Barry and Victoria Head North

We spent much of the morning visiting with Renee Dionne at the Arctic Coast Visitor's Centre. As well as dispensing lots of information they also sell wonderful crafts, most of which we decided were just a little too expensive. Victoria was in fine form, and spent the better part of an hour talking with Renee about living in Cambridge Bay, growing up in Cambridge Bay, and asking a lot of what she calls "dumb southerner questions".

Among other things today I learned how water and sewer work when you can't bury pipes in the ground. Maybe that's not the most exciting thing in the world, but it matters. Back home you turn on the tap or flush the toilet and never think about where the pipes run to. Up here it's more complicated.

Every house and every business has two tanks - one for water and one for sewage. One truck drives around town filling up water tanks and one drives around emptying the waste. These trucks are on the road pretty much twenty four hours a day.

The tricky part is that the two tanks in your house are connected - if your water tank is empty you obviously can't wash or do anything else. But if your sewage talk is full you can't use the water because it would overflow when water goes down the drain. So there are switches to keep you from doing anything dumb. When the red light goes on above the washing machine you know it's time to phone the truck to empty the tank. Until you empty the tank your water won't run.

It's things like this that really make me stop for a moment and think about life up here. It's never the big things that stand out - just the small, every day things that are part of life.

Oh yes. It's wet today, and that means MUD. In almost every building people take their shoes off at the door so that they don't rack mud and dirt inside.

It’s been a full day – full of surprises. Spent most of the day going around town talking to people in the community about the radio station. The board of the station would like some help finding people and organizations that might be interested in doing programs.

We’re now a hot commodity on the high school lecture circuit. We went to a staff meeting this afternoon and were asked by two high school teachers to come talk to their classes about radio. I think it’s Grade 10 tomorrow and grades 11-12 Thursday. Or is it the other way around?

The Kilinik High School is a wonderful building (those shoes are from the lobby, where all students drop their muddy footwear). It's only a couple of years old, with bright airy classrooms, a well used gymnasium, and a very nice library. The History and culture of the region are everywhere that you look.

In the “isn’t it a small world” department. We met Colleen Rusk, who works with the Kitikmeot Heritage Society. We got talking about where we are all from and she said “a small town outside Windsor .. guess you’ve never heard of Harrow”. Well yes, we had a farm five miles from Harrow when I was in the teenage years of my life. Then she said “we used to live in Essex – my dad was a teacher at Essex High School for 30 years (note to my older sisters – remember Mr. Rusk?) Colleen is his daughter and she’s been living up here for two years.

Another highlight of the day – I went down to the barge (the one that we talked about in yesterday’s posting), put on my best “Hi Sailor ..” voice and got an interview with the captain and a tour of the ship (the ne that pulls the barge). What a job ... they weren’t even going to stop in Cambridge Bay, but there’s a gale blowing in from up further north and they decided to park here and wait it out before heading north to Gjoa Haven, over on King William Island. They start out from Hay River, go north on the Mackenzie River and then into the ocean straits for places like Cambridge Bay. They’re on the move most of the summer, stopping only when the ice starts to form. We talked for about twenty minutes in the ship’s galley and then I got to go up to the wheel house. Once I get around to doing some editing, I will post some audio clips of Captain Mike talking of the glories of northern navigation.

The other news today is I found out why our townhouse has a mud room. It rained last night and are my shoes ever a mess. Mud, mud everywhere. But it could be snow .... Captain Mike told me that it’s snowing about 80 miles north.

Progress is going well at the station. Production studio is now up and running. Barry is doing wiring diagrams and I am talking to everybody in town I can find. Tomorrow I’ll be busy doing digital editing training. And then Thursday and Friday will be small group work with the board as we help them figure out some of the finer points of radio station management. I also have to record the 10 pm siren -- it's the spookiest thing I've heard in a long time. To everybody else, it's just real life. I think there's a metaphor to be found here somewhere ....

Here's a picture of Abe Eyegetok, the other big star at CFBI. He and Anthony alternate or co-host depending on their schedules. Abe like his music LOUD!

The other highlight of our trip to the Kilinik High School was an invitation to "exotic food" party at the home of a local teacher. As if Cambridge Bay didn't have enough exotic foods already.....

You just never know what’s going to happen. I managed to get myself invited to a cookware party (Colleen, the woman from the Kitikmeot Heritage Society also sells Pampered Chef cookware). So I figured, why not? And I had a really good time – there were about 15 women there from the community and I learned a whole bunch of new things. Like, it takes three years to build a house because all the building materials have to be brought up on the barge, and usually by the time it gets here there’s only a month left in the building season. And that you can still have imaginative meals if you plan carefully in advance. And what kind of food people eat when they get their food from the land. And I also learned that many people have cabins outside of town because they like the peace and quiet.

It was a wonderful female bonding experience. I even met a few people who are interested in doing radio shows. And because I have a weakness for kitchen gadgets, I ended up buying a cookie press. I came all the way to Cambridge Bay and bought cookware. Figure that one ...

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OK - the moment that you've been waiting for! It's snowing on September 9th!

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Wednesday

Ok. To be honest it was such a light fine snow that most people claim it didn't happen. But doesn't it make the story better?

Today I visited the Kilinik High School to talk to their Grade Twelve class about radio. As you can tell from the picture they were a wonderfully well behaved group. What they told me was that there's an active music community in Cambridge Bay, with several people DJing dances, and a lot of people who are into hip hop. There's also a group doing scratch DJ stuff that has a pair of turntables and a mixer. They don't feel like they're quite ready for public performances, but they're working on it.

When I talked about the idea of local young people getting involved in the radio there was a lot of interest. Everyone really wanted more music that suited their tastes and I collected names of some dozen people that wanted to get involved. We also recorded a half dozen station IDs for CFBI.

Today was a wonderful sunny day - warm and lovely - the kind of day that shows off this landscape to the fullest. We've decided that we have to get hold of some kind of vehicle on the weekend so that we can get out of town and see some of the sights.

One of the highlights today was seeing Victoria on the receiving end of a CBC Interview. She was the guest of Matthew Illaszewicz for an interview about our work that will be broadcast on CBC Iqaluit (both CBC Iqaluit and CBC Yellowknife are heard here). Note from VF -- I am always more comfortable being the one DOING the interview, rather than being interviewed. Ya, it's a control thing ... but Matthew did a very good job and I am happy with the way it turned out.

It's interesting how Cambridge Bay seems to have two geographic orientations. On one hand, anything to do with government tends to look east, towards the territorial government in Iqaluit, and from there on to Ottawa. Commerce though moves north south towards Yellowknife and Edmonton, since that's the shortest and easiest route for shipping.

VF -- What a beautiful day it is. The winds have finally gone down and I've been able to go out and do some soundscape recording. I went down to the water's edge and got sounds of the gentle waves, the sharp clattering of the flat sharp stones on the beach. And I also got a perfect recording of a twin engine float plane taking off. It was amazing -- I could hear it for about 10 minutes after it took off. Sound carries that far up here.

I am really enjoying the times when I am just going out and meeting people. I dropped by Colleen's children's ballet class in the elementary school gym -- I taped a little bit but after a few minutes I put away my recording gear and just talked to everybody just because I wanted to. That's the hard thing about always being on the lookout for a story -- it's hard to step out of role and just be a normal person. But it's worth it when I do. Some of the best moments are the ones which are enjoyed for their own sake. Not everything in life needs to be documented.

I was watching the 3-5 year old class. It made me happy just watching them. So many children in this community, and they all look like they have so much fun being here. It's the kind of community where they can run around without their parents having to worry about stuff that city parents do. Everybody knows each other and watches out for each other.

Today we talked to someone who was telling us that people make surprising connections her in the north. He told us about all the people he's met over the years who he knew back down south. I am finding the same thing. As I was leaving ballet class, I started talking to a woman named Vi who is up taking care of her grandchildren. Her daughter is a public health nurse up here who is away for the week at a conference in Greenland. Turns out that Vi is from Burlington, the next town up the road from Hamilton (where we live). I love it when those kinds of things happen.

Barry's making supper. We didn't bring up too much food after all and have been to the Co-op a few times since we got here. After supper we'll go out for a walk. A night this perfect shouldn't be spent inside.

Well, just as we were getting ready to up load tonight's chapter there was a very enthusiastic knock on the door. I expected one of the radio people, or maybe someone selling local crafts (yeah, they have figured out that people staying in the Green Row are likely customers!). Instead it was a posse of kids collecting donations for the annual Terry Fox Run. Ok - five dollars each was worth it for this picture!

My final picture today is from the council chambers for the Kitikmeot Region. In the middle of the council chamber is this absolutely great wolf.

Tonight was a full moon. This is unlike any full moon that I have seen. We walked down to the water's edge and stood transfixed until the air raid siren told us that it was time to go home.

This is a picture of that moon over the Anglican Mission. Trust me, it does not capture the moment.

Thursday - Muktaaq Day!

I am starting to feel like I could stay here forever. We went for supper tonight over at George and Madeline's place and walked home under a sky of stars and a full, white moon. We could hear a plane coming in on a night flight, and the air was clear, fresh, crisp and still. Southern Ontario feels like a blur.

We learned a new word from Madeline and George. We are "qablunaaqs" (pronounced KA-blue-nak", which was an Inuit word for people from far away with bushy eyebrows and pot bellies. Not that we are especially bushy eyebrowed and fat. But the name stuck and applies to all us white folks.

George's daughter Gina also taught us another Inuit nuance. If you ask someone a question and they don't answer yes or no, look at the eyebrows. Raised eyebrows mean yes, and a furrowed brow and lowered eyebrows means no. George tells us that to really understand the north, you have to be aware of the subtleties and nuances. The larger than life, bombastic way of the south rarely works well here, I think.

We learned about a whole new kind of food -- muktaaq. Madeline carved us off a couple of pieces and warned us that it would be very chewy. She was right. Muktaaq is narwhal meat, and it's eaten raw. Hard to describe the taste. For some reasons, I tasted soybeans but I suspect this was a perception unique to me. The first piece I tried was chewy, but I could chew it all the way through. The second piece was a little closer to the hide so it was a bit of a tough chew. I ended up not being able to chew my way through it. (BR: I kinda liked it!)

I was really glad to be able to talk to Madeline. She shared some really amazing stories. She also showed us a beautiful coat - a Amauti - which she made. It has a pouch on the back for carrying babies. She put her 18 month old son Tugaq in the back when she modeled it for us. He would have stayed there all night. The brightness of the coat, the brightness of Madeline's eyes and Tugaq's wonderful smile was a beautiful sight.

There is so much more to life than money, fame and rushing around to who knows what. There is a sense of peace and contentment here that people spend all their lives looking for. I wish I could take what I am feeling right now, put it in a bottle and bring it home so I can breathe it in whenever I lose sight of what's important.

Lest you think that life on Nunavut is all muktaaq and char, George actually cooked the rest of dinner - chili, salad, and Betty Crocker brownies! Rumour has it that his reaction to muktaaq caused him to also be branded qablunaaq....

It was really a divine evening. As we walked home we were able to still marvel at the giant full moon and the sky which was still light on the horizon at 10:30 at night.

On another food note, we found out that there is deal between First Air and Canada Post to allow people to ship up perishable foodstuffs at a special more affordable price. Apparently as long as you have your boxes labeled appropriately as either "refrigerate" or "frozen", your kiwi fruit will probably arrive in OK condition.

And, if you have more traditional tastes there is also a reduced shipping cost for "Country Food". That refers to "Inter-community and southbound shipments of fish, caribou, seal, whale, polar bear meat, etc. are shipped at a 60% discount from the one kilo general cargo rate."