"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?

Chef Pierre's Hot Dog Buns

One of the adventures in any new place is figuring out what of the necessities of life can be gotten, and where. This is true for any community (fabric choices in New York are much better than in Calgary!), but particularly true for smaller communities, and true in spades for smaller communities to which commodities must be trucked or flown significant distances. So it is true for Yellowknife - even though we need to bear in mind that compared to many other remote Canadian communities Yellowknife is a shopper's paradise.

Chef Pierre is by some measures a local legend in his many efforts to bring finer foods to the City. I have yet to meet him in person, or even to see him (I think), but already as a previous visitor I was in a number of his (since failed) establishments, and I currently enjoy those of his places which are still operating. You don't necessarily have to go to his businesses to get his products, however: one store selling his excellent breads is Shopper's Drug Mart (!).  Chef Pierre makes a classic Winnipeg Rye, a mean sourdough, and his Ciabatti buns are one of my special lunch treats, which I fill with his Arctic Char dip and enjoy very very very slowly. Tonight I had one of my semi-annual hankerings for hotdogs (and I knew there were two in the freezer), so I picked up Chef Pierre's Hot Dog buns at Shoppers. They lived up to the reputation - among the tastiest hot dog buns I've had.

One of Chef Pierre's current businesses is Le Stock Pot, a pared-down version of its previous iteration, (at the time a very ambitious deli-cum-upscale-kitchen-store). The smaller Stock Pot still sells those yummy Ciabattis and the char dip, but also very tasty looking dessert-type affairs which I have not yet tried, as well as sandwiches, quiches, meat pies and other "better" fast food. He owns one of Yellowknife's premier restaurants, Le Frolique; it hosts a rousing week-long celebration of Bastille Day in its outdoor courtyard (I could hear the music, June evenings, from my apartment).  And he caters - as the trucks say, in not quite perfect English: "We only get invited to the best parties!"

Another of his failed food businesses (which I saw on a previous visit) was a fantastic gourmet grocery store, on a scale which even a bigger city like Calgary was unable to sustain. (I remember the up-scale store in Market Mall which supplied the food for my 50th birthday and shortly thereafter went under). In Yellowknife the same location hosts another similar store, more sparsely stocked - I have heard tell (rumour only!) it's a "vanity store" by the mall's owner to give a struggling mall an anchor.  But you can get some pretty exotic cheeses there, and preserves and various sorts of spreads and crackers, olives - that sort of thing.

In the downtown "Loony Store" you can buy the usual gimcracks, but there's a small tucked-away corner close to the cash register where you can buy animal pelts (!) - seal, fox, rabbit, wolf, as well as a good selection of beads. A few doors down is Northern Transitions, a slightly upscale Northern souvenir store - it sells not only authentic parkas, but also various weights of wool by the meter if you should want to make your own. Again, in a corner tucked away, it sells an odd miscellany of fabric - cottons, linings, batting, canvas. And if you're still on the lookout for fabric (as I always am), if you walk through the chips, pop and chocolate bar section in the Sunline Alteration and Convenience Store you will come to a small section that similarly sells wool, canvas, buttons, zippers and the like.

Then there is Weaver and Devore (website worth exploring: Weaver and Devore), which is a "must see" on the tourist list. It is celebrating its 76th anniversary of being Yellowknife's "number one source for bush gear," and indeed, it does have about everything a northerner might need, and then some. A bug shirt? warm socks? parkas? chest waders? a Russian muskrat fur hat? classic Melmac dishes? suspenders? stovepipe? stoves?  - but don't stop there! how about a package of stroopwafels, those delicious Dutch cookies, or a roll of Dutch King peppermints? spices, perhaps? milk? pizza? That's in the grocery section that supplies some of the house-boat dwellers, other Old Towners, and folks from N'dilo.

Well - there are other stores, of course, but I'll leave them for another time. Suffice it to say that there's lots to be had here, if one knows where to look. And if it can't be - well, there will soon be a friend "making a run" down to Grande Prairie (the next big town, at 850 kms relatively close), or to Edmonton, or to other parts of Canada or the world. Chances are that friend will have a shopping list - even I had promised to buy some cheesecloth for a felting friend while in Ontario in August. And there's always mail order.

It's not so bad not having all the world's material goods at your fingertips. Makes you think a bit about whether you really need it or whether you could do without, or make do, or - in a pinch - check The Dump. Not so bad at all.

COSY goes to the Movies

COSY - Classics on Stage Yellowknife - is a group of musically talented individuals who have organized to profile "the classics", very loosely understood: see the wide eclecticism of past programs at  COSY Website: Past Events. Tonight was a concert dedicated to performers' favorite movie songs and music - and just delightful it was.

For me the haunting theme from Schindler's List, played by violinist Barbara Fortin Clinton, was the highlight, but it was hard to choose a favorite: a few other numbers were "Evenstar" from Lord of the Rings, "Moon River" from Breakfast at Tiffany's, "That's Amore" from Moonstruck, the theme song from The Addams Family, even the Cantina Band from Star Wars Episode IV. Clearly band members had great fun finding and wearing appropriate costumes for all the different numbers - the audience hooted appreciatively when they all appeared in their Star Trek: The Next Generation uniforms. The concert was ably hosted by raconteurs and brothers Roy and Merlyn Williams, obvious favorites with the audience, which did its share of participation when warranted.

I'm fortunate to live so close to NACC (The Northern Arts and Cultural Centre) where the concert was held - a mere hop and a skip through the snow and I'm there. I had decided already before I moved that I would avail myself of the advantages of this proximity by attending as many events as possible. In a (good) way that's a reversion to my U of A student days when I lived next to the Jubilee Auditorium in Edmonton.

I do, very much, enjoy the home-made entertainment that plays such a significant role in Yellowknife cultural life. It's of excellent quality, and whatever it might lack in flawless professionalism it more than makes up for in the warmth of community connection. In a way it's like one of those legendary large Maritime kitchen parties, where everyone who can, does make music, while all the rest appreciate and enjoy. I really really like it.

Swinter!

"Swinter!" Alan used to say in a combination of astonishment, enthusiasm and mock despair at the first real snowfall, and on appropriate other days during the course of the winter. Well, 'swinter here, with the first snowfall yesterday. Not a real dump, just a few inches, enough to whiten all the rooftops and remind us all that this is, after all, The North. It's actually very pretty and invigorating - later today I'll dress warm (or should that be warmly?) and go get groceries.

It's moving on to the 21st of October, which means there will be only two more months of increasingly shorter days before, on the 21st of December, the days start to lengthen again. For now,  I'm finding it all quite cozy. Especially when the wind howls around the building, as it did the other night, I look out on the lights of the city and appreciate the beautiful and warm place I call home.

The Lesser Blessed

Last night I went to a Yellowknife "happening" - a 10:15 p.m. screening of The Lesser Blessed, "an eye-opening depiction of what it is to be a young Native man in today's modern world" (watch the trailer and find other info at The Lesser Blessed; it is also the source of my quote). The film is 2012, hot off the film presses or whatever is the right term for that genre; it's based on the 1996 novel of the same title, written by Richard van Camp.

Why "a happening"? Besides the fact that for me personally 10:15 is past my early-to-bed-and-early-to-rise usual bedtime, it was special because the 10:15 screening was the second of the film that day, an emergency response to the fact that the earlier show had sold out within minutes. Author Richard van Camp was very much in attendance, as was the main actor Larry Sole, both much applauded and cheered as they made brief pre-film speeches. Richard is a local boy who made good - a member of the Dogrib (Tlicho) Dene Nation, born in Fort Smith NT, educated at the En'owkin School of Writing in Penticton, the University of Victoria, and UBC, and, as he said last night, his novel is the first ever published by a Dene writer. There's a brief moment in the film in which the camera focuses on a sign that says: "R V Camp High School" - it took a moment for the information to sink in, then the audience had a hearty chuckle.

It was also "a happening" because the audience was differently composed compared to most events I have been to so far in Yellowknife: by rough estimate at least half aboriginal, half non. In my blog up to now I have followed the dictum of Jane Austen's Charlotte in Pride and Prejudice: I do not speak of that which I cannot praise. I'm also a newcomer, hardly equipped to claim any real knowledge of the race issues that, like the problem of the Giant Mine, in the north cannot as easily be ignored or simply not experienced as in other parts of Canada. But I am not blind, and the problems which face Canada's native population are brought to my mind almost daily. Yellowknife has a homeless population, for example, and that homeless population is largely and certainly most visibly native, and definitely visible - in nice weather the homeless sit in the sun on benches or the edges of planters or building steps on one of Yellowknife's busiest downtown corners.

The film screening audience was a reminder that Canada's aboriginal people have many other faces than the highly dysfunctional one usually seen via the media - successful or just average people leading successful or just average lives like other Canadians. And yet it was interesting to notice that, judging by audience reaction to nuances that I for one simply didn't get, the film spoke particularly to the aboriginal experience. Laughter, for example - it seemed to me that the aboriginal audience laughed at different things than the non-aboriginal audience. There were chuckles of recognition at certain details that simply went by me, certainly, but also, it seemed to me, by other non-aboriginals.

When the film was over, I thought: if even half of what the film depicted, of this sixteen-year-old's "coming of age" in such a confusing, irrelevant, bleak, violent world, is true for even half or a quarter of Canada's aboriginal people, there is such a long way to go before the legacy of the past is healed. And yet, surprisingly, the film ends in hope - the step-father (Benjamin Bratt) is a good man who helps the boy begin to find healing from the nightmares of his terrible past, and a circle of healing which includes the boy's loyal mother emerges.

It's a film worth seeing, a story worth experiencing, an experience worth sharing. I'm glad I did.

Other "Arts Stuff" in Yellowknife (second installment)

In loose conjunction with the Aurora Arts Society Arts Week, the Yellowknife Quilt Guild put on its annual show. I've mentioned the Quilt Guild before, back in June when I attended my first meeting. But the quilts that emerged for the show - stunning work of the widest variety. There were 60 finished pieces, and a number of WIPs (in quilters'/sewers' lingo usually called UFOs or Unfinished Objects - everyone has a few of those).

A few samples of the many magnificent pieces, here some large and medium ones with a detail from the one:

Smaller pieces were also welcome, as this sample shows (I cheated a bit and entered the jacket I had made in 2009, the only jacket in the show):

Hazel Wainright has the rights to make and sell Yellowknifer Janet Pacey's designs (the first small quilt below: see Janet's website at Janet Pacey), and does stellar work with Barbara Lavallee's patterns (second quilt: Lavallee is based in Anchorage and does wonderful children's book illustrations: Sample web info on Barbara Lavallee). In her third little quilt, Hazel took on the challenge of making a quilt without any green - much harder than she had supposed, she says, as most fabric has some green! Hazel is teaching the beginning quilting class my sister Trudy is taking and has spawned quite a number of quilters in town.

After the show I helped with take-down (as I had helped with set-up eight days earlier, reminding myself once again how much I enjoy working on common projects with competent people). In an hour we were done, after which I was part of a small four-person "committee" charged with counting the "Viewer's Choice" ballots. We repaired to my apartment for that task - Donna, Brenda, Hazel, myself - and spent an enjoyable hour counting and chatting. Fibre-women can be such neat people!