The House & other Arctic musings

Google Meme - Only because my Blogmom tagged me.

Nuthatch (my inspiration) tagged me with this "Google" Meme.  Rules are pretty simple.  Plug your first name and the following verbs (needs; is; likes; wants; gets; and says) into Google and copy the first (or best) five responses. 

So, with some ado...

Clare needs...
1) a temporary fiance
2) more nous (????)
3) to purchase a total of $700,000 of Life coverage
4) to find a good hair stylist (yeah, like that would help)
5) to come back to the show, like now.

Clare is...
1) grappling with an unusual problem.
2) is not responsible for any problems in downloading and installing the program.
3) is the author [of a ridiculously long titled book]
4) currently taking the 2-dimensional world of on-location painting to the three dimensional world of sewn, rough, quilt-like paintings.
5) so musical

Clare likes...
1) to share
2) nothing better than interfering in other people's lives on both a professional and personal basis
3) natural wood or blond wood
4) food.
5) to believe the best in people, thinking that below every surface there are things no human eyes can see.

Clare wants...
1) the morning after pill (hmmm)
2) wants to escape them. (Oh I do, how I do)
3) an original leather hacky-sack from eBay.
4) to tell the story.
5) to marry a rich man. (Okay, legal in Canada but really not what I want at this point in my life.)

Clare gets...
1) top marks!
2) many tourists (although not as many as he'd like)
3) a promotion! (woo hoo at double my current salary. Wait a minute!!)
4) pushed.
5) a massive power boost here.

Clare says...
1) that prostitution is a choice.
2) I was looking for a slave the other day and, as luck would have it, this great resource just sort of fell in my lap.
3) I love this book and give it away as a gift all the time.
4) he sets the alarm at 5 am everyday.
5) I gave it a lot of polish and its still got a wobbly leg, but that doesn't bother me.

So, I guess I'll tag a couple of northern bloggers.  Darcy, at Way Way Up; Kara at The Adventures of Matt and Kara in Kugluktuk; and Jaime at Nunavut Newbies.

Feeding Frenzy

I don't think this needs any further comment.

A Tragedy

The community suffered another blow yesterday. A fourteen month old girl went into the Health Centre the night before last suffering from a fever and seizures. She died yesterday morning, before she could be medivac'd. It just happened that two doctors were in town on a scheduled visit, but despite their, and the nurse's, and the pediatric resident's (who came in on the medivac flight) best efforts she passed away.

A death is always hard on the community here, it is small, young and close knit. But the death of a child always seems extra hard, no matter where it happens. Children are so young, vibrant, and full of life. They carry with them all of our possibilities.  I cannot fathom losing Travis or Hilary, and I don't mind saying that I was quite teary yesterday just brushed with the possibility that it could occur. I cannot imagine what her parents are feeling now. My heart goes out to them.

Things you don't see in your neighbourhood if you live in, say, Toronto

What a Beautiful Fall

It is hard not to wax effusively about life up here these days.  It has been an absolutely gorgeous fall.  Most daytime temperatures  are hovering around 10C. The mornings have been dead calm, not a cloud in the sky. The wind picks up mid-afternoon and blows away the dust from the traffic and the airport project, and then drops again for the evening.  The blueberries are ripe, the bird life fantastic. Travis and I spent last night building sand castles in the sand at Victor Bay, and skipping stones in the mirror like ocean. Who could ask for anything more.

This is essentially an excuse to post some pictures, so I'll get right to it.  Saturday evening saw us head to First Bridge for some games, and then we went on Second Bridge and drank heartily from the cold clear water there before picking blueberries.  And afterwards we went down to Nanisivik and checked out the CCGS Terry Fox at the Nanisivik Dock.

The view at First Bridge.

Hilary in her amautiq

Travis and his Aunt Sipporah throwing rocks.

Big splash!

Exploring something in the water.

My girl.

Hilary at Second Bridge. Notice the teddy bear in her amautiq.

What else? Throwing rocks.

The Valley at Second Bridge, bathed in a golden light.

What's left of the townsite at Nanisivik. Essentially 9 houses and a garage.

Hilary checking out the CCGS Terry Fox.

The 10 Million Dollar Sign.

... and check the oil and clean the windshield also.

Last week saw the arrival of our first sealift ship of the year, the fuel ship.  The Tuvaq is on it's first trip of the season here with a load of diesel/heating fuel for the next year.

This is actually the second ship to arrive this year, a cruise ship visited in the fog a couple of weeks ago.  Soon the two sealift ships will arrive with goods for another year.  These are anxiously awaited this year as there is no pop left in town, and pop is like Crack Cocaine up here.

Berry picking time.

The other day Leah took a day off and went blue berry picking with her Aunt and sister.  She came back with an ice cream pail full, and a gorgeous picture of her sister and her aunt in the hills above Second Bridge.

These are the days...

The four of us, along with Leah's sister Sheba, her little sister Sipporah, and nephew Bradley went blueberry picking last night.  Yesterday evening was one of those days that you wish that summer lasted a lot longer up here. We had scrambled down a hill off the road to Nanisivik, in a little draw that had plenty of berries (but for those of you used to picking blueberries in the south, plenty is a relative term. After I picked enough to have counted myself as useful, I went and sat with the kids, stuffing berries down Hilary's maw and watching Travis, Sipporah and Bradley as they scrambled over the rocks looking for spiders and what ever caught their fancy.

The ocean was like a mirror, there wasn't a breath of wind, and as I sat amongst a berry patch I admired all of the world laid out before me.  The sun was low and the contrasts highlighted the land before me's character, celebrating every contour, every scar.  Far below I could hear a pair of Sandhill Cranes (I now have a pretty good idea where they nest) and something else that I do not know.  I'm guessing that it may be Yellow-billed Loons.  Ravens tumbled over head, delighting in the day and cackling with what could be nothing other than joie de vivre. As the blueberries kept disappearing into Hilary and she'd smile and say "More more more!" you could not help but know that all was well with the world.

After the women had decided that they had enough we headed back to town, but stopped at First Bridge to join others there who were having a picnic. Travis threw stones in the rushing water and drank glass after glass from the cold refreshing river. The fragrant smoke of a Heather fire wafted around, and we ate delicious smoky Caribou, sliced thin, seasoned only with salt. A finer tasting meat could not be found, wonderfully infused with the Heather smoke, the perfume of the earth.

The edge of our hunger gone, we then drove out to Victor Bay, stopping to try and get a look at the small char that were rising in the first lake on the way there. The sun was setting across Admiralty Inlet, which was not shrouded by fog for the first time in what feels like weeks. Unbelievably the entire ocean had not a ripple on it, and we watched gulls wheel and turn and the land turn to gold, while the sky turned pink and mauve and purple. A Baird's Sandpiper entertained from a small pond, but other than it's occasional call there was not a sound to be heard, even the Gulls held their voices as the sun edged its way down the horizon.

A more perfect evening could not be found, except perhaps if the sky could have deepened enough to have seen the Perseid meteor shower. I miss lying on a sleeping bag in the cool darkness watching light streak across the heavens. All of this just for me.

Of ships and sovereignty

Prime Minister Stephen Harper was in Nanisivik yesterday, to announce that Nanisivik has been chosen to be the new deep water port to service the new Arctic patrol fleet. The choice of Nanisivik as the port is the only logical one for the government to make. For one thing, it already exists. Nanisivik has been a deep water port, with fifty feet of water port side, since 1975. To construct a new port in Iqaluit or Resolute or elsewhere would be much more expensive and needless.

It also is situate on the Northwest Passage, the only existing port on the Northwest Passage (there was a second on Little Cornwallis Island that was decommissioned when the Polaris mine was shut down. There will be people in Iqaluit jumping up and down saying a port should have been built there (give me a break, Iqaluit is about 600 nautical miles south of the Passage, and the costs of construction would be enormous), and apparently Churchill Manitoba (alright it has a port, serviced by a railroad to the south, but it is so far away you might as well use Newfoundland).

There is also additional infrastructure at Nanisivik that makes it a logical choice (although not as much as there used to be). Fuel tank facilities, proximity of a 6,400' runway, and a utilidor for fresh water all still exist in Nanisivik. No, Nanisivik is the smart choice if you're needing a base for Arctic Patrol vessels.

The only problem is the new scheme for Arctic Patrol vessels is the wrong approach to sovereignty. The Prime Minister is right when he says that when defending sovereignty you must "use it or lose it". As far as the waterways of the Northwest Passage go, Canada already uses them, and have for years. A fleet of Canadian Coast Guard icebreakers spend all summer in the Arctic waters. And more importantly, Canadian Inuit make use of the frozen and unfrozen waters, to travel, and hunt, and live. The Inuit have been living lives up here for thousands of years, long before there was a Canada, and now they are Canadians and their lives, and those of other Nunavumiut are the strongest possible arguement for Canada's sovereignty in the Arctic that there is.

It has been long understood that it is people's lives that enforce sovereignty, it is the reason that the RCMP had detachments on Devon Island (the largest uninhabited island in the world) and on Ellesmere Island, policing no one but the people they brought with them. It is the reason for the poorly conceived and executed movement of people from Northern Quebec to Grise Fiord and Resolute Bay. It is the reason that the government should be doing as much as they can to make the Arctic a better place to live for the people who are here, and to attract other Canadians here.

What can the Government do? First starters they need to have a long look at the price the airline(s) charge for airfares in the north. Flights from Arctic Bay (Nanisivik actually, as that is where our airport currently is) to Iqaluit, 900 kms south and our only direct destination apart from Resolute, cost $2,500. Flights from Nanisivik to Ottawa range from $3,700 to almost $5000. In less than six months, when Hilary no longer flies for free, the cost for our family of four to fly to see my family in Manitoba would cost at least $15,000, but likely closer to $20,000.

And it not just that I want a vacation. The airfares impact on absolutely every aspect of our lives up here. If one of the stores needs to bring someone up to fix the coolers in the store (which I really wish they would do) that $2500 to $5000 gets added into my grocery costs.  The cost of every teacher from the south includes the airfare from bringing them up, taking funds away from education programs, and the same thing happens on every in-service training that they have to attend outside the communities. Every time someone from the government flies into a community that takes away from money for their programs. I stagger to think about how much medical travel costs the Nunavut government each year, but you wouldn't be able to find a flight here that didn't have someone travelling to Iqaluit or Ottawa on medical. Think about your school sports teams and the opportunities that they have to play other schools. Now think about how often that would happen if you had to spend $2000 per athlete and the coach/chaparones. The costs of housing and other capital projects (such as the new airport) also includes the costs of flying in skilled people.

There are so few business opportunities up here, and one that is trumpeted all the time is tourism. Think of the challenges in attracting people to a community like Arctic Bay, when it costs someone $3700 just to get here from the south.  I could fly to Australia from southern Canada three times for that price. In fact I just looked, booking a flight from Toronto to Sydney return in mid-October cost $1424 with Air Canada, in fact I can get a flight and a weeks accommodation for $2500 from Vancouver. 

Imagine how much lives could be improved up here, with cheaper food, more money for medical and government programs if even an average saving of $1000 per flight were realized.  There are four flights up to Nanisivik each week.  When I flew last month there was 24 passengers on the flight. A young girl from Arctic Bay I met at the airport had been trying for three weeks to fly up on standby, so you can see the flight is usually full. So, some quick math would show that there are 96 passengers a week to Arctic Bay, or 4992 a year.  The vast majority of those are travelling on government, medical, or business.  A $1000 reduction in fares would mean almost $5 million more for programs or reduced food or other costs to this community alone.  Oh, and just in case you don't think that $30,000 is enough revenue (24 pax times $1250 one way costs) to bring a Hawker  the 900 kms from Iqaluit to Nanisivik (plus the $30,000 for the return flight), half the plane is carrying air freight, also generating revenue (and you don't want to get me started on the costs of air freight up here).

So if the Government really wants to defend our sovereignty in the Arctic, save the 8 billion dollars on the redundant Arctic Patrol vessels, and make it worth Canadian's while to live up here. Oh and at the same time free up the Coast Guard to do community projects, such as mapping the family grave sites (and marking graves) that are scattered all over up here from when people lived on the land, making sites like the RCMP detachments at Dundas Harbour and Alexandra Fiord National Historic sites. Take some of that 8 billion dollars and create more housing and better infrastructure in the Arctic Communities. Our sovereignty depends on peoples lives lived up here.

Sorrel in my salad

Lately I've gathering Mountain Sorrel (Oxyria digyna) and adding it to my green salads.  Mountain Sorrel is one of the (few) plants used in a traditional diet up here.  It's red waxy flours were used to make tea and the leaves eaten.

Very high in Vitamin C, it's leaves are crisp and have quite a tart flavour to them.  Although they are high in "C" the addition of it to the inuit diet did not add the bulk of their vitamins. By far most of the vitamins in a traditional diet come from the consumption of raw meats - seal, caribou, fish and muktaq. 

I enjoy the tart goodness of Mountain Sorel and will often reach down a pick up a couple of leaves for refreshment. I think it adds nicely to the salads, and I only wish I had some Nasturtiums to add a peppery counterpoint to it.