The House & other Arctic musings

Roll up this rim, and the earth wins

It is time for one of Canada's most well known promotions, Tim Horton's R-r-r-roll up the R-r-r-rim to win. So I thought it was an opportune time to point you towards the coffee you should be drinking, iconic Canadian Businesses and contests aside.

Let's talk about what we'd like to do today while we drink our morning cup of coffee. I'll wait while you have that first sip. Okay, while I have that first sip. Got any plans? How about making a pledge that will 1) help reduce poverty in the world, 2) help slow the degradation of forests in the tropics, 3) reduce the use of pesticides around the world, 4) make the world a better place for birds, including neo-tropical migrants - those birds that we love to see return to us every spring, and 5) give you a much better tasting cup of coffee than that one you just took your first sip from?

Let's talk about sustainable coffee. First things first, there are others out there who do a masterful job of explaining sustainable coffee. If you don't already do so, make it a point to read my friend Julie's blog - Coffee and Conservation. Bookmark it. Add it to your Feed Burner/Reader. And if you haven't visited it before, explore it, poke around. It is filled with resources that succinctly explain the positive impact that the simple choice of choosing sustainable coffee over corporate brands. Julie is passionate about a number of things, birds, coffee and making the world a better place are chief amongst them.

In North America we drink a lot of coffee. It is the number one food import in the US and probably in Canada also. Over half of us over the age of ten drink coffee, and coffee drinkers average over three cups a day. Corporate coffee, brands such as Folgers, Nestle, Maxwell House, Tim's etc makes up the largest volume of that coffee drank. It accounts for 80 % of the coffee in the US and some 40% of the coffee bought world wide.  Coffee drinkers, by demanding something other than the junk that comes out of those cans, could make a significant difference in the health of the environment, for not a great deal more money. I know my situation is somewhat different given where I live. But my coffee, that I mostly get from Equator Coffee (free shipping), costs me roughly the same as Maxwell House or Tim's from the local store.

Does the coffee you drink make a difference? Yes it does. Does sustainable coffee taste better? Oh yeah. Don't just take my word for it, apart from comments about the House itself, I get more compliments about the coffee I serve here than anything else. Coffee, once it is roasted, spoils quickly. Even more quickly once it is ground. That is the main reason that your stomach might get upset after a cup or two of coffee. Since I began writing this this morning I've drank a whole pot of Yirgacheffe (Organic, Fairtrade) and my stomach isn't complaining at all. My tastebuds are doing little happy dances though.

Look, it is a complex subject, just the different certifications - Fairtrade, Bird Friendly, Shade Grown, Rainforest Alliance etc. can make your head spin, and have their strengths and weaknesses. This one post is not going to do the subject justice. But here is what I'd like you to do. Go visit Coffee and Conservation and learn more. But more importantly, make a pledge that after you're finished with that can of coffee that is in your cupboard you'll switch to something better. Roll up the Rim of a bag of sustainable coffee. You won't regret it, the birds and environment won't regret it (and if you're a birder and haven't yet switched for shame - this is one of the simplest things you can do to help those birds you love), and you'll have a much better cup of coffee in the morning.

Taking care of business

I guess it has been a good week for ranting against the high cost of air travel here.  This little news item caught my attention today.  Now I'm not sure if it is because I'm getting older but I sure am getting a lot more cynical about things these days. 

In a nutshell, one of the northern airlines, First Air, has hired a former long time Nunavut politician and perennial cabinet minister, Ed Picco, as "Director of Government Relations".  Again while it may be just the airlines way of trying to make things better, my inner cynic is noting that the timing of the hiring (Government is starting to take a closer look at the extremely high fares for travel in the North) says that they are trying to head that storm off before it cuts into their large profit margins. 

The story indicates that Picco's job won't be to lobby on behalf of the airline. Indeed he is prohibited from doing so until, oh, April 18th. That's a long time from now, all of seven weeks. No his job is to liase with mayors and Hamlets and resolve any problems they have with freight or fares, sort of a special customer relations guy but for Government.

I hope that he can resolve the problems when Mayors complain that the fares and freight rates are about ten times too high. "Really, that much? I'll get on it right away. Maybe the directors and executive can return the $1.5 million in bonus and see if we can't get those reduced. Am I glad you told me!"

Damned Psychometrics

It would appear that Meandering Michael is not going on to the next round in the Greatest Job in the World competition. Pity, he deserved it and had a brilliant campaign. Perhaps too brilliant. His video stood out above all the others I looked at for originality, but it appears they were just judging the videos, and his actually led them to places they could find the information needed for their choice. In other words, what they were looking for wasn't in the video, but on his blog (and the media).  I think they missed a brilliant opportunity for hiring him. Their loss really.

At any rate I had a cartoon almost ready to go for the campaign when I learned that he had not been asked to take the psychometric testing, the next step for potential final fifty competitors. Probably a good thing anyway as he might not have passed, this is a man who went snorkeling in the Yukon, in the dead of winter for god's sake.

I've decided to put up the cartoon anyway as it illustrates a couple of things. One is that the campaign of Michael's went beyond his application video, and two that I don't have an original thought in my head, unlike Kennie and Michael.

So here is The Adventures of Un-original Man.  In glorious Comic Life colour.  It makes more sense in conjunction with Michael's application video and my follow up video, which I've posted again below.

Video feed for Michael from Clare Kines on Vimeo.

E I E.I.A.

I have Exercised Induced Asthma (E.I.A.), or at least I believe I do. I self diagnosed it, and have never had a medical professional check it out.  Perhaps it is time.

Tired of the amount of weight I'm carrying around I've recently started back in an exercise regimen. Knowing that 1) I'm older now, and 2) I'm very out of shape, I've been taking it slow. Weights every second day, not pushing myself, and adding a new set each time. Cardio on the rowing machine on alternate days, taking it slow and increasing my time slowly.

I've always seemed to have a different reaction to cardio than a lot of the rest of the world. Perhaps it is why I was never an athlete. Usually I have a slow resting pulse (quite often in the 50 bpm or slower, nurses sometimes do a double take when taking my pulse. But my heart rate shoots up quickly during cardio, and a really intense work out can bring on an attack, not right away but always after things slow down completely.

I do have a tendency to throw myself into these things and quite often injure myself after resuming workouts after a lay off. So I'm being careful. I've also not wanted to bring on my E.I.A, but apparently not exercising for years hasn't helped me in that regard.

So today was rowing, and when I felt that I was pushing myself I slowed down. Last session I didn't and suffered from the coughing fit after. I finished the session, did a cool down, drank a litre of water and when feeling returned to my legs I sat down in front of this thing.  Now the thing about EIA, at least in my experience, is that it doesn't always manifest itself right away. Leah called, and while talking to her the familiar scratching came to my throat and I began coughing, a little bit. So I coughed through our conversation and then hung up.  Deciding that a nice hot shower would help I stood up, and then really started coughing, and the world started closing in.  I thought to myself "Self, you are about to black out" and sunk to my knees, where a firm grip on the desk and filing cabinet, and a lot of concentration kept my world from completely closing in. Thirty seconds later I was fine and the attack ended.

Interestingly, according to the article linked above, there is a period of time (about an hour) after an attack when resumption of cardio will not result in another attack. Maybe instead of a shower I should get back on the rower. Nah, maybe I'll wait until after I talk to the nurse.

Verbal Medicine

One of the things I did when I recently revamped my sidebar and separated the northern blog roll into feeds for each of the territories (and others) was to search out some more NWT blogs. I am very glad I did, for I discovered the wonderful story telling of Gregory Turnbull's Verbal Medicine. The man knows how to reminisce.  Go have a visit and see what I mean. Tell him I said "Hi".

Comments

Okay, I've been very bad when it comes to responding to comments lately.  So that has been corrected, at least as far back as Valentines day. I figure if you left a comment that far back that I didn't respond to, well you've probably given up on me.

I've also noted a small increase in spam lately. From pretty much zero to about one every two days. A little troubling because I've hardly been bothered here with spam comments on Typepad. Perhaps there is a flaw in their new commenting system.

So what does that cost exactly?

After my last post on air transportation costs (and to be clear I think the high cost of air travel up here is a social justice issue, and it is high time the different levels of government, and others start thinking of it as such) I got to thinking about how best to put travel costs in perspective.  Now I know there are many ways to make comparisons, and this is just one way, but here is a breakdown on air fares by cost per kilometre.

A note on the information.  All of the Northern/Nunavut fares were taken from First Air's Website. There are other carriers that service some of these destinations. Vancouver to Halifax and Toronto to Sydney Australia fares are from Air Canada's website. London England to Ascension Island and Copenhagen to Nuuk Greenland were taken from comments on my last post, and I did not check them further.  Fares and distance were based on Return flights, departing March 4th, 2009, returning April 4th, 2009 or dates close to that. The cheapest fares found are the ones used.  Mileage is "as the Raven flies" and calculated from this site, or in the case of London to Ascension Island on Google Earth.  Whew.

Arctic Bay to Iqaluit:  2420 kms at $2188 = $.90/km
Arctic Bay to Ottawa: 6220 kms at $3642 = $.59/km
Resolute to Iqaluit: 3150 kms at $2384 =  $.76/km
Pond Inlet to Iqaluit: 2126 kms at $1452 = $68/km

Cape Dorset to Iqaluit: 784 kms at $598 = $.76/km
Pangnirtung to Iqaluit: 594 kms at $412 =  $.69/km

Iqaluit to Ottawa: 4194 kms at $1852 = $.44/km

Moving out of the Baffin Region but staying in the north we find the following...

Rankin Inlet to Iqaluit: 2352 kms at $1366 = $.58/km
Cambridge Bay to Yellowknife: 1700 kms at $1216 = $.72/km
Cambridge Bay to Edmonton: 3738 kms (via Yellowknife) at $1732 = $.46/km
Kugluktuk to Yellowknife: 1194 kms at $870 = $.73/km
Kugluktuk to Edmonton: 3232 kms (via Yellowknife) at $1508 = $.47/km
Yellowknife to Edmonton: 2038 kms at $494 = $.24/km

And finally a couple of southern domestic and international flights...

Vancouver to Halifax: 8858 kms at $568 = $.06/km
Toronto to Sydney Australia: 31,108 kms at $1466 = $.05/km
Copenhagen Denmark to Nuuk Groenland: 7068 kms at $2412 = $.34/km
London England to Ascension Island: 13400 kms at $3664 = $.27/km

For the most part I'll let you make what you will from this. It is a pretty basic comparison and I realize that other factors fall into play.  Now I didn't check any other Baffin fares (perhaps I should) but obviously within this data Arctic Bay (Nanisivik) has the highest fares within the context of price per kilometre of travel (and for this service I'll point out that you get a box lunch - my last two were frozen).  The Vancouver to Halifax fare is for Air Canada's Tango service which is pretty bare bones, however if you were to ask me whether I'd prefer bare bones at six cents a kilometre to get from here to Ottawa or half bare bones at sixty cents a kilometre I wouldn't have to think about my choice to hard.

I was actually quite surprised at the costs for Cape Dorset and Pangnirtung, as I thought they'd be better deals per kilometre. The other northern surprises for me was the CamBay and Kugluktuk legs to Yellowknife. Again I thought they were fairing better. They of course get the benefit of the low Yellowknife to Edmonton leg, should they be venturing farther south.

Fly away home

If I were to book a flight from here to Ottawa in about two weeks time, staying south for a month, airfare would cost me between $3642.00 and $5298.00 plus additional taxes and fees. In practical terms this means that for the four of us to go visit my family in Manitoba it would cost us roughly between $14,000.00 and $20,000 (plus) just to get to Ottawa!  By comparison, a quick look online found me an airfare from Toronto to Sydney Australia for $1466 (plus) and that is without searching more than one site.

Airfare and transportation costs are finally getting some attention up here. I've heard that industry and government are having informal meetings on the topic this week. As well they should, for airfares impact absolutely every aspect of our lives up here. I wish I could tell you that I'm optimistic that change is in the wind, but I'm not. Personally as much as I believe that the Nunavut government has good intentions, I just don't believe that the political will or innovative thinking needed at the Federal Government, the government responsible for transportation issues.  It should.

High airfares (and they are certainly the highest in Canada and if you know of higher comparable fares in the world I'd like to hear about them) impact every aspect of our life up here. Absolutely every aspect. Every Territorial Government program has less money too deliver their programs available because of the amount they spend on transportation. Every Federal Government program delivered up here has less money available from their budget because of the unreasonable amount of money they need to spend on transportation AND isolated post allowances, which are based on full fare airfares. If I was to still work for the RCMP, judging by what I saw on line for local airfares I would receive in the neighbourhood of $22,000.00 twice a year for isolated post travel.

I would dearly love to know what both governments spend annually on air travel. Just think of the program delivery that could happen, programs that are need if that travel was even halved. And it is not just government, but NGOs, Beneficiary organizations, and businesses. Personally I'm surprised there isn't more outrage up here.

If a store needs to bring up a repair person, that gets added in to the cost of my groceries (and before anyone jumps on me to say that those costs are spread out over the entire organization, say the Northwest Company, I know. But still, lower those costs all over Nunavut and the average goes down. So, in theory, should my grocery bills. Housing, or lack of it, is a major major issue up here. Yet still a lot of the carpenters, trades people or trainers come from down south. How many more housing units could be built once the travel budgets halved?

Medical Services? Discounting the costs of travel for Nurses, relief nurses, doctors, technicians, equipment specialists etc, Just think of the cost in patient travel. Then think of the medical service we could have if those costs were halved.

I understand that it is more expensive to operate up here (but a large part of that come from the transportation costs). The economics of scale enter into it. Places like Arctic Bay are staffed by the airlines for one or two flights a day, as opposed to many flights in southern cities. But I don't care what anyone says, it doesn't cost $1000 more per person to fly an ATR  the 900 kilometres from Iqaluit to Arctic Bay (Nanisivik is the airport) than a 747 to Sydney Australia from Toronto.

So what to do?

And the Glory goes to...

M&M of Cape Dorset.

On The Origin of Species

I chanced upon this post at thinkBuddha.org and thought I'd share it with you for its quiet assessment of Darwin's seminal work, On the Origin of Species. Perhaps he has hit upon one of the key aspects of Darwin's revolution, something apart from the importance of the science that Darwin laid out. The idea that we are not something outside of Nature, but a part of Nature. We arrived at our little twig at the tip of but one branch of the tree of diversity no differently than any other life. By chance and fitness, not in anyone's image except perhaps our ancestor's.

If we could but grasp that, perhaps we would work harder to make this world better for all life. This view of life. There is grandeur in it.