The House & other Arctic musings

The Short list

A short while back I received an email from Canadian Geographic advising of a special wildlife issue coming out. This issue would use photos from selected photographers who had entered their photo contests and were short listed. The problem was the email (actually there were two) were sufficiently vague that it was difficult to tell whether it was genuine, or a pretty darn good phishing attempt.

A couple of emails later, through the CG site, and a direct one from the issue's editor, and it turns out that this is genuine. The next problem, I had no idea what photos I had submitted, and as it was done online as opposed to by email, I didn't have a record of them.  Again an email to the issue's editor cleared that out. It was the photographer that they selected, not the specific images.

I was to select up to two images to submit for consideration. But which two?  Not that they're all wildlife or bird photos, but I've taken almost 10,000 photos in the years since I got the Canon DSLR. And without a specific species or theme how do you choose amongst them?

Well, I asked (on facebook and to friends) but I knew that ultimately I'd have to go with something that I felt would fit the bill. One thing to narrow it down was that I knew it would be a bird photo, as with one or two exceptions most of my mammal or insect shots are pretty poor.

So again to limit the process I thought I'd limit it to images I had on Aperture. For the most part that would be photos from the last couple of years, plus I've been a little more diligent in tossing images since I've started using that program. I created a file for the shortlist and then started through some of the other files, duplicating and transferring ones that caught my eye.

From there I went through that file, tossing photos for various reasons, such as lack of sharpness, or not enough resolution to meet the criteria. There were photos that were pretty nice photos of individual birds (I've taken a lot of Pacific Loon photos lately) but that lacked a certain visual impact or decent composure. Such as this one: nice photo, but its just not enough.

That brought me down to twenty-two images. And a further cull took me down to ten. Those ten, are below the fold, along with which, two I eventually submitted.

A limit

I wonder if there is a theoretical limit to the number of photos of icebergs, fog and the St George's Society Cliffs one can post before the audience becomes over-satiated?

 

While I was taking this photo Leah and the others were picking blueberries. When I went to get them I took the opportunity to snap this portrait of her, and a couple of my son on his bike.

 

I am, truly, a lucky man.

Sealift season is upon us

The first (well second, the fuel ship was here and left) sealift ship of the year has arrived, disgorged, and departed.  I'm anxiously awaiting the next one, because that is the one with our goods on it.

A grave concern

I seem to have a thing for old graves. Especially those that have been somewhat forgotten.

My sister pointed out that part of it stems from an enjoyment of history, mingled with the passion of the stories of individual lives. And I think it is those stories, and a desire that they not be completely forgotten that attracts me.

When I worked in Fort Providence along the mighty MacKenzie River I had the opportunity to contribute to one of those stories, and a small role in connecting one man's grave site with his family. Shortly before I was transferred here I was in conversation with a fellow at the front of the detachment. He pointed off across the road, which was also RCMP property on the bank of the MacKenzie, and asked "Did you know there's an old grave over there?"

I didn't know, so I wandered over and sure enough, tucked into the edge of a small parcel of shrub was the depression of an old grave with the remnants of an old, unmarked, cross laying on top. I've long felt that graves, especially isolated ones, should be marked. We deserve to have our finally resting places noticed. I started working on finding out more about the man that had long laid in that sod.

Information was sketchy.  A few people that I talked to knew bits and snippets of the story, most never even knew it was there.  The basic details that came out was that the grave was that of an American, who fell off a barge or sternwheeler at Mills Lake, down stream from Fort Providence, and drowned. Because of the cost he was buried locally, because he wasn't Catholic he wasn't buried in the local graveyard. It fell to the RCMP member stationed there at the time to bury the man (and depending on who was telling the story the man's dog as well).

My goal was to have enough information to put up a proper headstone and a fence around the grave, but before any of that could be done I was transferred, and I passed the torch to the other members of the detachment, and the community. I never found out if it had been done.

Until recently.  A short time ago I received a message from a friend in Fort Providence letting me know some news on the grave.  Not only had the grave been marked some years ago (thanks to community members and the work of the detachment), but the fellow's daughter was coming up to visit her father's grave for the first time.

As it turned out, the stories I learned had many of the details right, but not all.  The man buried there across from the detachment was not American but a man from Alberta. Robert Lee Wilson was a trucker from Alberta who was on a barge at Mills Lake when he was hit in the head, knocking him into the water. He died in the accident, leaving behind a wife and four children.

The family never got a chance to visit the grave site, and only had a photo of the already deteriorating grave taken in the '70s by an Uncle. Three of Wilson's children passed away, but finally, this summer, Wilson's last surviving daughter got the opportunity to travel north and stand at his grave. Thanks to the community and people of Fort Providence she stood not at an almost forgotten depression in the ground, but at a marked and maintained grave.

And that makes my grave concern all the worthwhile.

You can read an article on the visit here, and listen to two radio interviews here and here.

Fully Completely

I'm constantly in awe of the world I live in. Even more so in these days of changing light, and constantly changing tableaux unfold before me.

Last night, in the hills outside of town, I stood at the edge of the road looking back toward Adam's Sound and Arctic Bay. Leah, Hilary, and Leah's sister quietly picked blue berries down below me, and the boys played with their toy loaders in a small square of sand. A small nearby stream provided the ambient music.

Before me was the most expansive sunset I have ever seen. There was not a single part of the sky, in any direction, that wasn't tinged in orange. The low clouds were painted in every direction. Every direction. Off over Victor Bay in the direction of the setting sun the oranges and yellows were intensive, but there was colour everywhere.

I stood there and watched as the colours towards the sun slowly deepened and darkened, and the colours fade from the rest of the sky, shifting from orange to mauve and then disappearing. I had left my camera at home, but it didn't matter. While the main part of the sunset might have made a fantastic photo there was no way a single photo could have conveyed the entire scene. And camera in hand, I just might not have drunk in the entire experience.

Sometimes its best not to experience the world through the viewfinder.

The bear watchers

A couple of days ago the bears were still hanging about Victor Bay (they're still there apparently). They were a long ways off but we had the best views from the new sewage lagoon.  I was more taken by the bear watchers than the bears.

 

 

 

The bears are nice, but like I said, a long ways away.

Weaseling out

While you can't always get what you want, some times you get what is pretty darn interesting in its own right.  Two nights ago, we headed over to Victor Bay to see if we could get another look at the bears, but there was none to be found. They are still around though, and we got to see them again last night. There is, apparently, another of trio of Polar Bears in the area, a sow with a couple of smaller cubs.

But as we were motoring along, we did get an excellent look at another of our mammals. Travis (of course) saw it first, shouting that there was an avinga (lemming) under an old water truck tank that is used as a water tank for the campers of Victor Bay. It was instantly clear that it wasn't a lemming, but one of their biggest predators the weasel. I believe this is a Least Weasel, but my guide books are still somewhere in boxes.

This was one of our best looks yet of these quick, sleek hunters and I managed to get a couple of decent shots of it, despite the low light and high ISOs. The weasel slipped easily in and out from under the tank, checking us out when ever I'd squeak - looking for the strange wounded rabbit making all the racket. It had enough when I got out to try and get another photo, but they are quick and it was difficult to get a shot of it in the open, it rarely paused.

Luckily everyone had a long close look at the handsome beast.

With no Polar Bears in sight, and Travis clambering to go to the water lake to look for Char fry, we left Victor Bay and headed out there. After a short stop to confirm that the Pacific Loon was still incubating what must be a long dead egg, we went a little farther up the road to the inflow of the lake.

As we pulled off the main road two large birds were at the water's edge, feeding. After my initial shout that they were geese I quickly realized that they were actually a pair of Sandhill Cranes, a bird that no one in the truck but I had seen before. They were nervous at the appearance of the truck but settled quickly and resumed their foraging.

Foiled again by the lateness of the day and the lack of light, I managed only record shots of them. Grainy and shaky. As soon as we tried to roll quietly closer to them they took to the air. What was surprising, apart from their appearance, was that there was no chick with them. It seems as though the Pacific Loons aren't the only ones having trouble raising a brood this year.

The Bears went over the mountain

We'd just finished supper last night.  Well, we'd just finished cleaning up and lazing about last night when Leah's dad came in with news.  Three polar bears were over in Victor Bay, and they'd been right near some of the tents.

It was like a fire drill, or a missile drill (um, is anyone else out there old enough to remember those? "The missiles are coming, hide under your desk! It was where I learned that you didn't need a fall out shelter, just a desk in your classroom. We dropped what we were doing, and rushed out to the truck, and beat a hasty trail to Victor Bay.

We did arrive in time to see them, but they'd left across the bottom of the bay, and made their way to and island/penisula.  When we saw them they were crossing the ice, but soon climbed the island and crossed down the other side.

This is what we do for entertainment folks.

We hung around after most everyone left and were rewarded when we saw them on the ice at the far bottom of the bay. As they seemed to be hanging out there, we decided to get a different vantage point, and left for the new sewage lagoon project.

Now, I don't want to brag, but I live in a place with the most beautiful sewage lagoon in the world. Really. It is an awesome place, sitting on the saddle between Victor and Arctic Bays with spectacular views in both directions. I expect to go there much more often.  Don't believe me?

The bears were still there, moving back and forth on a pan of ice, but they were even farther away from us.
So we satiated ourselves in all their northern glory and came back home. There is news that another sow with two smaller cubs are heading towards Victor Bay.  Time to pile in the truck once again.

Tank Commander

I suppose an explanation is in order first.

Our water comes in a truck. There are no water lines lying neatly underground supplying an endless stream of water. Or above the ground for that matter.  Because of the permafrost here laying pipe to supply water is impossible. There are utilidor systems of insulated, heated pipes above ground, but they have their own issues and costs and very few communities in Nunavut have them, I'm aware of Iqaluit and Resolute, although there are probably more.

So our water is picked up a few kilometres out of town at a pumphouse by a large water truck, and then it is delivered to a tank inside our house. In our case to a large tank that lies in our crawl space. Ours was dirty and needed a good cleaning.

Now the dirt in our tank was rather clean dirt, but none the less there was a lot of it. Water out of river fed lake has stuff in it. Suspended silt and sand that, while it isn't a huge amount, settles into the bottom of the tank and accumulates. So when the mechanical guy that we had in to clean the heating system pointed it out to us, we decided to clean it.

It most houses the water tank is made of plastic, and is an upright tank that holds around 1000 litres of water. It often sits in the mechanical room.  The B&B had three of those tanks ganged together in a room pretty much dedicated to them. Because ours lie in the crawlspace (our sewer tank is down there also and is a very similar tank) it is a low fibreglass tank. It has a large capacity, perhaps 2000 litres or more) and like all of the water tanks it has an access port on the top. There isn't a lot of room to access it though, the "crawl" in crawlspace is there for a reason. The four feet of crawlspace also has to fit joists and ducting. A heating plenum was put in in the joist above the access port, which also lies right near the centre line of the house and the supporting framing that also lies there. Suffice it to say it is cramped. It also doesn't help that the (ahem) carpenters who built the house used nails about a quarter inch too long  to fasten what passes as the underlay to the subfloor (there goes my plan on putting in in-floor heating in a year or two).

The first step was to drain the tank.  In theory this is pretty easy. Tell the drivers not to deliver water until further notice and then just keep using water. That in itself took a long time, this is a bigger tank than we are used to. But the cut off switch, that saves the pump when you run out of water, leaves about 3 inches in the bottom of the tank. That is still a lot of water.

Reaching in a lifting the float on the cut off switch gets rid of some more, but only until the pump starts sucking air, and that still leaves an inch or so. There is a drain on the tank, but I really didn't want to drain the tank into the crawlspace, which was, realistically, the only option.

It was at this point that we got in the tank. Now when I say "we" I mean Leah and her sister. I tried, really I did. But I couldn't fit my shoulders through the tank, not on the angle I tried to get through head first on.

Apparently the water was cold.

Now in the tank they were able to was the silt off the sides, but that still left the sand. Out came the wet vac. Again, this involved more effort than you'd think.  Suck up a wet vac tank full of water, take a bucket of water from the wetvac, crawl to the access door, hand the bucket up to someone, repeat as many times as necessary.

Around midnight, we were left mostly with wet sand and sludge in the bottom, and Leah and her sister again entered the tank. They would push the gunk close to me at the hatch, I'd vacuum it up, until it was all gone. Then one final washdown by them and the job was done. A little too late to get the tank filled, but done none the less. It probably took almost four hours to accomplish.

The things we do for entertainment.

You can ignore this code thingy.  Its just for Empire Avenue to verify this as a real blog run by a real person

EAVB_KHGBVCPZUE

Knock me over with a feather.

One of the goals of this year was to make it down to the southern reaches of Admiralty Inlet. It is something I've long wanted to do. The topography is different down there, and although I've been nearby in the spring, I've wanted to see the land in the summer.  For one thing it is one of Canada's Important Bird Areas, an important nesting ground for geese and many other birds.

It was one of the birds that nests down there that has been the main object of my desire to go see that country. Back when I was first up here the only other bird enthusiast was the local wildlife officer. She told me that many, many, Yellow-billed Loons nest there. It is a bird I have hoped to see for some time, especially in its breeding finery.

But one thing led to another, and I once again put aside any hopes of getting down there. And with them any hopes of seeing a Yellow-billed Loon. But once again, this amazing year for surprise birds has continued for me. Last night I saw my first Yellow-billed Loon.  What a beautiful bird.

Leah's sister had a friend arrive here yesterday for a visit. She was last here on a high school exchange trip nine years ago. Nine years? Impossible.  Last night, as we headed down to visit Victor Bay we saw a loon in the small lake half way there.

That's not unusual. A pair of Red-throated loons has nested there as long as I can remember. And although I haven't checked out the lake much this season, last night I drove in for a better look.  But the loon, was not the one I expected to see. It was very much unexpected.

My brain wasn't quite prepared to see something other than a Red-throated Loon, and when I first put the binoculars on it I had a "what the hell is that?" moment. The first thing that came to my mind is "what is a merganser doing here?"  But I quickly realized what it was, the first Yellow-billed Loon I've ever seen.

I have no idea if there has been a pair breeding here, I suspect it was just foraging.  But I plan on getting back over the next couple of days for a better look.  Here then is a photo, a poor one, from far off, grainy and cropped.  The obligatory record shot.