Board warns school buses could stall
The Hay River District Education Authority warned again it couldn’t balance the budget with bus service weighing it down.
A May 25 letter to parents said it needed to find more money or there wouldn’t be school buses in the fall. Chair Mark Harris wrote that the board has been taking money from school operations to pay for transportation because it doesn’t get enough from the GNWT.
Curtis Brown, chair of the umbrella organization the South Slave Division Education Council, said he applauded Hay River’s efforts to find alternate sources of cash, but wouldn’t hold a special meeting on the subject because he thought it would be fruitless and could set a dangerous precedent for other education authorities.
KFN objects to new framework
Kátł’odeeche First Nation registered its objections to the new self-government framework signed days earlier by the Northwest Territory Métis Nation, the GNWT and Canada.
“To date, no credible evidence of historic use and occupancy within Kátł’odeeche Got’i Ndee (primary traditional territory) has been provided to KFN by the NWTMN or by the GNWT and government of Canada.”
The KFN argues the only way to avoid a conflict would be to move the NWTMN boundary east of the KFN border.
Smudge for Kamloops 215
About 50 people attended a special smudge ceremony held in the wake of the discovery of child remains on the site of a former residential school in British Columbia.
“It’s a cleansing ceremony,” Sharon Caudron explained. “You think about the ancestors and now we’re talking about little small ones,” she said. “Those are dear to anybody’s heart.”
Elder Roy Fabian added: “People didn’t believe we were human, and so in that light they did some very atrocious things.”
Boil water advisory lifted
The town of Hay River was under a boil water advisory from May 16 to June 2 due to high turbidity caused by the spring freshet. The advisory also affected Enterprise, Kakisa and the Hay River Reserve, which all get their water from the same place.
High rise pulled from auction
A number of “registrations against” the Mackenzie Place apartment building forced the Town of Hay River to pull it from a tax auction at the last minute.
The town explained the parties responsible for those registrations would need to be notified a set time before the auction takes place.
Owner Harry Satdeo said he’d spoken to five parties interested in buying the building. The minimum price for the tax auction for the building was $1.455 million, or half its assessed value.
Youth charged after crash
A youth was charged with a number of crimes after a black Ford SUV collided with a utility pole on a rural service road June 5.
The 15-year-old boy, who was not identified by police, was charged with two counts of dangerous operation of a motor vehicle, careless storage of ammunition, mischief over $5,000, driving without a license, failing to remain at the scene and underage drinking.
Canada Day cancelled
“Now is not an appropriate time to celebrate in the face of Indigenous friends and neighbours,” Mayor Kandis Jameson said in cancelling Canada Day events.
The change was made in communities across the NWT and the country in response to the discovery of a burial site on the grounds of a former residential school in Kamloops, B.C.
“I want to stand in solidarity with the folks that have lost and as Aboriginal people, when we are in mourning we don’t celebrate,” said Travis Beck, president of the Hay River Métis Government Council.