The House & other Arctic musings

Fifteen years

Yesterday was a rough day in many ways. There was a tragic boating accident that unfolded here and we lost two members of our small community. Every death hits us hard, and this doubly so.

But July 30th is always a day I rue, for personal reasons. For it is the anniversary of another death, that of my first wife Janice. It is fifteen years since she died. Fifteen years. A lifetime ago, and yet only minutes.

Janice died of ovarian cancer, but there is always a danger when you say something like that that it becomes all about the cancer, not about her. It is a terrible disease but it looms so large in our imaginations that it swallows up all other concerns. She died in my arms.

She was so, so much more than her disease and her death. There is not a day that her smile doesn't pass through my thoughts. She lives in my memory, the good, the bad, the ordinary, and the extraordinary.  I am a lucky man to have had her in my life. And I've said it again and again, but very few people find great love in their lives, and I have found it twice. I am indeed a fortunate soul.

There are some flowers floating down to the sea for my Sweetie, they are how I mark this day. One of my rituals. After I imagine a conversation with her, and bring her up to date on my year. Flowers in a stream, all of it, this life of ours.

Family outing

Our weekend family outings are a little different than most. Certainly not everyone, but this time of year its rare that you'd find families outside of the Arctic that have an outing built around dog sledding.

We took a short jaunt out to Uluksa for coffee and tea, but mostly to get a dog sled run in for the kids and Bolt.  While the rest of us were on Snowmobiles, Travis was pulled there by Bolt.  I've been wanting to ease her into this, as I don't know just how far you could expect an unconditioned dog to pull a sled. This run was her longest yet, about 2kms one way without stopping. 

After a short break for hot beverages, we turned and came back, with the other kids taking turns on the sled.

Sledding

Although the air temperatures continue to hover around the low -20s here Spring feels like it is arriving. It just feels nicer out there, and you can feel the warmth of the sun on your face. So we decided to take Bolt out for a run on the sled. Was it fun?

This photo pretty much sums it up. Check out those smiles.

It is pretty challenging just getting the dog to do what we want, which at this point is to run. Anywhere. Just run.  But I suppose that is the challenge when you have a dog with no training or obedience skills whatsoever.  And a dog that is still a big puppy at heart and just wants to play and romp instead.

"Ah yeah, right there that's the spot."

But once you could get her going... 

Then the fun began.

Unfortunately the camera bouncing along around my neck managed to have all manner of strange settings accidently set.  Much of the rest of the afternoon's photos were reduced to extremely overexposed strangely white balanced shots.  But I think you get the point.

A darker blue

My friend, Indigo, passed away yesterday afternoon in Kamloops.

The world seems a lesser place today, bereft of an generous, inspiring, vivacious soul. The suddenness of it all seems to make it harder. Cancer is the disease that takes people slowly, creeps and withers them, not plucks them away in a week. Photos of her from a couple of weeks ago show no hint of sickness. Her eyes bright and mischievous. Her frame looking strong not wasting. It is all so unbelievable.

Some of her friends, who like me have never met her or met her briefly but know her from correspondence and her generousity, have talked about getting together. Inspired by her "don't let life pass you by" attitude. That is a good thing. The idea that you shouldn't wait to meet those who have come into your life through the distance, those whose spirit you only know electronically. Some times the practicality of the life up here gets in the way of all that, just as it keeps us away from family and friends that we do know much more deeply.

I've much to write, and at the same time have nothing to write. So I'll just say this...

Goodbye my friend. Thank you for letting my into your life from afar, and for all the inspiration.

Indigo Sweetwater -"About me: January 2011 : New decade, new year, new month. All those good intentions, I'll make mine for a month: to sing once each day, to finish at least one project this month and to memorize the walrus and the carpenter. big, bad and beautiful as ever , just ask me, I'll tell ya'"

A deeper blue.

Some people seem so very full of life, that it is difficult to imagine them sick. Impossible to really. So the news of a friend's illness has hit me like a punch to the stomach.

There probably isn't a northern blogger that hasn't been touched by Indigo. She's had a long friendship with most of us, and an even longer friendship with the north. She's lived, worked, nursed and touched hearts here for a long time.

We've never met, but she is a fast friend. Without warning a package from her will appear at the post office. Care packages with exotic dark organic chocolate. Old books, magazines and ephemera from the Arctic, from Arctic Bay, from the world, would land on our doorstep. Heck I have old Arctic Bay pennants that she sent me, just because.

She shares my love of Mondays, the promise that they bring. Unwaveringly positive, a world traveller. A world traveller of the road less taken. She is high on the list of close friends I've never met, who I want to meet and hang out with.

That meeting may still take place, I hope so. But it is at risk. Tonight her son posted on her facebook page that she has been in the hospital since Monday, diagnosed with extensive bone cancer and a failing liver. I read and re-read the status, unable to reconcile what I was reading and the person I've come to know and call a friend. Looking for a loophole, something that will make it different if I read it one more time.

I hope for the best, like I always hope for the best on that glorious day of promise, Mondays. Indigo, get your self well.  We still need to meet.

More than a pittance

This is an expansion of the thoughts I was trying to express in my Remembrance Day address this morning, through my tears.

Remembrance comes easy for me. I've had family in pretty much every major conflict from the Napoleanic Wars on through to Korea. My Great-great-Grandfather was at Waterloo, and he took a French bayonet through his hand, injuring him permanently. Uncles and cousins were in the Second World War, of course one of them, Clare, gave me my name and his death gave me part of my identity.

My Grandfather was a soldier in the Great War. When I was small I had the keen interest in soldiers and military things that most young boys have. The kind of thing that gets them to draw tanks and planes and bombs. So I pestered my Grandfather to tell me about the war, to tell me about being a soldier.

One time, I asked Grandpa if he had killed anyone. Grandpa kind of paused and looked away. Then he told me that it was what they had to do. He told me about a time that he came upon a German soldier.  Both reached for their grenades, Grandpa his Mills Bomb, the German his potato masher. Grandpa's was on target, landing between the other man's feet, killing him.

We ask our young men and women who go to war to do terrible things for us, and to make terrible sacrifices. They do it at our behest, so we do not have to. War is Hell, my Grandfather knew that as well as any man. But he also knew that sometimes we have to go to war. After the Great War I'm sure my Grandfather hoped and prayed there would never be a need to go to war again, it was after all the "War to end all wars". But when the world found itself at war again, he was at the front of the line trying to go back. He couldn't because of a hernia, but he served at home, and recruited young men and women, knowing full well that they would be making terrible sacrifices and doing terrible things.

We might have success at war, but war itself is a failure. It is our failure to find another way, to resolve a particular conflict, or to stop some group from doing terrible things. Sometimes, unfortunately, in our world, it is a necessity.

Remembrance requires more of us than two minutes of silence once a year.  It requires us to acknowledge constantly the terrible sacrifices we ask others to make for us, and the terrible things we ask them to do on our behalf. It requires us to constantly seek the resolution, and to prepare when we fail at that. It requires us to remember all of the time, what happens when we fail in this world to find peace, and security.

Photo of my grandfather's carving underground near Vimy courtesy of J. Richardson

For the grieving

I just heard the news of the passing of someone who has been a part of my life, well, for all of it. Garry was the fast friend of my family, he and his family were pretty much always there. He lived life large, and always always was looking to take another back road to somewhere. He had a thirst for the road less taken. He and Barb were such a part of my parents world I cannot imagine how they will imagine their life without him in it.  I can imagine even less the loss that Barb, Lee, Michelle and Shauneen must feel at this moment.

I wish I had the capacity for words that could explain to them all how much a presence he has been, and even though he isn't with us, how much he'll continue to be, and how we must continue to love life, like he would. So I'll fall to someone else's words, words I just read the other day.

The Thing is

(By Ellen Bass)

to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you've held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.

 

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.

Its only fair

Seeing as I posted a photo of Travis with a puppy that I post one of Hilary also

The faces say it all