category as oil and toxic chemicals.

There are responsible dog owners, and it's unfortunate that the city has to legislate because of irresponsible people. However, responsible dog owners won't be paying any price as a result of the proposed bylaw because, de facto, they are picking up the feces their dogs leave behind. And in order to do so, they carry bags.

Yellowknife wouldn't be alone in having a dog waste bag rule. Calgary requires dog owners to be armed with bags while out for a walk too. The minimum penalty for failing to remove feces is a fine of $150. The minimum penalty for not having suitable means to remove feces is also fine of $150 - both fines are quite reasonable.

Whitehorse has a similar bylaw, and most municipalities exercise some form of authority over fecal management. Since council is pushing for municipal enforcement officers to make more foot patrols of our trails after a number of serious attacks on women, it only makes sense that they could use the patrols as an opportunity to make sure people are picking up after their dogs and have the means to do so.

Owning a dog is a privilege that comes with responsibility. Living in Yellowknife is also a privilege that comes with responsibilities.

Carry bags or pay the price.

Many students in the Deh Cho participated in culture or fall camp during the first weeks of school. The camps allow students to learn traditional activities while enjoying some fresh air – creating a positive environment for cultural learning.

I attended fall camp for an afternoon with a group of elementary students in Fort Simpson. The boat ride across the mighty Mackenzie River was a great way to start. On the other side of the river, I met an elder who told me the importance of passing on traditional knowledge to students before it gets lost. He led the group into the forest, a rifle across his shoulders, stopping along the way to let us know how to find our way into the forest looking at the bark of a birch tree. He then checked his snare traps as the group picked Labrador tea leaves. We learned which plants would yield the best-tasting leaves.

Earlier in the day, an agriculturalist presented students with garden-grown vegetables, including carrots, broccoli and kohlrabi, emphasizing how better they taste compared with those at the grocery store.

The culture camp also provides stimulus to our sense of smell, taste, and our ability to create sustenance for ourselves outside of the comforts of home. Labrador tea was brewing on the fire. A vegetable soup was simmering in a pot. Fresh bannock was available. Meat was cooking in a pan.

In another area, meat and fish the students had prepared was hanging to dry, which would be a pleasure to eat once it acquired the smoke flavour of the fire below.

Youth have to balance traditional knowledge with modern influences. It's not always easy to practise your hunting or fishing skills when a computer game is tempting you at home. The key is finding the right balance, but at a young age, that balance might be difficult to find. Sometimes participating in traditional activities as part of a group is motivation enough.

Culture camp also provides an opportunity for students to be active. Walking in the forest, taking in some fresh air and spending the day outside exposed to the elements is both refreshing and invigorating.

Students from Jean Marie River and Nahanni Butte are also scheduled to discover new things and learn traditional knowledge during their respective culture camps coming up.

And what a great time of year to do it when the leaves are changing colour, offering a spectacular view of nature.

I've come to the conclusion that having to gather my own food would be a great way to lose weight.

That sad realization was forced unwillingly upon me by another round of berry foraging with my botanical guru David Bob.

Bob, the student wellness co-ordinator at the Aurora Campus, invited me for more berry-picking lessons on a wet, cool afternoon at Jak Park.

Our prey was the much-sought cranberry.

I had visited the park a few days earlier for some on-the-land workshops offered during the Gwich'in Tribal Council's self-government conference. At that time, an elder told me there were basically no cranberries to be found.

Bob was determined to go out, thinking some patches had been overlooked.

Of course, we had to go bush-whacking to find these patches, mostly amongst game trails that he casually suggested were made by bears.

That was an immediate distraction.

I'm way more interested in bears than berries, and found the idea of coming face-to-face with one in the bush far more intriguing that stooping and picking.

Bob, being a practical sort, pointed out his husky pup Inuk would warn us if any bears were around. That was a not-so-subtle hint to "git picking."

I did my best, and found cranberries a good deal easier to pick than my earlier attempts at blueberries and gooseberries.

It didn't take long for me to discover that every sinkhole in the spongy muskeg in the forest made it easier to spot and pick the berries. Those holes seemed to be a uniform two feet deep, which brought me that much closer to eye level with the luscious fruits.

It also brought me closer to Inuk's level, and that dog likes berries almost as much as he likes playing.

I had painstakingly picked just enough berries to inadequately cover the bottom of my plastic container when Inuk enthusiastically dumped them.

I groaned, and discussed in some detail with the pup that it had taken me almost an hour to collect that many.

Bob did his best to stifle a smirk as he put him on a leash.

I muttered "I'd lose a lot of weight if I was lost in the bush."

Bob agreed a trifle too enthusiastically.

"Yup, you'd want to be lost with me in the woods if you wanted to eat," he said.

The whole process did provide some food for thought, though, if not my stomach, as I pondered just how much time people spent gathering enough food for a Northern winter while living a traditional lifestyle.

It's a sobering reminder of how easy we have it now, and how much sheer skill, endurance, co-operation and knowledge went into living off the land.

Over the past few weeks, many Yellowknifers noticed something was missing from their lives - their mail. People were left waiting for parcels delivered through Canada Post, along with letters, cheques and bills. Other mail, some within the city, was taking nearly a month to arrive at its final destination. It became more efficient to hop in your car and deliver the message yourself.

People who called Canada Post looking for answers were told the regular mail carrier was on vacation, and that the individual who was supposed to take over "wasn't able to handle it." So, in other words, the job was too much and they gave up, leaving Yellowknifers without their mail.

A call made to the sorting depot at the airport lead to one Canada Post employee telling Yellowknifer "everything was fine," while telling another person that he "didn't understand what the big deal was."

The big deal is that residents are being left without a government service without any explanation or warning. Some people were able to go to the Shoppers Drug Mart parcel pickup and get their goods with the presentation of ID, but others were not. Regular mail would have to wait until service resumed. What would happen if, like Angie Benoit, you were waiting for important mail to arrive? Or waiting for a bill that, for all you know, could lapse before it reaches you? If that were to happen, does Canada Post pick up the late fees?

Canada Post has been losing money hand over fist due to a slowing business. How is Canada Post expected to gain the trust of, and credibility with, communities when it can't even do its job of delivering the mail?

Others in the country have called for Canada Post to be privatized, meaning it would have to be competitive with other delivery services, such as FedEx and Purolator. The government of Great Britain is debating the same thing, recently announcing it would soon be offering an initial public offering of shares in the service, meaning the Royal Mail could soon have to answer to shareholders.

The German postal service, Deutsche Post, did just that in 2000. Eleven years later in 2011, the company posted a profit of €1.163 billion (nearly $1.6 billion) through its mail delivery service and parcel service DHL, which it acquired a majority interest in following the initial public offering. The company now also has a licence to deliver mail in Great Britain.

So is this the answer to Canada Post's woes? Or is it too late for the country's national mail carrier? At a stop in Yellowknife earlier this year, Canada Post executives discussed ways to stay "relevant for the next 100 years." They were using a report from the Conference Board of Canada as a launching point. One of the report's recommendations? Slow mail delivery to save money.

Four weeks to deliver a letter - it can't get much slower than that.

Make no mistake about it, with Daniel Shewchuk announcing he won't run in the upcoming territorial election, the Government of Nunavut has lost a good minister.

But whether or not Arviat has lost a good MLA is a matter of some debate.

Being somewhat of a political junkie, my opinion has long been that the worst that can happen to a constituency with a good representative is to have that person accept a ministerial portfolio.

Good representatives get to be that way because (a) they care, (b) they have solid work ethics, (c) they understand the issues and are quick studies when it comes to political manoeuvring and (d) when they do something, they give it 110 per cent.

And there's the rub.

When you become a minister, your thinking becomes channelled toward the dreaded big picture.

It's only common sense, really, and it absolutely has to be that way.

If I may shock you with a hockey analogy, it's the exact scenario when a group of team representatives and a league commissioner or president sit down to hammer things out.

It's not that the individual team representatives don't care about their league, because they do, often quite passionately.

But, at the end of the day, they're almost always going to do what's best for their respective teams.

The commissioner or president, on the other hand, always bases his decision on what's best for the league, as a singular entity, whether that means upsetting the worst team, the best team, or those somewhere in the middle.

When MLAs become ministers, they have to look at what's best for each and every community in their territory, often at the expense of their own ridings.

Those who gain positions of power above their MLA status in any capacity, and begin to feather their own riding's nest, are often taken to task quite quickly.

One need only think back to Conservative Tony Clement and his little band of rogues known as the Local Area Leadership Group, and their funnelling of more than $45 million in G8 legacy payments to Muskoka-area projects through Clement's constituency office.

And don't even get me started on the political corruption we've seen in Quebec during the past decade.

Shewchuk pointed to gains in Arviat's infrastructure through increased housing and improvements to its arena as signs of progress. He was taking political credit for these but they almost certainly would have happened anyway.

While I'm fresh out of crystal balls, with Shewchuk stepping down, the timing is right for the current mayor of Arviat to give some serious thought to throwing his hat in the territorial ring.

Precious few have the understanding of the challenges Arviat must overcome as one of Nunavut's fastest-growing communities as Bob Leonard.

And Leonard has deep grassroots - the kind that make him fiercely loyal to his community.

He may even be dedicated enough to resist any overtures of greater political standing for a term, or two, should the day ever come he finds himself in Iqaluit as Arviat's representative.

An MLA whose big picture is solely the community he or she serves.

There's a novel concept.

Lutsel K'e has crunched its numbers and is looking to hop on the solar energy bandwagon to cut down costs. The band council will be making a final decision by the end of the month on the development of a community-owned alternative power plant using the sun's energy - the first in the NWT. It could be up and running about a year from now.

The proposed 35-kilowatt solar system, on a sunny day, could power up to five community buildings. It would also cut down on the amount of diesel needed to power the remote community. If surplus energy was created, it could be sold back to the grid.

The GNWT's Solar Energy Strategy has a considerable goal of developing solar systems able to take on 20 per cent of the community's power needs to 25 NWT communities currently using diesel over the next four years. There's also the chance Lutsel K'e could benefit from the GNWT's plan to install, test and monitor two systems sized to 75 per cent of a community's energy average load in the next four years.

Solar energy isn't new in the territory, but it's growing. There have been smaller systems built for residents, businesses, wellness camps and band offices. The Northwest Territories Power Corporation hosts the only other solar farm in the NWT, located at the Fort Simpson airport. The 104-kilowatt system is expected to create enough electricity to be the equivalent of shutting down the diesel plant for 4.3 days of the year.

The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (ENR) is pumping $50,000 into the planning of the farm in Lutsel K'e and if the project is green-lighted, $200,000 to $250,000 in territorial and federal dollars will be needed to make it a reality.

There is a keen interest from ENR and the not-for-profit society Arctic Energy Alliance to invest in this clean energy. Lutsel K'e will reap benefits of reduced diesel transportation and usage, and community-based employment opportunities. If the community jumps on board, it will pave the way for other off-the-grid communities to benefit from the powers of the sun as well.

Residents cannot focus on the "what ifs" of such a tragedy that befell Norman Wells on Sept. 6, for fear of spiraling into a dark, confusing place. What if the two boys who went canoeing in Jackfish Lake had life-jackets on or in the boat?

That wasn't the case and thinking about it won't bring 15-year-old Andy Carpenter Jr. back. But learning from the tragedy and acting appropriately could save lives in the future.

In the NWT, there is no rule that residents must wear life-jackets in boats of any kind, but there must be enough life-jackets for each person in the boat. Unfortunately, when that canoe capsized on Jackfish Lake, there were no life-jackets on either boy, nor in the canoe.

The Town of Norman Wells has a plan in place to set up a life-jacket tree - essentially life-jackets hanging from a device that would be free for the use of the general public. This is scheduled to be set up next spring at Jackfish Lake and hopefully members of the public will take advantage of it.

Life-jackets are not solely for those who cannot swim. The water in the North is cold. Muscles seize up and people hyperventilate and get disoriented after falling out of a boat.

Drowning is the leading cause of accidental death in the territory, said Cathy Menard, the NWT's chief coroner. Having life-jackets in the boat, or better yet wearing one, can save lives. Let's stop learning the same lessons over and over again every time such a tragedy takes place.

It is the tragic call that comes all too often. A loved one, a son, daughter, brother or sister, has been found dead after having taken their own life. What follows for those left behind is a range of powerful emotions - shock, sadness, grief, bewilderment and, sometimes, anger.

Understanding why someone has committed suicide is often difficult, just as life itself is often difficult.

We observed on the occasion of World Suicide Prevention Day last week, and the introduction the week before of the Be Safe kits for schools by the Embrace Life Council and the Canadian Red Cross, that there is a concerted effort by government and helping agencies to reduce the incidence of suicide among Nunavummiut.

Giving people the tools to recognize signs in people who are contemplating suicide is important. Further, it is vital that there be resources in place to help people who are thinking about committing suicide. That is happening as part of the Nunavut Suicide Prevention Strategy Action Plan, launched in 2011 and currently laying the groundwork for community-based counsellors and mental health professionals to develop a plan of action.

Suicide is a difficult topic, no matter how it is viewed. The media by and large, including Nunavut News/North, does not report individual suicides, unless it involves a prominent person and the act was carried out in a public place. The issue is largely hidden because police, emergency responders and health-care providers do not make information public about individuals who commit suicide.

Yet, the number of people who commit suicide is significant. In 2009, 3,890 people were recorded as having taken their lives in Canada. A 2006 study concluded that the rate of suicide among Inuit males age 15 to 24 in the Baffin Island region was 10 times higher than among the non-aboriginal population in the rest of Canada.

Simply because of the higher rates, there is a need for more effort, more awareness and more resources to be put toward giving young Inuit people a will to live.

This involves many factors, including the ability to live without the stress and worry of falling short in providing the necessities of live, such as food, shelter and clothing. That is difficult considering the high cost of food and the deplorable state of housing in some communities.

Government-sponsored programs and the establishment of strategies are vitally important to helping to prevent suicide from happening, just as is breaking down a stigma that prevents people from seeking help. Suicide prevention walks and candlelight vigils draw attention to the issue.

One of the most important strategies, however, is the ability to observe others and, when signs of potentially suicidal tendencies are observed, having the courage to step up and talk to the person. Ordinary people need to learn how to answer a call for help and offer assistance before the call bearing bad news arrives.

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