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Greg Robertson receiving a lifetime achievement award for his tourism business shows the industry is still going strong and has managed to evolve with the times.

The outfitter recently received the Mike Stillwell lifetime achievement award for his long career and his tourism business, Bluefish Services. The licensed outfitter, known primarily for his fishing trips on Great Slave Lake, has been in operation since 1982, and recently added a unique attraction to his business.

Four years ago, he purchased a Snobear – a self-contained ice fishing machine – and modified it into an excursion vehicle to take sightseers out for day trips. Robertson said he added this component to his business to make ice fishing more comfortable while offering his guests a neat ride in which to view the beauty of the North during winter.

This is the passion and ingenuity governments should be tapping into if it wants to advance the tourism industry. There will always be attractions such as fishing, aurora viewing and dog sledding but to attract more visitors and keep tourism vibrant, there needs to be variety and more visual cues for visitors – particularly those from Japan, and increasingly China, who dominate the winter tourism market in Yellowknife – that they are welcome to be here.

That is where lateral thinkers are needed. Bill Tait, the former president of Raven Tours, followed by Aurora World, was one of the first to see the potential of marketing aurora tours to international tourists. Current outfitters such as Robertson's Bluefish Services, Aurora Village and Beck's Kennels carry the torch.

Areas to expand winter tourism include the touring of the winter roads – made famous by Yellowknifer Alex Debogorski and his reality TV show Ice Road Truckers – and to the smaller communities outside of the city.

These would seem obvious places to develop to their tourism potential but go to Lutsel K'e – gateway to a proposed national park – one would quickly realize that tourism there – other than the one fishing lodge that has been in existence for many years – hasn't been given much thought at all.

This is where the territorial government, and in Yellowknife, the city, come in. Where is the signage in Japanese, Mandarin and Cantonese? The development of roadside and community attractions?

Premier Bob McLeod is heading up another trip to China – his fifth, at a cost of $300,000 – but what kind of bang is the territory getting for its buck? Would this money be better spent on providing grants to potential tourism operators in the territory who have the ideas and the ambition but lack the capital to get them off the ground?

Aurora tourism was up 112 per cent in 2013 from the previous year with 15,700 visitors to the territory that year. But as long as government relies entirely on the few upstarts and visionaries who have managed to survive despite a lack of tourism infrastructure, this market will remain much smaller than it ought to be.

With the shrinking Canadian dollar – now at $.86 US – the time to take advantage is now.

Upcoming conference a solid concept
Editorial Comment by Darell Greer
Kivalliq News - Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Another year has passed us by as Nunavut nears the end of its 15th anniversary.

As in our first 14 as a territory, the year had some triumphs, some failures, and some decisions that had many shaking their heads in bewilderment.

Arguably, however, the two most disturbing trends continue to be the serious disconnect between the federal government and Nunavut (see Nutrition North for glaring example), and the vocal minority who insist on keeping skin colour at the top of the problems-that-can't-be-overcome list, complete with conspiracy theories on how southern Canada is plotting to commit genocide on the Inuit way of life.

There is a slowly rising voice of Inuit trying to be heard with their message of we can't move forward if we continue to live in the past.

But, unfortunately, theirs is a message of reason and co-operation, not one of sensationalism, nor of headline-grabbing themes that cause southern media feeding frenzies like we saw in Rankin Inlet to close out 2014.

I've long come to the sad realization there are folks who get their voices heard by dropping the old standbys of colonialism, genocide and, in some cases, white privilege, without grasping the true definition of each.

One of the more recent targets of those who drop the colonialism bomb is the upcoming Nunavut at 15 conference being hosted by the Northern Institute in our nation's capital on Feb. 4 and 5.

Despite the call for a non-partisan mutual forum to discuss how Nunavut is doing - in terms of meeting the goals set in both the preparation stages of the land claim agreement and the official creation of our territory in 1999 -- the conference is being dubbed colonial in some quarters because it's being hosted in Ottawa, not Iqaluit.

National and southern media outlets are all too happy to play that up because they're not particularly enamoured with its structure.

In what this humble scribe sees as a smart move, media covering the event will not be able to quote speakers directly from the forum, having to, instead, ask them during breaks if they're willing to go on the record.

Much the same approach was taken by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission when those who spoke of their residential school experiences were given the choice to speak in a public forum or in private.

The approach allows participants to speak openly and honestly without fear of their remarks being taken out of context and, perhaps more importantly, without fear of whether their opinion happens to be in vogue.

To top it all off, the conference promises only speakers who actually know what they're talking about.

There's a brave new concept you have to support!

The plan is for a summary of the conference to be posted on the Northern Institute's website.

The early list of speakers is a solid one, including, among others, Premier Peter Taptuna, Languages Commissioner Sandra Inutiq and former premier Eva Aariak.

What remains to be seen is who among the country's movers and shakers will deem the conference important enough to attend.

You can be sure that, far more than the conference location, will be a good indicator of who is on our side and who, perhaps, is not.

It's easy to romanticize about the importance of the year that was as calendars change over to 2015. Nonetheless, we at News/North are holding fast to the notion that 2014 will go down in the books as a remarkable year in the Northwest Territories.

Over the past 12 months, devolution has taken effect; courts in the territory and elsewhere have heard landmark cases about indigenous rights; residents, politicians and industry have been locked in heated debates over what the future of resource development should look like; a grassroots movement to raise awareness about Canada's missing and murdered indigenous women has taken root and started important conversations about violence and gender equality; accusations of assaults by police have arisen; and the future of caribou and the people who rely upon them has returned to the forefront, among other things.

Power play

Bureaucrats are currently wrestling with the $250-million question of how to power the territory.

An unprecedented lack of water in the Snare Hydro System has turned Yellowknife into the North's largest diesel community. This, along with a technical report that found the proposed hydro grid expansion linking the North and South Slave would cost over $1 billion, has killed the dream that was creating a connected hydro grid in the NWT.

The biggest issue impacting daily life is poverty, driven in large part by the cost of living in the North. On this, there appears to be consensus -- but what to do about it remains unclear.

Meanwhile, Finance Minister Michael Miltenberger is poised to invest big money into energy – as long as the federal government approves the GNWT's request to raise its debt ceiling by $1 billion.

But before we can fix our energy problems, the monopoly currently enjoyed by the Northwest Territories Power Corporation and Northland Utilities Ltd. has got to go. Those who don't agree that there is a power monopoly in the NWT need look no further than to what happened when Borealis GeoPower proposed to build a geothermal plant in Fort Liard.

News/North would humbly suggest that the government think small. Stop being distracted by grand-scale projects that rely on industrial customers. The NWT's diamond mines – none of which are expected to survive beyond a couple decades -- have never said that they want to purchase power from the territory, so let's let it go.

Instead, focus on small-scale projects that will provide residents with affordable, sustainable power.

The climate is changing, now what?

Climate scientists have upped the urgency in the alarm they have been sounding for years: the climate is changing and without immediate action there will be serious consequences.

In 2014, the messaging from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) changed from – and this is paraphrasing – "we need to cut emissions or bad things will happen" to "bad things are happening and we need to get ready."

It's not hard to see the effects looking around the NWT. In the Beaufort Delta, the shoreline has eroded to the point that homes will have to be moved back or be swept into the sea, and hunters are dealing with ice conditions the likes of which they have never previously seen.

Then there were the fires. This past summer saw the worst fire season on record – highlighting a drought that is not only negatively impacting the land and animals, it is now hitting the government's pocketbook.

All the more reason for the government to double-down and invest in community alternative energy projects -- for both power and heat -- such as wind, biomass, geothermal and solar power. Not only will it reduce carbon emissions, it will save money long term.

While there are definite glimmers of possibility as the Northwest Territories embarks into the new year, there are plenty of potential pitfalls ahead.

There is no end in sight to the persistent and worrisome population drain despite GNWT efforts to reverse it. The territory, despite the government's devolution deal, remains vulnerable to rising costs and a lack of money to pay for massive infrastructure needs.

As 2015 unfolds, we will see whether the GNWT can rise to the challenge.

The new year brings much promise but also many reasons to be wary. We wish our government leaders and everyone else the best of luck in navigating this uncertain year.

It was quite a year for Nunavut on the national and international stage in 2014.

Historians lauded the discovery of the lost ship HMS Erebus, missing since Sir John Franklin's ill-fated voyage in 1845. Where dozens of explorers and searchers had failed before, modern technology and determination by the Harper government was finally successful when the wreckage was finally found, under Nunavut water in an area that was described previously by an Inuit expert in Gjoa Haven as a good place to look.

Nunavut performer Tanya Tagaq of Cambridge Bay made national headlines by winning the $30,000 2014 Polaris Prize, awarded in Toronto in September, for her album Animism. She shocked the audience when she pointed to her sealskin armbands and proclaimed seal meat as delicious, before uttering a few choice disparaging words at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals for its stand against the seal hunt in Canada.

In Clyde River, meanwhile, the hamlet has banded together with Greenpeace in its efforts to stop seismic testing in Davis Inlet and Baffin Bay to map the water for future oil and gas development after a multinational company received approval from the National Energy Board. Greenpeace, known worldwide for its efforts to protect the environment, is helping to bankroll legal services by a high-profile lawyer.

A significant black mark against Nunavut was the fire at the Iqaluit landfill, colloquially referred to as "Dumpcano," which burned for an atrocious 100 days before being finally extinguished on Sept. 16. Residents with health problems were forced to stay indoors and others were affected by the toxic smoke, depending on wind direction, while requests for help by city officials from other levels of government fell on deaf ears and the Iqaluit fire department struggled to come up with a game plan.

But nothing has cast a darker shadow on Nunavut in the eyes of outsiders than the damning report by the auditor general of Canada on Nutrition North, the food subsidy program administered by Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada. It concluded that there is no way to determine if subsidies are being passed on to consumers. The resulting coverage, including images of food products displayed on Nunavut grocery store shelves above outrageous price labels, have outraged Canadians and prompted a startling response.

Now, people in southern Canada are holding fundraisers, organizing assistance online and shipping groceries north like Nunavut is a Third World country hit by a natural disaster.

The issue was exacerbated by Nunavut MP Leona Aglukkaq's response, which ignored pointed questions in the House of Commons and called out an elected leader in Rankin Inlet for drawing attention to food insecurity in a televised documentary which showed elders picking food from the dump.

The territorial government's primary focus is on education, but how can young people learn when they are hungry and don't have a stable place to live?

In the year ahead, leaders at all levels need to wake up to the severity of the trouble Nunavummiut face in finding healthy, affordable food and adequate housing. There is no single solution but, just as there were many people involved in making the news, there must be multiple efforts to address issues of basic need.

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