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To all the athletes, participants and visitors who have come to our fair city for the Arctic Winter Games, I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for coming. I hope you enjoyed your stay and that you are leaving with some fond memories.

For those of you who are reading this column for the first time, I imagine that you are asking yourself, what "Tales from the dump" is all about. Well among a whole host of other things, it deals with the environment, ecology, the north, its history and geology, and just about anything else that comes to mind. The main focus though is on the city's Solid Waste Management Facility, which we call the dump.

In case you didn't realize it, Yellowknife has a magnificent, marvellous and world famous garbage dump. Our dump has been featured on the CBC national TV news, on radio and in countless newspapers and magazines. It is a tourist attraction known around the world. A couple of years ago we were featured in the Sunday edition of the New York Times and also in Le Monde Magazine.

What makes our dump so famous? Well it is a bastion to democracy, human rights, civil rights and salvage rights. Any man, woman or child, whether they be resident or visitor, can go to our dump, look around and salvage free of charge whatever strikes their fancy. People have salvaged building materials for cottages, homes, greenhouses and sheds.

They have salvaged furniture, dishes, pots and pans, books, clothes, computers, televisions, automobiles, snowmobiles, sports equipment, school equipment, boats and motors, garden soil, plants, fertilizer, jewelry, cash, diamond rings, food, fuel and just about anything and everything that you can think of or name.

Every year the dump pumps a couple of million dollars worth of salvageable materials that individuals have collected into the city's economy. Every week individuals collect several hundred dollars worth of beverage containers for their deposit. Other people salvage copper, brass, aluminum, gold, silver, platinum and countless other metals. As a prospector, I have to tell you that our dumps are becoming the richest ore bodies in the world and some day soon they will be mined for their metals. So if you get the chance, stake one up for its mineral rights.

Yellowknife was founded as a mining town in 1935 during the Great Depression. The founding mothers and fathers enshrined it into the city charter that anyone can go to the dump and collect whatever they want. It is theirs fair and square; finders, keepers. Woe be to the politician, bureaucrat or civil servant that tries to get between the people and their right to salvage at the city dump.

Now if our dump can do it, so can yours. Yellowknife's a beacon and an illustrious example to the world that every dump should be open to the public for individuals to salvage in, no exceptions, no excuses and no laws or rules to the contrary.

It is not too late to visit our dump and to see how it is done. When you stop to think about it, garbage dumps really are an anachronism from the past and there is nothing that goes into them that can't be salvaged, recycled or composted.

I would also like to see Yellowknife, the North and the circumpolar region become a litter-free zone. I have a rather simple plan for accomplishing this. If every person collected five pieces of litter every time they went out for a walk, in no time the North would be litter-free.

Have a safe trip home and, as Spock would say, "live long and prosper."

- Walt Humphries is a well-known Yellowknife artist and prospector