Frozen Pipes Can Impact Your Pipes

Today, I trekked out to the gym (which you'll recall is across the road from the airport) and found it closed. I sign posted in pink highlighter said "Closed Due to Frozen Pipes." My thought was, dude, it's chilly out here. If you wanted, I could show you some frozen pipes. Chilly it is: it's regularly in the low -30Cs without the wind chill. It freezes up cars, planes, snow machines and, well, pipes.

Home Sweet Home

There are some ways in which I am very bad at being a girl. For example, I forget to clean. I also hate blowdrying my hair. It's true that the forgetting is somewhat deliberate, since I also dislike cleaning but I usually need to remind myself to pick things up off the floor. Or I become frustrated always having to search for the matching sock in the clean laundry hamper and end up putting the laundry away. But I digress.

One other way that I am not a proper girl is home decorating. I mean, I like nicely decorated homes but I find that I have no idea how to make mine one of them. In particular, I have no idea how to make my newfound house into a home. I am starting with a lot fewer variables than most people because my unit has set furniture, lighting and window covers. That is the way of federal housing in Iqaluit--perhaps I should explain what I mean by that.

If you have read Canadian news lately, you might know that housing is an issue for those who live in the North. Statscan's recent update can tell you a lot more (http://www12.statcan.ca: eg. 22.7% of total occupied private dwellings in Nunavut have more than one person per room; 4.2% is the Canadian average for aboriginal populations), or the news (like: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/north/story/2007/11/23/kug-housing.html). In Iqaluit, I believe most of this available housing is owned by property corporations or some level of government. The federal government, my employer, owns/leases a number of units in buildings across Iqaluit. These, in turn are leased to me at a subsidized federal housing rate. The rate is determined through a calculation of some sort that may or may not include utilities, that may or may not be furnished, and apparently works out to approximately the market rate for Ottawa. Is your head spinning yet?...I'll refrain from getting into Territorial employees's housing, then, because that will probably result in a headache from which you may not recover. I do not, however, complain about my particular headache. I have a very good deal...a very, very good deal, actually.

Why is all this important to the Trading Spaces edition of this blog? Well, I have a furnished federal unit. This means that I have a set of furniture, lighting, window covers, and wall-to-wall carpeting that belongs to my unit. Due to my particular situation, these items are permanent and in some cases, like the headboard and mirrors, nailed to the wall. I came to this realization when, after my first week here, I thought it might be nice to move my bed to the opposite end of the room so that I could wake to a view of the Bay. Sounded lovely until I realized that I could not move the mirror, which would leave it hanging conspicuously above the bed...maybe not. I also found myself fantasizing about having a blue yoga room with gold stars, like Liz Gilbert did in "Eat Pray Love".

So, the decorating project was abandoned until a few days ago. That's when a couple of friends came over to pick up a CD and one of them exclaimed on how I still had the plastic wrap on my lampshades. I was embarassed that night into cutting them off. I also cut the plastic off the other three lampshades...and unpacked the last boxes of books, which she did not see. That was easy. The more difficult question involved spicing up the stark white walls that towered over my living room. My apartment has two floors and the top floor is a loft-type space, which means there's something like 20 feet of ceiling I need to fill. My painting collection, once so integral to my decor, remains in Toronto, so it could not help me. I did have, however, a number of fun wall-hangings from South East Asia. With some nails and hangers, I think I may have added colour, but the key question remains....what exactly will Ikea deliver to the Arctic?

Stay tuned for more, as I now expect a visit to Loomis and Ikea are in my future...

Roads

I bet you are wondering why there is a post about roads coming from a woman who lives where there aren't really any roads at all--in the literal sense.

It all started with the Ice Road. There are many ice roads, but the one that I am referring to is the onfrom Yellowknife to Dettah. I was on it because I am in Yellowknife for the weekend on my way back to Iqaluit and my friend Karen (whose comments you may have seen on this site) was nice enough to take me on a little drive. In the summertime, you need to drive 27 km around Great Slave Lake to Dettah. In the winter, a quick 6.5 km drive across the frozen lake (well, across Yellowknife Bay, really) gets you there in 1/4 the time. We even got out of the car to have a look at the ice. It is apparently 8 feet thick. And full of cracks. Lots of cracks. Had I not already walked across a cracking almost-frozen river I may have been more perturbed. As it was, I kept pointing at the SUVs and trucks saying "how cool is that?!" every time one drove across. If you are fascinated by the idea, check out the History Channel series "Ice Road Truckers". I would, except that I don't have TV.

Also in the realm of roads: taxis. Yellowknife must have the chattiest taxi drivers in North America. Witness the two conversations I had in 24 hours:

Conversation #1--midnight on Saturday

Me: Chateau Nova, please.
Driver: So, you don't live here?
Me: No, I'm here for work.
Driver: Where are you from?
Me: Iqaluit.
Driver: Originally?
Me: Oh. No, I'm from Toronto.
Driver: No, I mean, like, where are you from? Your family is not Canadian, right?
Me: Oh, yeah, uh, no. My parents are immigrants. We're Armenian.
Driver: Yeah, because you look, like, Italian or Greek or something different.
Me: I guess that's true.

Hmmm...odd, but nothing to write home about until...

Conversation #2--7 pm Sunday

Me: [Private Address], please.
Driver: Sure. (Pause) You live around here?
Me: No, I'm from Iqaluit.
Driver: 'Cause you look like this lady who used to live around here, I used to call her the S[indecipherable] lady.
Me: Pardon? The what lady? The Steak lady?
Driver: No, no, the SNAKE lady?
Me: Snake lady?
Driver: Yeah, she got into my cab one day and asked if I minded pets. I said no, and she told me she had a pet snake. Can you imagine that?
Me: Well, I guess some people have unusual pets.
Driver: I mean, can you imagine going on a date with that woman? You wake up and there's a snake in the house?
Me: Yeah, I guess that comes as a bit of a surprise.
Driver: Though I've had bigger surprises. I once got drunk and woke up next to a woman who only had one arm.

Then we pulled up to the house. I think my response was fairly unremarkable, I mean, what do you say to that?!

But that was my weekend of roads and experiences on the road, which is really pretty good if you think about it.

There and Back Again

The travel whirlwind continues, this time mainly of my own doing. As the sun set in Iqaluit on Decmber 21st, I took off in a First Air jet for Ottawa: my first trip south since moving here two months ago. The first night, I was overwhelmed when trying to decide where to eat dinner and mesmerized by the number of Christmas lights on all the houses. I even went to BMV books just to absorb the atmosphere.

I did a lot of absorbing, mainly of calories: Xmas cookies, Xmas nachos, Xmas coffee, Xmas chocolate... And, let's face it, there's nothing like shedding long johns to make you feel justified in having dessert. I also can't deny it felt good to head home to see my friends and family. I came bearing Nunavummiut gifts, in particular char of all kinds for dinner parties. I think I may have started a trend for smoked, dried char on New Year's Eve.

I enjoyed every minute of my vacation, but I found that I was not only ready to come home, but also looking forward to it. As I eagerly watched for the bright yellow airport from the plane, I thought to myself that it was good to be home.

Ikki

"Ikki" is the Inuktitut word for cold. Said with the right inflection, it means "really damn cold". That's an apt description for the last couple days: -26C, -40 some with the wind-chill factor. Getting dressed to buy eggs takes longer than it took to write this sentence! I have not yet resorted to the snow goggles, but the day is coming. There's no other way to keep my nose warm. Even the balaclava does not totally cut it. I am starting to look forward to a Christmas of -8C in TO. In the meantime, it's cookies and hot chocolate to keep the cold away.

The Inuit watch and remember by Noah Richler New Statesman December 17, 2007

A winter's day as Igloolik knows it. The cold is crisp, the sky dark andclear. Outside, it is ­40°, a temperature at which it does not matter ifthe scale reads Celsius or Fahrenheit. It is December in the southerncalendar, but the beginning of Tauvikjuaq in the Inuit one. This smallNunavut community in northern Canada, established in the 1950s - when theInuit were encouraged, and sometimes coerced, into moving off the land andinto permanent settlements - sits at the north-eastern side of theMelville Peninsula and across the water from Baffin Island, just inside69° latitude. The snow-encrusted land around it, bluish and untrammelled,stretches out flatly in all directions like an upside-down plate. Thehorizon, its distant rim, is an incandescent, silvery white. Before the arrival of Qallunaat - the white man - Tauvikjuaq was the timewhen the Inuit were likely to be assembled in camps, the weather inclementand their supplies often running out. The sun, which fell below thehorizon at the end of November, would not be seen again for several weeks.In the old days it was a time of storytelling, when Elders would amuse thechildren with games, and long hours passed in the handing down from onegeneration to the next of Inuit lore, history and folk knowledge. AfterTauvikjuaq, the Inuit nervously awaited the return of the sun, which meanta return of the light and that the year was starting afresh. Today, science trumps Inuit lore and the old ways are renderedincreasingly useless, not just by the trappings of modern living, but byclimate change and the soaring value of the territory's resources. Now thenarrow strait that separates Igloolik from Baffin Island freezes later, sothat the caribou herds roaming there cannot reliably be hunted untilJanuary, and GPS systems have replaced stories that were used to navigatethe land and speak of its properties, guiding not just hunters, but shipsand prospectors through. When the Inuit do hunt, this is what they find: the work ofdiamond-mining, uranium, hydroelectric, oil and gas pipeline companiesaltering the migration of the caribou herds from Mackenzie to Labrador,affecting the organisation of the land as dramatically as whalers did acentury ago. Now, as then, there is a competition of governments eager forresources: the Russians claim the seabed, the Danes plant flags, andChinese vessels visit. Canada's north is no longer open. Now it is"territory", and the country's prime minister, Stephen Harper, has setabout defending it - planning a deepwater port where frigates can stop atIqaluit and sending in military patrols. >From the settlements, the Inuit watch. Zacha rias Kunuk is the director ofthe remarkable film Atanarjuat: the Fast Runner. When I met him in hisIgloolik office, he spent most of the time staring out the window acrossthe frozen water, to Baffin, where his father was hunting. "Is our storylost?" he asked. "I look around and it's still the same world, still thesame animals, still winter every year, but now there's all this talk ofglobal warming and PCBs [persistent industrial pollutants], there'smercury in our fish - why, why?" Igloolik is a "dry" community: its temperance has contributed to itshealthy social ties and cultural flourishing. But still it must contendwith change - and the forgetting. "Today, in Igloolik, there's TV andradio, there's hockey and there's light," said John MacDonald, a residentof the Arctic since 1959. "There are more distractions - a different tempoand different obligations. The very nature of the community is changing." "All the hunters take radios with them when they go," said anotherneighbour, Louis Tapardjuk, "so everybody is constantly informed. There'sno good stories coming back from the land any more." Tapardjuk sighed."Memory is so different now." When I visited Igloolik, a nurse's van parked outside one Elder's houseindicated another death and more of the old knowledge irretrievably lost.A plume of smoke rose from the chimney of the late woman's home, andwended its way through wires tying her house to a world thousands of milesaway - but disconnecting her from her community. [Noah Richler's "This Is My Country, What's Yours? A Literary Atlas ofCanada" ( McClelland & Stewart) won the 2007 British Columbia Award forCanadian Non-Fiction and is available through Amazon.ca

Yellow, Gjo, and Talo...Oh My

My second circuit proved even more eventful than the first. It all started out fairly inauspisciously with a flight to Yellowknife through Rankin Inlet. Us Baffin Island/Eastern Arctic dwellers have to fly to Yellowknife to hit the Western Arctic. Strange but true. We had one moment of foreshadowing of what was to come: my colleague did lose his "action packer" rubbermaid filled with his personal luggage en route (an omen of things that followed).

In Yellowknife, Karen Lajoie took me out for a night on the town. It started with dinner at Bullock's Bistro, a well-known spot famous mainly for its fish dishes. I bucked the trend (ha ha) and decided to try the muskox. It was a muskox kebab with some yummy teriyaki marinade. It was delicious and came with lovely white bread, french fries, and greek salad. Also, I drank honey brown lager. Out of a bottle no less. Then, we went to Le Frolic for dessert where I discovered that strawberry-rhubarb can be really, really good. The next day was an explore Yellowknife, drink coffee, check out the NWT Xmas dinner-dance kind of day.

Much restored after all this weekend of urban adventure, we headed to Gjoa Haven--first stop on a two part circuit that would also take us to Taloyoak. Both Gjoa Haven, population approximately 1 000, and Taloyoak, population 870ish, are in the "Kitikmeot", a.k.a the Western Arctic. It's a lot colder in those climes, around -31C or so this time of year. I spent most of my time changing into and put of expedition-weight winter gear. And hiding in my parka.

Gjoa Haven actually has its own legal aid office where a lone lawyer toils bravely to represent, well, everyone. Otherwise, lawyers fly in from Yellowknife to do duty counsel work. All was well in Gjo on Day 1 of court. Matters were spoken to, sentences submissions were heard, the Justice Committee consulted. The next morning, however, a wee storm blew in causing disruption so that there was no water at our hotel and court broke a couple of times due to a blackouts. Citizens of Gjoa Haven were apparently worse off than us, however, because on the evening of Day 2, they filled the Community Hall where we held court so that the next morning the only place to hold court was the hotel boardroom. So, we did. I ran my first trial with unshaded hotel lamps to light my submissions. I think the lighting added somewhat to the drama during then voluntariness voir dire when I looked up and asked the police officer, "Did you at any time have recourse to, or gesture at your sidearm, constable?" Response: "No, I did not." It was something. But not as much something as riding with the entire court party, my co-counsel, the pilots, and defence counsel (and all our luggage, including Xmas baking supplies) out to the airport in a white cube truck. As we all stood and hung on the wooden rails nailed on the side while the truck rounded corners. As we entered the airport, the court reporter turned and said, "You do realize, this is how people smuggle themselves into our country?"

We waited a long time for our smuggler's boat, however. The visibility on the runway was variable and the pilots would not head out until it reached at least 3/4 of a mile. A 1/2 mile is what you need for take-off. The airport had issues keeping the power up and, for a while, we thought we would be stranded there because we could not get out and the town of Gjoa Haven was officially in a state of emergency. Half the town had no power and those citizens were being evacuated so they would not freeze to death. Finally, we got our 3/4 mile and after a long taxi (to account for the momentary blackout of the runway lights), we took off. Twenty minutes later, we were in Taloyoak.

After our Gjoa Haven adventure, Taloyoak was all charm, hot cocoa, and homemade cookies--literally. The chef there makes these awesome shortbread balls and hot, fried bannock that broke down all my resolve to eat healthy. After a hot shower, I reveled in delicious refined carbs, though it was a frenetic day of court and some poor accused were remanded back into custody without the court ever getting to their matters. My nerves worn after a long day and mindful of the cookie and big slab of bannock I'd had at lunch, I hauled the circuit bag back to the hotel on the icy road. Two kids pulling a toboggan came alongside me and asked, "what's your name?". I'm friendly, so in our chat my new little friend, Samantha, says "What are you doing? Don't you have a car?" To which I replied, "What's the matter, haven't you ever seem a kudlunah pull a bag in the snow before?" At their turnoff, Samantha and her friend left me, pausing to look back as I trudged up a hill. I waved. Then, I heard, "lookout, Jeanette, there's a car!" Bless them. Little did they know one of those cars, a big old van, in fact, would stop to give me a ride up to the hotel. Mike, if you are out there, you are my hero.

I am happy to report that that was the final adventure of the trip. We flew home in our little charter, tired but successful. I crawled into the bath and then into bed, where I enjoyed dreams of calorie-free bannock.