Weeks 11 & 12: The Return of the Sun

Weather update: -24 C (-36 C with windchill) with a snowfall warning in effect! They are calling for 5-10 cm... not exactly comparable to the dump the Georgian Bay area has had lately.

And... it's back! The Sunlight count today: 3h 25min (Sunrise 12:23 Sunset 15:48)

The sun rose again in Inuvik January 5th, showing its face for 21 minutes. But due to a couple of cloudy days, and working over lunch, I didn't actually see it until January 13th, when day length was already up to 2h41min! It was nice....

Welcome back Mr. Sun!

To welcome the return of the sun, last weekend was the annual Sunrise Festival in Inuvik. It was apparently being heavily promoted down south this year as a tourist event, with packages for discount airfares for sale through Air North, and there were journalists and news cameras here from all over to cover the story of the festival. Including a young girl from RadioCanada in Montreal! What a cool assignment to get.

Friday night there was a "Taste of Inuvik" dinner in the town gym, with food supplied from restaurants around town including muskox meatballs and char chowder, as well as the classic mayonnaise-laden macaroni salad. After dinner was a performance by the Inuvialuit Drummers and Dancers, a tradition of drumdancing and story telling kept alive by men and women, elders and even one little boy all dressed in traditional outfits.

The Inuvialuit Drummers and Dancers

The amazing little boy dancer

At the end, they got visitors up to dance too - we still counted as visitors, and miraculously, Adam was actually convinced to get up to dance.  The gloves he is wearing are made of moosehide with long tassels on the ends of the fingers to make dramatic waving motions as the men dance.

Adam dancing. This is a keeper.

A peek at how cool the dancers were: (if the video works)

After the drum dancing, there was a good old-time square dance, as well as a jigging contest. Which we were happy to watch from the sidelines. It was awesome to see so many people from the community up and active and proud of their traditions!

Saturday was a full day of activities to welcome the sun. It started with a pancake breakfast at the Legion, free with a donation to the food bank. Then there was a snowmobile parade, with snowmobiles decorated and judged for prizes. There was a small craft fair in the community centre, which I didn't make it to, and a big igloo built on Boot Lake that was serving bannock and hot drinks - an Igloo Cafe!

The Igloo Cafe was at least 8 feet tall - they didn't quite get the snow blocks up to the roof, so the top was covered in a piece of plywood. Still impressive none-the-less since the snow here by the river isn't really the right consistency to build igloo blocks.

The place I spent the most time was at the snow sculpture carving contest in the park out front of the school.  The large bank of snow that had been ploughed from the parking lot had been turned into a makeshift toboggan hill, complete with steps carved into the sides, and kids were having a blast sledding down.

The toboggon hill at Jim Koe park

Scattered around the big christmas tree in the middle of the park, there were 8 big blocks of snow that artists from the community (as well as a few ambitious southerners) signed up to carve. They had about 3 hours on Saturday afternoon to craft their vision, and it was awesome to watch them work! I took a lot of photos... although trying to catch the contrast between carved blocks of white snow on a background of white snow and white cloudy sky was challenging. Unfortunately the sun hid behind the clouds for us again that day!

A southerner, crafting an inukshuk. (It fell over later that night!) He was using a cheese grater to smooth the sides of the blocks. Genius.

A polar bear sculpture

An owl, or "ookpik"

This guy has obviously done this before. 

I spent a long time admiring this sculpture. Joe Nasogaluak is a renowned carver from Tuk. He was apparently asked to make a carving for the recent Prime Minister's visit (more on this later!) but declined because he was too busy. 

The detail of this sculpture was incredible.

An impressive replica of the Igloo Church

You could come by to warm up, or toast marshmallows or S'mores wrapped in tin foil over the fire. It was the hardest I've ever worked for a S'more - took 10 minutes to get it warm enough to melt, and by the time I'd unwrapped it and taken my first bite, the chocolate had frozen solid again. Ha.

Later that evening, we were invited over to one of the physician's houses for chili and fresh baked bread. At 6pm we all walked down the road together for the big community bonfire - a tradition of making the largest fire possible down beside the town dump. It was HUGE. I think all the wood pallets they could find in town were piled in there.

The fire had melted a little lake of snow around it. 

The fire gave off enough heat to stand around for a half hour in the cold and watch the fireworks!

Fireworks in the snow. Kind of a cool effect for the photo!

To top off the night, there was a CBC-sponsored (and recorded!) concert in the Igloo Church - headlined by Barney Bentall (from the 1980s-90s band Barney Bentall and the Legendary Hearts). The opening band I thought was even better - Kevin Barr and Boyd Benjamin, who played the good ol' guitar and fiddle.

Notice anything about the way he is holding his fiddle?!!! I was blown away.

At work, it's been a busy two weeks.  Jan 7th-8th I went on a community clinic visit back to Aklavik again, this time driving there on the Ice Road as opposed to taking the 20 minute flight like I did in December. At the same time, Adam left for a two day visit to Fort McPherson.

This past week, Adam and I both had the opportunity to go back up the ice road to Tuktoyaktuk for three days to do a doctors clinic together. We stayed in a quaint B&B that looked out over the ocean - well, at this time of year, the never-ending white that makes up land and sea on the tundra, but I can imagine it would be really nice in the summer. I guess they do get a few adventurous tourists coming through to check out the 'end of the earth'. It's nice to get paid to go to a place that people spend $2500 (and $200 per person per night) to visit!

Driving on the Arctic Ocean:
The GPS locator on my phone while driving the Ice Road to Tuk

While we were away the first week, someone important dropped into town in Inuvik for a few hours.  Literally, a few hours. Rumour has it he didn't even stay over night, so he must have flown his own plane up since there is only one flight in and out of here a day! Does this guy look familiar?

Our good old friend Stephen Harper paid a last minute visit (i.e. photo-op) to Inuvik

Mr. Harper is all excited about the construction of a gravel road that will run between Inuvik and Tuktoyaktuk and achieve the dream of connecting Canada "sea to sea to sea".  It's a bit of a controversial project here. The 140km road will cost an estimated $300 million dollars, with the federal government contributing $200 million of this and the territory contributing $100 million plus any over-budget costs. The benefits are (according to the government webpage): Increase in tourism (equivalent to creating 22 new jobs); Decreasing costs of living in Tuk (by $1.5 million); creating new jobs to construct and maintain the road (1000 temporary, 70 permanent); and... how is this adding up to the $300 million price tag? Oh right, because of the estimated $385 million in savings for the exploration and development of the Mackenzie Delta rich natural gas reserves and eventual hopeful creation of a pipeline out of here. So it's really all about the gas. A number of people I've met from Tuk are quite excited about the road, hoping it will bring down food prices and create some much-needed jobs. However there is some quieter concern about the environmental and cultural impacts a large scale gas exploration project will have on the community. Just yesterday there was an interesting article in the Globe about the potential energy industry in the north. (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/fracking-and-climate-change-canadas-far-north-gets-an-energy-boost/article16396953/) The first 'fracking' operation has been approved to begin operations in the Mackenzie Delta south of Inuvik in February. I have lots to say about fracking and deep water arctic drilling but I'll leave it at this: it will be a hot issue to watch over the coming years.


We are down to our final week in Inuvik, hard to believe our time is coming to an end! We fly out next Saturday and are looking forward to a 10 day vacation in Hawaii before our next placement in Grand Forks, BC.  Weather in Lihue, Kauai today? 25 C, feels like 33 C. Pretty much the same as here, except, you know, no negatives  :)