The Spirited Educators

birthdays and doctors in Kingait

2011-11-26T10:08:00.000-05:00

What a busy few weeks! Margot went to Ottawa for more extensive tests for her and the baby. I will let her give the specifics about what is happening but the basically she has a super rare blood disoder (0.2% of the population) in which her red blood cells attack baby's red blood cells. This can be very, very, very bad. Margot has been having blood tests every 2 weeks and had to fly out to Ottawa have a special ultra sound that can show how much blood is flowing in baby, then met with an O.B. specialist. He told her not to worry as her blood work indicated that baby may be in trouble. That it can often go up quickly earlier in a pregnancy but what we were all hoping for was that things would level off soon. This was huge news for us as no one knew anything until this doctor about Margot's condition so we had been operating in emergency mode for weeks not knowing if baby was okay or we would have to have an emergency trip down south for an invitro blood transfusions or a c-section. It has been a hard time. Margot will be going back down for more tests in December right before Christmas.

After her doctor's appointment, she then headed off to Calgary for a special math conference, so its just been me and Lily for the week. Sadly I had a bad cold when she left and was off work until Wednesday and I am starting to feel like a human being again. We have had a fun week together.

The weather has been all over the place up here but always cold. It's hovering around -25 C on my front deck today. A couple of days ago after coming home from school, we were playing outside in the dark (4pm, pitch black outside) with the dogs under amazing northern lights. It was a pretty neat way to end a day.

Sorry, no pictures yet. I must spend some time fixing my mac so I can upload. One day I will have both the time and the energy I hope.

-Richard

You want to leave Cape Dorset? Hah, not today.

2011-10-26T09:39:00.000-04:00

This month has been plagued with travel delays. Both Margot and I have been trying to get to and from Iqaluit for medical appointments (don't be alarmed, we're doing just fine). I got stuck there for two extra days due to booking issues and Margot has missed two trips and is now working on leaving Thursday. I hope she has good weather. It is a lot of work for us teacher's to miss work so I hope she gets out and back this time.

I decided that during my time in Iqaluit that anyone who lives there does not get to complain about how hard it is living in the North. It is a proper city with many stores that carry everything you could need (I did not say want). They had a huge (southerly) selection of fresh fruit, veggies, baked goods and a full size department store filled with hardware, clothes, housewares, and so much more at cheaper prices. You can go swimming in a pool, watch a movie at the cinema, go out for a beer and a burger, even see a doctor at a hospital. It's feels like the south. But, I wouldn't want to live there. It lacked all the charm of our small town. The Inuit people here are more friendly to outsiders, they speak Inuktitut, wear more traditional clothes and seem happier. Cape Dorset feels like somewhere different, like the Arctic. Being here feels like an adventure in a unique place that has it's own ever-changing culture and people. Now, I know that I will catch flack for this statement, but it's how I feel. Iqaluit felt more like a small southern city with all the cars, traffic (seriously right?), English, consumerism and such. I like my little town (most of the time.) There are some things about it that I don't like, but overall I am happy here, well, for today at least. I think that experiencing alternatives gives me a better appreciation for what I have.

Lily, like all kids, is getting very excited about Halloween. Margot told her she could paint her face as part of her costume and she was so amped up that she could not wait. So last night while I was outside working on closing in our ATV shed, Lily was getting painted like a Monkey, or at least what she thought her Monkey should look like. This is the picture that was on the packaging that she really liked.

What a funny little girl!

It's snowy and cold here. People are out on their snowmobiles already. Cape Dorset is a much happier place in the snow. Everything is clean, the kids are out sliding, the adults and teenagers are zooming around.

Thanks for dropping by and let us know what's up with you.

-Richard

So you think we're a circus now, just wait until March

2011-10-05T21:27:00.000-04:00

Richard has created this great title and so I am adding to the blog to let everyone know that I am pregnant. The March part is that baby is due in March two days before Lily’s birthday. We found out during the summer and have been trying to figure things out ever since. Now we know where babies come from but we are not sure where they arrive in Nunavut. I saw my family doctor while down south so got the preliminary tests done and he sent me for an early ultrasound so we got to see the baby nice and early! Still trying to figure out how things are going to work here. There is a prenatal nurse in town and she has been great but she is also new so is learning the system too. So we are working on learning and I figure either way the baby will come so we better be ready. Tomorrow I am being sent to Iqaluit for a regularly scheduled ultrasound. I am pretty excited. I will be there two nights and so far I have barely been out of the airport so am looking forward to seeing the town! I also get to see an obstetrician and have a nice long list of questions to ask. So we will keep updating the blog with details as we get them (and no we are not going to find out the sex of the baby). Thanks for reading!

- Margot

Hello all, other news (from Richard):

I have recovered from my zombie energy zone. I had a few good nights sleep and now with Margot finding out more information about our baby that seems to have helped.

Our "new" Honda atv is giving me frustration. Skip this if you don't care about broken atv's. This is a post I put on a Honda atv forum looking for some suggestions.

Hello all! I have recently bought a used 2003 trx350fm. It was rode hard and the electrical system was in need of repair when I bought it. Oh, side note, I live in Nunavut (the high arctic in Canada) and there is no Honda dealer here to take my machine to. So, I removed the engine, put in a new starter, regulator, alternator, battery, oil filter, spark plug, oil (10w30), a used cooling fan that worked when bench tested, and tires. It started and ran like a charm for a few weeks. It is starting to get cold and it snowed the other day. I took it for a drive to the store and it did fine. The next morning when I choked it to start it (because it needs it) it ran for a bit then died. It did this a few times then it would not fire. So I left it a couple of days thinking maybe the float needle got stuck after having some bad gas go through it, or the carb had gotten gummed up after sitting for a while (although I doubt it as it has run fine for 2 full fuel fill-ups). I tried starting it tonight before I took out the carb and away it went. Sounded just fine so I thought I will go get some fresh gas and drive it around a bit just to make sure it has sorted itself out. Well, after driving hard for 20 minutes the engine was noticeably warm/hot (ticking after shutdown) the engine sounded like it was missing and not firing on every stroke and promptly quit again. I walked home, had a friend tow me home and then I tried it again and it fired up and idled fine for the five minutes I let it run. Oh, and the fan never kicked on. It was about -3 Celsius outside.

So, I am wondering if maybe there is a blockage in the oil passageway that is causing a restriction, carb problem or some other mystery. I really could use all the suggestions anyone has as this is my family car up here and it's not snowmobile weather yet!

Stupid atv's!

We had an interesting thing happen. We often get emails asking specific questions about moving and living up here. Last year, a couple with a little boy asked us a lot (!) of questions about coming up here and what life was like. Well, they ended up moving to Cape Dorset and now live two doors down from us! So now we have new friends and our kids love playing together. It was a funny thing though, because they got to know us through the blog, it was like we fast forwarded our relationship and bypassed much of the friendship foreplay that is required when getting to know new people. It has turned out to be a really nice byproduct of this blog. Yay technology!

A sad bit of news. A couple with whom I work with adopted a puppy last year, had their dog shot by our bylaw officer after it escaped from it's leash to which it was tied in front of their townhouse. It is my understanding the dog took off two nights ago and they could not find it. The dog was shot yesterday because the bylaw officer thought it was a loose dog instead of checking it's collar for tags. I feel very bad for them, I know I would be devastated if something to our dogs. Sorry about your dog guys, we really do feel for you!!!!!

Thanks for dropping by, drop us a line.

-Richard

My energy is fading, just like the sunlight

2011-09-29T14:13:00.000-04:00

It must be this time of year up here for me, but I have no energy, patience or internal drive. All I want to do is nothing. The more (or less) I can do the happier I am, seriously. I don't think I am ill, I get a normal (for a parent of a toddler who wakes up too much at night) amount of sleep and my work is busy but not overwhelming, but I just want to crawl in a hole and sleep for a week. Yuck. I am wiped out.

Since this is a bit of a negative post, I can let everyone know there was an ATV accident here a couple of days ago up near tea lake. A couple of middle age men were found dead near what I have heard looks like where they crashed their quad. It has been quite a blow to a few of my students who are related to the deceased.

It is still rainy, foggy and blowing here. It has been trying to snow or the snow has been trying to stick the last few days also. So, it has been relatively cold as well. I wish winter would just come. I miss the snow and want all this mud and sand to be frozen and buried.

Lily has really come into her own with her three year old tantrums. Yesterday we were at the Hamlet office after school and I had some business to attend to and Lily wanted me to pull her rain paints "all the way down" over her boots immediately (for the third time in a row). I told her I would as soon as we got ready to go. Well, poor Lily lost the plot and started crying, yelling and melted onto the ground. When finally, after talking and such didn't resolve anything, I put her in time out. Well, she was upset and crying. The next thing I see is her rolling/crawling across the foyer floor while crying her lungs out. I reminded her that if she could not make good choices we would be going right home and not going to the store or a friends house to play. Well, that helped straiten her out and she calmed down, asked for a hug and sat on the counter quite happily while I attended to my paperwork. It was one of the moments as a parent I was so frustrated, embarrassed and very upset my child was so upset, but there was nothing I could do other than what I did. I realize this is the end of her day and she was already tired, so I am going to give her an after school snack as soon as I pick her up to see if that helps her attitude. I am sure low blood sugar has something to do with it, but still. I wonder if this has anything to do with my new-found lack of energy, patience and such? Hmmm....

So that is what's going on today.

Oh, we have our house sports at school today instead of Friday because tomorrow is our school's Terry Fox Run. I sure hope the weather is descent.

-Richard (I am so wiped out it took me four tries to type my own name correctly!)

Alive and well, sort of...

2011-09-27T20:24:00.000-04:00

Hello all. Sorry for the absence from the blogging world. Life has been filled with work, getting back into the swing of things and the fall illnesses that seem to plague our house every fall. Since we both work in germ factories and now we have Lily bringing home god knows what, our immune systems get a workout. But, we all seem to be doing better now.

I thought I would just give a bit of an idea what we did this summer. Sorry no pictures yet because iphoto won't let me load any new ones for some unknown reason. We spent a week in Downtown Ottawa getting our city fix and it was amazing. We stayed at the Lord Elgin that is right downtown and was fine with pets which was important because we were travelling with Kala and Smoot. Right across the street from us was Confederation Park which was hosting the Ottawa Jazz festival. So after I helped get Lily and Margot sorted out in the evenings I would wander across the street and see a show. I got to see an all time favorite of mine: Elvis Costello, who was followed up by Canadian rapper Shad. The next night I saw KD Lang who also put on an amazing show. What a welcome back to the south: ice cold beer, a fancy hotel and an amazing music festival! During the days we shopped, ate out, played at the surrounding parks and just had fun. Lily loved the pool. I think she may be part fish. One afternoon I stopped in to have a pedicure (you need to treat yourself sometimes right?) and thought I would surprise Lily with getting my toenails painted with sparkles. The day before Margot and her Mom had their nails done and she was so excited about shiny nails that I thought it would be a fun surprise if we all matched. Well, the ladies in the shop all thought it was hilarious that I asked for nail polish. Lily and Margot joined me as I was about to pick which colour to have applied. I told Lily she could choose which shade and luckily for me she chose blue sparkles, instead of pink or purple. She was quite delighted once they were done and I felt great with my happy feet. As well as Margot's Mom visiting her Dad and Step-mom, Rosamond, came up. This worked out very well for us because West Jet screwed up our cargo booking for the dogs and said that we would have to wait two days to ship them. So after a few very intense and long conversation we found an alternative to shipping the dogs as cargo we had to go buy two new smaller dog kennels ($550!!!) and they flew as extra baggage. David and Rosamond drove us the hour round trip to go and buy the new ones. What a pain it is flying with extra baggage, kid and two large dogs.

We then headed out to Rossland which is in southern BC. We rented a house there for the summer. This is the same town we moved from prior to moving up here. It was great to be home and near my family. We had lots of our friends come and stay. We spent the summer eating at great restaurants, swimming (Lily had lessons) in pools and lakes, hiking, playing and having a great time.

I fulfilled a bucket list item. I went on a motorcycle trip with my dad! After getting new leathers and a fancy helmet, we hopped on our bikes and headed off from BC and went through Washington, Idaho, Montana, Southern Alberta and headed back to BC. We put on about 2500 km in 5 days. It was spectacular!

Then at the end of our summer trip we headed back to Ontario to visit with Margot's family and took a train (Lily and my first time) to hook up with everyone. We had a wonderful visit in southern Ontario and then began our stressful trip home. It's always expensive, stressful and exhausting to return to the north with our circus.

We had a great summer and it was sad to see it end but it is nice to be back and get into the swing of things.

Once we got back I got right to work fixing our "new" 2009 Yamaha 125 grizzly atv. It has been a very frustrating experience trying to get the local Yamaha shop to get it done right, but I think after basically setting my wallet on fire it's running great. I also bought a 2004 Honda fourtrax rancher. It also needed some parts shipped up and a couple of full days work done to it, but now it runs like a top. However with this one, me and another fella spent two days fixing it up. Then we had to build something to house the new machines which was quite a debacle as there is not much space in front of our building it. But we got it all worked out and I spent this last weekend building it so now we're all set. Luckily it seems as though it was just in time as the ground was covered in snow this morning.

Anyhow, that's what we're up to these days. We will be blogging much more frequently now I hope.

Thanks for stopping by and drop us a line!

-Richard

Trains, Planes and Automobiles

2011-08-22T09:03:00.000-04:00

Hey all, this is just a quick update. We're back home in Cape Dorset after our amazing summer. We have had numerous phone calls and emails from concerned family and friends because a First Air plane crashed the same day we were flying home from Ottawa to here. We heard about the crash after we had arrived home and the news hit a bit too close to home about how scary flying can be. Here is a link to the CBC News article. We are very sorry for all those who have been affected by this tragedy.

The summer was amazing and when I have some more time in the next week or so and can get some pictures up to share I will go into more detail (for those that care!) about where we were and what we did. Needless to say it was so wonderful to re-connect with our culture, friends and family. I can't speak for the rest of my family but I must admit that I am filled with mixed emotions about being home, as I am sure you can understand. It's foggy, windy, rainy and muddy here now, but hey, it could be worse!

Hope you are having a great summer wherever you are and take care.

-Richard

summertime!

2011-07-12T18:21:00.000-04:00

Yup, we're on holidays in "the south" right now. Sorry for the lack of blogging but wrapping up school for the year and planning, packing, travelling, eating, drinking, dancing, reading, sleeping, visiting and tree gazing have been taking up all of our time. We spent a week in Ontario (Loved seeing Elvis Costello and KD Lang live) and are now in southern BC. I will do a large post in late August I suspect when we have more time for things like being on being on a computer.

Thanks for dropping by! We are having a great time with parks, lakes, swimming and travel.

Oh, and we are returning back north for another year. Actually we are all excited about the upcoming year. I think that's the fun part of being a teacher is that you get new kids every year.

Take care and we'll post soon!

-Richard

So much sunlight!

2011-05-17T20:12:00.000-04:00

Sorry everyone, it has been a while since I have had the time or energy to post.

I thought I would talk about the amount and intensity of the light up here. We are into light all the time now. It is very bright until I go to bed and moderately bright most of the night. It is really nice to feel the warmth, but I find it hard to unwind and sleep well. Also it is really having an effect on the students. They are much more tired and lethargic because they stay up very late playing. Oh well, we're in the final countdown to summer break. Woohoo!!!! We have been here since August and I am really ready for a break. I am looking forward to some very simple things. Like no snow/rain boots and extreme outerwear, liquor and grocery stores, the mall (even though I have never been much of a shopper), eating somewhere that I didn't have to plan a week in advance for groceries, preparing and cleaning up and finally grass and trees. Mmmmmm, it's gonna be good.

The sad news about it getting warm is that our roads have turned back to gravel, sand and rock strips that make travel around town very hard on snowmobiles. I wish the street cleaning crews were not quite so fastidious about there jobs and had left some snow on the roads considering the majority of town travels via snowmobile. Oh well, the exercise probably isn't such a bad thing. I just hate getting up early and coming home later.

We now also have a front hall very full of outdoor clothes because the weather fluctuates so much. It can be truly cold if the wind picks up, to the point that I changed the other day from my windstopper fleece and down vest into my fur lined, down parka. My neck was so very cold without that fur! Plus we now need rain gear. I am not looking forward to the oncoming heaps of mud, especially with dogs and a toddler. Yuck.

Some sad news, one of my neighbors had her snowmobile stolen. It was locked up in front of her unit and they managed to cut the lock, damage the ignition and go joy riding. Bastards! They returned it, but it was damaged. At this point, I don't think the culprits have been charged, but it's only a matter of time in a town this small. To the individual who had it stolen: I am very sorry for the loss and damage to your property. I know for when we have been robbed (Halifax and here) it's the feeling of violation also. That someone has tread upon your safe and secure world. Sometimes people really suck.

Lily is doing well and loving the daily walks that they are doing at school these days. She is so cute wandering around town with her school buddies. It was sad today because I had to get her before the walk began and she was unable to go. But I told her that tomorrow we would walk to and from school and she thought that was a great "big idea" as she refers to it.

At my school, we have wrapped up some of our courses (social studies, science for my class) and I am teaching 1 credit courses, one of which is a music course. It's been fun brushing up on the mechanics of teaching beginner guitar to the kids. They are just getting into it, but some of them seem really keen on learning.

Oh, and lastly, I have had numerous email conversations with people thinking of moving to the Arctic and looking for advice or information which has been really neat. We got so much help when we moved up from local bloggers that was one of the reasons we opted to start this blog. Well, cool news is that two different families are in various stage of move to Cape Dorset. One of which may be moving into our building this next month. I think this is pretty cool. Technology certainly takes the guesswork out of these sorts of things these days. Although some may argue it takes some of the adventure out of moves and experiences too. However, I think just being here and experiencing this place is a true adventure.

Thanks for stopping by, drop us a line!

-Richard

The end of the blizzards

2011-05-15T11:22:00.000-04:00

I realized that in all the hula-ba-loo I never actually wrote that Rick and Maureen got out safely. On Monday May 9th the skies were finally bright blue and the plane got out just fine. We also got to see the RCMP plane landing just before their flight. They had a long stop-over in Iqaluit but then carried on to Edmonton and got there about 10pm. They spent some time with Maureen's sister and then drove home. By Friday they were safe and sound back home and according to Lily busy getting their house ready for her! Lily is happy to be back at school. She was home most of the time her Mama and Papa were here and was missing her friends. On Monday she asked to go to school in the afternoon to get to see her buddies again. I think the distraction was good for her. So now at the end of the week we have all been at school and are getting back into the rhythm of life. But now we realize just how close the end of the year is and we are getting VERY excited about heading out of town. The end is near...
Margot

Theft.......

2011-05-11T22:00:00.000-04:00

They are home!! So here is the story. We got home from work and as we were getting ready for dinner I asked Richard what he had done with the two bears. He said nothing. It took a minute to figure out because maybe we had just moved things. But no, we had done nothing. Then we realized that when we got home there had been snow on the floor and the front window was wide open. We figure that someone came in through the window because there was such a big snow drift. We also think that our arrival home startled him (or them) and he took off. He may even have left as Richard came into the house. So once we realized they were gone we looked to see if anything else was gone. It doesn't look like anything else had been touched. We started calling everybody we could think of to let them know what had happened after we called the RCMP. We gave them a description of the two bears as quite likely they would be resold tonight. Hopefully we had cut off some selling routes. In the mean time we were trying to feed Lily dinner and a carver came to the door. It was someone I quite like and so told him what had happened so he could be looking too. After our makeshift dinner Richard went outside to get rid of the ramp to our window and I went to put Lily to bed. While he was outside another carver came by. It was another carver we like who we have bought from before so Richard told him the story. This time however...a lead. This carver had seen our bears in a truck belonging one of the specialists who is working on the broken pipeline. Richard gave him a call but only managed to talk to his co-worker. This man confirmed that they probably did have our carvings. After a bit of a wait Richard called back and talked to the man who had bought the carvings. He was more than willing to have Richard come down and take a look. So off went Richard with money ready to buy our carvings back. This was about 9pm.

Just before 10pm Richard came back in and told me this story…

He went down to the hotel and met with the man. He did indeed have our bears. He was very sorry for what had happened. He had paid $100 for them and Richard offered to buy them back. He said not to worry about it! Amazing! There are still kind, decent, generous people in the world!!! The bear’s feet have been sanded and new names carved in. However you can still see Richard’s name on his bear and part of the original name on the other. Richard then went over to the police station to let them know. And there in a cell was the thief. Apparently he had walked into the station to sell some inukshuks and when the police asked him, he confessed. So Richard just added to the case. They say he will have a court date soon.

The little jerk will be released tonight but will hopefully (and had better) steer clear of us. It is just so frustrating because we know this kid. He is only about 15 years old. Everyone knows him as ‘the thief’. Before we knew who he was he had been to our house selling carvings and when he told us he was starving we gave him food. I don’t even have words yet for how we are feeling!

But there you have it. Situation resolved! And thank you to all those who were willing to help us, and all those who truly did help.

Good night all and close your windows!!

Margot

Richard's Art defaced! On the foot that is bottom left in this picture you can still make out most of Richard's original name carving. Its hard to see in the picture but at the very left you may be able to see the R. On the bottom right foot you can see the kid's alteration to the carving.

Theft...

2011-05-11T21:33:00.000-04:00

We have a lead......

THEFT!!

2011-05-11T18:18:00.000-04:00

Our house was broken into this afternoon! Have you seen these carvings? The white bear and the green bear have been taken. If you see them please let us know or call the police. The green one is most important as it is the one that Richard carved! Thanks, Margot

The Hotel California

2011-05-08T10:38:00.000-04:00

Our house is now being called the Hotel California. I posted this on facebook and actually had three suggestions when we were only thinking of one. So you decide:
1) because of "the cool wind in my hair"
2) "this could be Heaven or this could be Hell"
3) "you can check in any time you like, but you can never leave"
Just for the record it is not Hell.
So here's to hoping that everything goes well on Monday and the folks actually make it onto the plane. So far the weather looks like it is cooperating. I'll let you know.
Margot

Mother's Day

2011-05-08T10:32:00.000-04:00

Mother's Day in Cape Dorset. Happy Mother's Day to all those mothers out there!! So far the day is great with getting to sleep in and a water delivery. The biggest news is that Rick and Maureen are still here. On Friday they tried to leave yet again. We tried to call a cab but as often happens no one even answered. So Plan B we loaded everything into the Qamatiq. By everything I also mean Lily and Myself. She loves riding in the sled and laughed the whole way. This time we made it all the way to the airport and were checked in and everything. Waiting for the plane to arrive we heard it fly overhead. The wind and snow were picking up and it circled to try again. We saw it fly right over the airport and then fly away. The anouncement came that it was returning to Iqaluit. So everyone is here until Monday. On the up side we now get to spend Mother's Day with another mother! The weather looks good for Monday but we will just have to wait and see what happens...
Margot

Blizzarding

2011-05-04T10:36:00.000-04:00

A quick update...the flight this morning has been cancelled and so as Lily says "Mama and Papa are 'taying"! We had school cancelled this morning but are still waiting to hear about this afternoon. Apparently the forcast looks pretty dismal for the next week so who knows what is going to happen! Environment Canada uses a 'flake' rating system so here is what it looks like: Today a 3 flaker, Thursday a 4 flaker, Friday a 4 flaker, Saturday a 3 flaker, Sunday a 4 flaker, Monday a 3 flaker and Tuesday is another 3 flaker. 3 is officially a snowstorm and 4 flakes is a blizzard. We are telling Mama and Papa to enjoy our hospitality because they might be here for a while!
Margot

Blizzard, blizzard, blizzard…

2011-05-04T08:50:00.000-04:00

We are entering another day of blizzard! It is truly crazy up here right now! Rick and Maureen have been trying to fly out since Monday. They are still here. The weather had been pretty good until…a giant storm moved in. School has also been cancelled so we are all at home. We have been having a great visit and it is wonderful to have them here however it is getting hard to constantly be saying goodbye. Every day we just have to check on the weather and see if a plane is going to land. The storm is fierce blowing many feet of snow around in front of our house. But it stops completely from time to time. Yesterday just before lunch the storm let up. A plane came, landed and took off, and we were told that school was back in session for the afternoon. Then literally 10 minutes later the storm is back and we get another phone call cancelling school. Crazy. Rick and Maureen can’t leave but we don’t have to go to work either, so we get to continue our visit. Yeah for snow days!! The problem now is that we need confirmation the plane isn’t flying before we know if they are staying another day. No one is at the airport yet but we shall see soon enough. I am pretty darn certain that they will not be getting on a plane today!

As a side note we were asked what the temperature is doing as the blizzard is here. I have to say it has been pretty nice. Yes the wind is cold but the temperature has not been much below -15 and has gotten up to -3.
Now that we have convinced Lily to wear her goggles again it is actually possible to play outside for chunks of time.

Margot

Children and bedtime

2011-05-04T08:45:00.001-04:00

Sunday night, 10:30, and the phone rings. “Hello” the voice says, “is Lily there?” My brain says “What!?!” It turns out it is one of the students from my school and yes she actually wanted to talk to Lily. I was so taken off guard but I managed to tell her Lily had long been in bed and to ask her to please not call me at home any more. I was worried this might be the start of something but we have gotten no further calls since then. So all is okay. Except, I am still wondering why there are children up and about so late into the night!!
Margot

Mama and Papa days continued

2011-04-21T22:22:00.000-04:00

Monday.

My snowmobile has been having some trouble so Richard took it to Gabriel to have it looked at. Gotta love the Cape Dorset Canadian Tire (dump) as some bits and pieces Richard had found there were exactly what my machine needed to get up and going. He found this crazy big spring and it worked perfectly as my rear spring so my machine doesn’t bottom out any more.

The big news of today is Rick’s new purchase. Since arriving here he has been admiring Richard’s seal skin mittens. We have been asking around but no one had mittens for sale. I mentioned this to one of the women I sew with. About an hour later she showed up at the house on her snowmobile saying that she had gone on the radio asking for mittens and had received several phone calls. She had two pairs of mitts with her unfortunately neither fit Rick but she said not to worry because she had two more leads to follow. She called and said one of the women would be by shortly with a pair. Rick saw them and fell in love. They were full gauntlets and are beautiful. He got a very good price on them. They fit him like a glove (ha, ha) and are keeping his hands toasty warm in our yucky weather.

Tuesday.

The search for water continued today. We were okay being patient until we heard that some houses had gotten water delivered twice while we (and everyone in our building) had received nothing. So Richard called the garage and asked for water. About 10 minutes later the water truck arrived and partially filled our tank. The water is coming from Dead Dog Lake. This is not the best of water and so we will be boiling our water before drinking. Nobody else seemed to know where the water was coming from so I spent a while on the phone telling as many people as I could. Even if we can’t drink it we can SHOWER!!!!!

Richard and Rick went for a ride after dinner. They said it was absolutely beautiful! Although the floe edge is disappearing quickly and is completely gone in the spot we took them to the other day. They were having a great time and stopped on a mountain peak to look around. When it was time to return they discovered that my sled wouldn’t start. They towed it to Gabriel’s house. It looks like my carb froze over again. Gabriel managed to fix it but time for some long-term repair as this is the third time this same problem has occurred. We also got some amazingly generous help from a neighbour and I would like to thank him very much! Richard also found a man selling a complete engine for our type of machine and so there is now a snowmobile engine sitting in the living room drying out. Ah, the North!

Wednesday.

Rick, Maureen, Richard and Lily went to visit the artists Co-op today. They had a great time, were given the full tour and got to see some beautiful art. Unfortunately most of the works had been packed up ready to send to galleries down south. But they got to talk to a working artist and see lots of things. Everyone came home with samples of that great art.

I spoke to my principal today who asked me for some help spending money. It doesn’t seem like a hard job but it was. Just before school let out for the holiday we received a grant from the municipality for ‘Arts and Crafts’. Five of us met and made a list of projects we would like to see happen. The end, I thought. Now we need to actually order everything and I was asked to do it. Some of the project I know a lot about and felt comfortable ordering but a few I have never tried, like leather work. It is hard to order basic supplies when you don’t understand what tools are needed. Thank goodness for the internet is all I can say!! PS I have 24 hours to get supplies ready for all 11 projects.

This evening I was called to an emergency meeting of the Resource Center Committee. We had been working on a proposal for funding for the year ahead and just found out we have been denied. All the application said is that our project is too similar to another in the community and we should join with them. Nobody could think who this ‘other group’ might possibly be which makes it hard to join with them. So it was decided that I would call and see what information I could find out. We have 4 days left to appeal the decision. Why is it that everything happens all at once?!

Thursday.

I spent the morning trying to finish up business. I spoke to a very nice woman about the proposal.
Along with some other helpful information she was able to give me the name of the other group applying. I called Mary, one of the other committee members who wrote the proposal, she recognized the name. Mary had in fact also helped with their proposal and so knew for certain it was nothing like ours. There we go crisis averted. Looks like a misunderstanding and so I will now write the appeals letter and will be able to discuss how our group cannot join with the other group and that we do in fact need the funds we have applied for.

For those of you who don’t know I should clarify. Back in October I began to sew with a group of local women at the resource center. Anyone is welcome to join and can just come and sew. I began to learn parka making and have now completed four. I thoroughly enjoy this group. There are some wonderful women there with some amazing knowledge to share. I was nominated for and voted onto the newly formed committee two months ago. The group has always been fairly informal but the committee is the beginning of trying to make it slightly more formal – while still welcoming any and all women who want to sew. (I still don’t know exactly why men can’t join us but I know they never do more than stick their heads in the door to let their wife or mother know that their ride has arrived.)

I also finished the Arts and Crafts shopping list and sent it off. Done and done.

While I was hard at work the rest of the family went off to the park. It is snowy and blowy but they had a great time. They also stopped by the store which Lily always thinks is a good time. Home for lunch. We tried to put Lily down for a nap but as is happening more and more frequently she is refusing to nap. She did stay in her room having quiet time so everyone got a little down time, we grownups played some dominos, but all too soon she was up and about. So nap kyboshed we decided to head up to the GN (Government of Nunavut) building. Rick and Maureen are so enjoying their visit that they are contemplating moving here. We went up to check out the building as it is beautiful but also so that Rick could meet a few people and talk about possibilities. We had a very nice visit. Got to see Amy and Lily took to exploring the offices on her own. It is a big circle so she went for a little walk. I found her in a nearby office chatting with a woman at her desk. She just made herself right at home. What a little nut. Luckily everyone loves her and so she rarely gets herself in trouble. Rick got lots of good information and so they are left to debate what life is going to look like. But then aren’t we all?

Thanks again for reading and I hope we will get the photo thing sorted out soon!

Margot

Floe Edge

2011-04-17T23:52:00.001-04:00

Today we loaded everyone onto the snow mobiles and took a drive out to the floe edge. It is amazing how much has melted since we were last there. It is so incredibly beautiful! I realized how much I have been stuck in the house lately. Being out there reminded me of how amazing my life really is. I get to live in this beautiful, spectacular, breath-taking place that most people will never even get to visit. I am thankful for my life! I think everyone felt the same today except maybe Lily who was distracted rolling down the hills and throwing ice off the edge of the ice into the water. We carried on to the park and had a great time swinging and playing. Came back home for lunch where Lily ate more of the caribou stew I made yesterday and arctic char with soya sauce. She has been off and on with naps lately but went to bed without fuss and fell asleep before Mama had even left the room. While she slept, Maureen and I rested but Richard and Rick went for a big snow mobile ride out to Fish lake. They had a great time.
In the evening we headed over to Richard's Vice Principal Mike's house for another Kitchen Party. Lily was specially invited so dinner was nice and early (Thank you very much!). Richard and Rick both brought guitars and treated us to one song after another. Lily went bananas and was dancing and singing with everyone. She always hates to leave a party but eventually I did have to bring her home. Again she went straight to sleep.
There is still no word on the water situation. We can see lots of activity up the hill and Richard stopped to talk to them today but all we really know is that the pipe is Badly frozen. They seem to be plowing a road up to the lake I think the idea being that if they can make it to the pump house they can fill the trucks from there. No idea if that will actually work or not but hey at least they are trying. We would all really like water back in our lives. And a shower without thought would be lovely!!! Maybe tomorrow...
Drink up all, and drink one for us (water that is).
Margot

Mama and Papa Day!!

2011-04-17T23:28:00.000-04:00

Tuesday April 12th was declared Mama and Papa day. We were all very excited that Richard's parents, Rick and Maureen, would be arriving in Cape Dorset in the afternoon. We all went off to school and then afterwards headed up to the airport to pick them up. Lily was so excited!! They arrived safely and in fact were the only people on the plane. They said it was quite the experience! It is so nice to see familiar faces we have missed them very much. After dinner we went up to my school to attend the penny sale. These are a regular occurrence in Cape Dorset and we wanted to give the parents the full experience. Lily has discovered a deep love for participating in the cake walk and got Papa and Mama to do it with her. I think she walked 5 or 6 times. Between that and the running around with the kids she was a tired little bean when we got home.
On Wednesday Richard and I had to go to work but Lily got to stay home.
On Thursday Richard and I had to work and Lily went to school as well so that Rick and Maureen could come and visit our schools and meet our students. They spent part of the morning with me. The kids have a game they play we call 'dice math'. I roll two dice on the Smart board and two people compete to see who can add the fastest. Rick and Maureen were great sports competing against my kids. They then went down to the high school where they were doing a big lunch for the kids and then house sports. While they were there I had to stay at school for parent teacher interviews in the afternoon. Things were going well until one of the dads who is also the SAO of our hamlet told me that the pipe that brings water into town was frozen and broken. This meant that there was no more water being delivered and they did not know when it would be fixed. I called home and let them know and we went into water conservation mode. I was supposed to go back for more interviews in the evening but a storm came up and they were cancelled. This made us all very sad!!
Friday. No School. A nice day we all got to stay home and heaven love grandparents, Mama got up with Lily so we got to sleep in. What a great way to start our holiday. Richard's principal called us just before lunch to let us know that the Co-op was having a sale on bottled water so Richard loaded up the qamatiq and headed down many of the other high school teachers were there as well so Richard filled the qamatiq full of water and delivered it to their houses. He is such a nice guy!!
Saturday. We went sledding in the morning on the hill outside our house. We brought Lily and the dogs so it was good old fashioned chaos. Amy came over for dinner to meet the folks. We all had such nice time and Amy, an Ontario girl, was well acquainted with the "cottage rules" we are living with. Well done everyone! Still no water but we are managing.
I am getting closer and closer to being up to date!!!
Take care everyone and appreciate every little thing you have (especially your water).
Margot

Richard goes fishing

2011-04-17T14:28:00.000-04:00

Richard had one further addition to my last post. He wanted to add the following:

April 5: Ice Fishing:

Yesterday I went out on the land with my students (grade 8/9) for a day of fishing and sledding. It was a challenge to find enough volunteers to bring their snowmobiles and Qamaitiqs which were needed to ferry the kids out the lakes. The morning was mayhem trying to find enough space for everyone and make sure we were all packed. There were about 75 students and 25 adults in all. I figure we had about 15 snowmobiles and 8 qamatiqs in all. Once everyone filled up at the gas bar we headed out. It was a pretty neat sight seeing so many machines travelling across the frozen landscape in a line. The day started out a bit cloudy but quickly cleared up to a balmy -16 (-27 with the wind-chill) at the lake. We drove for about 45 minutes, stopping from time to time to regroup. There was only one crash along the way when one of the qamatiqs hit a large piece of ice on a side slope and flipped. Luckily the kids were just a bit bruised. When asked if they needed to head back to town to see the nurse, they replied quite strongly that they were alright and wanted to keep going.

Once we got to the lake, most everyone pitched in and set up the cook tent and made holes in the ice for everyone to jig the Arctic Char in the freshwater lake we were at. It is interesting to see people up here ice fish. They lie down on their stomachs and peer into their hole in which they have placed there lure which is tied to a small length of stick (like a hockey stick or broom handle.)They wait for a fish to come near the lure and pull up trying to hook the fish with a large 3 pronged hook. Only 3 fish were caught in all, but when they were, everyone cheered for the fisherman.

The day was spent fishing, playing soccer, sledding and hanging out. For a little while, I made a towrope and was pulling kids around the lake which was a big hit. We stayed until about 2:30 and began our trip home after packing up and doing a head count. Sadly about halfway back to town, one of my qamatiq’s ski’s buckled under too much weight tipped over causing the ropes to loosen. I re-tied some extra rope to it in hopes of limping it back home. It would have been fine, but I think I had about 900 lbs on the sled. That combined with the uneven terrain caused it to break. The good news was I got the kids back to town (with a little help) and I have fixed it now.

Way behind the times

2011-04-15T23:04:00.000-04:00

Well I just realized how far behind the times we truly are with the blog. So here goes some fast updating...
Our last post was in the middle of Professional Improvement week. So we both made it through! Lisa and I managed to finish our Kamiqs and they are gorgeous! I'll post pictures at some point but I have to learn how because the system has changed so for now just information. (Sorry.) We may have had no children but the week was jam-packed and tiring. On March 25th Sam Pudlat had a carnival in the afternoon. Arranged by Scott one of our grade 4 teachers the kids were so excited. It was hectic and chaotic but fun for all. I was in the 'chill zone' where we were showing a movie or colouring or just playing while others were at the carnival. The kindergartens came in the later afternoon and I actually had 2 fall asleep sitting colouring at desks. On the 26th Lisa and I organized a penny sale which very well thanks to the help of so many people at school. Our staff really is great about pitching in when needed.
On to April. April 1st is the day that Nunavut became a territory. Apparently someone has decided that it should be celebrated in July so April 1st is no longer Nunavut day BUT...it is now Hamlet Day. So either way we got the day off work. On top of that they had another round of outdoor games like we did at Christmas. This time however Richard and I competed. I started with a crawl across the field and back race. We like to think it was a polar bear race. I was convinced by the children to participate and as I was standing at the start line waiting to go I noticed that everyone else was wearing snow pants and I was not! Uh oh! Anyway off we went. I was doing pretty well until I was attacked from behind. A crazy Lily decided that not only should she run with me but jump on me and sit on my foot. I continued anyway dragging her along with me. I lost terribly but she thought it was great and asked to do it again. My next event was the harpoon throw. I got up there and just threw it. But then was told my throw was disqualified as I had been using two hands. The down side of not knowing the rules is: you don't know the rules. So I got to try again (after asking for the rules again) and threw it as hard as I could. Many, many women competed but in the end I WON!!! Amazing! Plus I won $40.00. The last competition I did was sort of like a tug of war. Only two people compete at a time and you have your backs to each other with a rope around the back of your neck and under your arms. It was very hard especially as half way through I realized that wearing my Kamiqs was a big mistakes. They have no treads and are just bare leather so I was slipping and sliding all over the place. I gave a valiant effort but definitely lost! Richard had been keeping an eye on Lily most of the time but after each lady's event was the men's. He tried the harpoon throw but lost however he was the champ of strange tug of war. He had to defeat lots of people but did it with Lily and I cheering him on. Days later you should have seen the bruises on his arms where the rope was pulling. That evening there were more games at the Community Hall. We went down for a while and took Amy with us. Lily loves it there with all the people and the freedom to play and play and play. We all tried a few things but were knocked out pretty early until Richard and the dice game. He made it down to 5 people and because he was the last man he WON. He was especially excited as he won a Qamatiq hitch. Yeah. Didn't mean much to me either but Richard has recently built a Qamatiq (a sled for behind a snowmobile) and this hitch is worth $250.00. So YEAH Richard!!! We were just beginning to talk about leaving when another strength competition started. Some of the young people were encouraging Richard to try it. So after watching for a bit (and learning the rules) he decided to compete. We were a little bit worried about offending anyone with our winning but as he was being pushed into it he decided to give it his all. So Richard beat 4 men (16 and over) by sitting feet to feet and holding onto a broomstick between them and trying to pull each other over. He was finally beat by a young man. So we thought it was over but then our lack of understanding of the rules became obvious again. No it was not over because the man who beat Richard also beat 4 men he and Richard had to battle one more time. And...Richard WON!!! No doubt about how people felt as Richard was cheered in riotous fashion and swarmed by well wishers. He was pushed towards the stage where he was given his prize of $60.00. So all in all not a bad day. Tones of fun and $140.00 and a hitch to boot!!
Birthday notices: Happy Birthday (in date order not importance) Kala, Rosamond, Joy and Grandpa!!! The beginning of April has been busy for me as it is report card season. They were due last week. It is only my second round and I was very concerned if I was doing them right and if they would get done and make sense. But they got done and my principal was extremely complimentary of my work so all is well after all. On Friday April 8th the staffs of both Sam Pudlat Elementary and Peter Pitseolak High School went out on the land for a 'cultural day'. It was amazing. We drove for a good 40 minutes out over the water and over the land and over the water and on and on. We got out to a lake and set up camp. A tent was pitched with a stove to heat up caribou stew. Holes were dug with the auger for fishing and we all got to it. We followed the others lead and Richard brought on of our machines over beside the hole where we sat on it and fished. Nothing was biting despite my using all the Inuktitut I knew and learning more to try and get the fish to bite. I said the straight forward Qaigit (pronounced hi-gee meaning come here), the unusual Nagligivagit (pronounced Na-lee-gee-za-geet meaning I love you and here it is in sylabics ᓇᒡᓕᒋᕙᒋᑦ) and following Ernie's lead I yelled Iqalamai (I made up the spelling but it is pronounced EE-ha-la-may) or here fishy, fishy, fishy!! That got a lot of laughs but not a single fish. Lily was very disappointed that there were no fish and we had to go home and pull the two out of the deep freeze so she could poke them. The day was great but I am hoping that when we go next time we will actually catch something! The next night we went to a good old fashioned Kitchen Party. Ahh, the legacy of the Newfies. Actually very, very fun as our student teacher Jennifer is a harpist and she played as did David, a GN employee, Scott, one of our grade 4 teachers, and Richard. (They were all playing the guitar.) Everyone chatted and ate and drank and listened and sang. A very good time and a good send off to Jennifer who after being here for a month is headed back to Halifax. There I end this very, very long post as the next saga is the arrival of Richard's parents.... later I promise but it is bedtime now...
Goodnight to all and thanks for reading.
Margot

Lily turns 3 and Richard goes hunting

2011-03-16T14:22:00.008-04:00

Sorry for the lack of postings the last couple of weeks. It seems like if we leave it too long then it becomes such an undertaking to get caught up with the backlog that it then gets put off even longer. So this posting is a bit of a mish mash.

Lily’s birthday:

She had a great time. We had a party and invited a few of her friends. We had a friend dog sit for us as the puppies may have scared some of the kids. Everyone arrived, played and had a good time. We all had hot dogs and Kraft dinner with a cake Margot made. MMMMMM. Then after Lily’s nap we had a couple of adult friends over and had another party for Lily. She had a great time turning three.

Personal Improvement Week:

We all need to improve (some more than others) ourselves, and this week all of us teachers in the Qikiqtani region got to do just that. We were given a set amount of money and it had to be used towards professional development. We had to set up what ever we wanted to do and put a proposal together that needed approval. Some did course work both up here and down south, others had projects they were working on and some chose to learn about Inuit culture. Margot and I both chose to go the last route as we are new and very interested in what is important to the community in which we live and teach. It makes for a more authentic teaching and learning model when you have personal experience with a subject. So Margot is making seal skin kamiq’s (boots) and I am learning to carve stone and have arranged for a local guide to take me out on the land to hunt and fish the Inuit way.

I love GPS:

A bit of back-story about hunting and I. When I was a kid in southern BC my dad was quite a hunter and I grew up hunting birds (using a small 22 caliber gun, not a shotgun) and such. I have never shot a large animal and I stopped hunting in my teen years. It has never been something I really wanted to get back into, but having lived up here, it reignited my interest in it. This community and the Inuit people have such a strong foundation built on hunting and fishing. It was something I really wanted to be a part of, to be a true hunter up here. I wanted to be able to relate to my students and members of the community about something that is important to them. I can only learn so much from reading books and watching educational videos. What follows is not a story about blood lust and my desire to kill. It is about my wanting to experience a new part of the culture that is important for the men in my community. Also I wanted to feed my family and share with my community. Trust me, nothing goes to waste up here. I was very conflicted about killing such a beautiful animal, but I also know that is how the food chain works if one eats meat (which I do) and these animals have been harvested for hundreds of years and are being carefully managed now. I know this is not everyone’s cup of tea, but I am here to experience Inuit culture and this is part of it.

My day Caribou hunting started well after picking up the snowmobiles, loading up gear into the Qamutiq (I built, with help) and getting fuel. As we were departing, I set up my new (borrowed) GPS unit to track our day. This would allow us to follow a trail home in case we got turned around or bad weather came in. Gabriel, my guide, scoffed at my GPS a bit, but didn’t say too much. I told him it was just in case and that I did not really know it very well. I reassured him that he was the one who was going to get us home.

It was an amazingly clear day and around -32 C (not incl. wind chill). We headed off and began our journey on the frozen ocean. I must admit how terrified I am of being on frozen water. It does not help that everyone I talk to who has been traveling/hunting on the ice has some horror story about how they have either had a snowmobile fall through or the ice they were standing on break off and float away. That’s scary stuff. So, I was very careful and we followed other fresh snowmobile tracks. We traveled 45 miles north east across the southern tip of Baffin Island. We traveled through some amazing terrain and it was so very beautiful. At times it was a bit frustrating though because it was so cold, I had to cover my face to avoid frostbite. But, when I did that, the condensation would eventually make it’s way up into my goggles, eventually forming a thick layer of ice that made it difficult to see. So, we would stop, thaw out and then carry on. We drove for about 2 hours passing over frozen mountains, wide open flatland's, lakes and streams. We passed over numerous tracks, both Caribou and Polar Bear but still no animals. I did see an arctic hare streak across our path which was pretty cool. It was the first wild, non-airborne animal I had seen since we moved here. Right about the time I was starting to give up hope, we came across two Caribou. They were in the lee of a large hill and stopped to watch us as we prepared our guns. In hindsight, this would have been good time to put on some thin gloves, like mechanic or biking gloves to stop the intense cold and wind from freezing them. However, in my haste to leave the house I forgot them, along with a camera and my binoculars. Anyhow, as we began to approach them they began to trot at a leisurely pace away from us. Gabriel did not seem too concerned as we neared them and he tried to shoot the larger of the two, which turned out to be female as they both were. He missed a few times and then asked if I would try to shoot the other. Now, as an aside, I am a resident and a licensed hunter who is legally allowed to shoot up to five Caribou this season. I did not bring up a rifle to Nunavut, but I am having one shipped up now. I did bring along my model 12, 12 gauge Winchester pump action shotgun that was my grandfathers. It is a very nice gun. I brought along rifled deer slugs for bear protection, but they are also used for hunting thin skinned, large game. Now on with the story:

Caribou are a strange animal. I have never seen an animal stand and watch you while you shoot at it. Generally they run away, but these ones would run a couple hundred yards and then stand and watch, as we would try again. It took about 10 minutes for the actual hunt, during which I had exposed hands while holding my gun and driving. We would drive, stop, get off, shoot, reload and repeat. By the time I took my last shot, I could not move my thumbs and was trying to load my gun by shoving shells in with my burning, frozen, unmovable thumbs. It was so very painful! It took us a few tries but eventually we did shoot them. It didn’t help that Gabriel’s gun was not sighted properly. I was quite impressed with my shot. It was at least 125 yard, using a shotgun in the wind, using open sights on a gun I had never hunted with. Gabriel was very impressed which made me feel pretty good. I took a total of 7 shots. 4 misses, two body shots and one final one to kill the animal quickly after it was on the ground shots. I don’t want to see an animal suffer needlessly. Gabriel’s Caribou was a full grown female with antlers, mine we estimated to be about two years old. It had small antlers and a bit smaller body. They are much larger than the deer down south with large hooves, noses, eyes and long, long legs.

Then the work began. I stood back and tried to help, but soon realized that I was only slowing Gabriel down as he expertly skinned, limbed, gutted and butchered both animals. He told me that when he lived back home in Coral Harbor, Nunavut, he butchered over 30 Caribou in one day. His hometown has a very large heard and they supply many communities with Caribou meat. It took about 25 minutes per animal. We lined the qamutiq with a tarp then used the skins to hold the meat, innards, legs and heads. The only things left were the intestines, everything else was used. I took some ribs, the shoulders and the hind quarters from the smaller one that I shot for my family and friends. I also took the hides, one set of innards (a delicacy), and the vertebrae, which I gave away as a thank you to an older Inuit woman who has worked with both Margot and I at our schools. She sent her son over to help me butcher the pieces of Caribou into specific cuts of meat, which I then processed later. Gabriel took the rest of the meat, limbs, innards and heads to feed his family and friends.

After we got cleaned up and had some bannock and tea we began our trip home. By this time, it was about 2 pm and the sky was still clear but a very cold wind was tearing across the land. It was very cold. We figured we had another 45 minutes before we should start heading home. Gabriel led the way as we continued our hunt. After passing over a never ending criss-cross of old snowmobile tracks and a few more mountains Gabriel admitted he was a bit turned around and asked if my GPS was working. At this point I was concerned and brought out the GPS that I had hastily set up to track our route prior to leaving town. We both looked at it and the map I had brought and he figured he knew where to go and we set off again. 15 minutes later, he stops and says he’s lost and wants to see the GPS again. After a couple of "comments" from me he smiled and said he knew where we were. I said so do I, Nunavut, but that doesn’t help me get home. He asked for the GPS again and he used it for the next 30 minutes until he got us back on our old tracks. Now, I am sure we would have been fine and figured out which way was home, but GPS is amazing. I also was sure to bring extra batteries, fuel, emergency food, tools, clothes, maps and such. I tend to over prepare which usually turns out to be a good thing.

We then began the long and very cold trip home. There was one section that was about 15 km long in which the wind was hitting our side with such force that it was blowing the qamutiq (fully loaded and heavy) sideways a bit as we traveled at a pretty quick speed.

We made it back to town and filled up our fuel. Many people gave us big smiles and were very happy for our successful hunt, however, most also “jokingly” asked for either an invite to dinner or some of the Caribou. I had to drop Gabriel off, stop by the store and get Lily and Margot also. By the time I got home there was a small army of kids wanting to know about the hunt. Two girls refused to believe that I shot one of the caribou, or that I built the qamutiq or my harpoon (with help) and called me a liar. I asked is it because I am a teacher and therefore have no life or skills outside school (from their perspective) or a qallunaat (non-Inuit) and they told me it was because I was qallunaat. After explaining that what they were saying was racist, I suggested they should go home.

Lily thought the whole thing was very exciting, as did we. We called up a few friends to come over and check it out and have dinner. Kala and Smoot were also very excited. Margot spread out cardboard on the kitchen floor while I brought everything inside. I then went and returned the snowmobiles. I had been told to throw the hides out by numerous people because they were not good for making anything this time of year, but Margot got on the phone with an elder, Qupi (Hope-ee spelled phonetically) and she sent over her son to get them. He will use them as bedding while out camping once they have been cleaned, stretched and dried in the spring. He also said he would help me with my meat as I was completely out of my element. He and his girlfriend arrived with a gigantic cleaver/axe and after I assured him I had our dogs, who were sequestered in the living room, under control, set about chopping and portioning up the Caribou. Within ten minutes he was done. He commented on how often he has done this before and I believe him. After we said goodbye, I began the arduous process of cleaning, trimming and packaging everything up. Lily thought it was great and went and put on a party dress for the special occasion then desperately wanted to sit on my lap as I sliced and diced. I explained to her that she needed to put on other clothes if she was going to “help”. That night we ate bbq’d Caribou steak for dinner and it was very tasty but a bit tough. I think that is why many people up here eat it frozen and raw with soy sauce (I haven’t tried this yet) or in stews. Sadly it was too rich for the dogs and they were both a bit ill that night, along with Margot. We did not get done until about 8:30 pm. I must admit, I love bleach. The kitchen was such a bloody mess afterwards (literally) that I created a mixture of pine sol, sunlight and bleach. Margot and I then used it to clean and scrub every surface in our kitchen.

It was quite a day and I am still processing everything. It will be a day I never forget, that’s for sure! Thanks to everyone’s help and generosity as it made the day a success.

Conquering ones fear:

I had planned on spending another day with Gabriel as my guide setting up fishing nets under the ice in a nearby lake. But sadly the plan fell through, as he could not locate the nets. So, as a plan B, we spent the day out on the ice floe edge. Now, I am terrified of being on frozen water. I have seen people and snowmobiles break through ice after being reassured “don’t worry, it’s perfectly safe. You could drive a truck on this!” This is why I have waited so long to go out on the ice, and never by myself. I managed to hook us up with another hunting party who was also heading out. They even had a little boat. They use the boat to go pick up whatever they shoot in the water off the flow edge (seals & walrus). It was also nice to go with men who go out on a daily basis and have a very good understanding of this area, currents and ice thickness. Also, the more the merrier I say!

As we left the relative safety of town and firm ground for a day of ice, I must admit to being quite scared. But, it seemed as good a day as any to conquer my fear, so off we went. It was really amazing to feel the difference between regular snow and the snow on frozen ocean. On regular snow, my snowmobile just scoots along without much resistance, but on the frozen ocean it felt as if I were towing a heavy load. The engine struggled to overcome the resistance from sticky frozen ocean’s snow. As we approached open water, I could feel a slight panic attack coming over me and I had to work very hard at calming down and trusting the men that I was with.

The floe edge was very beautiful. The day was clear with blue skies, a moderate wind and about -30 C (temp, not wind chill). The cold air blew across the frozen land and ice and when it hit the open ocean, created a thick fog about 50 feet out that extended high into the sky. I was told that when it warms up, the visibility will increase on the water. We parked about 50 feet from the edge and everyone used their harpoons (I am glad I made one) to stab at the ice to ensure it was thick enough. If after one stab it goes through it is dangerous, 2 stabs okay for one man, 4 stabs it’s okay for many men and snowmachines, 6 stabs and it’s safe for a truck. We were at about 5 stabs. It still seemed very thin. I explained that I am a large man and maybe their stab scale was only for smaller Inuit men. They all laughed and one man said his dad was very fat and would be safe out there too. So with that we all watched the ocean looking for seal heads.

The day proved to be unsuccessful for hunting, but we did get to explore much of the shoreline, meet other hunting parties and get some good riding in. We left Cape Dorset Harbor and headed across Parchetuk bay, over a couple islands known for duck hunting, past Negus Bay and out to the Neta Islands in search of weed. When I asked what we were looking for and was told “weed” as we all poked at the ice with our harpoons, I must admit my southern BC brain was not thinking seaweed. When I explained my confused look to the group, they all had a good laugh.

It was a calm day filled with lots of stories about the past and how things used to be. How people had to fight for their lives and work together. I was told a story about a man and his friends who had a the piece of ice they were standing and hunting on, break off and float out into the open ocean. They would fall off and the waves would lift them back onto their ice again. They huddled together to keep safe and warm. Finally after two days, they were rescued by helicopter. Another story that stuck in my mind was a group who also had a large piece of ice they were on break off. They rushed over to their snowmobiles and raced across the ever widening gap of deep, black ocean water that separated the piece of ice they were on and the new floe edge. They lost 1 snowmobile and 2 guns. I cannot imagine being faced with these challenges. This is not a place for games or to not take nature seriously. I am still afraid of the ice, but I am very happy I got to experience it with so many warm and friendly people.

Lily in the morning. She decided she need to wear her some of her snow clothes while we watched the news. What a funny kid!

Some people drive trucks, others drive snowmobiles and quads. This person rides their scooter all year. It's the funniest thing to see them flying down a road so icy that kids can use their ice skates. The riders keep their feet down like outriggers and often have passengers! What a crazy place.

Lily and Daddy at the dump looking for a snowmobile part. This is a place the locals call "Canadian Tire".

Lily on the phone wearing daddy's boots.

Lily getting ready to "go out" in her play amouti

Give Lily a pack of stickers and guess were they end up?

A man cleaning snow off the vent stacks with no safety equipment. He almost fell twice, so scary. A WCB nightmare!

Margot and Lily out for a big walk.

Lily and Kathy using Margot's smartboard in her classroom.

Margot commuting home from work.

Richard coming home from work.

A hunter on the floe edge.

Snowmobiles on the floe edge.

A destroyed seal den. This is what they build to have their pups in. It must have been crushed by a hungry bear.

Hunters planning our next move.

Looking for weed.

A very icy island.

My gun and seal skin mittens.

A view looking east from the Neta Islands.

An elder on the floe edge waiting to help a group of hunters with their canoe. They will be returning, hopefully, with walrus.

The edge of the floe edge.

My Qamutic.

My Qamutic returning full after a successful hunt before I returned the snowmobiles.

Lily and Kala enjoying a Caribou foot.

Lisa and Lily checking out our Caribou.

Amy and Lily check out the action. Notice Lily's fancy dress. I thought Amy did pretty good considering she is a vegetarian.

Richard learning how to butcher Caribou in the kitchen. Notice his gigantic knife on the floor beside him.

Lily's birthday lunch.

Lily's birthday presents.

Lily enjoying a ticky loopy after the party.

Lily playing on her new bike.

Lily and Daddy have a bit of wind-down time.

Lily checking out the glove from the new Michael Jackson dancing game.

Lily giving the new sweater her Grammy made for her a 'yes' face.

Lily enjoying the new toque from her Mama and Papa

Thanks for stopping by and leave a comment!

Kids gone wild!

2011-02-26T08:40:00.001-05:00

What a week! We had a group come up from down south armed to deliver science concepts to both the high school and elementary students. We learned about light and sound, animals and the stars. We played laser tag (so fun), got to go inside an inflatable planetarium and see a moving light show (for about a minute before it broke) and meet a lizard and a hedgehog. The group (elephant thoughts) was set up at Sam Pudlat school and my class got to go up twice to participate. We had a great time and the kids got to have some new experiences which is always great. However, it made the week crazy! When there are big changes to the kids schedules it brings out the crazy behavior. For the most part, my students are a pretty good group. They look out for one another and make good choices. I am generally very proud of my class, but there were a few moments this week that made me shake my head. By the end of the week I had to suspend two of them (a boy and a girl) for assaulting other kids on different occasions. I haven't had to suspend a kid for that since school began! I have been told that as we get more daylight that the kids get a bit kooky because they stay up later and get less sleep. We'll see if this is the case. Obviously, I hope this is not the case. The sun is rising at 7:30 am and setting at about 5:30 pm right now. But we are fast approaching long periods of light which I am very interested in seeing how it affects us. Both Margot and I have been feeling a bit low lately (energy & mood) and I am really looking forward to my parents visit. It is nice to have something to look forward to and seeing family will be a real treat. We have not left our little town since we got here in August. It has been a strange thing being trapped here. We have always taken road trips on weekends and at holiday times down south, but up here, it's just not possible. It just costs too much to justify a trip out. Even flying to Iqaluit from Cape Dorset return is over $1000 each. So, having loved ones make the trek up at spring break (1 week off work) will bring a bit of home up here. Don't get me wrong, our life up here is very comfortable for the most part. We have a nice place, good jobs, great friends and Lily is loving daycare. But, I do miss being able to pop out to a larger community for a break.

Warning: Proud Parent moment

Speaking of Lilibeth, she is able to speak and understand so much Inuktitut, it's amazing. We often get comments from the Inuit about how surprised they are at her ability to speak and understand both languages. She knows so much more Inuktitut than me at this point. It is the dominant language that is spoken daycare so she spends all day, 5 days a week immersed in it. It is really great that she is leaning another language. This has really made me step up my game and given me yet another reason to keep trying to learn and use Inuktitut daily.

I tried to setup a jam session this week with a few other musicians who have been wanting to get together but was very disappointed when only one showed up. It was cool enough as we played together, but not the same as a full band. I am hoping that we can try again as I really miss playing music with others. But, I do get frustrated when plans are made, then abandoned without letting other know. Grrrrrrrrrr.

Yesterday after school I popped down to the Co-op to get gas as I needed to top up my machine and fill a spare jerry can. When I got there I was told the pump was broken and I had to estimate how much fuel I need, prepay for it then drive all the way out to the tank farm. The tank farm is at least 1 km from the Co-op and is where they to store all the fuel for the community. So after a bit of hullabaloo with my new credit card's pin, I headed on down to the farm. I had been expecting to see maybe a snowmobile or two there, or none at all. That I could simply get my gas and be on my way. Well, that was not the case. I arrived to a lineup of at least 15 vehicles (quads, snowmobiles and trucks) all lined up. Each had a plethora of jerrycans with them. I had to wait for over an hour to get my fuel. Did I mention I was not wearing long undies or fuzzy pants. Just my work clothes and in town snow clothes (not insulated pants). It was about -34 C temperature (not incl. windchill.) I was OK, but pretty chilly by the time I got out of there. They did have a little office I could have waited in, but it was small and there were elders and women there who had little ones in their amouti's so I did not want to take up space someone else may have really needed. It was quite a bizarre thing to be in a lineup again, and I must say I haven't missed them at all. It's going to be a big shocker when we go south on our next visit.

Some sad news. A local man committed suicide yesterday. I am sorry to say I don't recall his name but he worked at the Co-op's gas bar and was in his early 20's. It is such a shame and a waste to hear of a young person making this choice. It is especially hard in a community like this one in which there are so many close friends and relatives that it effects. I am very sorry for the family's loss.

That's been my week. Thank for stopping by and leave a comment. We love to hear from our readers!

-Richard

My big day out on the land

2011-02-20T21:32:00.000-05:00

What a day. It started off a bit chaotic because when I showed up in the morning the fella who had said he was selling me one, the one I was going to use today, had sold it to someone else. I had not given him cash yet as it was not done. Grrrrr, I was pissed!!! All this work and prep to put this trip together, getting excited and having to get up early on a Sunday morning all for nothing. Well, I was having none of it (teehehee). I drove down the street and stopped at a house that had numerous snowmobiles and Qamaitiqs. There were two older people warming up a snowmobile. I stopped in, introduced myself, told them my story and who I was taking out hunting and asked if they would rent me one. The best part was the man, who spoke little English. When he heard that I was going hunting, started hooking a well used Qamatiq up to my machine before we had even talked money. I think he would have just lent it to me had I asked. What a nice guy, I was so impressed and surprised. Most people, myself included, tend to be quite protective of their possessions. But here was someone giving something of value to a total stranger. Wow, I think there may be a lesson in here for me. Once I got loaded up, I went back to Gabriell's (my friend whom I went out with today, also my mechanic) place and off we went. He was quite surprise to see I had solved the problem in under 5 minutes, as he did not know anyone he was willing to ask to borrow one from. It worked out really well. Anyhow...

Off we went. What an amazing day: 150 kms, numerous ocean/river/stream crossing, "mountain" passes and so many amazing veiws. Sadly, no Caribou but we did have a great day. I had a mild breakdown when one of the steel runners under the ski broke and peeled back. I was very glad I have a toolkit from which I was able to fix things with (thanks Mom!). We stopped into an Inuit camp in which people still have cabins that get used frequently in summer. Gabriel's family has one which was a nice place to stop off for an americano (I love good coffee) and lunch. We noticed a couple of snowmobiles across the bay heading to check on their nets which are deployed in a nearby lake. We decided to go a check it out, which turned into a really neat experience. For those of you who might not know, I love fishing. When we got to the lake, there were two groups checking nets. The first we visited were both women who had it down to a fine art. It was pretty neat to see the whole process. I helped remove fish from the nets and re-deploy the nets. After the work was done, she gave us a good sized Arctic Char. I was quite honored by the gesture but gave it to Gabriel for his family. We then headed over to the other group who was just finishing up. After chatting for a bit, we were offered fish again. This time we got one each, and mine was quite a good sized one. I knew Lily would love it for dinner. Then we headed for home. Sadly, the Qamatic was very old and rotted. The front had already been "repaired" at some point, but did not hold. Right near town as I was slowly working my way around the boulders of frozen ice as we got onto the sea, I was stopped dead fast. The front of the Qamatic ski had dug in after the tip broke off. I was feeling very bad, but realized I had done nothing wrong to cause the damage. This is why I hate borrowing things and always end up buying/making my own. Anyhow, I was very worried about what the owner was going to say, but I explained what had happened, gave a bit more cash to cover the repairs and he was very understanding. Again, what a great guy. So our day ended well. No major breakdowns or injuries and so much tasty fish for dinner we invited a friend to share. Other than being exhausted and having very sore eyes (no goggles as they froze and I could not see well enought to hunt), it was a great day.

It was really great to see so many Inuit values that we (teachers) teach the kids, put into action today. I am sure they happen in town, but I don't often see them the way I did today. I saw generosity, trust, friendship, and a true appreciation for the land and it's resources. Getting away from town and the politics that go along with it was very re-invigorating for me. I am wiped out, but feel very recharged.

All of the photo's from today were taken on Margot's Itouch. What a handy camera, not the best quality pictures, but the battery actually last all day!

PS: I apologize for any errors, grammatical or otherwise in this entry. It's late, I'm tired and can barely see the screen anymore.

Have a good night!

-Richard

ALL LOADED UP AND READY TO GO

AN OPEN SECTION OF OCEAN THAT WE WATCHED FOR A BIT HOPING TO SEE SEALS

CAPE DORSET FROM ACROSS THE INLET

MMMMMM.

My first Caribou hunt tomorrow!

2011-02-19T22:23:00.000-05:00

So am I a bit nervous tonight as I am going on my first big trip out onto the land tomorrow morning (early) to go Caribou hunting. I am taking an Inuit friend and we are heading out for the day. The ice is very thick I have been told and both of my snowmobiles (he is borrowing one) are finally in good shape. I have also bought a new Qamutiic (sled) that was built by a local carpenter which is towed by one of the snowmobiles to carry anything we catch. It's not a big one, but is big enough for what I need.

I must admit to being a bit nervous about the whole thing as it is quite chilly and it is a 3 hour ride to the area he thinks the Caribou are. Then there's hunting time, cleaning (assuming we get something) and then travel time home. It's not like down south, where you can stop and make a fire to warm up! I should be just fine as I have good, high quality gear, but....

I have spent the evening gathering up all the things I think I will need (I tend to be over prepared - thanks Dad)and am headed to bed early tonight. I will post some pictures and such monday to let you know how it goes.

-Richard

A LONG week

2011-02-13T13:58:00.001-05:00

This seems to have been a VERY long week! Monday started the week off just fine but things quickly went sideways. On Tuesday we were suddenly told that we would have to meet with the district Elementary program co-ordinator. This meant giving up our prep. It was frustrating as late last week I asked if we would be required to meet with her and was told only if we scheduled a meeting. This meant that I was not fully prepared to go into a meeting. It would be nice if we got the correct information! However we were given some great information (that I wish we had gotten in August). It was also nice to be re-inspired about what we can accomplish with our students. Wednesday seemed like it would be okay but then... near the end of gym a student came to get me saying that a boy was hurt. This is unfortunately a common occurrence in gym class so I said "okay" and started walking to the gym. The student said "No, really hurt, with blood." So I started running. I arrived and there is one of my boys lying on the floor with Kathy (the other grade 3 teacher) and he is gushing blood from his head. I took over from her and sat with him applying pressure. Our VP said she would call the ambulance. We don't really have an ambulance but the health centre does have a vehicle that they use when necessary. 10 minutes later we are still waiting so she called back and whoever she talked to this time said that no they were not sending anyone as they didn't have a vehicle available. I looked at my principal and said "we need to get him to the hospital now!" He agreed. The social services van had just arrived to take another student home and my principal said we would take it down. Other adults nearby started trying to tell us that we couldn't take the van as it was working. We both looked at them and said "we are taking it, now." So I bundled the boy in a blanket and scooped him into my arms. My principal led the way and hijacked the van. He drove us down to the health centre where we went inside and the nurses, after an exam, said he needed three stitches. By this time Mom and Dad had arrived. I stayed nearby in case I could help. Mom had to step out but Dad was great. That poor kid. What an awful experience. We sent them off home and as I was just thinking how I would get back to school I see the Social Services driver (who is also the dad of one of my students) waiting for me to offer a ride back to school. I was so thankful as all I had on was my sneakers. So back to school and although my request for an afternoon of stress leave was denied my principal took my supervision duty so I at least had 20 minutes to eat lunch and get ready for class. After lunch my class and I had a BIG conversation about safety and appropriate behaviour in gym class. We then wrote Jason a book all about him and cards for him. After school I had to rush down to pick up Lily so we could all get tested for Tuberculosis. It was not very pleasant but Lily, as always, was a trooper and afterwards thanked the nurses for 'having fun'. They really did work hard to make it okay for her and then gave her prizes, stickers, and a cookie. I send them a great big THANK YOU. Thursday I went to sewing as I often do. We had about 5 minutes to sew and then a meeting started. The ladies are creating a Resource centre committee. We had a big round of nominations and then voting. I got voted onto the committee along with 6 other ladies. Immediately after the voting the seven of us had a meeting to start the process and try and make some progress on a funding proposal. It was an interesting meeting mostly held in Inuktitut. One younger lady very kindly translated for me. Things took a long time and suddenly ended when one of the women walked out. Apparently she felt that things were not orderly enough and got frustrated. Not sure where this leaves things but I do know I have another meeting Wednesday...
A frustrating delay has just occurred!! I got an iPod for my birthday and have just started using it. I have been taking lots of notes and had written down things I wanted to blog about. Well I have just accidentally deleted the whole page of notes! Super frustrating and I have no idea if it is recoverable. Suggestions anyone?!?...
Anyway I do think that was everything except that Saturday was Hockey Day in Canada and we celebrated with Hockey Day in Cape Dorset. Lily and I went up to the arena in the morning where kids were playing hockey. We also went next door to the youth centre where there was free hot chocolate and hotdogs. She had a great time and loved seeing the kids. It was extremely windy and for the first time she agreed to wear her goggles. Of course we then couldn't find them. I think they may have been left at daycare. On the way home the wind had picked up and we only made it about 50 feet on the snowmobile before Lily was miserable. I decided that she would ride home on my lap facing me. This way she could tuck her face in my coat. She clung to me with her little hands. It was so cute. She was pretty happy and we made it home in one piece. Then she had some "big news" for Daddy about the crazy way we drove home. That afternoon I went to sewing and the good news is that another parka is well under way. Saturday night was another dinner with friends. It has been called the Dinner Club by our principal's wife. A very nice relaxed evening with good food and a good game. So ends a very long week and the start of a new, hopefully better week.
Thanks for reading,
Margot

PS. Maybe the deleted iPod notes means I get a fresh start for this week. And that would be okay with me!!

So cold my watch froze

2011-02-08T20:50:00.000-05:00

I went riding on Sunday for about 3 hours and it was amazing. However, it was so cold (-35 C temperature, not wind chill) that not only did my camera die (no longer works at all, even after charging) but my watch froze in my pocket. I kept looking at the time and realized it did not change after a while. Now that’s chilly! I explored and rode all over our island and got to so many places I could not get to before due to the increased coverage from the recent snow we have gotten. It is pretty amazing riding up here. I rode in the mountains in southern BC as a kid, but with the trend to restrict where motorized vehicles can go (no judgment), it’s pretty neat to know I can ride anywhere I want up here. There is so much land and it’s wide open, hilly, challenging and you are totally alone if you want to be. I find it very peaceful and reinvigorating to find isolation outside. I spend time with others so it’s nice to take a break alone sometimes. I was able to do a full lap around (and back) without using any existing roads, which was a fun challenge. The snow here gets so hard here when the wind picks up a snowmobile will climb just about anything you are brave enough to ride up. Needless to say, I was able to get up to some new places!

I came across fresh polar bear tracks while I was traveling on the far backside of the island. Even with the strong wind we have had, they had not been blown in yet, so they must have been very fresh. As soon as I realized what was happening, I loaded up my 12-gauge shotgun with deer slugs (large bullets) and carried on my way. I do not ever want to get into the situation where I have to use my gun on a bear, but I also don't want to be fast food for a hungry critter. The tracks were about 10” wide! Sadly, the camera had died so I was unable to get some pictures. I asked the elder that works with my boys at school about the bear and after I explained how big the tracks were, he figured it was a very big male bear. Yikes, they can be up to 16 feet long!

The view from our kitchen. It so nice to see and feel strong, direct sunlight. Ahhhh, I missed it.

Up high on the hill. The ocean freezing over in the distance. I love the steam or heat coming off the ocean. It is quite a sight.

Inuksuks. The one in the foreground is at least 8 feet tall. They are quite a sight.

Cape Dorset and the airstrip far below.

Wide open and ready to ride!

Brrrr.

It was an amazing day. Sometimes it's really great up here!

-Richard

A snow day and Lilibeth's parka

2011-02-03T21:10:00.002-05:00

I spent my lunch hour playing my drums today. It was really nice to play, as I never seem to make time to play. For those who did not know, I am a drummer and have been for most of my life. I brought a drum set up with me that I leave at my school. We have a very nice music room that so far seems safe. I have actually been working with a couple of girls teaching them how to play, it's been fun. Anyhow, another staff member found me and told me the news: snow day! It was nice because Margot and I were able to get a bunch of errands done which included a trip to the Government of Nunavut building. Margot had never been inside as was quite impressed as it is very nice.

On numerous occasions I have tried to get to know facebook but have always been pretty turned off by the whole thing. However, many people up here use it so I thought I would try it again. Well, it was pretty neat. I got in touch with some old friends, made amends with others. Overall a great night spent on the computer. Being so far from loved ones also means that having a relationship on the computer is much more acceptable. Down south, it had always seemed odd to me to talk on the computer with your friends rather than hopping on your bike to go hang out and talk in person. But up here, well that's just not an option if your friends live elsewhere.

This is Lily checking out a recent Arctic Char that I bought. Mmmmm, I can't wait for Sashimi! Lily then started telling me stories about when her and I would go fishing or the trip she took with her cousin and her "Papa" in the little boat. Lily loves fishing.

This is a carver posing with a bear we just bought. His name is Noo Atsiqq and he does beautiful work. Note the "steam" in the picture. It is about -35 C and that is the humidity from the house freezing. Brrr, to think these carvers all work outside.

Lily playing with her Amouti (note the dolly in the back). So cute!

Lily in her new parka. Margot did an amazing job.

That is the look of big trouble! Lily posing with her seal mittens, or as we call them, her furry mittens. They really are amazingly warm.

The twins warming up. We decided to treat ourselves and go out for dinner tonight to the restaurant.

The girls posing for a quick picture inside our restaurant.

Thanks for stopping by and please drop us line using the comment function.

-Richard

Saturday

2011-01-30T17:46:00.000-05:00

I am working on getting better at posting so here is a little something about Saturday. Had kids over to play with Lily which she LOVES. They had a great time and the morning went quickly. After getting Lily down for a nap I headed off to sewing. I had sewn the fur on Lily's parka Thursday night but took it to get approval from the ladies. One small fix needed but otherwise her parka is finished!! It is so cute I will get some pictures up soon. She is not so sure about wearing it, she has a thing about hoods, but we shall see as the temperature continues to drop. I spent all of sewing time fixing the trim on my parka. I had taken a chance on trim material and it didn't work out well. Doing trim is not a hard job but this was a bit stressful in that until it was done my parka was in pieces so I didn't have a coat to wear home. Finally did get it finished just in time to head home and get ready for our dinner guests. Had a great dinner with friends. Lily loves having people around and insisted that one of our guests give her a bath (which was done willingly) and then she took all our guests to her room and read them a story. So cute and fun but sort of destroyed bedtime routine. She spent the next hour and a half getting out of bed and asking for "last hug" from everybody. We kept saying no but she kept asking. And that was our Saturday. Sunday has been relaxing and playful. Lily and I took a walk with the dogs and after almost 15 minutes of dressing we were probably outside for a total of 5 minutes. Ah, the arctic. So ends another weekend.
More soon,
Margot

Friday

2011-01-29T08:20:00.001-05:00

Of course by the time I get to writing this it is no longer Friday. However that doesn't change the fact that I had a very nice Friday. Richard took Lily to school (this in nice in that I am less rushed). Got to school feeling relaxed and breakfast went really well. The kids were organized and actually finished close to on-time. This does not always happen. Then we did guided reading and everybody was focused and working hard. Indoor recess because of a big blizzard. This makes the kids very happy. Next math class. We are working on patterns. They love it because it is something they can excel at. Then instead of gym our monthly assembly. Each month we celebrate an Inuit princilple and two students from each class get recognized for demonstrating this ideal. This month was Tunnganarniq (being inclusive and welcoming). I even managed to call the parents of my two students ahead of time so they could attend the assembly. End of the assembly came and David (the principal) says that school will be cancelled in the afternoon because of the blizzard. I think I was the only person in the room not celebrating. I had a great afternoon planned and was sad to miss it. I also thought I might have time to get some planning done. But instead of all that I got to go with Lisa to the store to look at fabric for our upcoming parkas and then head home to spend some time with Richard. Daycare stayed open so Lily stayed at school. By about 1:30 the storm died down and we had a pretty nice day here. Other things that made Friday great:
Finished (mostly) Lily's parka. I just need final approval from the sewing ladies because I'm not sure about one detail.
Took all the trim off my parka (because it was fraying) ready to use the right stuff and fix it all up today.
Had great cuddles with Lily.
Had a relaxing night.
Now I am ready for a great Saturday and getting two parkas finished.

PS. Not sure about the greatness of any day when I will be up at 6:30am. But we shall see...
-Margot

Newbie snowmobile move gone wrong!

2011-01-23T19:50:00.000-05:00

I took a friend out snowmobiling today who hasn't gone riding for some time. After Margot and I rebuilt the secondary clutch on my machine, I loaded the sleds up away we went. We headed up into the hills and as Lily says, things went horribly wrong. My friend had rolled the machine onto it's side and fuel was pouring out everywhere. After much effort we righted and got it going. Long story short, it was only running on one of two cylinders and pouring out fuel from the carburetor. So, we couldn't even limp it back to town. We rode my machine back to her house, where I dropped her off and headed over to my mechanic's house. Luckily he was home and willing to help me rescue the stranded snowmobile. I ended up taking off the drive belt and towing him and the dead machine halfway across the island and through town to his place. After removing half the snowmobile (it seemed) he disassembled the carburetor and we put it all back together again. After some tweaking, we got it running! In the end, it turned out alright, nobody got hurt and the snowmobile has another crack in it's hood, but otherwise, it turned out ok. We still got some riding in which was fun. But boy, it's getting cold up here. It's -34 outside right now and breezy. The Inlet is frozen over and many people are driving on it. I am still wary to go on it. There was a large polar bear sighted across the bay a few days ago. Sadly it was gone by the time I could go see. There was a wolf in town also which I hear was shot. Now that the ice is here, I am hoping to see some living animals.

This is a picture looking away from town, up in the hills. Below in the foreground is our frozen water reservoir and beyond is the ocean. It was sunny, cold and blowing.

-Richard

An Island of white and a caribou face

2011-01-18T16:28:00.002-05:00

Sorry for the delay in posting. New Years eve up here was fun. I went in the snowmobile parade that began at midnight after a church service. I had no idea there are so many snowmobiles in our little hamlet. There must have been at least 250 machines! It was quite a sight. The rest of the holiday was uneventful. Lily had a great time playing with various kids and sledding. She really enjoys riding in an amauti with her friends.

I tried out my Ozone Mantra 13 metre snowkite on my snowboard. Here’s a short video of a snowkiter: http://vimeo.com/12759831 Wow, it’s looks so much easier than it is! I have been snowboarding since I was a kid and am very capable, but have never used a large kite to pull me. It was scary and challenging. I am a big guy, about 270 lbs with all my gear on, and the kite on a mildly windy day was able to lift me from sitting up into the air, flying for many, many feet. The day ended with the kite coming loose (my fault) and fluttering off toward a small hill over which I knew there was a long, steep hill leading to the open ocean. As I was trying to drop my heavy backpack and undo my bindings, I watched as the kite (expensive) fluttered towards the abyss. I ran, postholing into the deep snow, across the medow catching it as it hung up on a rock. Pheww. I then got to try my new snowshoes as I trudged over a kilometer up to my snowmobile. Next time I am going to bring a friend to shuttle me on one of our snowmobiles. I really hope the ocean freezes enough to try it. I think the wide open space will be much easier to learn on. Also, it will be faster which I like!

Speaking of snowmobiles, Margot’s is all finished and mine is working, but I have, yet again, more parts coming for it. But, I also have a nice set of sockets and wrenches coming which will enable me to work on them with more ease. It is quite a thing to be doing major repairs to both machines in my driveway in the snow.

We were without a phone, along with the rest of Cape Dorset for nearly a month. They seem to have the problem fixed though which is nice.

There has been a very bad flu going around town and Lily caught it. So, she is convalescing and is improving. Luckily, knock on wood, Margot and I seem to have avoided getting it. Yay!

The northern lights have been amazing this last week. One night, after Lilibeth was asleep, I sat out beside the road in my camping chair, smoked a cigar (mmmmmmm) and saw the most amazing light show I have ever seen. The colours were so vivid and the movement was reminiscent of flowing, pulsing river that went right over my head, from horizon to horizon. We tried to get pictures, but nothing did it justice. We received a new Digital SLR camera for Christmas and are working at learning how to operate it and get good northern light pictures. This website: http://www.gedds.alaska.edu/auroraforecast/ is pretty neat. It forecasts the aurora borealis, so you can plan to go out if the weather is clear.

We have been having more power outages to go with the increasingly cold, blizzard filled weather we have been getting. I hear the inlet is frozen and people can now with some ease, navigate the land bridge that connects Cape Dorset Island with the Baffin Island when the tide is low.

Over the holidays we saw some interesting events related to local hunters. Margot, Lily and I went down to the beach and watched as numerous hunters returned from the mainland on a boat (numerous trips back and forth to deliver gear, animals and people). 4 men had got 20 caribou. It was quite a sight. I helped beach their boat among other things. It is neat to experience positive cultural events here. It is a wonderful contrast to the tragic events we encountered when we moved here. Another day I headed down to the land bridge and met two hunters who had just come in from hunting in a boat. They caught some ducks or geese (it was dark) and a seal. I have yet to see a seal here so was interested in what they were up to. They were quite happy to include me in what they were up to after I introduced myself. The Inuit can be very friendly people. We talked as I watched as they butchered the animal in the light from a snowmobile headlight. One of the hunters really wanted me to eat/drink the seal’s still warm blood as they were doing, but I just couldn’t do it. I, very respectfully declined. A caribou would be different for me because they are similar to the deer my father used to hunt while I was growing up that he would butcher in the house. But the seals and beluga look just like the ones we oohed and ahhed over at the Vancouver aquarium. They are just so beautiful, and that’s what I think of when I see them, not food. That’s just my cultural background. After they finished up with the seal, I headed over to the land bridge as another group of hunters was returning on the land bridge. I parked and walked over in the dark to help them get their snowmobiles and Qamatics (fully loaded) from the large, sinking blocks of ice and slush to the frozen land. I sunk up to my hips into the abyss before I headed back onto land. I saw the most amazing thing while I was sinking and scrambling, the snow when it was disrupted began to glow with dozens of small green lights. I suspect it is some frozen sea creature. It was beautiful and a bit eerie.

My school hosted the Skills Canada trade show/job fair. Numerous government organizations set up booths in communities all over the north to promote... they exist I guess. I am not sure the point of it, but the kids thought it was fun. We also participated in a qamatic building competition. My group named themselves the Human Huskies. We won! It was a pretty fun time, although I had to help pull the teacher qamatic and sadly, we lost. Turns out that teenage boys pulling little kids are faster than two 30 something teachers pulling adult women. Big surprise eh?

Outside, we can only see about 200 feet at any given time due to the blizzard that has shut down Margot’s school for the afternoon. I feels like we are an island in a sea of white.

1. Fixing my snowmobile's skid. Glad I brought my grinder up!

2. Lily playing with "her" kids.

3. Lily, Baby and Ellissa. She is loving being in an Amouti when the girls play with her.

4. Playing in an outside Amouti on a different day.I am sure if we asked her to ride in one, we'd get a strong "No" but since it's with the kids, it's all good!

5. My kite drying.

6. Caribou anyone? I must admit, I was hoping I could try some.

7. Caribou face.

8. Lily checking the scene. She also wanted to play with her helmet on.

9. Transporting Caribou

10. Me helping out.

11. More boats coming in. Notice the navigating of the ice to get to shore.

12. They are returning with a fully loaded Qamatiq on the back of the boat.

13. Boats by the sea.

14. My group of "Human Huskies" posing with what was to become the winning Qamatiq

15. Tension mounts prior to race time. Let the trash talking start!

16. And they're off!

17. My team eagerly awaits the start of our first of two races.

18. Inside our gym during the career fair.

19. Margot chatting with a couple of kids after arriving with her class. Notice the beautiful parka she made.

PS: I just found out we have been nominated Best New Blog in Nunavut! What an honor. It's nice to hear about people just reading our blog, but for someone to think it's so good that it deserves a nomination, well, that's pretty cool. Thanks!

If you want to vote, there is a link at the top, right hand side of this blog.

Take care and be safe,

Richard

Christmas in Cape Dorset

2010-12-26T20:04:00.001-05:00

Christmas break has been wonderful. We have all been having a great time together playing, sledding and spending time with Lily’s buddies. On Christmas Eve morning our three neighbour kids came over to play. The middle girl is a student in Margot’s class. Lily has always enjoyed playing with them outside but this is the first time we have had them to our house. The kids played for a while and then we got into baking. We made almost three dozen cookies and then had a crazy time decorating them. There were chocolate sprinkles and sparkles everywhere! Later in the afternoon Margot and Lily wrapped them up and we delivered packages of cookies to all the families left in our complex (all four of them). The kids all stayed for lunch and then we all headed out for the Santa Clause parade. The great part about being close to the north pole is Santa has time to come for our parade. Santa stands on top of the fire truck and everyone joins into the procession that drives around town. It was really very fun. The neat thing was that most of the kids know Lily, Margot and me so most kids waved and said Hi to us, especially Lily. Then we joined into the parade on our snowmobiles. It was a funny thing to be in a parade with the police, fire truck, numerous vehicles, quads and snowmobiles. Lily thought it was great. She was so excited to meet him while he was giving out candy and oranges after the parade.

After dinner we went to a community event. It featured throat singers, various teenagers competing for cash in traditional Inuit games, and live music (after we left sadly). Margot competed in an event called the stick toss in which over 100 people stood in a large circle and passed a stick around while music was played. When the music stopped, whomever was holding the stick was eliminated. The event was quite heated and very intense as everyone took it seriously. Margot made it to the final four people before she was eliminated. I didn’t last long in the gambling game I joined. The game is played by placing either $5.00 or an item of similar value onto one of the three squares on the floor. We then took turns rolling a die. If you rolled a one, you get eliminated. Sadly, I was eliminated. Lily had a great time playing with all the kids and running about. But boy was she goony by the time we got home. She is usually in bed, asleep by 7:30 pm. She didn’t get to sleep until almost 10 pm! It was fun to participate with others in the community. However, I wasn’t too homesick until I got home from this. I think seeing all the Inuit playing and spending time with their friends and family reminded me what we gave up to come up here.

Christmas day was fun. It took us all day minus time spent sledding, lunch and nap opening half Lily and our presents. Every one she opened she had to play with for a while. It was so fun that she really enjoyed every single gift she received. Thank you to everyone for sending up such wonderful gifts! We were having such a great time that we lost track of time and missed getting the turkey in the oven. We opted to thaw some steak and tiger prawns instead. However, we missed the boat on that too because we were having so much fun playing, so we had a snacky dinner (sausage, cheese, noodles, etc) and it suited us just fine. We finished presents on Boxing Day. After which Margot took Lily out sledding with some kids while I sorted and re-arranged Lily’s toys and her play area. Now everything has a home in the kitchen.

One of the presents we got for Christmas was Toy Story 3, which is about a boy outgrowing his toys and how sad the toys are about not being played with any more. The reason I bring this up is Lily has opted to sleep with a new doll and has ousted three stuffed toys (a cat named Meow, a bunny that I had as a kid whom she named Booster and another bunny named Deetdeet). She is just fine with this and still plays with them but just doesn’t want them in bed. It makes me very sad thinking about their feelings. I know, I am sappy and they are just stuffies.

We hope you had a great Christmas!

-Richard and Margot

BYO Rainboots!

2010-12-22T09:05:00.000-05:00

Margot and Lily building a Santa's sleigh.

Lily at her concert. Sorry for the unexciting picture, but this is the best I could get from my spot in the gym.

Lily dishing out some love for "the little baby".

This is what Margot arrived to at her school after a blizzard. There is a deck and pathway under the snow.

Lily playing while I get some work done. It's about -23C.

Sledding with the kids.

Lily and Janice taking a break from sledding.

Good Morning everyone. Well, we made it to Christmas break! We are now all done school and I am over my end of school crash (the flu) so we are able to have some fun. It's been nice spending time with my family and start to slow down a bit. Sadly, the weather up here has been terrible. It has been so warm that much of the snow and ice that was starting to form started melting off. In the midst of the heat wave it rained. This carried on for two days then turned to proper freezing rain. You can imagine how icy it is now that the temperature is starting to drop. After the freezing rain, our house ran out of water. It was Saturday night when I had to start calling to get more. I started with the Hamlet emergency housing number and all they could do was suggest other people to call. It was very trying but I did finally manage.

Our Christmas concerts all went well. They are crazy events in which the audience never seems to stop moving/talking/walking. The highlight was seeing Lily's classmates participate in various songs and dances when they joined Margot's concert at the elementary school. They were great and Lily was so funny. She performed a dance routine and song in Inuktitut and was very well received by the audience, along with all the other little ones. My concert was a bit of a challenge as I was partially responsible for putting the event on. It was a challenge to put on a large event in a new school, new community and to me, a foreign culture. Everything went well and we received lots of positive feedback.

Margot and I had a couple of errands to run the other day, so decided to pick Lily up together and head over to the stores. Lily likes being out in the world and we thought it would be fun. Well, it wasn't. Lily had had a long day at school and emotionally crashed shortly after our getting her. She has now hit a stage that involves complete shut down (pitching a fit, screaming, crying, falling to the ground). Knowing she was hungry, Margot grabbed a package of green grapes for her to nibble on while we finished our shopping. This helped a bit, but boy, when that kid get's going, it's tough to get back on track. I find it very frazzling to have Lily in this state. It's upsetting to me to see her so upset, and I'll admit it, embarasing. I can only imagine what bystanders are thinking. Anyhow, when I get to the checkout to pay for our items, the girl shows me the price of the already opened green grapes: $10.89!!!! This is a small package, about a pound. The manager tells me they are about $22.00 a kilo. I am floored, but we already opened them, so we pay and leave. No wonder there are nutrition issues up here when that is what fresh fruit costs.

I have finally gotten our snowmobiles finished (for the most part) and they are now both able to be ridden. Our used machines that were in "great shape" ended up costing an additional $700 in parts. This does not include the labour to do the work. I really dislike buying used things sometimes. However, with that being said, it is great to have them. They make life here easier and more enjoyable. I went for another amazing ride yesterday. I was able to make it to another part of the island and was able to watch a beautiful sunset (at 2 in the afternoon) over the open ocean. In the background I could hear hunters shooting their guns in their attempts to get a whale. There have been belugas around and people are really excited. The ice is starting to build up on the inlet and people are walking on it. The other day, a man's snowmobile fell through though. I heard that both he and the machine were rescued so I suspect it must have happened near shore. It will be great when the ice is thick and stable enough to travel on. I have been invited out caribou hunting on Baffin Island which will be a truly unique experience although a bit daunting.

Take care and have a safe Christmas holiday.

-Richard

Blizzards and a snowboard

2010-12-13T14:49:00.007-05:00

Below are photo's of:

1-5. snowboarding and snowmobiling
6. Lily trying on Margot's snow pants and boots
7. Lisa posing with the fur she and Margot bought for their parkas. Margot's is on the left and is blue fox. It will be enough for three parkas.
8. Lily playing with her helmet.
9-14. Various shots of my tour of the Cape Dorset Artists Co-op.
15. Kala pretending to be a sheep after spending a few minutes outside in a blizzard.
16. Birthday Party!
17. Lily tending her garden
18. Pizza!

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This is a bit of a hodgepodge of written work that I put together into one post. It has been a bit of a challenge it seems for me to get much time or energy to post this last bit. Anyhow, here is how our life has looked lately from my perspective. -Richard

December 5, 2010:

It was quite a week for me at work. Our school has been closed to students all week thanks to our heating system. It has been consistently over 30 degrees Celsius in most of the classrooms and hallways. My class peaked at 43 degrees. Yowch! The DEA (District Educational Authority) has decided that our school is not a suitable place for students. So I spent the week getting the music/drama room cleaned and sorted along with other school beautification jobs. But we had the most staff meetings ever, one lasted all day. It was brutal! I did manage to arrange a tour of the Co-op’s Lithograph and carving studio, which was great. We saw numerous examples of locally produced drawings and prints. The manager was very helpful and took heaps of time giving me and three other teachers a tour. We talked about how to bring the school and the studio closer together which I hope will turn out to be productive. The whole experience was very inspiring.

This week we had students but school was canceled one morning, one afternoon and an entire day due to blizzards. The wind was gusting at over 90 km hr. The entire house was shaking; it was pretty wild and a bit unsettling. In the midst of that, we realized that the heat upstairs doesn’t work. A worker was sent out to fix it but he was unable to. Luckily we brought along a small oil filled heater that keeps Lily’s room nice and warm. The blizzard left a snowdrift beside the building that was at least 5 feet tall.

Christmas is fast approaching and most of the staff from down south are keen to be heading home but are very concerned about the possible weather delays associated with all the blizzards we have been getting. Sadly, we are not going home to see our families but are keen on seeing what Cape Dorset is going to be like at Christmas. I have heard there are all sorts of community activities and often they have a large feast which futures a wide variety of country food.

Speaking of Christmas, we got our tree up and all our lights and such set up. It is very festive here and Lily is enjoying it. We have a small-motorized Santa that moves and sings “jingle bell rock” that we have had forever. Lily is really enjoying playing with him and having impromptu dance parties. Good times!

It is starting to look the way I thought the Arctic was going to look like up here. Last week Lisa and I went out snowmobiling and headed into the back-country. But first I went snowboarding behind Nipple Mountain. Not the best riding ever, but I still got in about 10 or so runs. It was nice to get some turns in. It will be nice when we get more snow then we can access more shuttle runs with the snowmobiles. I have snowshoes, but it’s a lot more fun to get a ride to the top. Also, when we have more snow and ice, I can use my snowkite to pull me on my board and that should be a good time. After snowboarding, we wound our way up and over a couple of mountains and found a super fun bowl to play in. I taught her different snowmobile techniques like how to side hill and get the high mark on the mountain. It was going great until the key for my machine fell out while we were driving. Luckily I was able to get the machine working and back to town. It was so much fun, I love snowmobiling.

Saturday was one of the nicer looking days I have seen up her yet with lots of fresh snow, sunshine and little wind. The sun was up by 10 am so Lily and I, along with a few kids from next door, headed out to go sledding. Very picturesque with the sun hitting the mountains on Baffin Island and the harbour starting to freeze up. I realized how much I miss the sun though. Quite a contrast to when we lived in Calgary, with it’s 200 sunny days a year. I do love cold, clear and sunny winter days.

Lily received a small starter garden that will grow sunflowers recently and is loving it. We take it out everyday and she talks about her garden and how well it is doing. It has five good sprouts on it, which is nice as I was concerned that nothing might grow.

Take care everyone and I hope your Christmas plans are coming along. Drop us a line, we love to hear from people!

December 13, 2010 update:

There are snowmobiles out on the ice today. I thought they were ice fishing but it turns out they are hunting seals. Oh, and last night was an iconic Canadian moment for me. After dinner we took the dogs out for a play in front of our place and it was wicked cold (-28 C). We were all playing in the snow when my neighbor came out with his son to play a bit of street hockey. Meanwhile, the northern lights were blazing across the sky and in the distance I heard snowmobiles zooming around. It was a very cool moment.

Overall, life is good up here. Lily is loving school, Margot and I are doing well with our classes and in our schools and our house is quite comfortable. We hope your lives are wonderful also! We are sure missing our families and friends though!

-Richard

Newfies and a babysitter

2010-11-28T20:56:00.001-05:00

Friday school was canceled because the day before the heating system in the high school was “fixed” which in turn changed my classroom (along with the rest of school) from a comfortable 20 degrees Celsius to upwards of 40! So I spent the whole day outside tearing apart the extra shipping crate we have and began transforming it into another shed for the other snowmobile. This shed is going under the stairs so we drive it in one side and out the other. Sadly, our machines don’t have reverse. Anyhow, it was a long, wet day.

Later that evening we were invited to a bit of a gathering for a birthday party so after we got Lily down to sleep we had our babysitter come over. She is a very responsible girl who goes to my school. She came over and met Lily a couple weeks ago and everything went very well. This is the first time Lily has ever been left with a babysitter with the exception of staying over at my parent’s house a few times. It is an odd feeling to be leaving her but it was nice to be able to go out with just adults. The majority of the people at the party were all from the Maritimes and it was a great time. We had our first proper kitchen party. It makes me laugh that we had it in Cape Dorset rather than the 8 months we lived in Halifax. A favorite memory for me will be me and a friend riding on one of our snowmobiles late at night while he managed to hold two guitars, smoke and not fall off. It was too funny! However it took a bit to get the guitars back into tune.

Saturday morning we all went out for a big sledding session. We were joined by a few kids and everyone had a good time. Lily went down the hill by herself for the first time!

Today we tackled moving our sealift goods out of the basement. What a pain! This is meant both literally and figuratively. It’s a nice job to have done.

Tomorrow is my birthday, 33! Woohoo!!! So I have taken steak, tiger prawns and lobster tails out of the freezer in preparation. Margot is making fresh bread and chocolate chip banana bread for me, which is one of my favorites. I am very excited.

Have a great week.

-Richard

Whale face!

2010-11-25T20:40:00.004-05:00

Yesterday I was told about a beluga whale that had been caught and was on the shore near the school. So I popped down there and was very excited about seeing busy fisherman (or are they hunters?) and a whale being all butchered up. Well you see what I saw. I must admit I was disappointed and a bit confused as to why the whale had had it's skin, blubber and fins removed while the rest was left to the seagulls. I waited in the snow and wind for a bit then headed back to school. I stopped in and talked with the Secretary of the school, Ooloosie (sorry if it is not spelled correctly). She has been very helpful clarifying customs and filling me in what is what up here. It turns out that her husband caught the whale in one of his nets. She explained that people only eat the meat from a whale when it is a fresh kill. If it recovered from a net (which are checked every 24 hours) then it has been dead for a while. Apparently this affects the taste and people don't like it as it tastes differently. However, they do use it to feed dogs and such. So, it does not go to waste which is great. Hey, the dogs have got to eat to right?

I have been thinking a lot about animals, hunting and culture lately. I grew up hunting and fishing in southern B.C. We hunted grouse (birds), rabbits and deer. Many others hunted black bear, elk, moose and ducks. When I grew older and moved to the city I chose to become a vegetarian because I did not want to support how animals who were raised for human consumption were treated over their lifetimes. Anyway, I have digressed. I now eat meat again. Principals, shmincipales. I do love bacon! Anyhow, hunting these animals seemed normal at the time and in hindsight. But coming up here, I had some trepidation about the hunting of animals that are found here. But, I tried to come with an open mind and not be judgmental and I feel I am doing a pretty good job. I realize, upon lots of personal reflection, that hunting a seal or what have you up here is the same as hunting a deer down south. In fact, my students asked me a while back if I was a hunter and I explained that when I was young, I was. When I told them we hunted deer, there response was "ohhh". This is in a "oh, that's kind of sad to kill such a cute animal" sort of ohhh. I was taken aback. These are the same kids who say their favorite country food meals are muktuk (beluga skin and blubber raw) and raw, frozen caribou. It just reinforces that normal is relative to your history and where you are at any given moment.

On a side note, the garden is doing very well. Our plants consist of large tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, basil, green onions and lettuce. Sadly, I was unable to get worms for composting though.

-Richard

Two steps forward, three steps back

2010-11-21T14:03:00.007-05:00

So the blog is getting around I guess. My neighbor came out to talk to Lily and I the other night as we were getting home off the snowmobile. A friend had told her about the blog and after looking through it pointed out that the crawlspace is NOT as good place to put food as we thought. This contradicts what we had be told before, however, once I heard her reasoning, I have opted to follow her recommendations. Turns out that the vents for the plumbing on our unit freeze over and the smell can spread throughout the crawlspace. This in turn can taint anything down there. Canned goods are okay, but that’s about it. So, since we are not interested in trying poo flavored crackers or bread, we have a whole lot of work ahead of us. We need to move everything up here and put it somewhere. Our extra room is now likely going to be our new pantry.

Margot is still having severe migraines, which is new for her. She was able to see a doctor while one was in town a few days ago and they are ordering in some medicine that may help. But she was told that if she were down south they would have sent her for a CT scan immediately and have her on special medication. But, we live in Cape Dorset so that’s not an option. They want to see how she will respond to the drugs first. Our not having Nunavut health care numbers yet also poses a problem as BC will not pay to fly her down to have medical treatment in Ottawa like Nunavut health care does.

Lilibeth is doing well and loving the snow. She is starting to stutter a bit, which is causing her some frustration because she can’t get her ideas or thoughts out fast enough. I am sure it is just a developmental stage as she is developing the language acquisition skills that are accompanying her growing vocabulary. We just remind her to slow down when she is really having trouble. She has now started telling herself to slow down also, it is quite funny.

I got the parts for the 2nd snowmobile (Margot’s) and on the second attempt at installing the springs, finally got them on. The spacers that hold the idler wheels in place had rusted on, but having never disassembled it before, I wasn’t sure how to take them off. I didn’t realize they were rusted on. I figured there must be a pin or a recessed Allen screw or something. So it’s nice to have that done. After I finished it yesterday I went out for a ride around town just to make sure everything was OK. While in an up and out of the way place, it started acting up. I was quite concerned; I thought I might be walking out. The engine started to bog down and was unable to rev up enough to fully engage the clutch. I opened up the hood and everything looked OK. I turned it off for a couple of minutes and then re-started, let it idle for a bit and away it went. It has always seemed a bit slow to get going, but this is very concerning. I came home and put in new plugs, added some methyl hydrate to the gas tank (in case of water mixed in) and am hoping that fixes it. We went out for a ride today and while it was still a bit doggy to get going, it did not stop working which is good. The only other quick fix is a new belt, although the one on there now seems to be decent. I was talking with a few guys last night and they seem to think it may be the main bearing going. With the combined power loss and a broken speedometer they figure that’s the culprit. It is a pricey fix and one I am reluctant to do until I know more. I am going stop into the Co-op’s shop tomorrow and hopefully they can help. Oh, and the brakes need to be adjusted. I think I may have bought a bit of a lemon. Oh well, too late now.

On friday, we went to the restaurant for the first time. We were feeling that we needed a treat. It was a quite fun. Lily and I picked up Margot and we took both sleds down and had numerous dishes of tasty, fatty food. MMMMMMMM. It was nice to not have to cook or clean up. Lily played with the kids at the next table. It started with talking to them and ended with her sitting at their table eating. After dinner they all pretended to be puppies.

We have had a fair bit of snow over the past couple of days so this morning Lily and I took the dogs out for a walk. Lily wanted to bring her sled. I put on Kala’s harness and Lily was very excited about being pulled around the neighborhood by Kala. Poor Kala though, she is used to being with Smoot and pulling an adult along with Lily. That’s what we did in Rossland BC Last year. She loves it because she can really get flying. Well, I wasn’t going to risk hurting her here as it’s hilly, icy and she is getting older. So, I had to leash her to keep her at a walking pace. Both the girls thought it was pretty good time.

Our snowmobile ride today was fun, but cold. It’s about minus 10 Celsius with a strong wind and blowing snow. We headed up the mountain then over to the park for a play. Margot is still very nervous about riding but is doing a great job. We did some trail riding for the first time, which is a bit tighter and is not as flat. Lily loved it! She switched between riding with Margot and me at least 10 times thinking it was the best thing. We had a good play at the park on the swings and then headed home for lunch. Margot made fresh bread! MMMMMMMMMM.

On a side note, I must say that I am having trouble with the darkness. The sun didn't crest the horizon until about 10:30 this morning and was setting by around 2 pm. It is dark when we leave in the morning and dark when we get home. Poor Lily is having trouble keeping naps and bedtime strait also. Oh well, I am sure we'll get there.

Take care,

Richard

Moving to Cape Dorset, Nunavut?

2010-11-12T23:08:00.004-05:00

First off, thanks Morena for the help with the photos. It seems that I can now post them, but I am still having trouble moving them or placing captions on them. So, you'll just have to figure it out.

Moving to Cape Dorset?

We have been asked to put together a list of things you need or need to know about moving up here, many of which I wish I had known first. I am writing this from the perspective of a teacher who is moving to Nunavut because I can only speak from our experience. This is the sort of thing we will add to I am sure, but at this point it is more of a “don’t forget” list with bits and pieces I keep meaning to write down before I forget.

First off, ask questions of who is hiring you. They should have a package of info for you. Next, ask bloggers. We had so much help from Morena who writes the babies and bulldogs blog. Thanks Morena. Be sure to read this link http://towniebastard.blogspot.com/2010/07/moving-to-iqaluit-faq-v-30.html from the townie bastard in Iqaluit as it is great.

Moving:

Be sure to pack everything you need for up to two or more months. This includes clothes, outdoor clothing, bedding, bath stuff, basic kitchen things, stuff to set up your class and program, paperwork related to the move, cheques, cash, food (both dry and perishable). We brought three large rubbermaid type bins that helped. It was important for us to know that when we got here we would be able to eat the way we liked. It helped all of us transition into our new home. You are basically camping until your moving contents arrive, which may take a while. Remember, liquor is Restricted in Cape Dorset so you can't just pick something up when you get here. My students tell me the going rate for a mickey of bootlegged (illigal) hooch is running around $100. So, if you want booze you must go through the application process when you get here and brace yourself for the prices. A flat of 24 cans of beer bought legally is about $300 or about $13.00 each! Be sure to review what you are and are not entitled to in regards to moving expenses and keep your recipts. Also, be ready for a long wait to get reimbursed.

You arrange for your utlities at the hamlet and power, internet and cable at the northern store. To set up your phone, find a phone and contact northwest tel. Rent comes off your paycheque eventually.

Services:

Nunavut arranged to have packers/movers come to our house in small town southern BC. We had a packed a few things and we asked to stop packing because Nunavut wants to be sure we were not packing items that are prohibited (food, booze, etc…). They arranged for our things to be moved from our house in BC to our house in Nunavut. Be aware though, the packers we had were more focused on speed than ensuring our things got here safely. Get Insurance! We have head some moving horror stories. Also, it can take a while (up to a couple of months) for your things to get here.

Sealift:
The Sealift are goods that are shipped from down south on a large ship. Here is a link to Government of Nunavut that outlines it: http://www.gov.nu.ca/sealift/ . You can order your food and other goods through a company or pack it yourself and take it to the packaging company (TSC I think?). I don’t know much about this as we had a company arrange the shipping. However, it is much cheaper and you get a much better selection of goods putting together a sealift yourself. Some people stop off in Ottowa (?) and do their buying before they come up for the year. This way you can shop where you like and find the sales. You can also ship up large items like ATV, snowmobiles, furniture and vehicles. A friend just shipped up a 1 ton 4x4 6 passenger truck with duallies and a canopy for $5000. I have heard a small suv is about $2000 and a quad is about $400.

Online shopping:
Here are a few companies that do free shipping or have it included in their prices at this time:
Bestbuy Canada
Well.ca
Costco Canada
Amazon.ca
LL Bean.com
http://marchecentralmetro.ca/ - this is the company we do our foodmail through. Food mail is a program that is going to be shut down in March that subsidizes the shipping of fresh, healthy food to the north. We are very upset about the loss of it.

mountainbaby.com is a great store from nelson BC who carries real outdoor gear for kids. It is where we got most of Lily’s stuff. You do pay shipping though the rates are fair.

Helpful Hint:
Pay Canada Post $45 to have your mail forwarded to the school you are going to be working at. This way, anyone who ships you large, expensive care packages only has to pay to have it be shipped from a community near where you used to live to your old address, then Canada Post will ship it to your new address up here automatically and without additional charge. Really, it works.

Use all your shipping allotment! You only get it once and you can always sell stuff you bring up that you don’t use.

Bring your movies and music. We digitized all our cd's and sold them before we came to lessen the amount we traveled with.

Stuff you might need or want:

Gear
• Insulated rubber boots
• Ice Cleats that slip on over your winter boots. It gets very icy.
• High quality rain jacket and pants. We have helly hanson gear and love it! Thin fleece gloves for the shoulder season and a hat
• Windstopper fleece jackets (it’s always blowing up here, always)and a warm toque
• Good winter gear. Some people buy coats up here that are nice, but I opted for a Canada Goose Expedition Parka that is super warm. I did not want to leave a coat to chance.
• Hiking backpacks. You carry everything here so something designed to carry some weight, that’s durable and has a raincover
• If you plan on going out on the land or hiking, you need to be able to protect yourself. So be sure to get your firearms training course before you come and bring a gun/ammo. I brought a 12 gauge pump action shotgun. I chose this because ammo is readily available and rifled slugs have a lot of stopping power. At the very least, look into getting bear bangers. They make a very loud sound, require no special permits and are non-lethal.
• Binoculars are nice because there are so many pretty things to see.
• I brought along my snowboards and tools for maintaining them. I also got a snow kite because I want to have something fun to do in when it gets cold and snowy.
• We bought a Nintendo WII for fun. The dancing games are quite a hit with our friends.
• A small tabletop propane (the kind that takes the small tanks) BBQ. They sell them here but they’re very expensive. We are able to buy the small non-refilable tanks up here at both stores, but we have to ask customer service and sign for them. There is a problem with people inhaling or sniffing the gas and getting high.
• Instruments. If you play, bring something up. We brought my drum set and two guitars. I am now running a Drum club at school, the kid’s love it.
• Fishing gear if you enjoy it.
• Tools!!! At the least, bring a simple tool kit with the basics for stuff around your house. Also, bring a couple extension cords, power bars, misc nails, screws and drywall anchors. If you plan on getting an atv or snowmobile, get a better set of tools that include electrical repair stuff, chain and locks. Tools and hardware are so expensive up here.
• A shovel
• A large humidifier
• Various flashlights and a headlamp. It’s dark here.
• A high quality Camera, it’s pretty up here
• Folding nylon camp chairs. They come in handy.
• Fitness equipment.
• Goggles and high quality sunglasses
• Helmets if you plan on using a quad or atv
• We bought snowshoes and poles to go out and explore as a family but I hear that the snow is quite hard and we may not need them.

Kids stuff you might not think about
• A high quality jogging stroller.
• Rain clothes (good ones!)
• High quality winter gear, not the stuff from the department store. It’s worth spending more. We bought Molehill gear for Lily and it seems to be doing very well.
• Fun things for little ones room. The living arrangements are very white up here.
• Backpack for the little one. Yours is going to be full.
• A vehicle. I really regret not bring up an SUV. It costs about $2500 to ship one up but you can pack it with all your sealift goods along with extra fluids and tires. When it costs over $10,000 for a quad up here. When it is cold and blowing while pushing Lily in her stroller home or to school I wish I had brought a truck up. If you could pick something up down south in good shape for under $5000 and be into it for under $10,000 you could defiantly get your money out of it after a couple of years.
• Presents. Buy them before you move and put them in with your moving things.
• Foam play mat. The lino is hard.
• Lots of toys and games.
• A sled
• Books!
• Any baby or kid stuff you use in the kitchen
• Diapers, wipes, TP can all go in your moving allotment. We brought enough to last until Lily is out of diapers. I have heard Amazon does free diaper shipping, but I can’t confirm.
• Goggles for little one
• Sunglasses for little one. Good quality.

Household (if you are sharing a place, consider bringing up what you need anyways just in case they leave and take their things with them)
• Apartment sized deep freeze
• DRAPES AND RODS!!!! The furnished houses up here do not come with these.
• All things you need to have a happy kitchen.
• Bedding and pillows
• Storage. I wish we would have brought a cheap assemble it yourself bookshelf.
• Rubbermaid bins are always helpful
• Bring up good coffee
• If you are thinking of getting new electronics, wait until you get here because bestbuy Canada ships for free. So there is not point using your shipping allotment up.
• A wireless router if you need wireless in your house
• Mops, brooms, garbage cans, mop buckets and any other large items. Bulky things up here are more expensive
• Art. We brought some posters, pictures and a digital picture frame.
• Area rugs. They are small and break up the lino that covers our entire house.

Pets
• Long thin dog leashes to tie up your dogs. The nylon webbing style allows you to close the door with the metal clips in the house where they can stay warm.
• Dog crates to ship your pet up here
• Extra medications! There are no vets in Nunavut. You need to be self sufficient with your pet. You may want to bring up a hand sprayer for the bathroom also. It’s such a pain to give big dogs a bath without one.
• Nail clippers and quick stop
• Extra metal clips for leashes. The metal stair treads and cold and extremely hard on them. We seem to be breaking one every 2 months.
• Dog food. It is pricey up here for low quality kibble. It is worth a doing a sealift just for it. Toys and dog treats too.

School Stuff
• A good laptop is handy and most schools seem to be shifting to macs. You may get something old and dated. If you are a newer teacher, I suspect you use your computer a lot and want it to be able to run modern software, bring your newer laptop.
• Any and all resources you use or like. Don’t expect much to be at your school. Come prepared and self-contained.
• Stickers, prizes, consumables, class decoration. Bring anything you think is fun and would make your life nicer or prettier.
• An espresso maker for your class. I think every teacher should have one!
• Thing are pretty casual up here in regards to clothing. However, like down south some dress nicer than others. I tend to be a bit more casual with nice white skate shoes, jeans and good-looking t-shirt. On fancy days I wear a golf shirt. It’s about personal preference and for me, I like to be physical and play with the kids. I hate having to hold back because I am wearing expensive clothes. I worked at a fancy private school for a while and it was something I always disliked. Also, the thermostat is broken in my class, which makes it the hottest place in Nunavut, so I like to be comfy. I am planning on wearing my birks soon.

Well, it’s getting late and I need to go to bed. Take care and I hope this helps. Please add any and all things we missed to the comments section.

-Richard

Big polar bear and little people

2010-11-11T15:12:00.004-05:00

Today we headed out with Lily and Lisa to see what the Hamlet was doing for Remembrance Day. We loaded up the stroller and walked down to the Hamlet office. It is about minus five and it was blowing up to 60 km winds this morning but had died out a bit by the time we left. Sadly it turns out the community didn’t do anything because nobody decided to take on the planning this year. So we headed down to the shoreline which was fun because there were people getting boats and gear ready to head out to camps for the long weekend and Lisa had never been down to this particular area before. So we hung out for a bit and headed over the Northern, but it was closed. Then I thought I would show the Polar Bear hide that was up on a frame drying out. This was the same bear they had seen being butchered a couple days ago. Once we got there we were taking pictures of it in front of the house feeling a bit odd, just standing looking at someone’s house when the window opened up and one of lily’s buddies from school pops his head out. So we asked the family if they minded us touching the hide and such and it was no problem. Next thing we know there are kids all over the place and the man who shot the bear was at the window and we chatted for a bit. Turns out it’s a female, so about half the size of full grown male. He thinks it was quite old as there were no cubs around and the shape the teeth were in. He found it about 40 minutes by boat heading over to the mainland. It is huge and very soft. The funniest thing about being near the bear was when Lily wanted to touch it at the last moment she changed her mind and told us the bear was saying “no thank you, I don’t want to be touched.” We then started heading home with numerous kids in tow.

It was a fun morning out. The house is quiet with Lily and the dogs asleep and Margot gone off to her sewing club. She is keen on trying to get her parka all finished as she only has her ski shell and fleece.

So, here is the next chapter in the snowmobile debacle. The used snowmobile that we purchased needed to be repaired it turns out. There is a small piece of metal attached to the suspension that stops the springs and shocks from moving too far and inverting which would then rub on the track causing it to tear. Turns out, this is why this sled has a new track; this is what happened to it last year. The previous owner to it and had it fixed, or so he thought. Fast forward to this last weekend. While trying to fit the snowmobile into the new shed, the springs compress and invert. Luckily, the water truck was here along with my neighbor who is very handy and owns the same kind of snowmobile. We flip the sled on its side and figure the problem out. I go over to see Eric’s sled in his shop to see what it should look like meanwhile the water truck guy and a carver and able to push the spring back to where they should be. We decide it will be safe to drive to my school, which has a nice shop I will be able to disassemble it in and fix it. Needless to say, I bought a carving from the guy who was helping. The next day, I take it to school and at lunch figure out how to take it apart. I take the frame up to the welder at the Hamlet garage who says he’ll have it done tomorrow. Two days go by and it’s finally done. We have an early dismissal yesterday so I go the shop to get it. When I get there it has just been welded up and it still mighty hot. I pull out my wallet and am told not to worry about it. The guys seem gruff but are really quite nice. I give the fella some cash and say coffee is on me. I make a comment about how I heard that there were no gentlemen who worked up here and that was not the case. The shop foreman tells me schoolteachers should be careful what they say there because they are all pink Floyd fans. I don’t get it, so I wait for the punch line. He say’s “cause we don’t need no education.” I smile and say thanks, and then head back to the school. Well, I got it put back together and properly adjusted. I have never worked on a snowmobile and do not even have an owner’s manual. I am still very proud of myself. Yay me! HAHAHAha.

We decided to purchase the twin to this one also as it is a bit small for the three of us and it is a good idea to always go with another sled if you are going out on the land in case something goes wrong. Turns out that one needs work too. Frustratingly I realize this after I buy it. Grrrrrrrrr. However the old owner is a stand up guy and did not realize there was an issue and has offered to pay for the parts to fix it. I am sure he would have refunded me my cash had I asked, but I really want the sled. The springs that hold up the snowmobile’s rear end are shot and need to be replaced. But, really the other one could use new ones also. It bottoms out if we both try to ride it. I will order the parts tomorrow from Iqaluit assuming they have them in stock. The nice thing about buying a machine from up here is that you end up getting something that is common to the area and parts are readily available.

To all bloggers who read this, I need help. Blogger seems to have changed it's layout as far as posting goes. On the toolbar used to be a button I could press that would allow me to upload and publish pictures. The button has vanished and I don't know what to do now! Has this happened to others? Have I changed a setting unwittingly and if so, how do I reset it? I need help, please help.

Take care,

-Richard

Arctic Moments

2010-11-11T15:11:00.001-05:00

Arctic moments?

I have been what I call Arctic Moments lately. These are moments when the reality of where of live and how different my Canada and Canada up here are so very different. First off, it is starting to look very different. We are getting fierce windstorms regularly (50-90km hr) along with freezing temperatures that are bringing us snow finally. It is nice to see (or not see) the dirt, mud and sand disappear under a crusty blanket of snow. The house is much cleaner now, as the dogs are not tracking in so much muck. I spent my weekend working on our snowmobile shed while Lily played with a few neighborhood kids out in the snow. It was snowing and blowing all day with large Toonie sized flakes. I love the snow and it was fun to be out playing with Lily, trying to find to the soft, deep pockets of snow to jump in and make snow angles. I managed to get one of the sheds done, but what a pain. All the wood is full of staples and is warped so it’s a challenge to create much of anything with very limited tools, poor quality wood and crazy weather, but one is done.

Margot went over to talk to an elder in town about getting a pair of mittens made because the woman who sold Lily and me ours approached her and claimed her mother (who makes them) had a problem with cashing her cheque. Because she had no money she wanted Margot to prepay for the mitts, sight unseen. Wisely Margot decided to go to the source and stopped by to talk to the elder and find out for herself what was up. So she and Lisa stopped by her house after craft group on Saturday and when they got into the house found a number of women butchering an adult polar bear in their kitchen. It was quite a surprise I’m sure. So, in the end the elder had no idea what Margot was talking about in regards to the mitts. I guess the go between just wanted some spending cash.

Lily and I spent some time replanting the garden. We got some good soil shipped up from down south and mixed it in with the soil we already had. Once we had the plants out Lily helped me mix everything up. She felt the best way to do this was to get into the bins and mix it by hand. We had a great time and the garden seems to be doing quite well.

On Sunday night we had a young teenage carver come to the door. He is mid high school age I suspect although I have never seen him at school. He is a nice enough kid, but a bit too pushy for me. He has been by a few times and always gives a bit of a sob story about being hungry and wanting chips and pop. I have always thought he must not be that hungry if that is what he is going to spend his money on. Saturday he stopped by to see if I was interested in seeing a couple of carvings he was working on and I told him to stop by when they were done. Then he hit me up for junk food, to which I told him no. So, on Sunday night he stopped in to try and sell a small seal carving. The quality was not great but it was his first try and I have to give the kid credit for trying to make money an honest way. I liked the seal enough to pay his asking price. While I was looking he kept trying to hit me up for a pop or chips. I told him in no uncertain terms it was not going to happen and to back off. After I told him I would buy the carving he continued to push, but then he asked for anything, even leftovers. Well, you have to be hungry to ask for someone’s leftovers. So Margot put together a moderate portion of chicken and veggie stir fry and rice from the previous nights meal. He was sort of thankful and took off into the night. Later I went out side and found the container the food was in discarded onto the ground and was quite angry that he had so disrespectful as to litter in front of the house. I came back into the house and told Margot who pointed out that anybody who would eat that much food so fast without cutlery must have been hungry and she felt bad we hadn’t given him more. I felt very sheepish about my perspective on the whole event and it was a good learning moment for me.

It a tough place to be sometimes. Many children are loved and well cared for, however there are still too many who are not. Being teachers we spend a lot of time with these children and truly care about them and it is heart wrenching seeing them in light summer coats and runners in -10 Celsius temperatures with blowing wind and snow asking for food because there parents are spending their money on drugs and alcohol (or who knows what). The drugs and alcohol purchasing is not a fictitious creation of a quallunat (non-Inuit) mind; rather it is what we are told by the children, their friends and often time other community members. I know we can make a difference in the classroom, but sometimes that doesn’t seem to be enough. I feel our life is very decadent here in comparison to what some of the kids face day to day. Margot has befriended one little girl who has over ten other children and youth living in the same house and a parent who has a substance abuse problem. She is not sure day to day where she is going to sleep or if she will have any food at any given meal. How can we expect kids to behave and learn at school when this is what they face when not at school. We one the other hand have a warm, clean, spacious home full of food and nice things. We even have an extra room we don’t use! There are problems in all communities and being in a small community like this one we hear about everyone in town. But, this place has some major problems. I am not here to cast condemnation on all Inuit people, but some are truly messed up and I hate how they treat their children and pets.

Sorry, no pictures as they seem to have gotten rid of the option to publish photo's. I am still looking into the issue and hopefully we'll get it sorted out. Or, we'll just go back to posting using smugmug again. We'll let you know what we are up to as soon as we know.

-Richard

Gettin er done eh

2010-11-03T21:05:00.003-04:00

We got our food order delivered yesterday after school with minimal breakage. The crate the girls re-packed our food into shifted while being moved and two flats of water bottles fell out which is really sad as I have plans for the empty bottles. The good news is Margot is quite quick and rescued more from being crushed by the loader. Lily and me got home earlier than expected due to another parent not showing up for a scheduled meeting after school. This is now three out of four. It is very frustrating trying to work with parents on an issue a student has and not having any support or the decency to show up for a meeting they agreed to. Don’t these people realize I am giving up my own time away from my family to meet to help their kid? Sometimes I find this profession very frustrating. Anyway...

So me and Lily trudge home in the sleet with the stroller up and over the hill to find two very large wooden crates in our “driveway” that are in need of attention as it is getting colder (-5C) and snowing/raining. Margot and me get Lily sorted with a show and a special treat: a TICKY LOOPY! She is happy and settled but so very tired as the daycare forgot to put a diaper on her for her nap again so she peed and woke up early. When she misses sleep she is such a monster. Margot started dinner while I starting hauling everything up the stairs in the snow into the house so things didn’t freeze or get stolen. We were both able to unload for a while as we waited for Lisa to join us for some unloading and dinner. Sadly we had to start dinner without her because she got hung up at school and Lily had a complete meltdown when she finished her treat and was reminded that she could only have the one. This was a full on big tears, throwing her hands in the air and flinging herself about meltdown. It was upsetting for us all.

Dinner went well with Lily and I sharing my dinner while she sat on my lap. She perked up with a tummy full of warm food and was back to her usual self by meal’s end. Lisa joined us and while Margot and I took turns on getting Lily bathed, storied and put to bed we all worked to unload, sort, inventory and store away our gigantic sealift. We worked for 3 or 4 hours and got everything unpacked and stored away. After dinner I took on the task of being in the crawl space. To get things into in stuff is passed through a trapdoor that is over the fresh water tank. To “catch” things I had to lean over the tank on my knees then push boxed up to 35 feet to their final locations. My knees were beyond painful by the end of the night. But everyone busted their buts and goterdun. We had a glass of wine and all said goodnight. Lisa, thanks again for your help!

I now have three large shipping containers that need to be disassembled and turned into a shed that will hold a couple of snowmobiles. I want to be able to drive in one side and out the other. My mom and dad have been kind enough to mail us some hardware (latches, locks, screws, hinges) that I can use to put it together. They are calling for rain and snow for the next few days then it is supposed to get quite cold and snowy Monday.

After school today I started the process of turning three shipping crates and miscellaneous lumber into a drive through shed for the snowmobile and other assorted things. Everything is muddy, icy, wet and cold so it’s not very fun. However it will be sweet when it’s done.

That’s about it from me. Take care all!

-Richard

Cops, boats and wacky kids

2010-11-03T21:04:00.008-04:00

I am starting with an update about gun safety here in Cape Dorset. The other day an RCMP member came to the house with a pamphlet on firearm safety and told me about a program in which they are distributing free trigger locks for guns here. Yay!!!! I think this is a great thing and I hope everyone uses one properly.

The last couple of days have been sealift days, which are always exciting around town as the stores get new stock and there are a host of new vehicles out and about. We got our sealift, which came mixed in with Margot’s school’s order. So it is a mixed blessing for her in that she has had to deal with it along with teaching. It has added allot to her already busy day. I wish I could help more but, well, I am down the hill at my school all day. My understanding of what they had to do was unload a large sea can into and around the school and separate various personal and school items. Then Margot and her friend who works at the school, Lisa, had to move all our stuff out of the middle of the school and pack it into a crate that she will board back up and wait for a forklift to deliver to the house for a fee. It is quite an undertaking. It’s very frustrating that they did not pack everything separately. I am sure Margot will elaborate on this procedure in the future.

Halloween was super fun! Lily dressed up in her princess dress on Friday that Mama sent from her house in BC at daycare. The kids all took the school bus up to Margot’s school for a costume parade that I hear was a very frustrating because it took SOOOO long. Margot said her kids sat for an HOUR before they could do a parade. When Lily got there she sat with her classmates for a bit then went up with Margot’s class for the parade. Afterwards she spent a few minutes in her class while she dismissed her class and then went home with her. After dinner we all headed back up to Margot's school because she volunteered to help supervise a dance the grade 6 class had planned for the older grades in her school. Lily had a blast! She loves kids and dancing so it was a hit. She was quite sad having to say goodbye early to her mom and the kids though. The dance ended much later than her bedtime of 7:30. Even with leaving early she didn't go down until 8:30.

Trick or Treating was dictated by the hamlet to be Saturday night from 6 pm to 8:30 pm. As you all know, Halloween was Sunday. I do like though that we all know when the kids are coming and there weren’t any after 8:30 pm which was nice. After dinner we got Lily all dressed up in her Monkey costume that goes over her winter clothes and headed out with the stroller. In the beginning she wasn’t a big fan but once she realized that she got to have a Ticky Loopy (lolly pop) and play with all the kids, she loved trick or treating. We were out for an hour or so and thought we should head home to hand out some candy to the kids. That, and it was getting quite cold. So we get home and Lily insists on handing out candy to everyone which was very funny. I found it odd and bit frustrating that the adults also trick or treat, even without kids. Very strange indeed. Getting Lily down was a bit of a chore because she was so jacked up but once we did Lisa, a friend who works with Margot came over and we had a nice visit and a WII dance party. It was a very good night.

School is going well for the most part. Crazy kids all jacked up on co-op days free candy last week (the stupidest idea ever) and Halloween this week. Having taught at a small rural school in Northern BC last year, I had a haunch what I was getting into this year, as did Margot, but I sure do feel bad for some new teachers this year who are really struggling. There are few resources for us to use and those that we do have are quite out of date. Most everything we use is book based so it is a challenge to get the kids doing hands on work. In science, we don’t have the materials to do labs and such which is a shame considering that many of the kids struggle with reading and writing. Many of us teachers who are new to Nunavut have also noticed that the kids really struggle with the idea of original thought and creativity. They don’t do well with group work or discussions. I realize they are English as a Second Language (ESL) but I think it may be more cultural. Their oral history is about telling stories that actually happened, not fictional myths or moral stories. I also don’t think there is the emphasis on literacy at home that I am used to. There are of course many more reasons but the end result is a bit frustrating when I am teaching anything that requires creativity. It is a long slow process, but one that I feel is worthwhile so I keep plugging away. I must say though, the students all love work sheets and this is a problem as I think most of the new teacher’s that I know try to avoid them.

Sorry, no pictures because blogger is using a new program to upload photo's and seems to be having problems. No worries, we'll post them soon.

Gotta run; hope all is well in your life!

-Richard

Whale bones and Ticky Loopies

2010-10-27T21:59:00.000-04:00

Hello all, sorry for the big delay in posting. Life has been busy as per usual. Well, that and we got cable. I know, it’s sad that has such an impact on our ability to communicate with the outside world but it has. Lily got a cold on Friday so I had to take the afternoon off and come home with her. I stayed home with her Monday as well. Margot stayed home with her on Tuesday, then started to get ill herself so stayed home with her today. The good news is they seem to be doing better and everyone is going to school tomorrow.

The last two Saturdays I have gone out for big morning walks while Margot stays home with the pants. It has been really good for my spirit to get some time outside by myself. We don’t get much alone time these days and I have been missing it as I was so ill. So last week I walked up to what was going to be a new septic lake for the town but turned into a 20 million dollar road to nowhere. It makes a great walking path though! The dogs loved it and we all enjoyed the exercise. Did a bit of shooting which was alright. I realized I hadn’t shot my shotgun in many years and since I have it for protection I should make sure it works alright. Well, it does and then some. I have Winchester 12 gauge pump action shotgun that was left to me by my grandfather and holy cow does it have some kick. It’s a funny thing about carrying it. I grew up around firearms and recently taken the Canadian Firearms safety course and feel quite comfortable handling guns. I am legally allowed to carry it. However, I still feel like I am breaking a taboo every time I unlock it and take it for a hike or shoot it. I feel very self conscience. But I do see many others doing what I am doing and the only thing people ask is if I am going hunting with honest curiosity. Oh well, I am still new here and I’m sure I will get more comfortable.

I went for another hike this last weekend from the park which is a couple KM’s from town and hiked the shoreline towards town in search of the remainder of the whale carcass that was killed last year. I did find it and WOW it is HUGE. I knew it would be big, but standing next to vertebrae that are as big as my dog. I found a piece of baleen and strapped it to my bag to bring home. My neighbor asked me how it was that I went hunting and all I got was a piece of baleen with a big smile on her face.

Lily is doing well and as silly as ever. She has really started to explore imaginative play. she is creating all sorts of story lines and using things around the house as props for her games. One of her favorites lately are taking Booster (her toy rabbit) to the airport so they can get on or see an airplane and she can have a ticky loopy. She packs her stuffy into a lunch bag and gets into her stroller in the boot room or straps booster in and then does it all over again. She is such a cutie.

School is going well for the most part. We got Internet yesterday which is very exciting. I have been participating in one of the teacher’s after school group: guitar club. It’s been nice to play with others again. My drum set is a big hit and everyone has been very respectful of my gear. They always ask to use it and one of the boys who has been really enjoying playing is now trying to buy his own set which is pretty cool.

We are supposed to be getting our sea lift on Friday, but I’ll believe it when I see it. It keeps being pushed back so I am a bit cynical. However, I am really excited about having a house full of food instead of a bag of groceries from the store costing way too much.

We got a package that contained the tools needed to put up our drapes finally! Yeah! We have been using plastic table cloth covers over the windows for the past two months and it will be nice to have some fabric up. With no carpet the house is very boomy and the walls are very white so it’s nice having some colour and sound absorption. So we are starting to work our way through our house and have all but two windows done.


Lily playing with Sassie the visiting puppy

Looking down towards the ocean and the park

Looking back towards the playground at the park

Whale bones

Ribs (I think)

This is about 4 1/2 feet tall and quite long

Lily keeping all of us safe, starting with Booster and Deetdeet

On top of the hill looking towards the other side (?) of the island

A long drop to the other side, but so pretty

On top looking towards town

On our way home looking down on Cape Dorset

On our way home from our hike. Boy those dogs slept well.

Thanks for visiting and stay safe! Lots of love to our family and friends.

-Richard

cbc comes to our hamlet

2010-10-15T19:54:00.002-04:00

Well, when CBC comes to town you know you're big news. Here is the Video that I have yet to see due to our very slow Internet tonight. Here is an article on what has been happening in the community lately. At school we had a critical incident meeting this afternoon with a team who had been brought in to work with a few organizations in town. I have never been through this type of meeting before and it was very helpful to hear what some of my peers were going through and I hope it helps. It was exhausting though and quite slow as both the school's staff member went through it together. There were at least 40 plus people there which made everything slow going.

What a week! I'm wiped and tired, so I am signing off. Take care everyone and make sure your guns are locked up. Oh, about my post about trigger locks the other day, I was talking to someone today (no names) and she informed me that the police had done gun safety programs in the past that ended with free trigger guards, only to find them in the garbage or used to lock things other than guns on their follow up visits. So, turns out the RCMP have tried free trigger locks in the past also. Sorry for my misinformation.

-Richard

Food Mail is freaking rad and other such thoughts

2010-10-14T20:48:00.002-04:00

I love food mail day. Fresh glorious food! We have had numerous requests for specific information about living up here and we are trying to do this. I thought Food Mail info would be helpful as we were very confused about the whole process coming up here due to a lack of information. For those who don't know what food mail is, keep reading. For those who do, skip a short paragraph.

This is my understanding of the program, however it could be quite wrong in some ways too, so be sure to look into it yourself if you need more info. Food mail is food shipping program that subsidized specific businesses who sell and ship food to remote communities. It is designed to ensure residents have access to nutritious food and stay healthy which saves the Canadian taxpayer in the long run I would suspect. Here is a list of the changes which they have recently made and the following items are no longer allowed. They are trying to encourage fresh perishable food is being shipped, not things that can be shipped on a sea lift.

FOOD MAIL PROGRAM – NUTRITION NORTH CANADA

ALL PASTA NOODLES, SOUP NOODLES, LENTILS, RICE, ORZO, DRIED PEAS, KRAFT DINNER.
ALL CANNED GOODS SUCH AS FRUITS, VEGETABLES, SOUPS, FISH, PÂTÉS.
EAGLE BRAND MILK, TEA, COFFEE, WATER, TOMATO JUICE, V-8 JUICE, ALL THE MARINADES.
CAKE MIX, MUFFIN MIX, CAKE FROSTING, PASTRY DOUGH, PUDDING MIX OR PREPARED PUDDING, JELLO POWDER, BAKER’S CHOCOLATE, POP CORN.
CHEESE WHIZ SPREAD, JAMS, JELLY, COFFEE WHITENER.
CROISSANT, GARLIC BREAD, ALL DIPS, CREAM CHEESE, SOUR CREAM, CREAM, YOP, HARD MARGARINE, HYDROGENATED SOFT MARGARINE, SHERBET, ICE MILK, ICE CREAM, FROZEN YOGOURT.
FRENCH FRIES, SIDE BACON, WHOLE PUMPKINS.
DIAPERS, TOILET PAPER, SANITARY NAPKINS, BODY SOAP, LAUNDRY DETERGENT, DISHWASHING DETERGENT, FABRIC SOFTENER, SHAMPOO, CONDITIONER, PRESCRIPTION DRUG

We use a company named marche central du nord.

So, we just had ours delivered tonight and here is what it looks like:

Food Mail boxes

Food Mail all unpacked

Now this is a big meat order as we don't really like much of the meat that is available up here in the stores. It's expensive and most of the cuts include bones. This is not an average weekly order for us because we are trying to fill up our deep freeze (a very helpful thing, be sure to bring one up with you) just in case there is a time when we cannot get planes in.

This order includes about $600 in food and the final bill came to approximately $800. There are packing fees, freight and the goods and services tax. So, it does bump the prices but the veggies are very fresh and we can get goods that are not available up here like sausage and soy milk. mmmmmmm.

We received our Canada Goose Order and the coats are very nice but pricey! The sticker is $625 plus taxes each. Sadly Margot's did not fit well so is being sent back. The worst part is there seem to be none available anywhere right now until the company begins shipping there latest production run, which may not be for a while. Good thing she is working on building a traditional Inuit parka at her craft group. I must say though, I do love my new coat! It's a funny thing about the fur though, it's a bit like having our dog Kala wrapped around my head. The consistency and feel of the coyote fur is identical. Makes sense though as they are all part of the canine family. A local was telling me domestic dog fur makes a great fur for clothes as it repels water very well and is quite warm. Hmmm, I'll stick with coyote thanks.

Mr. Winter!

Gosh, electronics drive me crazy sometimes. I bought Margot an 8gb Ipod touch for her birthday after much to do (numerous problems with the credit card address). Well, it can't hold a charge and seems to be overheating during use. So, now we have to send it back. boohoooooo! A real stinker eh? Oh well, we'll get another one!

Oh, and one of the boys who was involved in the shooting with RCMP the other night, was actually registered in my class. I have never met him though as he has never come to school. We had some follow up meetings with the students and such today, but I am too tired to write about it. This is the sort of topic I need to be sure I am firing on all cylinders to talk about, and right now, I am like a v6 running on 3. I can't wait for this damn illness to leave me.

Take care all!
-Richard

WTF?! Another shooting in Dorset today!

2010-10-13T10:22:00.001-04:00

I have moved my family to the hood. Last night or early this morning (I am very unclear about the details at this point) there was another shooting involving two grade 9 students. Thankfully they are not in my class as one was wounded superficially by the RCMP. I am getting conflicting stories, but the one that seems to pan out is that the boys were shooting at the cops who returned fire and wounded one of the kids. Classes were canceled and there is a community meeting at two in the high school gym to discuss coping strategies and such hosted by the public mental health nurse.

What a messed up situation. Yet again it was down in the valley (far below our house, near the other fatal shooting) and I can see the RCMP vehicles out my back window. I know stuff like this happens in other communities and because we are small (1200 - 3000 people depending on the source) everyone is affected and information spreads fast. But, when we lived in Calgary and Halifax I never felt scared because of the anonymity that one feels in the city, but here we are all so exposed. Everyone knows who we are, where we work and where we live. It is quite disconcerting. If this keeps up, I can see really re-evaluating how long we stay.

So, my travel tip for the day. If you are thinking about a scenic trip to Cape Dorset, stay home.

Regards,

Richard

Update:
My day started with learning that Cape Dorset has such a bad reputation that it has been called 'Cape Fear'. Just one more thing we didn't know before moving here.
The 'community' meeting turned out to be just the staff from the two schools. It was disappointing to not have the community rallying together. I was also disappointed that none of the local teachers came down from the elementary school. There is so much stuff going on it would be nice to hear more from the local people about how to handle things. I had hoped that the meeting would provide me some insight into what to say to my children tomorrow instead it was a chance for us to talk. I wasn't prepared for it. Three 'incidents' in three weeks is three too many. Everyone admits to a sense of worry about what might be coming next. We are all hoping this is the end of it!
-Margot

CBC links and my latest rant

2010-10-12T21:14:00.000-04:00

Hello all. Just a quick post tonight.

Here are a couple of links to the CBC north website and their write-ups about the two recent murders here in Cape Dorset. I was talking with a health nurse today about how messed up it seems to be here as of late and she was in agreement, saying that armed standoffs are not new here but the killings are. I had heard around the rumour mill that the firearms used in both crimes were not owned by the killers and had been taken from others. This raised the question of locking up guns here. So, I looked at trigger guards at the store here and found they were over $30 each after tax. Now, I know it is Canadian law that a gun must be kept locked and it is the gun owners responsibility to do this, but this is obviously not happening all the time. I think we as a country should take a cue from (gasp) the Americans. I know, it's a rare thing for me to say. But, in Spokane, Washington (and maybe elsewhere, I don't know) you can walk into any police station and ask for a trigger guard and they will give you one at no charge. No ID required, no questions asked. I think this is a brilliant idea. If they were readily available, then maybe more people would use them and it would force people to slow down when they are in a rage or to resort to a less simple and efficient way to harm others. I don't like putting yet another cost on the plate for all Canadian tax payers, but, I see a huge need for this and a strategy that could save lives. Anyhow, this is just my two cents. What do you think?

By the way, I bought a trigger guard in Spokane for about $8.00 then got a second from the cops for free.

Hmmm, I guess I did have something to say. Big surprise eh?

Here are those links:

Most recent murder

Murder in September

Regards,

Richard

It's ALIVE!!!!!

2010-10-11T19:48:00.000-04:00

Lily and my garden seems to be doing well so far. We have all sorts of sprouts popping up and the transplanted green onions seems to be surviving, lots of new growth.

Lettuce sprouts

My new garden centre.

The bins each have about 10" of soil in them and I put drainage holes about 1.5" up from the bottom of each. I transplanted the lettuce and they seems to be doing OK. We'll keep you posted.

Sadly I am still very sick and getting very frustrated at the lack of a doctor here. The nurses I have seen are trying but have yet to figure out what the problem is or, if they have, how to effectively treat it. But, there is a doctor coming to town here in the next week or so and I am going to try to get an appointment to see if he/she can figure out what this is.

To our Cape Dorset readers, beware of this truck! This is the vehicle that killed the puppy and didn't slow down or try to rectify the wrong they had done. So, if you see it coming, give it a wide berth because whoever drives it is a bad, bad man.

-Richard

Another sad day in Dorset

2010-10-10T23:09:00.003-04:00

We had a slow day around the house today. After I put Lily down for her nap I was outside when my neighbour walked past and told me that I should not be outside. There was someone shooting on the other side of town and we should all stay inside. I went in and told Richard this who was quite concerned. However, we were all invited to Cheryl’s house for dinner. Cheryl works at the airport and is the wonderful woman who went out of her way to get us our house keys when we arrived. She routinely has large dinner parties and today we were invited to Thanksgiving dinner. Richard decided to stay home as he wasn’t up to visiting. When Lily woke up she and I got dressed and figured we would be okay to walk to two minutes to Cheryl’s house. As I passed the neighbour’s house (the same one I’d spoken to earlier) the window opened and his wife called out to me that I really shouldn’t be outside as there was someone with a gun. And that they had announced on local radio that he said he would shoot anyone that he saw. I decided to head back inside. I called Cheryl’s and talked to Meaghan (Mercedes’ mom). I told her what was going on and although she said I probably didn’t have to be worried she had her husband come down and pick us up. They weren’t worried because the shooter was over in RC (the other side of town) with all the roads blocked off. We had dinner and a very nice time. Lily had a great time. She loves people so much and really likes playing with Sadie (as she calls Mercedes). Throughout the evening they kept getting phone calls updating them on the situation. By 6:00 they had the man in custody. Turns out they flew a swat team of 15 in from Iqaluit and within 20 minutes they had the suspect. Details are still sketchy but there is one confirmed death. The man killed his brother and may also have shot his sister. It was a pretty scary situation and there is still no word on what caused the whole thing. I think two fatal shootings in three weeks is more than enough and I hope that things will settle down for a while. A fairly big distraction from Thanksgiving but we really did have a great meal and Cheryl and Meaghan put together a big plate for me to bring home to Richard. It was nice to be out and be social. After all the illness in our house preventing us from getting out and about it is nice to feel like we are starting to become a part of the community.
-Margot

Crafting it up

2010-10-10T23:08:00.001-04:00

Saturday, October 9th

This morning Lily and I had another play date with Mercedes. The weather has been cooperating so we started with some outside time and then went indoors. The girls had a great time and we all had a nice visit.

Lily and Sadie sittin' in the toy box

Went to “crafts” again today to continue work on my parka. Went down with Lisa, our new teacher, and met up with Kathy there. I didn’t have very long as Richard still isn’t feeling well and wasn’t up to being alone with Lily for too long. So I put her down for her nap and headed out. Last day I had cut out the inner lining and the middle wind-proof layer. Today I finished cutting out the outer layer. This in itself was exciting but then I did get to start sewing. I have been told that I should bring down my own sewing machine as there are not enough machines there to go around and many of them don’t work very well. I think I will take my machine down but didn’t today as I was walking. So I used a machine there. The first didn’t work so well but the second one I tried worked just fine. I sewed 4 seams which got the front and back of the inner layer attached. Then I had to try it on and everyone in the room critiqued the fit. They (the women who know what they are doing) decided that the neck was too high. So I took it off and the organizer took a pair of scissors to the neckline. Two more fittings and they agreed the neck was okay. This layer then served as a template to cut down the neck on the other two layers. A very relaxed process working on local time so by the time the neck was sorted out I had to leave. But it is underway now and I am excited about seeing things come together. I’m going to try to take my sewing machine on Tuesday and see how far I can get using my own machine. It is fun to be making things again. For those who don’t know, I injured both my thumbs a year and a half ago and it was too painful to sew or knit or do anything. Now after double thumb surgery in July they are healing nicely and I am finally able to use my hands again. This is part of why I am so very excited to be creating again!
-Margot

Dead dog, not ours but still very upsetting

2010-10-07T21:27:00.001-04:00

I am so angry right now. Humanity is a constant disappointment. Here is the set up for this story. It has snowed a lot here overnight. We have about 20” of snow in the road in front of our house right now and the vehicles that can drive in it are staying in one set of tracks. We also have a family who lives at the end of the road with a very cute husky type puppy. He is about 3 months old and is already bigger than Smoot. Sadly, his owners do not tie him up or the dog frequently escapes. I had just finished having a romp with our dogs outside (off leash) and had brought them up the stairs because a truck was coming and they have no understanding of vehicles. I put them inside and was watching as the dog’s owner drove past with the puppy running along behind. Then another truck (a white Ford truck that is driven by a supervisor of the construction site across the road) comes barreling up the road. The puppy is unable to get out of the deep ruts in the snow and is driven over. I am watching this happen in shock and horror as I see this beautiful dog come tumbling out from under the rear wheel. The truck does not even slow down nor do I ever see the driver come over to see what he has done. ***HOLE! I run over to find the dog laying crumpled up on its side as blood is leaking out his nose and mouth. I run over to a neighbor who is a dog owner (responsible) and has lived here for a bit might know what to do with an injured dog, but I realize it’s too late. Meanwhile the two passengers from the truck, both Inuit, are visibly concerned and sad about the dog. One says he is willing to get the truck to load the dog into so we can take it to the owners, after my direct probing. So, 5 minutes later I realize no one is coming back so I carry the dog back to it’s house. People make me sick.

However, on a lighter note: SNOW DAY! The last two days we had up to 90 km gusting winds and forecasts for up to 20 cms of snow. The house was shaking last night as the storm moved through. We got up this morning with a phone call from my Principal letting us know that the morning session of school had been cancelled. They would re-assess at lunch about school. So we had a fun morning, aside from the dead dog, playing in the house and out in the snow. The drifts here were incredible. We have almost 3 feet of snow in front of our house. So much fun.

I went and got the snowmobile today! Again, the taxi didn’t come to pick me up so I hoofed it down to the storage shed. It was great to get it out and going. I got extra goodies with it including a new cover, oil, gas can, spark plugs, bungees and a few bits and bobs. With all the wind there are a few sparse sections of snow on the road so I had to pick and choose where I rode but I made it to the co-op which also sells gas. I parked in front of the pump which is across the street from the store then went in to pay. There is always a crowd in front of the store and today was no exception. I must say I felt a bit uncomfortable as I walked in with my helmet and all my gear on. However, all I got were smiles and grins. I got a fuel slip from the cashier and was on my way outside to get the gas when a customer stopped me and told me I had to wait for the “gas man.” I smiled and said “so, are you trying to be tricky or is there really a gas man? Do you all have a good laugh at the new white guy in town every time he falls for the old gas man gag?” He and his buddies had a big laugh but indicated that there was indeed a gas man. In the end there was a gas man who filled my sled and the gas can. I had to do two trips into town because I had to go back to get more Thanksgiving groceries. It was really fun to ride again. My dad and I rode every weekend when I was a kid and then a teenager. The snowmobiles and our courage grew every year as we became more adventurous. I was thinking today how so many skills we learn are re-used in ways or places we never would have suspected. I think it’s so important to experience as many different things as possible and learn from each one. You never know when you will have to ride a snowmobile in front of what feels like half your new town.

I came home and took the girls out for a ride. I had assumed Margot had been on a snowmobile, but I learned that was not the case. She’ll get the hang of it once I undo what her dad taught her about being a passenger on his motorcycle. Every time I went into a corner I was expecting her to lean but she didn’t. When we got off I asked why and found out he had asked her not to on the bike because it might cause problems. Lily loved it and started crying when Margot took her helmet off in the store because she wanted to stay outside and play on the snowmobile. So, her and I sat outside and talked with the kids while Margot shopped for the things I forgot on my last trip. In the end it was a success and we are looking forward to lots more snow.

I (along with my little "helper") got my indoor garden set up today. We are growing green onions, garlic chives, cherry tomatoes, full size tomatoes, lettuce and basil. I have it all set up with full spectrum lights, and it looks a bit like, well, a grow op. We’ll keep you posted on how it works out. Oh, I realize I never posted about the worms. Turns out that I was unable to procure any worms so sadly, no composting. Maybe we can convince a friend to bring some back with them from their holidays.

We skyped with my parents tonight which was great. It was a bit choppy but we all saw each other for a few minutes. Technology is really very cool when it works. I am very curious how much bandwidth we used up as the package we have now is good for 2 gb a month.

I am still sick and whatever I have Margot seems to have a milder version so we are now taking meds to hopefully help us heal. I have now been sick for 6 weeks. I am getting sick and tired of being sick and tired! I overdid it today and now I can’t talk or swallow very well. I am glad it is Friday tomorrow and we get Monday off and Tuesday is a sessional day with no students. I need a rest.

The storm coming in. 90 km hr winds and huge snowflakes.

The snow we woke up to. Upwards of 2 - 3 feet deep!

Having a play.

The girls getting ready to go. Lily had taken her goggles off.

Our garden.

Take care all!

-Richard

Other sad dog news today... Just as we were getting home from our snowmobile test run the dog next door got attacked. The dog's name is Bruno and Richard ran out to help him. He is tied up (with about 3 feet of rope) and two dogs were attacking him and had him cornered under the metal platform they use to fill the water tanks. Richard scared them away and checked Bruno out. He was upset but unhurt. And just now as Richard posted this originally we heard noises outside and the dogs were back trying to get Bruno again. We know the two dogs actually do belong to someone because they do have collars on. I wish people would take care of their animals. Those dogs should be tied up and Bruno should be inside. Lets hope tomorrow brings no more bad animal news!

-Margot

Crafts

2010-10-07T20:46:00.001-04:00

Tuesday, October 5th
School was slightly better today but still not great. What was nice at school is that our new teacher, Lisa, arrived. In August one of the teachers who was here last year and was supposed to be returning just didn't show up. They spent a week trying to reach him but he did not answer his phone or return a single e-mail. I am shocked by the rudeness and thoughtlessness of people. His selfishness has meant that we have been one teacher short all year. This teacher was supposed to set up the computer lab and run computer classes so we haven't been able to do computer work with our kids yet. So now they have hired another teacher and she arrived last night. She seems very nice and is housing just doors down from us instead of way up on the other side of the school. So first off I am excited about computer classes starting soon but also Kathy and I were chatting with Lisa and she was very enthusiastic about doing things which got us thinking it was time to go to crafts rather than just talk about it. "Crafts" is what happens Tuesday, Thursday nights and Saturday afternoons. The women get together and sew or bead or work on whatever project they are working on. It used to be that everyone worked on the same type of project at the same time but things have changed (not for the better according to some). However the three of us went down to the community center and were more than welcomed. There is a woman who runs/coordinates things who was very helpful. (She is also the elder who is coming in to work with my students.) There is another woman who is the 'helper' and then we were helped a lot by another young woman who put down her own beading project to help us. They all cut clothing from the same patten which is cloth. They adapt it as needed. For example I am tall and so they cut an extra 3 or 4 inches at the bottom. Things are very fluid and you just change, add or sew whatever you need. There is a lot of chatting so things move at a languid pace. There are three layers to a parka and once you cut out the lining you use that as a pattern for the next two layers. I got two layers cut out as I started first. Lisa got one layer cut and Kathy didn't get started. But now that we know how things work I think it will be easier next time. They say it doesn't take very long to make a parka so I am excited about wearing it soon as winter is coming! I am using my parka for practice before making an Amauti but I also saw a pattern for a tiny little parka. Maybe Lily will get my second attempt. I need to get some clarification about materials we use but my understanding is that the group provides materials for anything we make there. It has to stay there until complete (no bringing it home to work on) but when finished we get to take things home. We could also take in our own projects and work there and at home. It was also mentioned to me that I may want to bring down my own sewing machine as there are not enough for everyone to use. I may do that as there seems to be a safe place to leave it. I have to say too that it is nice to be doing things with my hands again now that my thumbs are healing. I like getting to know other people in the community. School has been busy and it is nice to have something else to think about...
-Margot

My Birthday

2010-10-07T20:17:00.000-04:00

Monday, October 4th
Today was my birthday. I want to thank everyone for the very nice birthday wishes. My class was so nice in the morning giving me great big "Happy Birthdays" and then apparently they had used up all their niceness by 10:00am and the rest of the day was Not so great! But then I got home and Richard arrived with Lily. They opened the door and she yelled "we gots boons" which translates to mean they had brought home balloons for me. Lily still doesn't understand the subtlety of surprises. So Richard and Lily decorated the house with balloons and the sign Richard had made for me. Richard made me burgers for dinner which I love and it may well be the last BBQ of the year. We had a very nice night and I got some very nice presents so thank you again to all!!
-Margot

Our Big Day!

2010-10-02T23:20:00.000-04:00

Forgive the duplication but I had finished writing this when I realized that Richard already wrote about this morning. I have left my version as it was, so please enjoy it again!...

We had a VERY big day here in Cape Dorset.

Lily and I started this morning with her having a screaming dance party over the fact that there was snow and maybe she could eat some. I told her that Daddy was sleeping so we couldn’t scream but we could dance, which we did. She wanted to go out right away but I convinced her that 7:30 in the morning wearing pajamas was not the time to be playing in the snow. It started out as only a light dusting but it made the world prettier. The snow got heavier through the day.

Later, as we were looking at the snow, the neighbour’s daughter came out and started making snow angles in the road in front of the house. Lily thought this was great and spent a very long time practicing snow angles on the livingroom floor just to be ready. She also shared her fort with Smoot with and thought it was hilarious.

After breakfast she and I got dressed and ready to go to our first playdate. There is a ‘Southern’ couple here with their 19 month old daughter. After making snow angles and slip-sliding our way to their house we had a great visit. It ended with both girls getting tired and frustrated with each other but then when we were actually on our way out they were both sad and we have been invited back tomorrow. Lily is very excited.

We came home and put Lily down for an early nap. When she woke up all three of us went up to my school. Today was the big Penny Sale. This is an event that happens often in town and is used as a fundraiser. Today was to raise money for the school. The way it works is that items are laid out on tables with a bag in front of each group of things. You then buy tickets, write your name on them, and put them in which ever bags you want to. At the end of the time they draw a name from each bag and if they draw your name you win the items. Today most things were 25¢ but there were some items were $2.00. I bought a few $2 tickets to try and get a very large rock for Richard to try carving. We didn’t win the rock but a young carver did. He spent about $20 and was so excited to win. The piece of stone was worth about $400. He was so happy and told us about how he has an order for a large statue from Iqaluit and now he could make it. So I did not win the rock but I did win something else. I won a collection of items that included shoes that are too small for me, boots that are too small for me, a hat that is too small for me and too big for Lily among some other strange things although I do like the rainbow scarf. The other thing that happened today was a ‘Cake Walk’ during the Penny Sale you could line up for a spot in the Cake Walk. You had to buy a ticket (price varied depending on the size of the cake, 1 or 2 dollars), then you find a spot on a number on the floor. When the music played people would walk around the circle when the music stopped so did the people. A number was then drawn from a bag. If you were standing on that number you won the cake. I helped show one cake that was about to be played for, I brought a cake for the sale, I played once and did not win a cake but two of my students did. They were so proud!

Out side Sam Pudlat and the Penny Sale

Penny Sale tables

My winnings

After we had put Lily to bed there came a knock at the door. A carver we have met before and had chatted with this afternoon was at the door. He asked Richard if he would charge his Ipod for him. Richard thought it was a strange request but it is true that most people here don’t have computers so he may not have a way to charge it. He then asked if Richard would like to buy it for 50 dollars. Richard said he was not interested but he would charge it (only this once) if he wanted to leave it and comeback in half an hour or so. Once Richard plugged it into his computer the Ipod identified itself as belonging to the Mom I had a play date with today. We didn’t know what to do. I decided to try and call her. I explained what was going on and she said that the Ipod had gone missing last year but she and her husband would come down to talk to the carver when he returned. So they came over and we had a nice visit while waiting for the guy to return. He came back and the men headed outside to talk to him. Locals here really do not talk much so I gather there wasn’t much conversation but he did say that he had just found it. In the end he was given the Ipod as they had already replaced it and didn’t want to make a big fuss about it. We both think this was pretty impressive.

So that was our day and we are both very pleased that tomorrow is not a school day. As I sit writing this two more carvers have come to the door. They sometimes come very late, 10:30-11:00pm, way past my bedtime! However Richard answered the door but then called for me to come. It is the carver I really like and yes I did buy another carving but it is a very round, very cute, dancing bear. As my student’s say, what else could I do? “Come on!”

Snow!

2010-10-02T08:57:00.000-04:00

This is what we woke up to this morning.

The snow is still coming down in big flakes. We are all very excited but feel trepidatious about the incoming cold. When I came downstairs this morning, Lily was working on creating snow angels on the carpet in preparation for going outside today. It is going to to be a fun morning for her as she has a play date with another toddler. I was thinking I might try going fishing today, but the snow makes that process somewhat daunting. We'll see.

Take care all!

-Richard

We have a new piece of Cape Dorset Art!

2010-10-01T22:58:00.003-04:00

I know, I know, we have alot of sculptures. But, now we have a one of a kind.....


By Lilibeth Haworth

A new Caterpillar! This was “created” by Lily at her school.

What a week! It seemed to go on forever with all the mayhem at school. Tuesday was supposed to be a half day so people could attend the funeral of the young man who was shot, but the funeral was pushed back a day to accommodate a relative who could not fly in due to a cancelled flight. So, the kids were crazy. Wednesday they decided not to cancel the afternoon but allowed students who came to school in the morning to not have their attendance penalized. So, the kids were crazy. Thursday was the Terry Fox Run in the afternoon. Since I am still injured I helped lock the school up after the kids left and greeted those who completed the run. However, I had a little helper. Lily was doing part of the walk with her school (so cute, sorry no photos) and was waiting in front of the school, but I didn’t know this until my students came inside and told me. So I went outside and we all waited for like 20 minutes for the thing to get going. Meanwhile kids are disappearing and the toddlers were getting antsy. Lily decided she wants to come into my school and not do the walk. So, she came inside with me and we said goodbye to everyone. Mike, my VP, found Lily a yogurt tube and she was as happy as a clam. She got an extra one that we kept as a snack for when we got home. This was after she invaded my stash of “Daddy’s Nola Bars” in my desk. I try to keep a couple of granola bars there just in case. Today’s craziness was House League day. Every Friday, the school gives up the last two periods of classes so the kids can participate in soccer. There are 4 teams that the kids sign up to play with and they all rotate through playing one another. My team are the Huskies. GO HUSKIES!!!! We won! The kids can also play table tennis (they’re crazy for it up here), watch a movie or just hit the concession and hang out. It’s a pretty neat activity and all the kids have to get approval from their home room teachers to play. But, the day is always a bit crazy as the kids are pretty jacked up.

Margot made a new furry friend this week. She was on supervision on Tuesday and a little huskyish puppy fell in love with her and would not leave her side. So, after saying goodbye she retreated into the school and headed for her classroom. Well, guess who found her? Yup, little puppy snuck into the school and found her. She took puppy outside and that was the last she saw of it. So fast forward a few days to Thursday and we are all at home. I am out on the deck BBQing and little puppy decides that my steaks are pretty good smelling. As I am trying to get the hot food into the house and keep our dogs in and the puppy out, it sneaks in. Now we have a Lily and 3 dogs romping in the house. Puppy gets excited and pees in the kitchen and we heave it back outside. It then cries and cries at the door. After dinner it sneaks back in when we are putting our dogs out. So we let it stay a bit while we decide what to do. The puppy is so cute but so skinny. So I give it a big doggy dinner and it goes wild for the kibble and water. So sad. We call some friends who think they know the owner and are willing to pick her up and take her home. But, it turns out the that this is a boy and not the same dog Margot had met at school which was owned. This dog is a mystery and sadly we have to let it go. The dog hung out for a bit, brought some dead bird up to eat on the deck and then headed off. We haven’t seen it since.

The other night the elementary school had a special community literacy event in which some of the teachers volunteered to read stories all the children and the school provided healthy snacks and warm drinks. It was a hit and the turnout was great. Lily had a great time and as usual was the center of attention. The kids love her and she thinks it’s a great time to play with everyone.

We ordered our coats and they are on there way up right now!!! We bought two Canada Goose Expedition Parkas from Altitude sports in Montreal. They were great and so helpful. I would highly recommend them. We are both really excited about nice, comfy warm coats.

Our curtain rods finally arrived! I love getting packages. It is like Christmas overtime, even when I know what it is. We also got a surprise package from my grandparents today. It was a long week and we were all pretty tired so it was such a treat to open a box filled with all sorts of tasty favorites. Lily was so excited about big bag of “colours” (smarties). She got a little cup of them and her face lit up like a bulb. She doesn’t get to eat that sort of thing much, so it is quite a treat. We send a great big Thank You to them!

So me and one of my students, PootoogooPootoogoo had beluga whale, Caribou and fish. It was partially thawed but raw. Sometimes her family cooks it but today, raw. They also had a dish in which they take a raw onion that is cut up, mixed with Crisco oil and salt. They asked about my lunch which consisted of sausage and fruit and we both were happier at what we had gotten to eat. I then asked how they prepare the meat. Do they use a local butcher or something? She said that after the animal was killed, they cut off the head, legs and freeze each section after skinning and thaw and eat it as they go. I explained that when I was growing up we hunted deer. When we killed one, it was usually sent of to a butcher and we would tell them the types of cuts we wanted (sausage, burger, steaks, etc) and we would pick it up a few weeks later in little paper wrapped packages. She thought I was kidding and when she heard we killed deer, she paused and gave me an incredulous look and said “like...Deer? Little deer?” Cultures are an interesting thing. We always think ours is normal...

So for those who don't know, my parents have been semi-professional musicians for longer than I have been alive. They have now undertaken the exciting challenge of building a website to showcase their original music. Please stop in and check it out. They love feedback too, so let them know what you think! I am sure you will enjoy your visit. Haworth Music

Thanks for visiting!

-Richard

Lily helping with the baking

Lily and Margot enjoying Literacy Night at Sam Pudlat

The smoke from our burning garbage dump and the sunset. The view from our kitchen.

Lily enjoying her yogurt tube snack.

The little visitor

Our little visitor checking out Kala's toy tire.

My students hard at work.

The kids playing soccer during House League.

The Fans during soccer at House League.

One of my students, Pii (pronounced Pee) showing a carving he is wanting to sell.

Another of my students, Willy, showing an Inuksuk that he made.

I know it's the arctic, but boy is it cold out!

2010-09-28T21:05:00.000-04:00

I know we are in the Arctic and it should go without saying that it is cold here, but that is very academic. It's not until it hits -2 Celsius (28 F for my American friends) and blowing up to 65 km hr (The Cape Dorset weather forecast) in September that I can truly appreciate where I am. Brrrrrrr. We don't have our down coats yet as the company we placed our order through (www.gear-up.com) three months ago has pushed back the delivery date until the END OF NOVEMBER! They are saying it is a stock issue, but we were only told after my repeated emails to the store. I would say avoid them if possible, we sure are now. I am in the process of trying to find what we want from someone else who has them in stock now. Margot is not going to get the colour she wants but that is a concession she is willing to make at this point.

So, I am so frustrated at being injured and not having transportation as I have to rely on the Taxi here which is okay most of the time but not so good today. As we have mentioned here earlier all the local news is broadcast on the local radio. This includes if the Taxi is not running. It's a grand idea, unless you don't speak Inuktitut and/or don't have the radio on at the exact moment they happen to announce whatever may be affecting you that day. So, it is quite a production getting us all scheduled to be ready and out the door on time and it is especially challenging on bad weather days. Today, Margot had to leave early because she was on supervision at her school so Lily and I waited inside a bit longer. I had my guitar and bag packed for school and Margot was all ready to pick Lily up after school so I could go to guitar club. Well, I'm sure you can see where this is going. I call the Taxi for 20 minutes, no answer. I call my school and tell them I may be late and then start getting Lily ready for the jogging stroller. I ditch my guitar, re-pack my bag so it's lighter. What a pain as my ankle is still very weak but I need to get to work. So we finally get sorted and on the move and while we are walking through Margot's playground she comes over to say hi and all Lily wants to do is play with the kids. Meanwhile it's blowing 60 - 70 km hr and below freezing. Then, the taxi drives up! Margot runs up, flags him down before he leaves and we find out he overslept. That's why no one answered. So Margot takes the stroller while Lily and I hop in the Taxi. What mayhem! Anyhow, we all got to school in the nick of time. This is the third time this has happened. Ohhhh, I miss my truck.

We have a new program for the junior high students at our school. They are spending two periods, two mornings a week with elders learning traditional skills. The girls all go and learn how to prepare and sew seal skins and so far no one has shown up to do anything with the boys. They have just spent those periods with me, until today. I accompanied them to visit their elder who turned out to be one of the boy's grandfathers. He spoke for about 40 minutes in Inuktitut and I tried to understand as much as I could from the few words I understand and gestures. What I was able to understand was he was telling stories about sailing and traveling on the water. After talking he then showed us all 4 common knots they use. It was really interesting to learn the knots and then he showed us how they traditionally carried goods by building a sling that sits on one's back and is carried around the shoulders and the head. He was very patient with the boys, although they were easily frustrated and discouraged. The students then had recess when I went over and introduced myself to the female elders who were teaching the girls and they showed me the skins and tools which was pretty neat. I look forward to seeing what the kids end up creating. It's a bit sad I can't see both the boys and the girls work, but being a man, I can't join the girls.

I am not sure how many of you realize this, but teachers have to pay to apply to jobs in Canada. Many school boards are using websites and services that require applicants to pay to apply for jobs. As I recall it was upwards of $10 per school district. This is not much for one person to apply to one board, but that is rarely how it works. It was going to cost Margot and I hundreds of dollars to apply to all of the boards we wanted to, so sadly we had to bypass them. Anyways, I have posted a message that is creating a national petition to stop charging educators to pay to apply to jobs when there is no need for it and we are the only country in the world doing so.

Education Canada Network has been approached by a group of concerned citizens, No Cost to Educators, to assist them in their efforts to market their cause. Education Canada Network strongly supports the principles presented by this group and have agreed to send this message to our registered users. We would like to encourage you to checkout the message this group is bringing attention to and support their efforts.

No Cost to Educators is seeking the support of education professionals from around the country via their online petition (Petition: Say NO to Charging Education Job Seekers to apply for Public School jobs). From their petition:

Job seekers across Canada are being asked to pay a fee to apply online to jobs to work at the school districts in British Columbia, Ontario and other Provinces. There is no other Country in the OECD that charges their teachers to apply to public school jobs. People who have to pay for this technology are both employed and unemployed. Other sites, with the very same job postings, do not charge a fee to search or apply online to the exact jobs. In other words, the job seekers have to pay to apply online to jobs that are not exclusive to one site.

Paying to apply does not provide the job seeker additional benefits and does not maximize ones exposure. It also doesn’t differentiate “active” vs. “passive” job seekers, but merely who can afford/not afford to job hunt via their system.

To support the No Cost to Educators group, become a friend on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/profile.php?id=100001282147864&ref=ts and sign their petition at http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/say-no-to-charging-education-job-seekers.html

Regards,
Mike Sproule
Chief Operating Officer
Education Canada Network
www.educationcanada.com
support@educationcanada.com
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Thanks for visiting and stay warm!

-Richard

The Arctic Gardeners

2010-09-26T22:39:00.001-04:00

So I have decided to undertake growing an indoor garden here. I love the idea of fresh herbs and veggies while it's cold and snowing outside. We have enough space in the kitchen to have a few bins around the edges to have our "garden". It has lots of natural light right now and as things get darker I will supplement with grow lights. My folks sent me up some starter soil and seeds which should get things started which is awesome. However the challenge comes when I need to re-pot the seedlings into larger bins as I need to find a large amount of soil to plant the seedlings into. Shipping up that much soil is not an option as it is very expensive so I have been scouting the area looking for the most fertile patches of grass outside. We went out today in the pouring rain (it's been doing that a lot lately) and found some soil, well, sort of. It was very wet and sandy, but it's the best they have up here. We brought it home and separated out the clumps of roots and soil and placed it near a window to start drying out. I am hoping to get a few more loads before the ground freezes. It snowed hard yesterday so winter is coming soon. I am working on buying some red wiggler worms to start worm composting to add good, high quality soil to the plants. It has been a challenge to locate someone near Ottawa or Montreal but I think I found someone ( wormgirl ) that may work. The idea is the worms eat paper and veggie food scraps and they turn that into good quality soil. So, I'll keep you posted.

We had our first dinner party last night and everyone had a good time. It was nice to be social again and Lily had a great time once she got over being shy. We all ended up playing "Just Dance" on the wii which allows up to 4 people to dance at one time. It was so much fun. Margot and I have been playing more as my ankle is improving. The problem is Margot is super good and kicks my butt most of the time!

I have included a picture of some of my students during our shorline cleanup the other day.

OH MY!!!!!! Moments ago while writing this I heard a noise outside. I turn on the porch light and look out as I hear footsteps charging up/down (?) the stairs, I open the door to see three bodies tearing through the darkness away from our house. I look down and see the bin that I keep our BBQ in is unlatched. A week or so ago we had three small propane tanks stolen and it looks like the thieves came back to see if we have more. I had no idea why they wanted it until I bought more at lunch last week and as the kids were coming into the classroom they saw me putting my groceries onto the counter in the class and I was approached by one of the kids. She asked me if I was going to smell the propane. I said "What?" And she explained that people inhale it to get high. I was and still am floored. I told her what I used it for and she had no idea what I was talking about. I don't think the locals BBQ much. So, after this I keep the tanks inside as they are a bit pricey at $12.00 each. Actually, I have to ask the manager at the store for them as they don't keep them on the floor of the store, I guess that's why. What a crazy place. (I have to add that after the original theft Margot said she figured it had been taken for that very reason but I didn't believe her because I had never heard of anyone inhaling propane to get high.)

We have a few kids who live in our building and the other day they built a tent out of sheets and such in the "field" across the street from us. They have played in it everyday since. It does not matter if it is raining, snowing or blowing they are out there. Oh, and in the one photo, you can see that one of the girls is wearing an amauti, pronounced AH-MAOW-TEE in which she carries her baby doll just like grown women carry their babies. So CUTE!! I love kids, it doesn't matter where you are, they just want to play and have fun.

The girl on the right is wearing a traditional Amauti

The Tent

Picking up trash

Our big project

-Richard

Garbage? No Longer!

2010-09-23T21:54:00.001-04:00

Today my class participated in the Great Canadian Shore Line Cleanup and it went pretty well. I wasn't sure how many kids would show, but it was great to see so many. My class filled so many bags I had to go to the house to get more. Sadly, I wasn't able to participate as my ankle is still healing but I was able to stand and give moral support (and supervision). It is nice to see those who really care trying to keep Cape Dorset clean. It is very sad how much litter and trash are around.

The weather is starting to turn cold up here. There is getting to be a nice bite to the wind and there is snow predicted next week. I am looking forward to the cold but am very, very sad I have not gotten out fishing yet. My hope is maybe Lily and I can go do some casting into the bay on Saturday and see what we can catch. I am not getting my hopes up on that though. It would be much better to hike away from town and try but that's not a possibility right now. I was also really keen on goose hunting but I may miss that as well. However, I am able to walk short distances without my cane which is super sweet so... maybe soon.

Things at the school are coming along. We are supposed to be getting our phones and PA system in by next week which should make school much safer, but we still can't drink the water. So, one step forward, one step back.

We got our food mail last week that we put an order in with Kathy. It was a total of 10 boxes and almost $800.00!!! So nice to have some meat in the freezer and our choice of veggies. We have now bought fresh peas and a box of cereal from a store in town here that has tasted like paint fumes on different dates. They are great about taking it back, but it's a real bummer to open something up to eat that you're really excited about and taste, well, a big mouth full of YUCK! It must get shipped with stuff that breaks open on occasion. The nice thing about food mail is the veggies are generally high quality this time of year. It has been recommended not to buy in the winter though as things sit on the tarmac and can freeze.

We also received a care package from my folks of some things we asked them to pick up. We now have 2 boxes of drapes for the whole house, various tools for me to learn to carve with, some things for Lily and some soil and seeds to start an indoor garden that I am super excited about. I love the idea of Lily helping make stuff grow. She loved my dad's garden in southern BC this last year so much that it would be cool to have a few things in our kitchen here that she can help tend and watch grow. I want to start a couple of worm bins to supplement the "soil" that we have up here, but have had trouble finding a distributor in Ottawa. If anyone has any suggestions I would be very appreciative. The idea of a worm bin is that you have a largish tupperware with holes in it that you place some of your veggie scraps. The worms eat and digest them then poop out good soil which is full of stuff plants like. I did find one guy who sells them but he was unwilling to ship them as they may take up to 7 days to arrive. I have read conflicting info on how long they will last and would really like to try before the weather gets to cold to try shipping them.

We have an update on our sealift. Now the ship won't be getting here until October 22!!! So now we have to buy a months worth of dog food. I can't even imagine what that is going to cost.

I managed to unpack my guitars tonight and was playing a bit after dinner while we were playing with Lily. It has been a couple months since I have played for Lily and she went crazy for it. She was strumming and singing and dancing. It was a good time. Sorry, no pictures tonight.

Well, that's about it from me. Take care all and I hope all is well and wonderful in your lives. Please leave some feedback as we all love to hear from you.

-Richard

Just to add a little detail about food mail... we have to place the order by 1:00 on Sunday for an order to arrive Thursday/Friday. This order we just received was placed two Sundays ago. It was supposed to be here last Thursday but we have been fogged in since Sunday. Our order was somewhere in the world. The fog finally lifted Monday and planes started arriving again. Our order arrived Tuesday. We were all very apprehensive but things were in excellent shape. It must have been stuck in Iqaluit which does have cooler and freezer facilities. So even though it was 5 days late we have beautiful food to eat and fresh coffee creme!

-Margot

Update

2010-09-20T20:24:00.000-04:00

I want to start of with our condolences to the families and those affected by today's events. I thought I would give an update with some more information about what happened early this morning. A young man tried to stab his uncle in the head while he was sleeping but was unsuccessful so was chased off. He then went and got a handgun and shot his step brother who was sleeping in another house (a student at the school) in the head while sleeping. The police found the shooter by lunchtime and he is now in custody.

-Richard

Some sad news today in Cape Dorset

2010-09-20T10:34:00.002-04:00

This is just a brief update about some sad news up here. While having breakfast I noticed an RCMP vehicle parked outside a house down below us for a long while but didn't think too much about it.

Home in "the valley"

So we carried on our morning. It was quite frustrating because I have been taking the Taxi to and from school lately because of my ankle. Well, no one was answering the phone this morning so after dropping Margot at her school I had to push Lily to daycare. I got Lily to daycare and headed to school where I was intercepted outside by my Principal, Cecil who told me there had been a shooting last night in which we were told that one of our Grade 11 students (I don't know the name) stabbed someone to death. His whereabouts are still unknown to the RCMP at this time and our school was on lock down. However, we did not have kids today because our water system had been compromised (a strong metallic taste in the water). The staff was told to stay in their locked classrooms. Then Cecil told us we did not have to stay if we did not want to or feel safe. The school doors had not been all locked and there had yet to be a room to room search done by the police. So, I decided to get Lily and go home as I was unsure how safe daycare would be given that a scared, trapped and violent teenager was looking for somewhere to barricade themselves. When I got to the daycare I informed them what was happening and they didn't seem to take any safety measures that I could see as we left. I will talk with them tomorrow about what they do in a lock down, if they even have a plan in place. Lily and I stopped by Margot's school and let her know what was happening and they were also in full lock down. Luckily they knew me and Lily and let us in. We had a quick play and now we are home, safe and sound. I now realize that the police were outside the house because that is the crime scene. They know have yellow tape surrounding the building. It's a very quiet day here and many are understandably upset. It seems everyone here is related somehow and it's a tight community. What a waste, I hope they catch the kid before he hurts himself.

Take care, we'll update soon.

-Richard

I think Nunavut is trying to kill me!

2010-09-16T11:39:00.000-04:00

So, I have decided Nunavut is trying to kill me. First, I tore some muscles in my left ankle and then I get a bad cold along with the rest of my family. They all get better and mine turns into.... Strep throat. It explains why I have been so tired lately. I am now taking penicillin and hopefully I should be feeling better by the weekend. Just in time to unload our sealift order, assuming it arrives on time.

-Richard

Teaching and life

2010-09-14T12:54:00.003-04:00

Hello all! I realize I haven't posted in a while so I thought I would give an update to what's happening with me. Sadly, my ankle is still buggered. What drives me crazy about the whole being injured thing is that the ankle splint (an aircast) that the nurse said I needed to wear is nowhere to be found in Nunavut. The splint allows me to walk and move without putting pressure on the sides of my ankle. Without it, every time I moved I risked re-injuring it. So, in the end I had to put out $150.00 to buy and have one shipped up from BC. My mom was kind enough to pick one up at a local pharmacy in Grand Forks and mail it up. Even with expedited shipping it took 7 days to get it. Thankfully I had an older aircast splint from a previous injury I packed and brought up. Sometimes I get vivid reminders about how isolated we are up here. Most days it is becoming normal living here. We have our things and a nice home. There are stores and so many places to buy goods online with free shipping. It's not until you need something that is not here and you need it NOW that one remembers how much time and effort is put into keeping this community going.

On other news, I was trying to install quicktime 7 pro on my new macbook and in the process destroyed all of the quicktime software which runs most of my programs. This would not have been such a big deal if I had my install software disks and our external hard drive, but, the disks were packed and being shipped up in our moving things and the external hard drive was in BC with some friends. So I asked a friend down south for help and after numerous attempts to revive my macbook we realized I needed the software that it came with. In the meantime, my computer was pretty useless. So, midweek I found the software needed but I had to take everything off my computer to ensure it did not get erased during the update. I have alot of music on my computer from the years being a DJ and such. We digitized all our albums before moving up here (about 900 or so) and somehow it made 2 or more copies of every song in every album. I have slowly been going through every file and deleting the duplicates but it has been a slow process. Well, since I had to move 120 gb of files to Margot's computer I thought now was a good time to take this on. So, I spent 14 or so hours working on sorting files and transferring to contents of my computer to Margot's using two 2 gb memory sticks. GRRRRRRRRRRRRR. It was so tedious. Then I installed my software and everything seems OK now. Computers are great when they work, but when they go wrong, they really go wrong it seems.

My teaching week went well. My students are pretty well behaved and are quite a group of characters. I laugh alot at school. We generally have a good time and are easing into the academics. Just like Margot, I am weaving my way through what curriculum I am supposed to follow. It is very frustrating that this is even an issue as I feel this information should be supplied to us at the start of the school year. Oh well.... what are you going to do?

The school's big construction projects are done and now it's just getting all the details and somewhat minor projects done. I am still waiting for a computer, smart board and white boards in my class. We have no computer lab or Internet. No phones in the classes. No library that is usable. The teaching resources are scattered all over the school and there is a large portion of the gym that is missing drywall, but otherwise all is good.

I am looking forward to the snow coming as it is raining everyday and turning the hamlet into a large mud pit. It will be nice when things freeze up and I can get to school on our snowmobile instead of taking a taxi everyday.

In the news up here there has been alot of discussion over the status, use and laws around liquor in Nunavut. We adopted the Northwest territories regulations when we became a territory. Now, there is a committee that is working on gathering public opinions/concerns about liquor in the hamlets. Some communities are dry (no booze), restricted (you need a permit, then you can what you want every week up to a set limit) and un-restricted. Iqaluit is Unrestricted and has a bar, Cape Dorset is restricted. In my opinion the problem with prohibition is that it doesn't work. There are always people who want to drink and will do whatever it takes to do it and those willing to supply them. The problem then becomes the lack of community/police control over who is drinking, when and how much. It also puts money into the hands of criminals who don't care who they are selling to (children, known alcoholics, etc...). Apparently the majority of violence in Nunavut stems from alcohol use which is terribly sad. I have worked around alcohol for years in liquor stores in Calgary and bars in Rossland and have seen the damage it can cause to a minority of people. But, they are the minority. I don't condone iresponsible alcohol use but I do think that allowing people to partake in a responsible way is O.K.

- Richard

It really was Monday

2010-09-13T21:03:00.000-04:00

Back working with children today! It was very nice to see them all again but not nice to be so displaced.

My classroom as of 11:00. Note the beautiful purple floor!

We had a fairly rough day but we think a lot of it had to do with the fact that our children haven’t been in school for 10 days and were certainly out of the routine and had forgotten (or were ignoring) previously set expectations. It was also the first time the two classes worked together so friends were happy to see each other and enjoyed chatting rather than listening. I also discovered that co-teaching is very difficult. We both have very different ways of dealing with our classes. And it was hard to know who should be taking the lead and I didn’t want to step on her toes or interfere with her kids.

So I made it through the day but am celebrating the fact that my classroom was finished this afternoon and tomorrow I get to be back in my own room. It will be a big job to get organized again because they simply moved everything into the hallway and since I didn’t before-hand things were not organized for a move. I have already discovered that some of my supplies are missing (like my bin of glue and scissors) so I am hoping that as everyone settles back in more items are returned to their rightful place. The time with no students has also given me a lot of time to reflect on my routines, especially first thing in the morning, and what I want to do with the physical space as well (read: made ‘to do’ lists!) I am looking forward to getting settled back into the routine of things.

Hoping tomorrow goes much more smoothly,

Margot

PS 16 really is a GREAT class size!!

Some unexpected classroom news arrives

2010-09-13T20:50:00.000-04:00

Sunday, September 12th

More unpacking. Richard joined Lily and me when we took the dogs for a walk in the field. It got much colder today and we were very glad our winter clothes have arrived. Richard and I do not yet have parkas but we have ordered them and they should be here soon. Hopefully they arrive before the snow does which according to the locals could be any day now. I got news this afternoon that although my classroom still isn’t finished the children will all be attending school tomorrow. There is an empty classroom down the hall from Kathy and I and we were told we could share it for Monday. When Lily woke up from her nap she came to school with me to have a chat with Kathy about how Monday would look. We talked about what we could do with our 32 students in one make-shift classroom. We did some planning and got all the breakfast supplies (we give the children breakfast every morning, toast, cereal and juice). We gathered up anything else we could think of to make Monday fun for all of us. Then Lily and I came home for dinner. I spent the night thinking of more games/activities to do throughout the day tomorrow. And finally went to bed.

Margot

Unpacking, unpacking...

2010-09-13T20:48:00.000-04:00

Saturday, September 11th

Today’s main project was to get our bed set up. Even working on Lily time we had the old beds moved out, the frame put together, the mattress in place, and the bed made before lunch. We all had a great time bouncing and flopping on the “really great bed” to quote Lily. Then we unpacked and unpacked and unpacked. I carried boxes upstairs and downstairs and back upstairs as we tried to figure out where everything should go. We discovered more moving damage today. So far we have lost one mug and one large corning wear casserole dish but today we found some major damage to Lily’s rocking chair. Something very heavy must have landed on it because the entire top frame was cracked right through.

Not much we can do about it so I wrapped it in clear hockey tape which will protect from slivers and future cracking and we should be able to use it as is. We also found that the corner of the deep freeze had buckled.

But it too appears functional so shouldn’t prove to be a huge problem. This is the nice thing about our move to Cape Dorset. We are pretty unattached to things as we know most of them will stay here when we leave. It was a very long day. In the evening Richard set up our new Wii. We have never had video games but thought it might be a good idea to have something up here to help pass the time on the long winter evenings. I had a great time dancing. Richard was sad that because of his foot he couldn’t join me. And then we had several car races trying to figure out the game and beat each other. I think it will turn out to be a very good investment.

Margot

Literacy, literacy, literacy

2010-09-13T00:00:00.001-04:00

Friday, September 10th

Today Grade 5 was added to our school attendees. And wonder of wonders the bus is back on the road. It ran for something like the first two days of school and then was taken off the road. Problems with registration, funding and which organization was responsible kept it off the road much longer than expected. All of our children go home for lunch and some have a fair distance to travel. It is good timing to have the bus back as the weather forecast says it is about to get colder. More work time for Kathy and I and in the afternoon we had a literacy meeting with all the teachers of the older grades except for Susan who had her Grade 5s back. Glen is the only teacher I have not yet mentioned and he teaches the Grade 6 class. The meeting was led by David’s (my principal) wife, Frances. It was very useful. Our school is short on books and we spent a fair amount of time brainstorming was to have the children reading when we don’t have books. I am re-inspired to get my Language Arts program under way!

Margot

Do I teach today?...Nope

2010-09-12T23:58:00.000-04:00

Thursday, September 9th

Kindergarten, Grade one and Grade two were back in session as that is where the flooring man started but the rest of us had yet another work day. Kathy and I worked on gathering materials. Lots of copying, cutting, gluing, printing, colouring and writing. Nothing to interesting on the work front but on the lifestyle side I was asked by an SSA (student support assistant) if I would like to buy a seal skin parka for Lily. I was unprepared for the question. I am trying to get into the local spirit of things but to have my baby wrapped in seal?! But I took a look. Apparently seal is one of the warmest furs to wear and it would be neat to have something locally made. She agreed to let me take it home to try on Lily and so I could talk to Richard. She was asking $100. Richard and I thought maybe we would buy it but Lily was unimpressed and as we did just buy her a brand new winter coat we decided not to buy this one.

Lily in the seal parka

I have commissioned a hat for Lily though. The day we were all at the Nurse’s station a woman asked if we would like to buy a hat. It was a little small but I said if she could make one a little bit bigger we would be interested. I saw her today in town and it is almost finished so Lily will have a new hat with fox trim. Mittens may be the next step as no manufacturer thinks that small children will ever be outside if it is colder than -30C. But let me tell you from the look (and feel) of things Lily surely will!

Margot

Students yet?...Nope

2010-09-12T23:53:00.000-04:00

Wednesday, September 8th

Wednesday I got to work and discovered that we still had no children. Good thing considering the state of my room.

My classroom now with no carpet, no nothing

My classroom...in the hall

With no students we spent the morning prepping and doing more paperwork. Kathy and I are trying to work together to have our children doing the same things so we can share planning, resources, materials and time. In the afternoon we took a field trip down to the art co-op. I went with Kathy, Emma (grade 4), Scott (grade 4), and Susan (grade 5). The other teachers had never been there and Emma is planning a print making unit with her class so wanted to see if they could tour the co-op. We all went down and had a look around and met a printmaker hard at work. Most artists are still off for the summer but they are all back by the end of September.

To finish the print this printmaker uses his favourite tool, a spoon.

He told us, "It is really the spoon that is famous not me."

Spent more time unpacking this afternoon and actually got to open boxes. Anything we don’t need right now, like Christmas things, we are moving down “into the hole” (the storage/crawl space under the house where the water and sewage tanks are is accessed through a small trap door in the floor). Lily thinks this is terrific fun! I made a big pile in the sealift room (where the hole is) and in the attached boot room so Richard could just pass things down to me.

Lily with 1/2 the pile ready to go down the hole

Some of our work in the hole

It is so nice to see our things again, all our things. During dinner tonight there was a knock at the door. It was Joey back one last time to deliver our bed. For those of you who do not know we have a king size bed that we love. We really wanted it here. Joey was not so convinced. It took himself, his assistant and I all pulling and pushing for all we were worth to get it up the stairs. The staircase is tight and doubles back on itself. I had never seen a king size mattress folded in half until tonight. But it finally made it upstairs and doesn’t look to worse for wear. Still a lot to do but we definitely made a dent!

Margot

Work??

2010-09-12T23:24:00.000-04:00

Tuesday, September 7th

Today I went to school only to discover that we would have no students. They are laying new flooring throughout the school and things got behind schedule. All the classrooms had been emptied into the hallway but no floors were complete. So we spent the day planning. Kathy and I worked on our Science and Social Studies year plans. The curriculum is itself a bit difficult to nail down. Nunavut has very little of its own curriculum and uses a combination of Alberta, North West Territories and the Western North Canadian Protocol. The first order of business was to make sure we were both working from the same document. While still down south I downloaded all the appropriate curriculum documents I could find so when we sat down to work I was looking at these. Kathy was using the hardcopy we had been given but we soon realized the hardcopy was seriously out of date. So we both switched to the online version. It’s a fairly daunting process to look at the full curriculum but know that our English as a Second Language learners won’t be able to do everything. So we are viewing the curriculum as a goal and we will just work our way towards it.

The best part of not having students today was that when Joey, from the airport, came to school to tell me that our belonging were arriving I was able to drop everything and go home with them. Joey and a local kid started bringing in box after box. How exciting to have our stuff!! In the end there were still 4 pieces that had not arrived but there was still another plane due later in the afternoon.

The airport's moving/delivery truck. Full of OUR things!

The kitchen, full of everything

I tried to call Richard to tell him the good news but the phone just rang and rang. I mentioned this to David who said he wasn’t surprised. The high school still doesn’t have phones. There is one phone line but it rings in the furnace room and last time he was there he noticed there wasn’t even a phone plugged into it! Eventually Richard called me (so there must be a phone somewhere) and said he had already heard the news. It is hard to surprise someone in a small town. After lunch we were back at work when Joey arrived again. They had more boxes for us. Poor dogs, because of the rush I put them in the closet instead of the bedroom this time. So three more boxes came in and I realized that the one thing that had not yet arrived was our bed! Yes we did bring our bed because we love it and there is nothing like a good night’s sleep! Joey said he didn’t know when it would arrive because food mail shipments start going out on Wednesday so the planes would probably be full. Sad, but at least we can start unpacking and making this feel like home. Tonight was spent unpacking boxes from within boxes. When the movers left our house they had 130 items. When we got our boxes off the airplane there were 41 pieces. Half were 4 cubic feet boxes and the other half were wardrobe boxes. So inside each big box were up to a dozen (sometimes more) items. One box had the arrows going the wrong way and I discovered a large Tupperwear bin full of tools and another with Kitchen things sitting on top of my sewing machine. All seems okay so far. I don’t think a single box actually got unpacked tonight. Maybe tomorrow...

Margot