Aaron's Arctic Adventure

Melting Muddy Meanderings & Med School

2009-05-29T16:20:00.000-07:00

The time has certainly flown by and I keep finding myself less and less behind a computer. Funny how since the nice weather has come, I spend less time cooped up inside. Well here's a whirlwind update of the last few weeks in my life. I had a fantastic trip to Whitehorse, a great city that everyone should see. It felt a little like a metropolis after holing up in Inuvik for the winter what with sushi, a microbrewery and shopping. The drive up and down the Dempster highway might have even been the best part. I captured some good pictures, but they don't do it justice. The remoteness of the highway with only a hotel/gas bar breaking up about 500km of absolute emptiness, is pretty astounding. I got an apprecitation for how far north I am by driving 15hrs south and still being north of 60. Ah Canada.

While in Whitehorse I received an invitation to interview for the physician assistant program at McMaster. So after spending a few weeks in the mud and torrents of flooding creeks in Inuvik, I flew back south to Ontario for a whirlwind visit with friends and family and even some bananas, had a good experience interviewing and then flew back north with my Parents so they could experience the northern life for a week. Boy did they see the north. Gone were the days of rushing meltwater, only to be replaced with wind and snow for another week. They seemed to enjoy themselves despite having to wear hats and mitts again in May. Taking a helicopter ride and having lunch with an Olympian can help smooth over bad weather though. Surprise, surprise as soon as they left the nice weather returned to stay and some good news for me. The University of Calgary offered me a spot in the class of 2012 medical program, so I guess 3rd times the charm.

Thank you to everyone who has sent well wishes, it's great to know that so many people were rooting for me. Maybe that's all it took. I just needed to win a bit more people power onto my side. Now I'm trying to pack as much enjoyment into my time in the Arctic before I have to buckle down and head back to school for a condensed 3 year medical degree. Nobody said it was going to be easy though. Fortunately the weather is gorgeous up here now, the river has just broken up, the sun won't set until July and I'm heading out to Ivvavik National Park with a biology class, which should be spectacular. I could do with a week in the mountains of northern Yukon under the midnight sun. Couldn't you?

2009-04-07T16:56:00.000-07:00

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.

Confident Calgarian Conibears

2009-03-02T15:25:00.000-08:00

Wow, what happened to February?! I feel like Jack Frost dropped a roofie in my drink during those heady days in January and now face March bleary eyed and a little wiser. Okay so it hasn't been that bad, but certainly busy times. The first week of February brought in the new semester here at the high school and along with it a visit from Turtle Concepts, a confidence boosting group aimed at convincing Aboriginal youth that it's okay to be confident in who you are and succeed at life. It sounds like it's been dusted with le fromage, but kids were really receptive and caught on to the message that you have a choice in your life's direction. You have to realize eventually that it's okay to be who you are, otherwise you'll never be comfortable.

I spent the next week prepping for my med school interview at the University of Calgary and then found myself being whisked away to the balmy temperatures of the Rockies. It was great to stretch my city legs for a bit, eat some delicious food, walk on pavement and most importantly taste a delicious pint of beer for the first time in 6 months. Can you believe you can't get draft beer anywhere in Inuvik? I got to tour around Canmore with Nikki, who played a fantastic host and who's friend Lucy managed to secure us a fantastic dog sled ride in the moutains of Spray Lakes Provincial Park. Oh yeah I had an interview somewhere in there too. I guess I wasn't thinking too much about that possibility when I packed to come to Inuvik, but quickly realized that I had nothing suitable to wear. Plaid shirts and holey pants are not the norm at those sorts of things, despite supreme comfort. So after some hunting around my outfit consisted of 2$ pants from the Inuvik thrift store, shoes 50% off in Calgary, belt 50% off in Canmore, shirt and tie from prep school teacher Dan and suit jacket from Scottish Murray. Somehow it all came together into a pretty professional looking outfit. Thanks to all who contributed, including the recession that enabled me to buy clothing on sale.

The interview itself went really well I thought, but it seemed like everyone had the same thoughts, so maybe the entire process is geared to lull you into a false sense of security. Hopefully I presented my burning desire to practice medicine somewhere in answering ridiculous scenarios that seemingly had little to do with the actual job and more to do with tip-toeing around dicey ethical problems. It was a really positive experience though and a much bigger feel than the Northern Ontario campus. Something about being nestled in a newly built medical complex with soaring skylit atriums, that makes you feel important. Definitely wouldn't be a bad place to spend 3 years.

No sooner did I get back from Calgary than I was whisked out on a skidoo-fueled adventure in the Mackenzie delta where we took 6 outdoor ed students on a trapper training program sponsored by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. While not exactly a serene picture of nature, snowmobiles certainly made traveling 70 km out to the cabin and roaming around setting traps and collecting firewood a hell of alot easier, plus who knew careening around portage trails and blasting over frozen lakes could be so much fun. Two Gwich'in elders accompanied the trip and brought their knowledge of trapping practices and stories along with them. We managed to catch 3 snowshoe hares (enough to make rabbit stew) and learn the different techniques for skinning both marten and rabbit. Our muskrat trap didn't yield any animals alas. I'll be posting some pictures soon and I'll try to keep them tasteful, but it's tough to make a skinless animal look anything but alien like. It was great to get out on the land though and work with a small group of interested kids. Once the apocalypse comes, I'll be snaring rabbits left, right and centre.

Seasoned Skier & Sassy Saxing

2009-01-29T15:15:00.000-08:00

We're coming to the end of January and turning a corner here at the high school. Exams are all done and the new semester starts next week. It seems like I've been pretty lucky weather wise in January. It started off real cold with ice foggy -40 days when some friends and I decided to hit the ice road and try our luck bringing a picnic to Tuktoyaktuk. A picnic in Tuk will henceforth be known as a Tuknic. The scenery was gorgeous and we were lucky enough to try it on a full moon night. It's a little bizzare driving down the frozen surface of the wide sweeping Mackenzie River with road signs popping up here and there (left to Aklavik, straight to Tuk). It's a lawless kind of driving, with no posted speed limits along 4 lanes wide of snow patchy ice and very little traffic (maybe a dozen cars during the 2.5 hr noe way trip). So if there are no rules, why not bring some skates along and try the ice road version of water skiing behind the truck. I wasn't brave enough to trust my skating skills, but I tied a mean bow line and took some pictures.

Then it got warmer and we had a weekend of ridiculously balmy temperatures (it reached +5 at one point). So what do you do when you're quite possibly the warmest spot in the country? You set up a movie theater in the front yard and project all the video you want on the side of your garage. Lots of passing skidooers slowed down to check it out and even stopped to figure out what the hell was going on. I've been getting my cross country skiing legs under me too. I joined the Inuvik Ski Club and went through the rigorous learn-to-ski workshop. It seemed to work, since I made it around the trails without falling for the first time.

Then the temperature settled somewhere in between, which is a good compromise. Last weekend the Inuvik Community Band was invited to come and play along with the local jazz band Razzamajazz at their CD release at the Lion's Den Robbie Burns Day dinner. Swanky stuff I know. Pretty fun though and my sax chops are gettnig a lot better. I even honked out a bluesy solo along to Flip Flop Fly. Yesterday I finally managed to get the rest of my mail that has been lurking at the post office since before Christmas. Thanks again to everyone that has sent postage love my way. the only casualty was a bottle of hot sauce, but it managed to stay contained and not taint anything else.

So what does February bring you ask? Well a ton more books for the library that's for sure. I finally got crackin on the tedious ordering process and we'll be getting about $10,000 worth of new books and another $2,500 in magazine subscriptions. I made sure we're stacked with Snow Goer and American Snowmobiler cause you can never have too many skidoos. Hopefully I can get a book club started at the school too, so the booky kids will have something to do other than wish they were better at soccer. The least I can do is provide for kindred spirits.

Cold Christmassy Calmness

2009-01-05T15:59:00.000-08:00

The Christmas break has come and gone and I'm looking bleary-eyed at the end of the first day of school. I missed seeing everyone in Ontario and toasting the new year with old friends, but I managed to find other "homeless" people during the holidays so we kept each other entertained. There definitely is a calm that descends over Inuvik during the holidays with a lot of government workers and teachers taking holidays and people visiting family in general. A nice break from southern shopping mayhem. There was many a movie watched and I made it all the way through the complete Degrassi Senior High series (lots of Pape Ave cameos). The mega movie watching was necessitated by the frigid temperatures that swooped in; I finally got to experience -42. *#$!n' cold is all I've got to say. I found a family to hang out with on Christmas morning so at least I got to share in the kidness of playing with cars, trains and small Barbie accessories you're trying not to lose on the first day. Long ago a friend of mine was tricked into thinking Mexicans actually celebrate Christmas a day late (I don't think she researched it much), thus for her, Boxing Day has become a celebration of all things Mexican. We celebrated in style like the best Mexicans we know how to be, with fajitas, sangria, chilis relenos and tequila jello shots. I rang in the New Year with playing a lot of Rock Band, a pretty fun way to live out your wildest rock n roll fantasies. All round not a bad holiday in the least.

I received the news today that my great aunt Lois passed away on the weekend after a long battle with Alzheimer's. My thoughts go out to all my family, but especially the Barrie cousins and my grandmother. She had been ill for a long time, so in a lot of ways it will be better, but it's always hard to lose someone you love. At least I have fun memories of visiting Barrie and will remember her as a kind and generous woman.

Asides from that sadness I hope everyone had the merriest of Christmases even without my bearded face. So far my new year's resolutions are to place a mega book order for the school library, kick start a breakfast smoothie program at the school and to think of more new year's resolutions.

Resolutely yours...

Weathering A Wintry Weekend

2008-12-01T15:17:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-05T15:25:00.001-08:00

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

2008-10-15T16:41:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-02T16:50:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-24T15:45:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-17T18:45:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-10T15:48:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-03T17:39:00.000-07:00

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.