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Yellowknifers have a love-hate relationship with the city's bus system.

For those who use it, it is a much-needed service that gets them around the city, saving them time and money.

So too there have been numerous complaints about lateness, awkward stop locations, even the size of the buses not being compatible with the city's streets, evidence it's a transportation model operating in a much larger southern city transplanted to a much smaller Northern city.

City councillor Niels Konge's call to scrap the bus service drew immediate criticism, but he did raise valid points. For one, the length of the bus routes have been a bone of contention for riders and even drivers for the amount of time it takes to service so many parts of the city.

There have been many complaints about buses being late, especially on Saturdays. Konge also cited the $1.28 million taxpayers will pay next year for transit.

These criticisms echo similar ones identified in a 2008 study, such as crowded peak-time buses, empty off-peak-time buses and revenue issues related to different fares for adults, children, students and seniors.

Ridership remains flat, with people hopping on about 175,000 times per year. That may sound like a lot, but the buses are often near-empty for most of the day, save the weekday morning rush.

Despite the problems, there are plans to expand the service, costing anywhere from $62,000 to $559,495 per year, depending on the routes and services implemented.

While there are inefficiencies, cutting bus service outright is not an option. Too many people rely on it and it offers a cost-effective solution to reducing traffic. A regular fare costs $2.50 and a monthly adult pass (tax deductible) costs $63, roughly less than a tank of gas for the average truck.

There has already been much discussion about the buses being too large for the population and city streets. On some roads, especially in Old Town, riders and drivers have to hang on as the huge vehicles pitch and shake over the winding streets.

The introduction of the low-floor buses over the summer showed those large vehicles, built for streets in southern cities do not work in the North.

Before city council looks into expanding the bus routes, they should also be looking at making public transit more efficient and reliable as a whole.

Part of the problem is the contract process that leaves the configuration of the services up to the contractor, who doesn't appear to take into consideration the size of the buses compared to the number of people who ride it and the conditions of the city streets. Contractors, not surprisingly, operate on past practices and simply present their proposal to council with a profit margin.

The perennial questions are:

• Why can't smaller buses service routes during off-peak periods?
• Why can't long routes be broken up and smaller buses used?
• Why are the buses not on time more consistently or don't show up?
• Why can't the bus go to the hospital all year?
• Why aren't more people riding?

As difficult as it may be, resolving the issues raised by the first four questions may well resolve the perennial issue in the fifth - encouraging more people to ride the bus. A new approach is needed.

Once again Deh Gah School in Fort Providence is at the centre of something new and exciting.

The school is collaborating in a three-year pilot project to discover if having a physical literacy co-ordinator in the school will make students more physically active. The other partners in the study include the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs (MACA) and Sport Canada.

This project is a great opportunity for the students in the school and the broader community of Fort Providence. Although the study will take three years to collect its evidence, it's difficult to see how the co-ordinator position could do anything other than make students more physically active and increase their physical literacy.

Patrick Kippax, the co-ordinator, has implemented a number of initiatives since starting in April, including running twice-weekly physical fitness classes for students that focus on developing their fitness levels. He has also been developing a physical literacy curriculum that will be incorporated into the gym classes for kindergarten to Grade 6. The curriculum will make students more comfortable with the fundamental movement skills that all sports are based on.

The students can only benefit from this project and Kippax's work. Study after study have found that youth in countries like Canada aren't getting enough physical activity. The result of increasingly sedentary lifestyles is obesity and a rise in type 2 diabetes. By getting students more active, the project could reverse these trends.

The project could also lead to long-term benefits for the students. If youth become comfortable with, and grow to enjoy different types of physical activities and sports at a young age, they are more likely to stay physically active as adults. The healthy habits that are being taught through the project could save the students from a variety of health problems as they age.

Community members in Fort Providence can also benefit. Kippax is running boot camps for women twice a week, and the school's gym and cardio room is open for women to use four evenings a week.

Schools are usually viewed as places where students come to learn academic subjects. The projects like this one that Deh Gah School is undertaking show that schools can take a holistic approach to students' development, including their physical development and health, and can also create positive change in communities.

Hopefully, the success of this project will lead the territorial government to create more physical literacy co-ordinator positions, so other NWT communities can also reap the benefits.

I can say with complete honesty I'm not looking forward to being in the dark.

Come tomorrow, when the sun doesn't rise, if you see a strange figure shambling around town wearing what looks like a hi-tech version of the old banker's visor, that's likely to be me wearing my rather odd sun therapy device, called a YumaLite.

I've been battling seasonal affective disorder (SAD) for quite a few years now, and I knew the polar night was likely to be a struggle for me.

So far as I can remember, my first brush with SAD came while I was in my second year of university.

It was a particularly unpleasant, rainy October where it seemed liked the sky opened up every day.

At the time, I couldn't understand why my mood soured steadily over the course of that month.

It didn't occur to me until years later, while interviewing someone with SAD when I was working at another newspaper, that I realized I had the same symptoms.

I had thought about coming North for more than 20 years before deciding to take the plunge, and it was largely my reluctance to tackle the polar night that held me back.

So this is going to be an interesting experience for me.

Whenever I hear the term polar night, I think of that rather gory but still enjoyable horror movie Thirty Days of Night.

I'm fairly sure that's not a good frame of reference, or at least no better than watching Ice Road Truckers ... but maybe no worse, either.

I know it will cause some chuckles around parts of town, but I might be grumpier than normal. Yes, it is possible, people.

I'm not always as mellow as I have been during my time here.

Hopefully, though, I'm going to avoid the worst of that. I'm planning on hanging around the tropical atmosphere of the pool ... and maybe I can get them to turn the lights up a little.

I'm also hoping to get out regularly to see the auroras and maybe do a little snowshoeing if we get enough of the white stuff. (Side note: where is the snow?)

Hopefully, I won't replicate an experience I had last winter, where I caught my snowshoes in a tree hidden in a snowbank north of Muskrat Road one crisp night.

The sound of a pack of wolves howling was all the incentive I needed to get back up in a hurry.

So it's not going to be all bad, but it will be an adventure.

Is the deck stacked against local retailers? Apparently not while people are decking the halls. But Christmas is a temporary, although sharp, spike in local shopping.

Online shopping, seemingly lower price points elsewhere, citizens routinely tripping south, where they do their shopping, and returning with filled action packers ... One might imagine a Yellowknife without a single retail outlet.

But that's not the case. Besides the ubiquitous Wal-Mart, we have clothing stores, electronic stores, furniture stores, stationery stores, and a book store.

In last week's Yellowknifer, Judith Drinnan said "use it or lose it" in relation to local shoppers and local stores.

"I am a bricks and mortar store and should my sales drop to a certain level, there won't be a bricks and mortar store."

This statement would throw responsibility onto the shopper. And, fair enough.

There isn't really anything that a person needs that cannot be found here, ergo bought here. But those are needs, not wants.

There is a difference, which throws the responsibility back onto the retailer. Buying and consuming aren't just about needs in this world. And that's where local shops can step up, by providing consumers with what they want.

Drinnan herself noted that in response to the many assaults on retail businesses over the years - such as online shopping - she has focused, over the years, on special orders. In other words, she provides personal service and she provides customers with what they want. She has adapted her business to her context.

This is precisely what James Croizier, owner of Ogre's Lair Family Game Shop says in today's story on page 21 ("City sidewalks, busy sidewalks").

"A lot of people ignore the issue of online shopping, but that's to their own detriment and eventually it could put someone out of business. You have to compete with online options," said Croizier.

And he should know. His is one specialty business that has been operating, in various locations, for more than 10 years.

A successful city requires a commitment on the part of everyone.

It's not enough to say that shoppers need to buy locally. Retailers need to provide Yellowknifers with consumables they want, at affordable prices.

That is something to remember after the Christmas sugar rush.

In previous editorials, Yellowknifer has called on Western Arctic MP Dennis Bevington and his New Democratic Party to offer up practical economic policies for the North, as opposed to broad partisan attacks on Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative government.

Bevington's plan to tackle the personal income crunch in the North with a 50 per cent increase to the Northern Resident's Tax Deduction is a good first step towards addressing the high cost of living in the North. Bevington also wants a 'Third Zone' that provides a tax credit to residents in small NWT communities which suffer high rates of poverty and dismal incomes.

When asked to comment on Bevington's plan, former Liberal candidate Joe Handley pointed out high income earners would enjoy most of the increased benefit.

Handley's right but that need not be a fatal flaw if Bevington and NDP policymakers can devise a way to keep that money in the North.

Otherwise, as happens now, working professionals in the communities would use their travel benefits to spend the lion's share of their disposal income shopping down south on vacations and business trips.

Any effort that reduces the cost of living in the North and keeps the savings in the North will boost the Northern economy by attracting workers, increasing transfer payments and possibly by holding the line on ever-increasing costs.

That's why we applaud Bevington's proposal and invite the other parties to build on the proposal rather than bury the effort in partisan rhetoric.

The fact is, regardless of one's own feelings toward sports, hockey resonates loudly with Canadians and their willingness to open their wallets for everything from TV channels, to satellite radio and Internet programming.

And they also open their wallets to purchase almost anything connected to the NHL brand.

That's why ad rates are so high during NHL broadcasts -- especially during prime time hours and the playoffs -- and why the league, itself, will adjust scheduling to accommodate U.S.A. networks (hence those annoying 1 p.m. starts for some playoff games).

It's also the reason why the NHL's dumping of TSN (Bell Media) to ink a 12-year, $5.2-billion deal for its Canadian national broadcast and multimedia rights with Sportsnet (Rogers Communications) was a lead story for every media across the country this past week.

The deal is a huge blow to TSN, which, after this season, will be left with only the (lucrative) world junior championships and regional broadcasts of games featuring the Toronto Maple Leafs, Montreal Canadiens, Ottawa Senators and Winnipeg Jets.

The agreement marks the first time TSN will be without national NHL broadcasting rights since 2002.

The CBC, although putting on a brave face, is also a mammoth loser in the NHL's decision, despite still being committed to 320 hours of NHL programming in prime time during the next four years.

While the public broadcaster does get to keep Hockey Night In Canada (HNIC), all revenue from the show will go to Rogers.

The prestige associated with HNIC, and the ability to hawk its own programming during the broadcast are the only benefits to CBC in retaining the show.

In fact, Rogers will assume total editorial control of HNIC in the coming year.

That means the future of such Saturday night stalwarts as Don Cherry and Ron MacLean is now in doubt, and the ultimate direction the broadcast takes will be up to Rogers decision-makers.

In many ways, however, the NHL's switch to one national broadcaster should prove itself good for fans.

With Rogers having national rights to all games -- including every round of the Stanley Cup playoffs and exclusivity to games featuring Canadian teams on Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday -- the deal guarantees the end of blackouts.

One thing that remains to be seen is what happens to the crown jewels of TSN's hockey team, Bob McKenzie and Darren Dreger.

McKenzie, a former editor-in-chief of The Hockey News, has more than one-half million followers on Twitter and is regarded as a definitive source by hockey experts.

Dreger is one of the most connected reporters in the game and is often the first with breaking news on the NHL.

It would be another win for hockey fans, and the network, if either decides to join the Sportsnet crew.

Cherry, on the other hand, is a national icon who has burned a lot of bridges during his run on HNIC's Coach's Corner.

And while there's no doubt many fans would shout their approval if Cherry were dropped, millions more would view it as sour grapes on the part of Rogers.

However it all turns out, TSN's slogan of hockey lives here has been left practically homeless.

As a plume of contaminated water is carried from Alberta up the Athabasca River and into the Slave River, we can't help but wonder why the territory has, for decades, failed to negotiate a transboundary water agreement with our southern neighbours.

In 1997, the wheels were set in motion to generate an agreement when the governments of Alberta, Saskatchewan, B.C., Yukon, NWT and Canada signed the Mackenzie River Basin Transboundary Waters Master Agreement. That agreement, in part, set the path for negotiating bilateral agreements.

A decade later, in 2007, the GNWT signed a memorandum of understanding with Alberta that outlined the general guidelines that would form an eventual bilateral agreement.

Today, as we near the end of 2013, when a government website indicates it aims to have the agreement ratified, signatures have yet to be penned to such a document.

At this point, even if it is signed in the next month, it might be too little too late. The NWT has failed to create a way to have a meaningful say in development over the past two decades years that has directly affected our waterways. The Obed Coal Mine spill is just the latest incident that brings into question our water safety and the effects on the fish, wildlife and people who rely on this essential resource caused by pollution from another jurisdiction.

If an agreement is signed, it should do more than create a feel-good policy that commits the territory and the southern provinces to working together. It should give the NWT real power to fight upstream development that could negatively affect our water. It should also provide our government more power to fight for compensation from Alberta companies that contaminate our water.

Ultimately, any water agreement should strongly favour us. Being the downstream neighbour, we are at the mercy of Alberta-based industry.

The NWT has no shortage of volunteers and people who go above and beyond to help make the territory a great and vibrant place to live.

Whether it's putting in extra time to coach team sports, passing on knowledge of traditional crafts, volunteering as firefighters - the list goes on - these people all deserve recognition.

Recently, two Northerners were given national honours for the work they do in very different fields.

Hay River's Floyd Daniels was named Softball Canada's volunteer of the year.

With 40 years of coaching, playing and time dedicated to NWT softball as a board member and volunteer, he should have 40 such awards on his mantle.

Angie Fabien, Fort Resolution's Chipewyan language instructor, was honoured with the 2013 Prime Minister's Award for excellence in teaching. She has been referred to as a champion of the Chipewyan language.

These are just two of the hundreds of people who work to make our communities better. Every year, a handful of them receive awards recognizing their efforts.

Although they might not do it for the accolades, as Daniels said, it is sometimes nice to be recognized. Although not all of these great people will receive an award, we can at least honour them with our gratitude.

Last week's outrageous decision by the World Trade Organization (WTO) to defend the European Union's (EU) trade ban on seal products from Canada, based on "public morality," reminds us of a visit by a representative of the Queen to Rankin Inlet a few years ago.

Michaelle Jean was the governor general in May 2009 when she embraced Inuit culture by using an ulu to cut a piece of prized seal heart and eat it raw - a custom normally reserved for important guests or the most revered elder in the community.

Jean got it. Those who criticized her, and those who support the EU ban on seal products, don't get it. And that, we submit, is the most troubling aspect of the WTO's decision. Those behind the stance just don't get that questions about public morality go both ways. On that day in May, Inuit leaders, elders and hunters would have been offended had she not accepted the invitation to try this delicacy - the best part to eat from the seal.

Jean recognized the importance of the seal hunt to the Inuit, that all parts of the seal hunt are used to full advantage, whether it be for food or clothing. Further, there is an overabundance of seals to the point that they are considered a pest in some communities, such as Pond Inlet, where seals are known for stealing fish right out of the nets set by local people.

The WTO has agreed, but chose to ignore, that Inuit seal hunters have been treated unfairly, even though the seal hunt is done in a sustainable and respectful manner.

The ban on the export of seal products to the EU from Canada has had an enormous impact since 2009, with the demand for sealskin severely diminished and the price collapsing. That is not so much the case on the relatively small domestic market, where sealskin products, such as mitts and coats, are expensive and highly prized.

Nunavut politicians are rightfully calling on Ottawa to pursue an appeal against the WTO's ruling.

Jean had it right when she told reporters, after eating the seal heart, that many people have lost sight of the origin of what they are eating, and that she recognizes seals are a good source of the vitamins and nutrients that Inuit have relied upon for thousands of years.

Much work can be done to educate people outside Nunavut that the harvesting of seals by Inuit is actually more humane than raising animals in captivity then slaughtering them in a factory setting, as is the norm in the production of beef, pork and poultry products. In fact, the seal hunt is, in reality, less harmful to public morality when compared to the harvest of other animals, quite the opposite to the basis of the WTO's ruling.

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