Dear Mayor Alty and city councillors,
Welcome.
It seems that city council, the territorial government and governing body of Aurora College were pretty proud of themselves when they were able to work in a conciliatory manner to sign a memorandum of understanding calling for Tin Can Hill to be used for a future polytechnic site.
However, it would appear that one significant body was not appropriately consulted: the residents of Yellowknife.
Now there is an online petition with several hundred signatures asking that Tin Can Hill be left alone. This is both an environmental and mental health issue. Why would these governing bodies fail to include the residents of Yellowknife more fully in this discussion? Do business concerns continue to take precedence over the needs of locals?
For some, their very sanity requires the comfort of this little slice of Mother Nature. It is where they regain balance, de-escalate and de-stress and why they stay here at all.
Green space is a mental health necessity. Why do we continue to destroy our natural environment and call it progress when the cost to our well-being and that of the planet is so great?
One of the respondents in an online forum quipped that the failure to develop the hill is because of a few dog walkers who want to preserve the space for their own ends. What nonsense! Thank goodness there are people who respect both nature and animals.
No. People want to preserve this space because it is an invaluable escape from the everyday pressures of life. It gives our lives meaning, as nature always does. Imaginary and fantastical legacies must not take precedence over grass roots health.
We don’t need another overpriced, under-utilized building swallowing up green space; we just need green space.
This memorandum of understanding (MOU) was another example of a project done with little transparency. This phenomenon seems to be endemic with both levels of government. Why do these bodies feel that once elected or appointed, they are no longer obligated to consult the electorate? Let them know they count. Ask them what they want. Include them in the conversation.
As you start your new council duties, please know that there are many of us who want you to talk to all the people of Yellowknife on important matters such as this before signing MOUs with such significant impact.
In the end, left in its natural state, Tin Can Hill has far more to offer residents than another questionable facility.
It’s ironic that this call to halt the “development” is revisited at the same time one MLA cites the failure of our current school system to meet the needs of youth in the communities at all. The majority, he noted, will not be able to attend post-secondary school because the current curriculum only merits a failing grade. This seems to give us some idea of where our attention should be directed.
The hope is that you, the new civic governing body, will think this through better than your predecessors.
Further, the NWT is experiencing a mental health crisis which prompted the chief coroner to put out an early synopsis of the North’s suicide rate. Why are the numbers so high? Past and current trauma, for sure, and our failure to provide healing modalities… one of which includes easy access to the land. It heals us. It nurtures us. It grounds us. People get sick without it —perhaps this is why we are living on a dying planet.
Tin Can hill already offers holistic well-being, something an educational facility built there cannot do.
Mayor Alty and councillors, we ask that you A) be transparent and talk to people and B) reconsider this MOU, choosing instead an area such as buildings within the city that can be recycled and easily accessed rather than destroying another spectacular green space that keeps many rooted here.
Sometimes progress is not development… sometimes it’s just destructive and colonial.
“Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone… they paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”
—Joni Mitchell
Please, leave Tin Can Hill alone.