Goodbye Nunavut

So I came home from Nunavut, after spending 6 weeks travelling to a number of different communities doing science camps for kids and felt a huge sense of loss, confusion and culture shock. First off, there were trees, which I love as you all know, but it felt strange to have the landscape covered by something so large and diverse. I also felt overwhelmed by the size of everything, Ottawa seemed huge and there were so many people all looking so different from each other, driving cars instead of Honda’s. Walking into my apartment didn’t help things much as Mike had already gotten rid of lots of our furniture and it was a disaster area, although looking back after the weekend, everything was very well organized on Friday. I haven’t had a lot of time to digest and think about all that I learned and experienced, but still having everything so raw seems like a good time to write down my impressions and thoughts. I’ve come back feeling like I have to do something about the negative things I have seen on my journey, but I feel so enriched by the positive things I have seen.

I think I will do a point form brain dump of what memories really stand out for me, not necessarily in order, but just as they come up in my mind:

· The Ravens there are so talkative, with a much larger vocabulary and penance for talking than elsewhere.
· Johnny Cash was ever present as a favourite musician all around.
· Walking down the very broken board walk in Iqaluit to the city square across from the old res and northmart to see the accordion player who came in from Kimmirut. The people square dancing there were unbelievable, with a huge repertoire of moves, smiles and seemingly endless energy.
· PUPPIES!!! So many kisses and they will follow you around just for some love. On a cooler day in Iqaluit a little one had a puppy stuffed down their shirt and I couldn’t think of a nicer way of staying warm for either of them.
· Walking down the street on a weekend in Iqaluit and having a little girl from my Sprout camp run up to me, give me a giant hug and smile and run off with her friends.
· Kayaking around Dog Island and seeing a seal head pop up and stare at us.
· The smell of the tundra, which has a warm, dreamy, sweet scent.
· The sound of the wind whipping around our tent in Kimmirut and the feeling like there was more to the wind than just air.
· When we ran out of water in our apartment in Igloolik, our neighbours offering us the keys to next door without a second thought, just wanting to make sure we were happy and comfortable.
· When an elder asks for something from a kid, they will stop what they are doing and go and do whatever they were asked without questioning or complaining.
· The screams of delight from the kids swimming in the Soper River, even though it was only about 10 degrees out.
· The bikes the kids decorated for the Nunavut Day/Canada Day festival in Igloolik.
· The bannock which kept getting better in each community.
· Walking down from the Arena in Iqaluit to the NRI on Wednesday with the fog and mist rolling in, coming to the edge of the cliff and gasping with surprise when I saw all the sea ice and ice bergs stranded on the beach when the tide went out.
· The gamey and sweet taste of caribou, especially the dried caribou Lori shared with me.
· Rick and Janet in Iqaluit inviting us in each time we wandered by.
· Watching the harvest moon rising above the hills in Rankin.
· The elder saying a prayer in the fog and rain on the morning in Rankin for the girl who had committed suicide the night before.
· Driving the giant old NRI Ford truck down onto the beach to pick up Lori & I’s kayaks after our long, cold ride and our return at low tide.
· Marc and I running away from two of our camp kids, Kyla and Ian who had water guns and us having to book it right through the town’s cemetery to avoid getting soaked.
· For some reason in Kimmirut the phrase du jour was “I’m from Rankin, where are you from?” despite none of the kids being from Rankin- that and an emphatic “NOT EVEN” to make a point.
· Hiking with the rec camp kids up the aptly named “Road to Nowhere” in Iqaluit and taking 2 ½ hours to get to the picnic site and when Lori and I went back on our own, it only taking ½ hour, the kids had so many things to stop and look at and explore, it was lovely.
· Almost missing our flight out of Igloolik and them delaying it ½ hour for us (and our mountain of luggage) to make it on.
· Susie sharing her pipsi (dried Arctic Char) with me in Kimmirut- YUM!
· My bag of rocks that I took back with me, more to add to the fish bowl of rocks I have already.
· Drinking cold and fresh water out of the Soper River.
· Feeling the softness of a sealskin and the heaviness of a muskox horn in the Kimmirut gallery.
· The joy on kids faces when they get to put their hands into a blubber mitt (a bag of lard, inside another bag) and feel the difference between their bare hands and blubber in freezing cold water.
· Becky playing around with the oscilloscope and getting it mounted perfectly so when she throat sang into it, it showed the sound waves perfectly.
· The fact we needed at least three polar bear patrollers and lots of guns each time we went out on the land.
· Having my hands frozen solid after climbing up an iceberg.
· The mosquitoes coming out in force in Rankin after the rain stopped.
· Hanging out with the girls in the tent in Rankin, with all our heads in the middle of the tent and the girls sharing ghost stories (I even got scared!!!)
· Being amazed at how warm the qallnic (lamp that is fuelled with fat) made Catherine’s tent in Igloolik.
· How smart the design of the ammouti is, with a pouch for a baby right against a mom’s back, and a hood that goes over the whole baby and mom to keep them both warm.
· How comfortable people were just letting their kids wander around and pass around their babies, it seemed like such a healthy and caring environment for kids to live in.

Alright, that’s a pretty big brain dump. Overall, my most strong impression of the north is that it is a land of extremes- both the landscapes and the people. I will miss it so very much, and really do hope to go back again one day.

Kimmirut

This is the end of my journey in Nunavut, and Kimmirut was an appropriate place to end. It is the most beautiful of the landscapes I have seen so far, with huge powerful looking mountains, crystalline blue ocean and only about 400 people living there. Our week got off to a bit of a shaky start on a few accounts. Firstly the trip from Iqaluit to Kimmirut was done in a twin Otter plane, which is a life experience in itself, and this plane was VERY full of food, in fact I had Ritz Cracker boxes jammed against my knees on the flight there. Marc also got off the flight and ended up with a horrible case of vertigo which would last the week. Pretty much none of our baggage arrived, save Marc's bag of art and one supply box which had all the stuff we had planned to do on the land. The Kimmirut camp was set up with one day in town and three days on the land so we built some bridges and mined some cookies on day one with 2 kids registered at the start of the camp and by the end of the day we had 25.

Kimmirut has a real sense of community, lots of smiles and waves while you walk down the street and our hotel was above the coop store, which is one of two places in town (the other being the ubiquitous Northmart) where you can buy things. This coop was a little different than other ones I'd seen because it had a lot more furs and pelts, it seems there is still a good trade in furs in Kimmirut. My hotel window overlooked the harbour which was breathtaking.

We headed up to Katannilik Park by boat up the Soper River. It was literally breathtaking, it was a beautiful sunny day, the kids and gear had all been shuttled up earlier in the day and once the kids went up, we headed back to town to thankfully collect our luggage which had made the next flight; camping would have been hard in a t shirt and jeans here.... The boat ride didn't take long and there was about a 10 minute hike once we reached the Soper Rapids to get to the camp site. It was in the middle of a valley, right next to the river and rapids, with a mountain to the South and wide open meadows to the North. The kids were swimming, with lots of squeals of delight when we got there so Lori and I decided to join them, yikes it was COLD, but the air was nice and warm so it wasn't so bad.

The way this camp was set up was that there was to be about 3 hours a day of science programming for the kids and the rest was suppose to be traditional knowledge taught to the kids by the four elders (2 men and 2 women). After dropping our stuff off among the tents and going for a quick swim in the Soper River, we headed into the cabin and there was seal meat stewing which I was invited to help myself to. Seal meat is delicious, the blubber surrounding the seal meat was a little harder to eat, but thanks to a tip from one of the kids that ketchup is really good with seal, the blubber ended up going down fine. There was also a type of blood broth from the seal that the kids were really keen on it. After the seal, me and a pack of kids wandered out onto the tundra and started picking (and eating :-) wild blueberries and cloudberries, which are absolutely to die for fresh off the tundra, still warm from the sun.

The next day was a little trying on my patience, but I think that was somewhat the point. I like to have things scheduled and prepared ahead of time, and that is not the Inuit way. Lori, Susie and I did camp in the morning, the kids were not quite awake yet and for some activities were totally into it, but not so much for others, so they wandered off and started up games of soccer. The one activity which was fantastic was collecting field specimens for the microscope. There are lemmings (avinnqaq's) abound in Kimmirut and catching them is a sport here, not only for the kids, but for the polar bear guard dog who we had along on the trip with us. While collecting specimens one of the kids got a lemming, and the dog killed it, so we performed a bit of an impromptu dissection (mostly with the help of the dogs teeth) and looked at its teeth (which are like little beaver teeth!), fur, blood and brain. It was really great how into the biology the kids were and their total lack of squeamish-ness.

After lunch, the group divided into girls and boys, and the guys all headed up the mountain for the elders to teach the boys about building Inukshuks, learning the landscape and hunting. The girls stayed behind and we had an amazing time. The elders started talking (in Inutkitut, which Susie translated for me, which I felt a little awkward and sad about, I wished that I could have understood) about being girls on the land, having to learn about preparing food and skins, and making clothes. They learned by watching their mothers and aunts and other women in camp, and asked a lot of questions. The women said that life back then was a lot harder, and being on the land now is easy in comparison. They talked about giving birth in ice houses, using arctic hare pelts for diapers and how much fun it was to do the sewing. I felt so special to have been given the opportunity to be a fly on the wall when the girls were listening and learning from these women who had seen such an enormous and for me, incomprehensible, change in their lifetime. To go from giving birth in an igloo, to watching their daughters and perhaps even granddaughters have to fly from their communities to Iqaluit to give birth in a very modern hospital must be so very strange and I would think overwhelming. These women keep so much poise and humour, I felt very comfortable around them. The elder then started doing a dance which was a game where one woman would get up and start tapping out a rhythm with their feet and another woman would have to get up and mimic her foot rhythm. I tried and totally failed! The girls then started an amazing dance, I’ll put up a video of it, cause it would be hard to describe.

The rest of the day was pretty much free time, which I had trouble with as I had gotten used to trying to cram in so many activities with kids for the past five weeks, that free time seemed wasted to me at first, I felt like I should have started an activity and get the kids learning. Fortunately I didn’t, because patience, waiting and just hanging out was a key part of time in camp and that in itself was an important learning experience for not just the kids, but me too. After dinner, Lori, Susie and I went berry picking for a few hours, it was wonderful to just let my mind go and focus completely on the here and now of picking fresh beautiful berries with a stunning landscape all around me, I felt the stress I had accumulated unintentionally through the trip just fall away.

That night was so very special. I ended up playing limbo and jump (jump is the opposite of limbo where you have a string and you raise it higher and higher and see who can get over without touching, Itee, one of the elders even tried for a bit). Tommy, our community contact for the camp, set up a bonfire and as we were heading down onto the beach for it, me and Oolaie, one of the campers noticed a huge harvest almost full moon rising up over the mountains. As the bonfire got going (with the help of some Honda gas..) the northern lights started up a show in the sky and the kids all started whistling. Apparently the northern lights represent your ancestors visiting you and if you whistle, they will come closer, if you clap, they will go away. The kids also mentioned something about whistling too much and they’ll take your head off, kinda worrisome... Anyways it was a perfect night to end an amazing trip.

The next day we did some more science activities in the morning and had loads of fun with the kids. Lunch included the best bannock I’ve had thus far on the trip, so very tasty!!! And then off to Sandbar beach for cartwheels in the sand, jumping in the water and then another hour or so of berry picking. Once back into town we held an open house for all the parents and families, and had lots of excited kids show up asking to learn about science, it just warmed my heart. On my way out I had some more frank discussions with some of the 11 year old girls at camp and again, was reminded that the fun loving children I watched chase lemmings and scream with delight in the river have problems become my own comprehension, this is truly a land of extreme’s in all aspects of life here.

I will do one last blog entry just to give myself some closure on this trip, which really did change my life in so many unexpected ways. I will also spend some time and make a massive photo album, as well as a more condensed one so people can see the trip through my eyes (and Kris and Tyler’s who took some amazing photos!) I am doing a cross Canada road trip next, so I will try and jot down any fun stories from that adventure too, it seems like the fun and learning never ever stops. Thanks for all your emails and comments, I am happy to share my experience with as many of you as possible, Nunavut is a truly spectacular part of our great country and I feel so privileged to have not only travelled to and around it, but to have had such a warm and unique experience there.

Sprouts

So my last week in Iqaluit was spent with my favourite group of kids thus far. Sprouts camp is for kids who are hand picked from low income families, many are from the women's shelter, their parents may be in prison, they are in foster families. The first day of camp I wanted to leave and never come back. Over the course of this trip I have learnt a lot about myself and I have come to realize that I like controlled environments- things don't need to go as planned, but I like a semblance of order. This group of kids did not have that. That being said, I have never gotten so many hugs, seen such huge smiles and excitement for learning anywhere else.

By the end of the week, after I came up with some personal coping techniques, informed by the ever patient, talented and wonderful Becky, who leads the Sprout camp and was the same woman I heard doing throat singing my first week here, all the kids in the camp were so very near and dear to my heart. Splitting the kids into groups, and trying to make the learning process more about exploring than about coming away with a specific learning outcome worked really well with these kids. Also acknowledging that I don't need everyone's attention to go ahead with activities was something else I personally had to work on. These kids have been through way more horrible stuff in their lives at the ages of 5 and 6 than I could imagine, yet they still show up in the morning with smiles and laughter, which speaks to the resilience of children and humanity in general.

On Friday morning, I traded Marc for his rec camp so he could have some time with the amazing awe inspiring Sprouts and I got to go on a hike up the famous Road to Nowhere in Iqaluit, it was a sunny warm day and it couldn't have been more perfect for a group of about 60 kids to meander over hills next to a river and just have fun outside. I was a lovely morning, but the kids were so well behaved and listened so well, it felt a little surreal and too polished for me, so I was excited to get back to my Sprouts in the afternoon.

After a very intense and tiring week of camp, Marc and I wandered up to the peaks of Sylvia Grinnell park with some left overs and had a splendid picnic at the top of the mountain. I spent some solo time hiking around Iqaluit on Sat, following the grave yard trail out to the small neighbouring community of Apex and checked out the old Hudson's Bay Company beach, which is a beautiful sandy beach that happened to have chunks of ice on it, which were rapidly melting in the hot summer sun, so I sat there for a good piece of my Sat just enjoying the view, the fact I had the whole long beach to myself and contemplating the history and impact of the HBC in this region.

Sat night we were contemplating heading out on the town, but decided to go for a sunset kayak instead, which almost turned into a bit of a disaster when the Nunavut Research Institute truck which we were borrowing got stuck, very stuck, in the loose large rocky boat launch at the far end of town. After many tries, lots of burnt rubber and a few stalls we manged to get it back up the boat launch and headed off on a beautiful paddle along the west coast of the bay up towards the river and park. The start of the paddle was on extremely smooth water, not a ripple to be seen, but just before we got back (sunset ends around 11 pm ish) a wind picked up and thank god we got off the water because it whipped up to 30 kms/hr pretty quick. We carried the kayaks (actually we only carried one, some guys helping take out another boat walked up with our other one unbeknownst to us until we got to the top of the launch and noticed them behind us, quietly carrying our kayak, I love people here!!!) back up the long boat launch instead of chancing another sticky situation at the bottom.

There was lots of packing and organizing for Kimmirut, which I will write about in a bit . For now I am sad to have left Iqaluit, despite all it's quirky flaws, I have really come to love it here, it's felt like a second home, with people like Rick and Janet making us feel welcome, walking down the street and having kids I've been working with run up and give me a hug, and recently having little ones show up at our door on white row and ask to hang out and play. The land and landscapes here are breathtaking too, to have such beautiful spots all around the capital city of Nunavut is fabulous. I am sure I will be back!

Bergy Bits

So last week involved some much needed down time, not because I acknowledged the fact that I must rest or burn out, mostly because it was foggy, windy, rainy and COLD! Camp was good, it was lovely to have four instructors so we tagged in and out of activities. This week though I think that I will make up for that as there are only two instructors...

Onto my adventures, which I seem to be experiencing in endless supply here. This was an outdoor fun weekend of adventures, which was great, as I needed to get some exercise and just let my mind wander free. Last weekend was great, we spent some time wandering around town, got to watch an Inuit carver at work for about an hour and see a chunk of rock turned into a beautiful bear, it was awe inspiring, and when we asked how he did that in such a short period of time and how he knew what the carving would be, all he said was it's in the rock. Alright back to the story. Last weekend Kris and I desprately wanted to go kayaking, however many things conspired against us. One: there were no life jackets- two: the tide was going out, Iqaluit has one of the biggest tides in Canada, which will be relevant later in my story- three: it was really windy. So we tried, but the lifeguard in me kicked in when in my canvas and wood kayak from the 1970's that had no spray skirt, I started feeling the canvas bend from the waves, I decided this was a bad judgement call. Not that it was a hardship for us to go back into the cememtary (where we launched from, it's right down on the beach) sit on the rocks in the warm sunshine and watch the tide go out for an hour, but we wanted to kayak. Fast forward to yesterday... Kris sadly has left us, so it's just me, Marc, Lori and Suzie joined us today.... Lori and I headed out in the kayak. It was sunny, windless, we found lifejackets and the tide had already gone out, so we wouldn't have been paddling over rocks that were in the process of coming to the surface, they were already uncover. As nice as it was not padding over the rocks, we had to walk with bulky kayaks and me with very sub par footwear (my slip on suede shoes, because my boots were still soaked from the Saturday adventure I'll get to later). This wasn't fun, but it was also a very surreal experience because the sea ice has floated into the bay, which meant at low tide, it was all washed up around us, so chunks of ice the size of houses were all around us as we were taking the kayaks down to the shore.

Once we got the kayaks down to the shore (a very nice man managed to balance one of the back of his ATV and take it down the last few hundred feet) I ended up getting soaked launching mine, so my feet were pretty cold to start with. Back to the surreal aspect, we were paddling around in Frosbisher Bay, which an abnormal amount of sea ice ranging from little tiny pieces to bergy bits to full blown icebergs the size of a house. This apparently only happens with the bay full in the summer once every ten years, so we are so lucky to be here right now. Lori and I paddled around checking out the ice both in the water and marooned on shore. We came across two ringed seals, one white one black, they were so peaceful looking. We padded around the ice island right outside the bay, and it was practically a glassy calm, which was fabulous for looking at the kelp forests waving below us. I even paddled over top of some bergy bits (I know, silly thing to do, but it was such an amazing feeling!). We were out there for about two or three hours, so I was getting pretty cold, the lack of spray skirt meant that the icy Arctic Ocean was ending up on my lap. Lori said that back in the day there would be two people laying in the front of the kayak and another two laying behind, I can't imagine how cold it must of have been for them to travel this way, because you really feel the chilliness coming up from the ocean into the kayak. We took the truck down the beach a ways to take the kayak's back to Rick's- who is our contact up here with the Nunavut Research Institute (NRI) and is a lovely human being, people here have been so friendly! I promptly went home after and curled up in a warm shower for 20 mins to let my feet thaw out.

Early in the week on Wednesday when all the fog was around was went the ice rolled into the bay, and I had to walk down to the NRI for a job interview in the middle of the day. I took a short cut down the hillside and walked along the beach to get to the other end of town, and I happened to be doing this during low tide, so I got to wander in amongst all these icebergs and bergy bits with the fog rolling around in the background, it was such a creepy and beautiful feeling all at the same time. On Saturday, it was sunny and gorgeous, so at low tide Kris and I went on quite the hike around the bay to check out all the ice. My stories won't do this experience justice, and I fear my pictures won't either, so I will simply recommend to everyone to spend a sunshiny day climbing up and around icebergs on a beach. I spent almost the whole afternoon repeating in my head that it was SO good to be alive.

After our beach walk, we headed over to the jewelry studio which was run by one of our campers parents. It was fabulous, we showed up just as one of the artists was coming in to work. He showed up the studio, explained how it was ingeniously outfitted with recycled goods, such as old doors for work desks, an airplane nose as a fume hood, government building supports for a saw, and so on. He also brought out a narwhale tusk, a piece of whale baleen, opened the fridge and took out two walrus tusks (one with the nerve still in it), it was so amazing to touch all these pieces- the narwhale tusk was really light, but the walrus tusks were a lot heavier and much more blunt than I expected. He also showed us an amazing piece that was being worked on with polar bear claws. We headed over to a gallery selling the work the next day and grabbed a few pieces. Speaking of art, I have gotten some amazing pieces, complete with a dancing polar bear from the artist we saw doing the demo last weekend, so many beautiful pieces, so little space in my luggage :-(

Next week I'll be doing the Sprouts Camp, which I am so very excited for, it should be great, I think that I'll have lots of camp stories to write everyone with. After that, it's onto the land in Kimmiruit and then back to Ottawa. Time has flown, it really doesn't feel like a whole month that I've been up here.