Ice Road to Dettah

The ice road to Dettah, as mentioned in my last post, shrinks the distance between Yellowknife and Dettah by some 21 kilometers, from 27 to 6. It starts about a 5 minute walk from my house (all of the following images were taken at about 10:00 a.m., with the sun a ball of fire just above the horizon):

The sign tells you: cars only, no trucks! and limits the weight of vehicles allowed. Ice roads are fascinating structures, and even a quick search on the web will provide information on building them (Popular Mechanics at Building Canada's Epic Ice Road; good old Wikipedia at Ice Roads (of the world)). There is danger inherent in driving over ice: at higher speeds, or heavier loads, and especially heavy loads going too fast, the weight generates waves under the surface which can damage the road in various ways. One of the bigger ice roads to the mine does not allow two-way traffic, as the road to Dettah does, but is a loop, because heavy trucks meeting each other generate waves in opposite directions - not a good thing. In addition, global warming is having an effect: the mild winter last year, as I understand it, greatly reduced the time the ice road was in operation and the number of truckloads able to use it. This winter does look better, at least so far.

On the Dettah road the speed limit is a clearly posted 40, and fines for speeding on ice roads are much heavier than on regular roads. For example, on a Yellowknife street going up to10 kms over the limit will draw a $58 fine, while 10 kms over on an ice road will bring a $230 penalty.

 Here are two shots of the first bit of the ice road as it leads to Dettah:

And here are two shots looking back at Yellowknife - the second shows my apartment building:

And, finally - cracks! I was startled to see a very clear, although relatively hairline crack across the road - perhaps a few mm in diameter. Of course ice inevitably cracks, I remember that well from my pond-skating childhood, but to see a crack in a road on which I was walking and had driven was a little disconcerting. Still, I trust the ice road builders, they've done this before and must know what they're doing.

Winter Solstice (and: "The Cold")

Yesterday was Winter Solstice, December 21, the shortest day and longest night of the year. A number of you have been asking about the state of daylight in winter, here, as well as how things are with the cold. Well - read on.

According to the web (information helpfully supplied by my Grande Prairie librarian friend Ann - thank you Ann!), on Winter Solstice the sun rose officially at 10:07 and set officially at 15:05. There is light before and after that, of course, perhaps a scant hour or so. So no, Yellowknife is not far enough north to have days consisting only of dawn/dusk, and we do have daylight. It must be said, however, that the sun sets not far from where it rises and doesn't get very far above the horizon even in mid-day.

On a typical day in winter the view from my balcony looks like this (please ignore the flash reflection in the window - the sun is actually behind my building):

As to the cold - well yes, it's cold. But interestingly enough cold, like heat, is relative. Just as 20+ (we're talking Celcius here) is much more comfortable than 30+, so -20 is much more comfortable than -30, and -15 is considered balmy. My sister had told me this before I moved here, but you do have to experience it to really understand it. A few weeks ago, after a spell of -30 and colder, the temperature rose to -15, and I immediately took the opportunity to walk (15 minutes) to choir practice, rather than car pool, since it was so lovely. But even -30 is walkable - it's all in how you dress. So I'm learning which set of layers will do for which temperature: wool long johns, jeans (I've ordered a pair of flannel lined ones from LLBean), and windpants when it's really cold; skip the long johns when it's not, or when I'm going to be indoors a lot; forget the windpants but keep the long johns when there's not much wind. Ditto on scarves and toques: a scarf to cover the face when it's colder than -25, or when I'm doing a long walk at -20, but at -15, when I'm only doing errands, I don't bother with a toque and sometimes don't even put up my hood when going to the car.

Speaking of the car: there's where -20 and -30 make quite a difference. I keep it plugged in - through the good offices of my brother-in-law Bill I have a working block heater AND a battery blanket. Each (outdoor) parking stall comes equipped with plug-in capacity:

The Subaru starts well in the cold, despite its advanced age (12 years), but the shifting is very sluggish when it's so very cold. Still, I generally don't idle it for very long but start driving as soon as the gear stick will let me, being an adherent to the philosophy that cars warm up better when being driven (slowly) than when merely idling. "Suby", as the next picture shows, is holding its own in winter (thank you thank you thank you!). And I had to include a picture of another vehicle in my building's parking lot - Yellowknifers do have a sense of humor!

Another positive feature of the cold is that the ice roads materialize, and last night - to celebrate Winter Solstice - we made our first drive out on Yellowknife Bay on the ice road to Dettah, a neighbouring Yellowknives First Nation community (read about it at http://dettahandndilo.lgant.ca/). As the community describes itself: "Dettah is located on the east side of Yellowknife Bay on Great Slave Lake, about 27km by highway or 6km by water or ice away from Yellowknife." My sister teaches there, and can testify to the material difference between 27 km and 6 km as a daily commute; she was saying that the kids in school are always excited when "the ice road is in! the ice road is in!"

We went out on the ice road in part for the sheer adventure - driving on water!! - , in part to see if there were any Aurora Borealis to be seen (unfortunately not), and in part to see if the houseboaters had started their bonfire Winter Solstice party. Yellowknifers consider winter as such a time for partying IN the cold - and some of the houseboaters, a particularly hardy and inventive lot, were going to have a bonfire out on the bay where their dwellings are moored.

Yes, the house boats are moored IN the ice - winter is actually a good time for houseboaters since they now have readier access between their homes and Yellowknife. In summer they must canoe (or some such), and in the tricky spring melt/fall freezeup do some amazing treks hauling canoes over what ice is there, putting the canoe into water when the ice gives out. Apparently this fall the freeze up was more problematic than usual: we heard via a friend that because there was a lot of wind on a very cold day, water was blown onto the deck of one of the boats, froze, and of course weighted the structure in that direction, i.e. into the water. So the young woman had to spend several days chipping ice off the deck, and carefully monitoring the situation. As I said - Yellowknife houseboaters are indeed hardy and certainly resourceful!

Oh, and speaking of hardy: the kids. In the Northwest Territories kids get "indoor recess" when it's colder than -30, though in Nunavut, I've heard, "indoor recess" kicks in only when it's colder than -40. So I can often see them from my balcony, running about in the school yard with their bright snowsuits. Well - running is perhaps a slight misnomer, winter wear brings a new meaning to the word "trudging" here. Still, the kids seem to have a ball - if you go back to the second picture in this blog, you'll see a kind of horseshoe-shaped pile of snow in the near side of the Weledeh school playground. The other day the kindergartners were out in full force, running to the top, sliding and rolling down, just having a ball. It looked like such fun!

Carolling and Concerts

Every December the Rotarians in town sponsor a "soup and buns with carolling" lunch for all downtowners - it's held outside, on the main corner (the Post Office, Canada Trust, License Bureau, A&W on all four corners respectively), and welcomes all comers. This year it was on Friday December 14, and as a member of the choir I received the call for "carollers needed!". So of course I went.

The streetscape is definitely wintery - the right setting for carolling - as the lit sign on the YK Centre Building testifies.

- 24: actually not so bad, although when you stand around in it for an hour or so without quite the right boots you do get cold. To help the carollers stay warm a heater was set up:

The heater works on propane, as you can see from the tank, and had issues staying lit - at one point it was carried INside the Canada Post building for maintenance (NO, I was protesting silently - no propane INdoors! but it all worked out, obviously Yellowknifers know their way around propane tanks).

The soup, made and donated by the ever-generous Chef Pierre, steamed its aroma into the air and attracted lots of customers:

And of course we valiant choristers filled the air with our carols - great fun. That's my sister Trudy third from left - she's wearing one of the traditional northern parkas, as is Mari on the far left.

In addition, my choir - Aurora Chorealis - put on two performances of its annual Christmas concert, at St. Patrick's Catholic Church. A beautiful program around the theme "Magnificat" - the magnum mysterium that is at the heart of the Christian Christmas story. The poster:



We did credit to some challenging music: among the pieces were Christine Donkin's "music of the spheres" Magnificat, Lauridsen's O Magnun Mysterium, Don MacDonald's beautiful Tabula Rasa. We ended with a rousing rendition of Rachmaninov's Bogoroditse Devo, in which the basses outdid themselves in an excellent approximation of the rich male Russian voice (there are renditions by others of all of these on YouTube, if you're interested).

Unfortunately, I can't show any pictures of the choir itself - copyright issues or privacy issues or something of that nature, but I will put in a picture of me with my music folder. Credit for the sparkly top goes to my sister, from whom I borrowed it! Looking at my fellow singers during that performance, I was astonished at how fond I have grown of so many of them in the short three months I've been a choir member. Yellowknife is a magical place in that regard, at least for me.

Arctic Air (Working #2)

On Thursday I spent from about 4:30 p.m. to a few minutes after midnight working as an extra for the CBC TV show Arctic Air (details on the website at http://www.cbc.ca/arcticair/). I had applied back in September, in response to an ad in the Yellowknifer - and while I had had one phone call asking to see if I could work as a driver (no: not without a class 5 license), nothing further had materialized and it had all quite slipped my mind. However, when the opportunity arose, I took it - why not, eh?

Our instructions were to marshall at the YK Airport Extras Holding Area - the old airport firehall just adjacent to the main terminal building. "Old airport firehall" is of course a typical Yellowknife way of identifying a building - only infrequently its current use or name (e.g. "Boston Pizza"), more often its context ("by the Boston Pizza"), and equally often its former use ("where the Boston Pizza used to be"). It does help a newcomer learn some Yellowknife history! Anyways - around 50 of us marshalled there and sat around chatting or reading or whatever, while we waited for the costume folk to check us over and - eventually - for the call to action to be sounded. Here we are waiting (one of the two costumers is the woman with the red sweater in the rough centre of the shot):

While most of us had to bring our own wardrobe - basic winter travel, a suitcase, no reds or whites - two young women got costumes as airline ground personnel in red jackets and matching shirts:

Many extras had really cool winter accessories, such as Brandon and his hat:

A shot that took us the longest, and that we had to do over and over, was waiting in line at security. At first I was immediately behind one of the main characters (plot line: main character about to board motions those in line behind her to pass by), but had to cede my place to a fellow in a beautiful moose hide jacket with traditional beading - and rightly so. In conversation I learned that the jacket had been designed by clothing artist D'Arcy Moses. Moses is an internationally acclaimed (New York, Montreal, Germany) fashion designer who some years ago turned to other ventures and his roots in Wrigley NT, about 750 km northwest of Yellowknife (for a sample account see http://www.wrigleyhotel.com/wrigley-dene-beadwork-fur-fashion.htm - although Moses seems to have moved on since then). That's the beauty of being an extra with lots of waiting time: you meet people you wouldn't normally meet and learn things you wouldn't normally learn!

Here are a few pictures of the action, or possibly lack of it, involving the roughly 50 extras, what seemed like almost that many filming crew members, and three characters with actual lines. The shots: lining up for security; the security fellows taking a break; the film crew setting up for a shot (note the fellow in a grey boiler suit, who was obviously dressed for the morning outdoor film work but found it all too hot indoors); setting up for the final shot in which we all walk industriously up and down the length of the terminal.

 

 

 

Of course we got up to some antics as the boredom set in: I tried my hand at being the "ground personnel at the gate" for both First Air and Northern Airlines.

 

I must say that while it was fun, I don't think I'll quit my day job, such as it is. The pay is decent - a flat $200 for whatever the time turns out to be - but by midnight I was quite worn out, as were most of us. And no, we did not get fed - on shoots that might be short no food is provided, and we were instructed to eat before we came and to bring snacks. One thing I did learn in the process - that my car will still start after 7 hours out in -29 degree cold without being plugged in. It protested a little, but started. Needless to say, I was grateful, and equally grateful to be back in my bed by 12:30.

Working

So another thing I'm doing in Yellowknife (see previous post, "Charlotte Kwon") that I didn't do, or even try to do in Calgary, is to work at different jobs.

For example, I'm substitute teaching at the two highschools - St Pat's Catholic High is a stone's throw in the one direction from my building, Sir John Franklin a stone's throw in the other. Both are architecturally beautiful buildings and a pleasure as a working environment. Here's a view of St Pat's from my balcony:

Actually, the grade school Weledeh is attached to St Pat's (it's the left portion), and the flat space in the foreground is the playground which at regular intervals fills with snow-suited children running about as though the sub-zero temperatures really didn't matter. Foxes play there, too, although not at the same time as the children, and ravens do regular clean-ups of whatever needs it.

 Sir John's is a two-minute walk in the other direction:

Imbedded inside Sir John's is NACC, the Northern Arts and Cultural Centre, allowing me to access all kinds of events just a short walk away. The other evening a recent light snowfall added a gem-like sparkle to the landscape. And when I made a brief detour up on the hill on the left, to see what the view might be, a fox trotted by.

WHAT do I teach, you ask? Well, Friday was an interesting example: at Sir John's I taught CALM (Career and Life Management), art, badminton (!), and yoga (!!). I also attended the Remembrance Day assembly. It's of course a legitimate question as to how much substitute teaching is actual "teaching" - I'd say it's 1/3 teaching, 2/3 supervising. For example, because of a glitsch due to the Assembly the class next door, connected to my classroom with an interior door, had one period in which students did not actually have a teacher. I knew most of these kids from previous subbing days, so I stuck my head in periodically to make sure that the few who wanted to do something constructive were able to do so, and that the rest weren't doing anything destructive. That's not actually a bad goal for life in general, it seems to me.

I must give kudos for anything I am able to accomplish to the teachers who prepare detailed and thoughtful lesson plans, to the kids who tolerate my direction, and to the school structure itself which sets standards for behaviour.

Surprisingly, perhaps - I quite enjoy it! At one of my St Pat's days the teacher had departed without leaving lesson plans, much to the principal's chagrin (actually - the teacher was on a bus to Hay River with the soccer team and had intended to email the lesson plans, but it's a reality of NT living that one is quickly out of cell-phone range, and the teacher had miscalculated...). So for the first period I just winged it: explained the situation to the students, asked them what they were working on and what they wanted to do, and said that if there was time left over I would teach them some German. "YEAH!!" was their reaction - and the class was one of the three most dynamite ones that I've taught so far.

In addition to teaching I've done other work: during the municipal election on October 15 I was one of the Deputy Electoral Officers, swearing people in if they weren't on the voter's list, handing out ballots, receiving them back, counting counting counting. It was a thirteen-hour day, but quite enjoyable - I was surprised by how many people I already knew.

I've also made and sold various kinds of bags/purses. In Calgary I had made similar items and donated them to charity, but given the robust craft market here I thought that just for a year I'd see what the selling experience might be like. So far I've sold about 15 - and here is a picture of some at a craft fair:

Interesting, though - my heart is not in sales. If I get $40 or $50 for a purse, it's a good meal in Yellowknife; if I donate the purse to a Grandmothers-to-Grandmothers fundraiser for the Stephen Lewis Foundation, that $40 could feed an AIDS-ravaged grandmother and a good number of her grandchildren for a month.

Finally, just to further illustrate the point that there's varied work to be had: I shortened the overalls for two of my brother-in-law's workmates. That involved driving out to the industrial section, measuring, altering, and returning - I explored the area and met a few new people in the process. Here's the overall in my workspace:

Upshot: Looking for work, and working at various jobs, has been interesting from a personal development point of view. As a teenager I worked for close to seven years, from 13-20, in a textile store in Hamilton. I vowed, after that, never to do the same work for more than one year. Of course the profession intervened and I spent 27 years teaching German. But now I'm redoing some of those teenage/early 20s years, and I find myself asking: what do I really want to do, in what form, for whom, and why? It's a development that has given me greater empathy for all those who are at the beginning of the process of becoming who they are, especially high-school kids. Life as a circle, unexpectedly and after all.

Charlotte Kwon

"So what can you do in Yellowknife that you couldn't do here?" is the somewhat peevish, possibly rhetorical, question sometimes posed by (some) Southern relatives.

A legitimate question, I suppose - although in answering it, my main conundrum is: where to begin?!?

Well - here's an example. My house guest this week is Charlotte Kwon of Maiwa Handprints in Vancouver: check out her company at Maiwa Handprints. Charlotte's passion is the natural dyes of this world, with a special focus on artisans in remote areas whose exquisite work does not easily reach world markets. Some years ago I had visited her store / teaching space in Granville Island (what's not to like about fibre arts in Granville Island?) and bought something there, without really knowing much about the story behind the company or the person. Then a year or so later I attended a lecture by her at ACAD (the Alberta College of Art and Design), and I began to catch a glimmer of the excitement of the field, and of Charlotte's status as one of the premier natural dyers and teachers of the natural dyeing process in Canada.

And here in Yellowknife - she's my house guest! Here she is enjoying breakfast (we share taste in strong coffee, good/unusual cheese, and prosciutto):

She's not here to visit me, of course - that was the luck of the draw of being one of the few people in my fibre group who has an extra bedroom and no pets. Rather, she's teaching a week-long workshop on natural dyeing at the Yellowknife Guild of Arts and Crafts. For her introductory Tuesday night lecture she laid out some of the luscious wares she sells at the Granville store (from India, China, Cambodia, Indonesia, Peru, Mexico):

 

For the course itself, she also lugged natural dyes and other supplies from Vancouver:

Unfortunately, I can take only part of the course but not all of it - Aurora Chorealis has its Remembrance Day concerts this weekend, which involves two practices during the week and three appearances in different venues. That could also be an example of "what you can do in Yellowknife that you can't (or aren't likely to) do elsewhere", but that will have to keep for another posting. In the meantime, I'll enjoy Charlotte's company and learn what I can in the time that I have. I'm a lucky woman!

"The Dairy Barn"

This past Saturday the Aurora Chorealis held its annual choral retreat day at the Alliance Church just outside of Yellowknife. Perhaps it's not technically outside of the city limits, but you do have to drive out of the built-up areas to get to it: past Fred Henne Territorial Park on the right, the airport on the left, the folk festival site on the right, the sandpits on the left, and finally, just past the horse stables, you have to look sharp to see the small, unprepossessing wooden sign at the end of an equally unprepossessing unpaved drive seemingly surrounded only by trees, that says: "Yellowknife Alliance Church."

What you see, at 8:45 on a cloudy Saturday morning in mid-October, is on first impression equally unprepossessing, and certainly not the standard religious edifice:

Swing around 180 degrees from the building and at the far end of the open (parking) space are ... could it be? ... yep they are! two old farm trucks.

Indeed - at some time prior to 2008, the current Alliance Church building housed a 60-70 head dairy operation. Details about it (on the web) are unfortunately sparse, but I did see, inside the church itself, a "before and after" picture which clearly shows the transformation from the one to the other. Once you know this, you can see that the interior (as well as the exterior) of the building pays homage to its origins, and the renovations are well and imaginatively done.

The main meeting hall was obviously once the main barn:

The kitchen may well have been the milk house, judging by some of the clocks and other wall ornaments:

 Strewn around the building are similarly whimsical reminders of the building's origins:

The retreat, by the way, was excellent: we enjoyed the expertise of choral conductor Debra Cairns from Edmonton, and the potluck food - plenty of it all day - was fabulous. Someone made a chocolate cake with about 10 layers that stood a good foot high, no exaggeration! the sliver I enjoyed was delicious.

When it was over, I had to take one more picture: now that pile of "junk" off to the right of the building made sense. The cattle fences, of course! and some sort of feeder, perhaps?