By Tim Querengesser -- Back in 2006, when Stephen Harper became prime minister, he promised never to appoint a senator who wasn't elected. That same year, Ione Christensen -- the Yukon's long-time senator -- retired her seat in the second chamber. And since then, as Harper has held fast to his commitment, the Yukon government has scoffed at holding a senator election and has apparently failed to pressure the feds hard enough to appoint one, relegating the territory -- democratically speaking -- to something approaching backwater status.

By Pat Kane-- Every once in a while, the editors at Up Here let me out of my cage and send me to some far away land to take pictures. Sometimes I think up a story of my own, and sometimes I will travel with a writer and get shots for his or her story. Either way, it’s good to get out of the office.

By Aaron Spitzer -- I beg all you Canadian readers to forgive this blog, because I’m going to ramble about something close to my heart: Americans and their crazy election.

Full disclosure: I am an American. I was born and raised in Indianapolis, Indiana – buckle of the U.S. Bible belt. And with the most tumultuous American presidential race in history about to be decided tomorrow, I’m feeling especially Yankee.

by Brent Reaney -- I first met Leona Aglukkaq just after she’d been named the minister of health in Nunavut. Like many of the politicians I’ve met up here, she was warm, friendly and without airs. But she also had a certain to-the-pointness about her which I’d never seen. We’d misspelled her name in News/North the week before. Shortly after our introduction at the Rankin Inlet airport, she sternly asked how such a thing could happen.

by Brent Reaney -- Many people I meet in southern Ontario have questions about life in the North. They want to know what it’s like to live here and, particularly, what it’s like to endure total darkness. I don’t tire of telling people it’s never entirely dark in Yellowknife, even in the middle of winter. But I still don’t have a quick and dirty explanation of what it’s like to live here.

By Tim Querengesser -- Last Tuesday, we spent about $300 million on a federal election. It still isn’t clear what we bought. To recap, we re-elected yet another minority Conservative government by 1) shooting the Liberals in both feet rather than the heart, 2) continuing our decades-long tease of the NDP with almost enough support to matter, and 3) convincing the Green Party we were listening only to ignore them, again, at the ballot box. It gets more confusing in the North.

by Katharine Sandiford -- This entry will be short. I'm depressed. It's October and it feels like November. I like December: the end is near, the snow is on the ground, the sweets of Christmas are coming down the pike. November is the worst month anywhere in Canada, but in the North, you get two of them: October included. This is the time of year when the sunlight abandons you.

By Patrick Kane --When I was a kid, I wanted to be a writer (oh, the irony). My mom, an English teacher, would tell me I needed to find my voice, the voice that people hear when they read my words. Same idea goes for photographers – we need to develop our eyes. “Show your readers what you see, the way you want them to see it,” a teacher once told me.

By Aaron Spitzer -- I’m conflicted about development up here. And the longer I stay up here, the more conflicted I become.

Back when I first came North – a rosy-cheeked innocent in virgin gumboots – I was a refugee. To me, the temperate south was a barrenlands of poison, swarming cars, metastasizing suburbs, and humans that were, at best, impressively lifelike. I fled without a fare-thee-well.

By Tim Querengesser -- Federal elections in the North turn established norms on their head. Here, in the cities at least, you don’t try to get to know the candidates, you try to avoid knowing them too much. They’re everywhere you go: the grocery store, the gym, the coffee shop. Simply leaving your house becomes political. Most people have some sort of connection to the candidates that makes it hard not to vote for each of them. One is a friend of a friend. The other used to teach their daughter at school.