Thursdays

Each Thursday I have the privelege of travelling to Chief Paul Niditchie School in Tsiigehtchic (Gwitchen for Arctic Red River; it was named after a bloody battle many years ago. The community has less than 100 people and is located about 60 km north of Ft. McPherson along the Dempster Highway. Vehicles need to board a ferry to get there. The ferry is scheduled to be pulled from the river on October 25th and it will take approximately 5 - 6 weeks for the ice road to open.

The school itself has 21 students and 3 teachers; an excellent student-teacher ratio.

These pictures are from the last time I travelled there 2 days ago. The top two pictures were taken around 9am at the crack of dawn so the days have severely shortened already. Although it's difficult to see, there's a thin layer of ice on the lakes. During the last visit some 1st nations people (Dog Rib) from Ray Edzo, NT were visiting the school to share their customs and tradition, more specifically drumming.

More Mountains and stuff

Yesterday, I was yanked from the "New teachers session" to attend another meeting more specific to my position near mid-afternoon. I decided to leave my planner which contained lots of important info along with key paperwork thinking I would return. The second meeting took place in a different hotel and ran very late. At 7pm I remembered my planner was left at the first hotel but when I returned it was gone.

I spoke to several people yesterday evening and today; my investigation revealed the incident would have occured during 4 - 5pm and that it was the "clean-up" crew who would have "dealt" with my planner. Late today the hotel manager and I went garbage picking in the dumpster and we only had to rip open 5 garbage bags in front of a small group of onlookers before we found it!

More mountain pictures.

The Mountains

We arrived in Inuvik last night for a 4 day conference and none too soon. Since we arrived in Ft. McPherson we've been working constantly; time is like gold so this break is timely.

Finding a child care solution for Ruth became a challenge and concern as we approached the conference. In the end we were blessed this morning when Heather called Sir Alexander McKenzie School (S.A.M.S.). Heather taught at this school in 2004 and still knew the Kindergarten teacher (sweetheart) and fortunately the secretary patched her through to the K teacher who just happened to already be in the classroom. The teacher whose name I can't remember graciously offered to have Ruth in the class for the entire day! Ruth had lots of fun. School at SAMS is closed from Wed through Friday this week because all of their teachers will also participate in the conference so the child care issue re-emerged.
Another blessing took place at the end of the day as Heather was walking downtown Inuvik(don't blink or you'll miss it). The Pastor's wife, Sherrie from the Inuvik church that we used to attend stopped and spoke to Heather. When she found out about our predicament she made a generous offer to take care of Ruth for the remainder of the week!!

Included, are some beautiful mountain shots from the following areas: Banff, Jasper, Mountains in B.C., Yukon and the NWT. About 45 minutes into the Dempster Highway is Tombstone Mountain, near Eagle Plaines ( 3 hours from Ft. McPherson) are the Seywelyn Mountains and the Richardson Mountains are close to our community in McPherson. The camera battery died so I'll continue with more mountainous pics next time.

Accomodations

It's hard to believe that we're approaching the one month mark in McPherson! The old building you see is actually from the gold rush days and I took the picture at our stop in Dawson City.

Accomodations in the north is usually a precarious situation and ours is no exception. We did not have a place confirmed even on route to McPherson. We found out on a Friday (a few days into the school year) that our "apartment" may be closed and that we would have to wait for a final decision the next Monday. Since there has been thoughts of closing the apartment we were considering, we thought it would be best to find something else. The opportunity to live in the church apartment came the very next day (Saturday) because the missionaries who were going to live in the church made other arrangements. We would need to find temporary housing in the meantime because the church is still under construction.

The night we arrived in McPherson, we stayed at the local hotel and it has about 5 rooms. It was very expensive since we didn't have the option to cook for ourselves. We only stayed at the hotel for a couple of nights. Our Friends, the Hanthorns who have been missionaries for 18 years in this community, we're away in Whitehorse. Lynn Hanthorn's dad, Wayne was in town working on the new church building and he invited us to stay with him at their house until the family returned.

After being at the Hanthorn house for a few days we then moved to a local bed and breakfast and stayed their for two weeks. It too was very pricy and we exhausted to amount of funding allocated for temporary accomodations that our school board covers. We have now been living with the Hanthorn family for about a week and it has been a blast! Lynn is a fabulous cook(Heather if you are reading this, you are an excellent cook too). One morning this past week after Lynn made a tasty pancake breakfast and Paul (Hanthorn) made some great coffee, I mentioned to Heather on the cold and wet walk to school that I don't think we're going to want to leave.

Lynn's dad (Wayne) is a retired engineer who is very handy at building just about anything has built a separate little apartment on the back of the Hanthorn house a few years back so that he has a place to stay when he's visiting. Once Wayne returned to North Bay, ON, Paul invited us to stay with them - a very generous and timely offer since the apartment in the new church building is not yet ready.

Mealtimes are the highlight everyday because the Hanthorn's have 9 kids - it's busy and lots of fun! All the kids are lots of fun, very nice and polite - overall: very well behaved children, thoughtful and so helpful! True contributers to the household - even the teenagers!. Heather and I are trying to find out what the parenting secrets are to their success. So far Paul mentioned that the key is: 1- hard work 2-consistency and 3- begin when they are in the highchair.

Although not having our own accomodations may seem like an inconvenience, it has been a blessing in disguise because we've had an opportunity to get to know many more people as a result of this situation. All that said, we are looking forward to moving into the church apartment in about two weeks.

Many have asked us why are we here and my response has always been: We're here as teachers but the key goal is to support the church and the new church building. Well, there's been no shortage of opportunity to help because although the structure, plumbing and outer shell is finished, there's lots of interior "finishing" type of work required. We did find out from a local person that we are the only teachers to have ever returned! It's nice to be the first at something because I don't usually finish first.

A typical day consists of working at school in the daytime and doing drywalling in the evenings and weekends, which is great and almost therapeutic because I love working with my hands. I'm a little slow but things really speed up when Paul's able to help. The drywall is about 95% done. There's a couple of teachers who have volunteered their time at painting the church already and they said they'd paint the apt too! The appliances are on route from Edmonton as I type this; a man who does some trucking has volunteered to deliver for free! We'll store the appliances in the church until the walls are completed and flooring is in place.

In terms of the pictures: new church building, the cabinets is the inside of the church apartment, the one with the truck is where we're living now (Hanthorn's house)

Last Tuesday several teachers spotted the northern lights that completly filled the sky at about between midnight and 5am! I was sleeping so have yet to see them.

I kept telling Heather and Ruth to view this year as a camping trip; so far that has not been too far from the truth having moved from "campsite" to "campsite".

It snowed for the first time yesterday and hasn't stopped yet. Work on the church apt will slow down this upcomming week because Ruth, Heather and I will leave after school tomorrow for Inuvik. Inuvik is the hub for all the Beaufort-Delta communities. There's an educational conference from Tuesday - Friday. Ruth will stay with some friends we have that attend the Inuvik church. We lived in Inuvik in 2002 - 2004.

Wildlife

I've decided to change gears with the blog from chronological to a more topical approach for now since I started these postings a week or so into our trip north.

We visited the Calgary zoo with Richard - great zoo sponsored by various gas and oil companies. Three pictures are from the zoo, which are obvious while the rest were view from the truck as we went from Calgary through Banff and north through Jasper park. The bison were seen in Northern BC. (video posted)Caribou were only 2 hours drive south of Ft. McPherson along with three silver back bears. The silver back bear are the two top blurry pictures.

An elder in Tsiigehtchic where I work one day per week told me on Thursday that the berries have fallen too quickly and the animals are starving on the land. The Porcupine caribou herd which are typically out late October are already here - times are changing.

August 26th

We woke up yesterday morning in Dawson City to a wonderful breakfast. The hostess/owner of the B & B was origninally an actress/dancer that came to Dawson to do theatre/entertainment as it was done during the gold rush. Her and her husband bought the B & B about 10 years ago and it has been thriving ever since.

The In-Transit license from Alberta expired so I got a new in-transit from the motor vehicle branch that was actually housed in the town liquor store!

Gas in Dawson was $1.40. We heard there was cheaper gas ($1.30) just outside of town at a makeshift station where there was no attendant. You just needed to use a credit card. I filled up the truck and the 25 L jerry can. I attempted to strap the can to the roof with adjustable straps bought from Canadian Tire. These straps did not come with instructions; getting the straps out from the packaging was even difficult. With some help from a stanger and an hour and a half later, the jerry can was safely affixed to the top of the vehicle. It was lunchtime so we headed back to Dawson.

We finally left for the Dempster at 1:30pm with a passport designed by the NWT as a travelling contest. If a person reached all the designated checkpoints and got their "passport" stamped then you could enter a contest to win prizes: 1st prize - diamond 2nd prize a waffer of gold.
We didn't complete the passport but had fun trying.

The Dempster was breathtaking and even more colorful than in pictures that I had previously seen. The road conditions were amazingly good considering there was some rainfall the night before. We made many stops for bathroom breaks and for photo opps. Our good fortune seemed to run out after Eagle Plains which is about a 3 hour drive from Ft. McPherson. The first hour was fine as we reached the Arctic Circle. However, shortly after we ran into some thick fog and stopped at a resting site where a small motor home was parked. It turns out they Christians from Australia who were waiting for the fog to lift. They invited us to stay the night in their motor home but we decided to follow another couple of trucks at a slow pace down the road. The fog was interspersed with rain making the roads extreemly slick in some areas. There was road construction still going on at midnight! In the end we reached McPherson at about 1:30 am.

Ruth was was amazingly well behaved not only on this final leg of the trip but throughout then entire trek! She is a true adventurer and traveler.

Our whole family attended today's school meetings; the staff is great.

Heather and I helped to set up the classroom. Tomorrow is Ruth's first day of school and she's very excited; Heather will be taking pictures.

I met Wayne this evening, Lynn Hanthorn's dad who is helping to finish the new church building. He invited us to stay at the Hanthorn house until the Hanthorn's return from a vacation next week.

August 24th

We had a great sleep at the Family Motel in Whitehorse, had breakfast at McDonald's and Heather did our laundry again! Heather and Ruth went shopping at Wal-Mart while I searched for tire chains and new window wipers.

I found the tire chains at "Integra Tire", which was around since the gold rush. I paid a hefty price for new wipers at the local GM dealership but a nice guy there showed me how to install a makeshit winter insert by removing a plastic guard under the hood and using cardboard!

The trek from Whitehorse to Dawson City was on the Klondike Highway and the scenery was beautiful as usual, only we didn't see much wildlife today.

We stopped several times to take in the awsome vistas and met some nice people from Calgary this evening at the 5th Ave Bed and Breakfast. The man said a large deposit of gold was found by a couple who decided to become propectors several years ago; they staked the claim this week and it's now all over the local papers!