Highlights of History from The Whitehorse Star
Published by The Whitehorse Star on December 30, 2007.
Dateline: May 16, 2024.
Choosing the Yukon's top 10 stories of the year is, to a large extent, an arbitrary task. It's a mixture of our judgment, of the stories which have attracted considerable media coverage, or those with the most significant effects on the largest number of Yukoners.
Here, then, are the Star's top 10 stories of 2007.
1
The Canada Winter Games in late February and early March, are near-unanimously seen as a huge success for Whitehorse and the Yukon.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper helps to officially launch the sporting event. Senior Games officials and VIPs, both local and national, applaud the organization by the thousands of volunteers who don their orange jackets for the two weeks and more.
The new Canada Games Centre, the focal point of the event, is cited as a first-class venue, second to none in the country.
Yukoners and visitors alike are treated to a stimulating array of cultural performances at the ATCO tent on the waterfront.
The team of student chefs and their supervisors who provide 'round-the-clock meals service for the 3,600 visiting athletes and coaches is put on pedestal of appreciation for its excellent food and service.
The athletes' village leaves a lasting legacy, then becomes seniors' housing and a student residence at Yukon College.
Financially, the Games bank account ends with a perfect zero balance. It's estimated a total of 7,600 people have visited the territory, including the athletes, averaging expenditures of about $1,000 each, with athletes spending as little as $90 and VIPS parting with as much as $1,850. Altogether, the Games generate about $8.7 million in spending during the two weeks, with most of the money $2.53 million going to accommodations.
2
The year 2007 proves a wet one for many Yukoners who suffer at the hands of Mother Nature. Residents of the Southern Lakes and Lake Laberge regions are hit especially hard with rising water levels, starting in late spring and continuing to rise until early August, spilling onto properties and into houses. Many residents from in and around the affected areas volunteer to help by filling and moving thousands of sandbags, but those efforts don't keep some people from being forced out of their homes.
Water levels peak at 657.297 metres above sea level on Aug. 15, beating the previous record set in 1981 by more than 30 cm.
The White Pass and Yukon Route Route suspends train service between Carcross and Bennett due to high water levels at Bennett Lake, and the territory's Emergency Measures Organization is called into action.
Premier Dennis Fentie announces a flood relief package for affected victims in late August.
3
The territory's mining and exploration industry continues its rapid upswing in 2007.
Sherwood Copper's Minto mine becomes the first hard rock mine to open in the Yukon in a decade with its Oct. 1 announcement that it has officially gone into commercial production. The copper-gold open pit project employs about 100 people directly, and scores more indirectly. They include truckers who move the concentrate from the mine site to the Port of Skagway, which has also benefited with a resurgence of its ore handling facility. Sherwood Copper expects a mine life of 10 years or longer.
And with mineral prices remaining hot, the exploration sector brings about another record year in spending. Recent figures indicate companies will be spending about $130 million on exploration this year, up a full 62 per cent over the $80-million-plus spent in 2006 itself a record year. Expenditures on exploration had bottomed out in 2002, with just over $6 million spent.
The Yukon's 107 placer gold mines produce more than 63,332 crude ounces this year, for a total value of $37.5 million-plus, representing an increase in overall production and value over 2006.
4
Compensation payments begin flowing to survivors of the residential school system between 1920 and 1997. The school system saw first nations children taken from their families and placed in the institutions funded by the federal government and operated by the churches. The deal which provides $10,000 for the first year and $3,000 for subsequent years to survivors is approved by courts across the country early in the year after hearings held in 2006.
Information sessions are scheduled throughout the territory, as they are throughout the country, about the compensation package, with the opt-out deadline passing in August. If 5,000 survivors across the country had opted out, it would not have gone ahead.
As survivors send in their forms for compensation, a three-day summit for survivors in northern B.C. and the territory is held in Whitehorse in October, with presentations on healing, self-care as well as investing their compensation dollars carefully and being cautious of scams.
5
A young woman reaches a tragic demise. For much of the year, city storefronts, lamp posts and other public surfaces are plastered with sheets of white paper featuring a photo of a beautiful young woman, asking for help locating the missing teen.
Whitehorse residents are united this year in the search for Angel Carlick. The 19-year-old had last been seen May 31, weeks before she was slated to graduate from high school. Friends and family members become concerned when the normally sociable young woman does not return home or answer any calls on her cell phone. Friends tell the Star it's very unusual for Carlick to cut off communication and leave, especially after booking beauty appointments for graduation and making plans for college.
The investigation starts with RCMP issuing a plea in mid-June for Carlick herself to contact the detachment. Shortly after, the investigation becomes more of a search for the girl.
Community groups and individuals rally together in search efforts spearheaded by the Blue Feather Youth Centre, where Carlick had worked. Some residents criticize the search efforts, both formal and informal, as being not good enough. Some write to the Star arguing if Carlick had not been a first nation member, the search efforts would have been much more active.
Five and a half months of search efforts come to a grim ending in November, when a hiking resident discovers what are determined to be Carlick's remains in a forested area north of the Pilot Mountain subdivision. Subsequent autopsy results are inconclusive, although it's immediately clear that Carlick did not leave the world of her own accord, but rather of someone else's malicious intent.
Carlick's own life was a story of overcoming obstacles to achieve success, friends say at her memorial services. At a juncture in her life where a bright path lay ahead, her aspirations and potential were cut abruptly short.
6
Residents of Dawson City express outrage upon learning Thane Moore, a convicted rapist who is laballed as a high risk to reoffend, plans to relocate to the Klondike upon his release from a New Brunswick penitentiary in September. Among his original conditions of release is that he not relocate to Whitehorse.
When Dawson residents learn he plans to move there, a petition is initiated calling on the territorial government to resist the move, while the town's lawyer is asked to review the case to look at fighting Moore's relocation plans. Moore eventually agrees not to move to Dawson as well, indicating he doesn't want to fail in his release after spending 14 years in prison.
The 42-year-old P.E.I. man was convicted in 1993 of brutally raping a woman who gave him a lift when he was hitchhiking. He choked her twice into unconsciousness before leaving her there and taking off in her car.
Moore will remain under his conditions for one year.
7
The fall sitting of the legislature is dominated by questions around the government's decision to invest $36.5 million in asset-backed commercial paper after it's revealed banks are refusing to give investors back their money on their maturity date.
The Auditor General's office agrees to investigate the funds following Liberal Leader Arthur Mitchell's request as opposition members continue to push for the assembly's public accounts committee to look at overall policies for investments by the government.
Most recently, a restructuring plan for ABCP is announced for all investors for the notes to be exchanged for longer-term investments. Further details won't be released until after the new year, with a vote in February.
8
In June, the long-awaited Alaska-Canada rail-link feasibility study, costing a total of $4.7 million US, is released. It proposes a T-shaped rail route, linking Alaska with the south, that would make Carmacks the hub. Segments of the rail would also head north to Delta Junction and south to a deep water port in the Inside Passage.
With a 50-year-old life cycle, the 1,900-kilometre track would cost about $10.5 billion US with potential net revenues of $7.8 billion, the report calculates. Total public benefits are estimated at $11.4 billion. The total economic impacts combined for Alaska and Canada over the 50 years would be an output of $170 billion in the gross domestic product and the creation of an estimated 25,000 new jobs.
Premier Dennis Fentie says the research will be shown to the federal government to gauge its interest in pursuing the megaproject. The territory funded $2.35 million of the railway study.
9
With virtually no debate, Yukon MLAs vote this month in favour of salary increases that see the annual base pay rise from $38,985 to $65,000. There are additional generous increases for those holding the offices of premier, party leades, minister, house speaker and deputy speaker. The vote comes following the release of former assembly clerk Patrick Michael's report recommending the increases.
While the change is approved during the fall sitting of the legislature, the territory's all-party Member Services Board, which meets in-camera, makes the raises retroactive to June 1, when the assembly approved the report's compilation.
Even with the salary hikes, Yukon MLAs remain among the lowest-paid assembly members in the country.
10
Whitehorse residents are hit with plans for a 7.5 per cent property tax increase for 2008, following a promise that tax hikes in 2008 would not be necessary.
The city's 2008 operating budget, worth $51 million, is released following months of city department penny-punching. A financial report in August had revealed the city was facing a $304,000 deficit. Mayor Bev Buckway asked all city staff to cut spending where possible. That plan seems to have worked, when, a week before the 2008 budget is released, the city announces it has reduced its deficit to a mere $30,000. Surprise ensued when, seven days later, the city announces it will be taking more tax dollars from residents to keep up with what Buckway calls the needs of a growing city.
City councillors appear to be divided on the reasons behind the proposed tax hike, but all cite growing staff sizes and unionized workers' pay agreements as the chief cause of the increase.
Stirring the pot last week is an announcement from the Yukon government that city property value assessments are increasing. Buckway says the surprising announcement could shake up the city budget and possibly lower the proposed tax hike. City staff and councillors continue to meet and discuss the proposed budget.
