Well March has brought a few new exciting adventures to report. Namely rising temperatures, more light than I know what to do with and some celebrations. Gone are the -40C days thankfully and while we're not as warm as the rest of you southerly folks, the "spring" up here is really enjoyable. When the sun is shining, there isn't much wind and the temperature is only in the minus teens/twenties, it's really great to be outside. It helps that the sun comes up at 7:30am these days and doesn't go down until after 10pm with a long twilight after. It's already light for pretty much my whole day and it's having an effect on the town in general. Just like southerly spring, people are in great moods wherever you go and kids find it that much harder to be in school. For a school of 400 kids at the start of the semester, we're at an average attendance of about 250 right now and it won't get any better as summer comes and we move even further into 24hrs of day light. Can you blame them though?

St. Paddy's Day in Inuvik was quite an event, not the manic craziness of downtown Montreal, where every bar is rammed from opening until close, but it's the one day of the year where you can buy draft beer! No it wasn't great beer and yes it was just kegs in the back of the Legion, but damn that green beer tasted good. I stopped by the Legion at about 4 to see when things were starting and low and behold they already were. So a night of green beer, east coast tunes and lamb stew it was. St. Patrick would have been proud (that's why we have this day right?).

This past weekend, true spring came to the Beaufort Delta with the start of the annual Jamboree season. The first one is always in Inuvik and tis none other than the Muskrat Jamboree. Four long days of indoor and outdoor events where there's a ton of activities, eating and chatting. Heavy on the socializing. The idea stems from the time when people would gather in the spring to meet with family from all across the region and boy does that still hold true. So many people from all over renewing their family ties and people of all ages out and about participating in dog sled and skidoo races, traditional events like harpoon throwing and tea boiling as well as some newer things like dances and talent shows. It's a lot of milling around and waiting for the next activity to start at least an hour "late", but since eveybody knows it's going to be this way, it doesn't really matter. When it's over, the show packs up and moves to another town the next weekend. I was denied my one goal for the weekend, which was to taste muktuk (the skin and fat layer of belugas dried and served up with HP sauce), since under the many layers of land claim agreements, traditional foods are pretty tough to sell to white people. C'est dommage, but I settled for chili and eskimo donuts.

I helped organize the annual loppet (cross country ski race for you non skiiers) at the Inuvik Ski Club. We held it on Jamboree weekend to catch the festive spirit and it worked out really well. I skiied the 5 km race, which was definitely enough for my novice ski legs, but we had races from 250 m for the littluns to 15 km for the skiiers wearing the fancy race pants. In the end, there were so many race categories that nearly all the 50 some racers got a medal of some sort at the Legion steak dinner following the loppet (even me). I'm keeping the ski motif going, as I'm travelling "south" to Whitehorse for the spring break starting at Easter to do some cross country skiing, eat some sushi & pho and hopefully drink some more draft beer. Bring on the Yukon.