Weathering A Wintry Weekend

Indeed it's been too long since I've posted, but that's only because I'm having too much fun, which is forgivable right? November has gone ridiculously quick, with basically a half week off around Remembrance Day. The high school had their own ceremony on the Friday which had a great deal of student involvement. The grade 12's made a banner with the names and photos of the 98 people that have died serving in Afghanistan (see photos). Two weekends ago, we were lucky enough to get tons of entertainment all in a few days. A trio of professional musicians (violinist, clarinetist, and classical guitarist) came to Inuvik to tour the Eastern Arctic and gave several concerts over the 2 weeks they were here. A storytelling festival sponsored by the northern arts council was held in Inuvik and a fundraiser for the food bank was held at the Legion featuring East Coast music. So I managed to work at a community feast on Friday night at the youth centre, serving up berry smoothies to chaotic masses of kids, and then headed to the serenity of storytelling for 3 hours. My favourite was a man from Ft McPherson who wasn't the most lucid storyteller, but had the whole audience roaring as he jumped from story to story. Saturday I caught the East Coast music night and danced the Newfie Stomp and capped it all off with a music concert on Sunday. The community band (which if you remember I've joined and am playing the tenor saxophone) played tremendous renditions of the themes from Jurassic Park and Dances With Wolves along with both Rock Around The Clock and Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree. I can't say it was moving, but at least we made it all the way through and managed to end together. Very important.

This past weekend I was lucky enough to take part in a winter survival course. It's not like we got an actual certification, but the hospital has been running training for their staff for years, since they often travel to remote communities and of course there's been plane crashes and such. So we had some in class stuff on what to wear, what to bring, how to build a good camp with shelters and an effective fire. All good stuff to think about. So Saturday we went just outside of town and camped out on a lake. We had gone out the day before to make snow piles for our quinzees, so Saturday we set to work hollowing them out and filling them with alder and spruce boughs for bedding, building a lean-to tarp shelter to cook under, felling a tree to make a fire reflector and basically working too hard to remember it was cold. Lucky for us it was only -15 and overcast, which is much warmer than usual. It's supposed to start getting colder this week, staying at or below -20 and we're down to only 2 hrs of daylight as of today. Being outside on the weekend really made me notice the lack of daylight. With the snow to reflect light, it's not too dark even in the night, but I didn't really feel like we saw much of the sun what with the overhanging clouds. Only two more weeks of school after this week and the Christmas break will be here. I've opted to stay up here for the break and house-sit for a couple of teachers. Everybody says it's really nice and quiet up here around Christmas, so I think that'll be a nice break from the hustle and bustle of Southern Ontario, although the Christmas displays are out in full force here in the North too. I'm going to try and do a photo diary of what Christmas in Inuvik looks like, not too different I guess, but there's a few Inuvikisms that people might appreciate. I'll miss seeing everyone at home, but you're welcome to drop me a line over the holidays and we can share some Christmas cheer or loathing, whatever your preference.

Hillarious Halloween Hula Hooping

Well it's a been a while since posting, so I really should get on this. Mostly I've been pretty busy with the school. The library is shaping up, with all the books moved to the proper spots. I still have a lot of books to empty out of my office, but that entails adding call numbers and book covers. I'm going to wait until our part-time library tech can give a lesson, so I can learn from an expert. The student organizer sessions went fairly well and have hopefully motivated some students to get on top of their school work, although I'm sure I wouldn't have been one of them. The next big project is to sort through the electronic resources available to the school. A list of websites as possible resources is utterly useless unless there's some sort of evaluation and synopsis. Who has time to go through all of them to find out what's there? Apparently I do.

I managed to luck into a part-time job that fits my schedule and actually interests me as well. A community-based project aimed at promoting healthier eating habits is being run in Inuvik (www.healthyfoodsnorth.ca if you want to check it out). Basically I run interventions (that's right just like trying to get people to kick the smack) in grocery stores, where we have a featured product that we have encouraged the store to stock. Hopefully by providing people with a sample of the product in an easy recipe we can influence them at the purchasing level. It seems like a worthwhile project with quite a bit of formative research and community input, which could potentially positively affect obesity, diabetes and other chronic diseases that are prevalent here in the north as in other First Nations communities (I've been writing an abstract for the project, can you tell?).

Fun-wise Halloween was pretty big deals here with at least half a dozen major community parties happening. I teamed up with two friends to bring a global perspective to Halloween costuming. I was the equator, while the two girls were the North and South Pole. Brilliant. Unfortunately brilliance doesn't win you 2 round-trip flights to Edmonton at the Mad Trapper. A hula hoop hanging from suspenders is a really fun dance prop however. I got my first winter taste of cross-country skiing on the Inuvik trails this weekend too. Definitely a fun way to be outside on an Inuvik winter afternoon. I better enjoy the sunlight while it lasts, as we're down to about 6hrs of daylight, with 1 hour disappearing every week. So by mid December it'll be the dreaded 30 days and nights ...

Tasty Turkey Temptation

Thanksgiving has come and gone and though it wasn't as balmy as the one you southerners experienced, we at least had some sun and above zero temperatures. A couple of friends made a turkey and hosted a pot luck, making for deliciousness. I baked some apple-flavoured squash, yams & apples, while my roomates brought some roast moose. The snow keeps piling up here, leading to a lot of people getting up on their roofs to shovel it off. Roof design isn't meant for a lot of snow up here, so barely peaked or outright flatness aplenty. The skidoos are out in full force, roaring around town and taking short-cuts wherever they can. They're probably better on gas than the huge trucks most drive, so I don't blame them. All the building adaptations that seem strange without winter are starting to make sense: big heavy doors with no windows & very few glass store fronts to prevent heat loss and grated steel stairs and porches with jagged edges to give you some traction in the hard packed snow. It's still a bit of shock to see kids (and teachers) trudging through the halls with big winter boots on. You can't pretend winter doesn't exist like down south, where kids (and adults) try and wear running shoes winterlong. On a winter plus side, I saw my first full blown northern lights spectacle, complete with shimmering reds and greens. So much like staring into a fire. I stood there for so long just waiting for the lights to bloom somewhere else in the sky.

The library is starting to feel alive. The junior high classes are coming in for silent reading on a weekly basis now. I've been trying to be a good librarian and have a book of the week I've read and can recommend to the kids. So far Schooled by Gordon Korman and Small Steps by Louis Sachar have been good picks. I think I might try some Jerry Spinelli next. The school has hired a part-time library tech to start running some programs for students as well. So we're starting by running a organization session on how to use your student planner. Hopefully the students can find the planners handed out at the beginning of the year and they can actually write some stuff in their calendars.

Being a part of the community relations committee at the school, I helped organzie a community feast last week. Community feasting seems to be a big part of northern tradition, so we cooked up 10 turkeys, 10 hams and you don't want to know how much macaroni, potato & garden salads and tried to fill up our gym with community members. We were lucky to get our Gwich'in teacher to bring in bannock and caribou soup too. There's some pictures added and it went off pretty well. I didn't have to do any cooking, but I rounded up door prizes from local businesses, who were all very supportive, and helped set up and take down. Lots of work for lots of people, but it goes a long way to strengthen relations with the community and get people into the school. Plus who doesn't like having a big free meal.

scholarly snowy suds

Winter is officially here. It snowed pretty much all weekend, so now we have a foot of sloppy snow covering everything. It's a lot like southern Ontario winter: about 0 degrees, slushy and generally gray. The highway into town is still open, but probably within the next week or so, the ferries will come out and we'll be cut off by road until the ice freezes thick enough to let the dare-devils to cross the Mackenzie and Pelly Rivers. We've still got plenty of sunlight (when we've got clear skies), but it doesn't get light until after I get to school (~8:30) and I noticed yesterday that it's setting much more southerly than when I got here. I can watch the sunsets from my apartment though, so that's pretty nice. The weekend held a great party celebrating Quebecois beer thrown by the Francophone society. Those Quebequers really know how to make 9% beer.

This week I managed to finish up my Ontario med school applications. Now I just have to wait 8 more months to find out if I got in or not. The incredibly popular intramural floor hockey league started this week at school. Even though I'm not much of a hockey star, I figured I could call the game like it is, so I've got myself a whistle and don't put up with highsticking or cherry picking. The library is starting to come together now too. I'm getting my office room cleaned out and the books on the shelves. Next week I'm going to get classes of kids coming in to introduce them to our revamped library space and do some silent reading. I think I'll start taking some books out too, lots of good ones keep catching my attention, mostly the SciFi/Fantasy of course, although I've got to try the new Gordon Korman.

Donuts, Don't Do Drugs & Dogs

The conference last week was a nice break, although I had to do my fair share of sitting and listening just like students. The highlight for me was going out on the land on Friday. We went to a park just south of Inuvik on the Dempster highway where we had presentations about the various activities teachers have done in the past with students. There were visits from a local elder who makes jiggling sticks (ice fishing rods with hooks made from muskox horn), Parks Canada staff discussing student trips to the 3 western arctic national parks (Ivvavik, Aulavik, Tuktun Nagait) and game wardens who run a student trapper program. An incredibly nice woman made us a very traditional meal at lunch too, complete with bannock, eskimo donuts (delicious), grilled whitefish and muskrat. I'm glad I got to try muskrat, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it. Still there's something about gnawing on a little carcass...

I've started my tutoring club after schools with a bit of success so far. Mostly just a half dozen kids, but at least there's some kids. I'm sure once it gets closer to report card time there'll be more. We had a visit from George Chuvalo today, spreading his anti-drug message. It was pretty much the same spiel I heard 10 years ago in high school, but still pretty poignant. I spent most of my time back at the gym, trying to get kids to pay attention. A lot of them didn't hear a word, which is too bad since some of them could probably use a sobering look at 4 dead family members all due to drugs.

I'm house-sitting this week, taking care of a dog and 2 cats. Not too much work, since they mostly live outside. In fact most dogs in town live tied up outside in plywood square boxes. Everywhere you walk you get bellows of warning. It's pretty hard to be outside and not hear a dog barking somewhere, which of course sets of another one. Get the picture? I should probably go home and walk the dog though. That and work on med school applications. Anybody know what my greatest ethical dilemma has been, cause I sure don't.

Konferences, Kataloguing and Kung Fu

So the book fair is all wrapped up and the grand total was almost a thousand in sales. The school will be buying the rest of the merchandise, which will earn us 60% of our total fair in credit at scholastic. That basically calulates to a 2for1 deal. Not too shabby. Right now the school is hosting a conference for all the teachers of the Beaufort-Delta region, which is a huge region including Inuvik, Aklavik, Tuktoyaktuk, Ft McPherson, Tsiigehtchic, Sachs Harbour, Paulatok and Ulukhaktok. Most of the workshops are specifically geared towards teachers (eg math skills K-3), but I've signed up for a full day of On-the-Land activities on Friday. We have some speakers including Parks Canada staff and Elders from the community, which should be pretty cool. I just managed to grab a free pizza dinner by tagging along with the new teachers for an orientations session. I don't think I'll be eating as much pizza as down south. It's just not the same when you can't order it at 2am and it costs $30/pizza.

Next week I'll be settling down into my regular schedule, with half my time spent helping in essential level math classes (grade 10 & 11) and the other half working towards a functioning library. The first goal is to get the books on the shelves, so we can at least open the door and get students in here using it as a reference library. The cataloguing process can then begin once we have a those issues sorted out.

I managed to take in some local night life on the weekend, cutting loose at the legion after work last friday complete with cribbage, shuffleboard and 50/50 draws. Who could also forget the beef on a bun for $5. A local delicacy I had to sample twice. I rounded out my weekend with a visit to a teacher run garage sale, where my two new roomates and I managed to score a DVD player, a box of mostly romantic comedy VHS and 10 Kung Fu DVDs still in the wrapping. Needless to say the wrapping has come off and I will become a martial arts expert within a matter of weeks. How can you not with Bruce Lee, Bolo Yeung, Jackie Chan and Sonny Chiba as teachers?

Book Fair Bonanza

I've been running a book fair in the school library since the start of the week. You know, where you've got tables of books, posters, pens, bookmarks and kids get to buy/order what they want. I wasn't too sure how well it would go over, but it has been exceeding my expectations. So far we're well over $500 in sales and it's only half way. Tonight is parent's night, which will hopefully bring in some of the big money. It hasn't been historically well attended here, but I think the positive image of the school has been growing. I'll be manning the book fair throughout, as the parents follow their children's schedule for a brief look at high school life.

The book fair and book orders were always a favourite of mine, so it's been fun getting kids into it. It's mostly been junior high kids (grades 7-9) and mostly girls, but little things keep surprising me. I made an annoucement over the PA telling kids to save their hard-earned pennies and one girl, taking me very literally, came in with $10.00 in rolls of pennies for books. Another kid came in after school by himself wanting the new Chris D'Lacey epic about dragons (The Fire Eternal), but didn't have any cash. I let him read a bit of it until I closed up shop. He said he'd try and get the money from his Dad and the next day he showed up with a ziploc full of nickels and dimes. He must have busted open his piggy bank and raided the couch cushions for the $7.00.

I'm starting to get involved with things in Inuvik. I attended my first rehearsal of the community band last night. They've only had band instruments here for a year and a half, so this is extra-curricular with about a dozen people, only a couple of which are students and all of which are playing instruments new to them last year. To grab the beginner's spirit (and due to the lack of a working bass) I'm taking up the tenor saxophone again, which I haven't touched in almost 15 years. It felt pretty weird to be holding a saxophone and not something with strings, but I fit right into the beginning atmosphere. Good stuff. Je suis aussi membre de la societe Fracophone d'Inuvik. On va avoir un diner ce Vendredi a l'Hotel Mackenzie. Vive le Francais.

A Bientot

Here I Am

So I've been living in Inuvik for a full week today and it's actually starting to feel like home. I've learned where things are, so I don't have to be constantly looking around. I mean what else says home but having your own Inuvik library card (they're the only place to get VHS movies). Travelling to Inuvik was pretty hitch free despite making a lot of touchdowns (Toronto, Vancouver, Whitehorse, Dawson City, Old Crow, Inuvik). It was a haze of gravol and clouds, but the sky and my brain cleared up for the flight from Old Crow to Inuvik which is breathtaking (note the picture at the top of the page). Thousands of lakes and ponds, some times seperated by only a few meters, and of course the many channels of the MacKenzie River delta.

Fall is in full swing here, complete with the leaves blazing, temperatures hovering between 0 and 10 and little dustings of snow every once and while. Check out the pictures in the slideshow to get a better idea. Nothing says fall like taking in the annual Inuvik Demolition Derby. Now I've never been to a demoltion derby before (I led a depraved childhood), but apparently they don't have all those southern rules here. Just go until there's one car left. Then fix your car as best you can (after the front-end loaders have hauled it out of the mud) and then go again. Repeat 5 or 6 times until there ain't no more. There can be only one!

I started school yesterday, which has been pretty hectic for the teachers and students, but fairly low pace for me so far. Quite glad to ease into it though. The school has been without a functioning library for a couple of years, but it has been undergoing a major overhaul. So my office is crammed full of new books just waiting to get on the shelves, only there is no cataloguing system yet. Hard to run a library based on the honour system. Just ask my parents. The good news is we've got a grant to keep us going, so the work just needs to get done. We're going to be hosting our first scholastic book fair next week too. I don't think the kids here have seen much like it before, so hopefully they'll be some interest. Well that's probably enough for now. I'll try and get some pictures up of my adventures and maybe even some video so everyone can witness the mechanical mayhem.