hunters

caribou head: skull-licious doggy treat

The other day, somebody in the community Facebook group was advertising fresh grizzly bear meat for sale, from the kill that a hunter had shot the other day. I wanted to buy grizzly bear meat! I would have no idea how to cook grizzly bear meat. Maybe in a stew, like rabbit, like my partner suggests, since it would probably be tough and gamey.  It's probably a good thing we didn't buy grizzly bear meat. Next time, Smokey...

Do you ever feel like a lot of North Americans want to avoid thinking about where our meat comes from? Our fish is served without scales or heads, and even when we walk into the butcher, the chunks of meat hanging from hooks don't resemble anything like the cows or pigs they once were. It's like we want to tell ourselves that burgers come from the burger tree and not from animals that were once living.

It's not like this in other parts of the world.  Just visit the markets in Barcelona, where the heads of ducks and rabbits are intact so you can see from the eyes of how fresh the meat is.  Order a "smilie" dish in Namibia, named after the fact that the goat's head served to you appears to be smiling. Or just take a stroll through Chinatown and peek into the grocery stores where feet and tails and faces of various animals greet you.

The Nunavummiut have less qualms about where their meat comes from. A lot of them go out on the land with the snowmobiles and catch the meat themselves.  It's pretty neat to see modern hunting culture among the Inuit.  Sometimes the hunters post in the community Facebook group, asking for assistance in removing the antlers off a caribou skull, as well as assistance in cutting the caribou head in half. (I wonder if we can take some advice from my friend in Africa and use a bandsaw?)

I also enjoy the hunters' postings on the community bulletin boards at the grocery stores.

for the record, I haven't figured out yet what a kalvik / kavik is. 

In the traditional community spirit, people often share what meat they do catch, especially offering the first cuts of meat to the elders.  This weekend, a community member invited everyone to a potluck dinner at the church to share the polar bear meat that had been shot this week.  This means, by the way, I've now turned down two opportunities to eat bears in one week.

 The Nunavummiut love country food, like muskox meat and char.  At the local grocery store, the "country food" section also has Korean-style galbi ribs for some reason, so I guess I love "country food" too....

I used to be a little squeamish about meat and fur.  I didn't eat seafood for a decade because Koreans like to serve their dishes with the whole fish intact, and I don't like the way they would look at me with their fishy eyes. I got over it, though. I think that you shouldn't eat meat, if you aren't comfortable with where your meat comes from. And I like to eat meat. Which means my Inuit neighbours can now totally hang up their wolverine and fox hides on their porch and I no longer blink an eye.

sled

yes, that's a leg poking up from the roof.

And deal with fish heads, randomly lying on the side of the road for no reason that I can really understand.

why is this still here? why has no one made bouillabaisse out of this yet?

charity fridays: cycling for a cause

If you're like me and you'd rather your money go towards charitable causes than to the tax man, there are all sorts of great fundraisers and charities to donate to.  I've decided that I'm going to devote Fridays to listing my favourite social causes and events of the week:

• CN Cycle for CHEO: My good friend Jasmine Woodley is going to do a 70 kilometre obstacle course on her bicycle, because she is *crazy*. And by crazy, I mean full of all sorts of courage that I lack. Read more about CN Cycle for CHEO here, and open up your wallets to support kids with cancer.

• Team aca-Pedal harmoKNEEs for the ORCC Spin-a-Thon: My friend Janet Lo is also going to do crazy things to her legs by spinning for EIGHT HOURS in order to raise funds for the Ottawa Rape Crisis Center. Those of you who know me know that supporting survivors of sexual assault is an important cause to me. Help my friend Janet out...and maybe we should send her a massage therapist for her legs afterwards too.

• Calgary Housing and Employment Services: My friend Josh Lam is very passionate about justice issues, because, well, he's just generally a really nice guy. After doing some great work for the International Commission of Jurists in Kenya, he's now helping to start up a new project in Calgary where he's based, Calgary Housing and Employment Services. This organization provides individuals facing homelessness with supported housing and employment strategies along with specialized legal services, and they very much could use your funding to get started.

after the fire

I heard the town siren go off again last night.  The ten o'clock curfew siren had already sounded, but this second siren was different - it just kept going and going and going.  This wasn't the curfew siren; it was the fire alarm, alerting the town of an emergency.

I put on my Canada Goose jacket and stood outside on the street, trying to see if there was smoke in the sky.  It was still daylight at 10:30PM. The sun has been staying up longer and longer these days, and it does weird things to your mind.

The first night that I visited Cambridge Bay last October, there was a fire that killed a woman. Tragically, it seems like these things happen here way too often than you'd expect, and in a small close-knit community like this one, each death hits the community hard. I had heard the town siren sound, like a woman wailing for ten minutes straight, just like it was now.  I wondered if somebody would die tonight.

CBC News: :Woman dead in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, house fire
Nunatsiaq News: CamBay house fire kills woman

In the days that follow, the world was swept up by the news of the Boston marathon bombing, followed by the shooting of a police officer at M.I.T., followed by the lockdown of all of Boston while the remaining suspect was tracked down in Watertown.  But Cambridge Bay, over two thousand miles away, was coping in its own tragedy after the fire.  Wasn't it just last week that there was a funeral?

The details about the house fire that claimed one life are still surfacing, but there is one thing I noticed: it seemed like everyone knew the woman who passed away; it was as though almost everyone was either close or related to her. The man in front of me in line at the post office. The person I talked to at the grocery store. Clients. Coworkers. In a small town, I guess it isn't all that hard to believe that everybody knew the victim.

It was also surprising to see the outpouring of support.  People took time off work to comfort the family. The planning committee meeting to prepare for the Frolics spring celebration was cancelled. People even sent messages on Facebook offering their help. That's the other side of things that comes with living in a small town. Everybody's right there with you, sharing the pain.  It was really something to observe.

selling sushi at the local market

Cambridge Bay held another community sale this Saturday, this informal market where people can sell their goods. Inuit ladies sell bannock and beautiful sewing. Artists sell their carvings made of muskox horn. Mothers selling used baby clothes and toys or Christian rock cassette tapes. As Cambridge Bay’s resident Korean-Canadian, I decided that Rob and I should sell some of our kimbap – Korean-style sushi hosomaki rolls.

Well, it turns out sushi is pretty popular in Cambridge Bay. I guess I should have figured it out, since people love seafood up here and people aren’t squeamish about eating uncooked fish like the way some people are down south. When I let it slip that we were planning to sell sushi at the sale, we were getting inquiries for pre-orders a week before the actual sale.

Rob and I spent all morning making maki rolls by hand. It wasn’t exacly like the kimbap that my mother used to make, because we couldn’t get some of the ingredients. Instead, we used Arctic char, crab, and tuna, with healthy and colourful filling like cucumber, avocado, peppers, and carrots. We were rolling till the last minute – it was noon by the time we rushed to the elementary school gym where the market was, armed with our plates of sushi, my hands still smelling like fish.

To my amazement, we barely had the chance to set our goods out on the table before a lineup had formed of curious and hungry visitors. The sushi was selling fast. One man bought a plate, and then returned to buy another, complaining that his wife just didn't know how to spread wasabi.  Another woman, when we didn't have enough change to give her for her purchase of two plates, decided to go ahead and just buy three plates instead. Within minutes, I decided to leave Rob at the table so I could go home and roll some more sushi.

By the time I returned to the sale with more sushi, I couldn’t see Rob at all. Where had he gone? Where our table had been, there was instead a pile of small Inuit children. That’s when I discovered that Rob was under the pile of small children. We had sold out our entire supply of sushi in an hour, but the kids were still curious.

Rob had gotten them to try a taste of wasabi, probably more for his own amusement than theirs, and now as I approached the kids wanted me to fall for the same trick. They were charming and cunning, and I barely made it out alive.

“I dare you to take a big bite of this,” one little boy said.
“No,” I replied, because I have tried it before.
“I double dare you to do it,” he said again.
“No,” I repeated.
“I double-dog dare you to do it,” one little boy said.
“I double-dog dare you to put it in your eye,” I retorted.
The boy blinked. ”That’s child abuse!”
I suppose it is. I’m glad these kids know their rights.

“Are you from China?” one of the smaller girls asked me.

I had a flashback of Africa. “No,” I answered, and wondered if these kids would start to think I had a one word vocabulary.

The little boy pointed to the girl. “Look!” he said. “She got big eyes like you, China!”

The little girl did have big eyes, although I have never been told in my life that I have big eyes myself. That was definitely a first. “Maybe she’s really surprised all the time,” I pondered.

“No!” the boy insisted. “She just have big eyes!”

Confusingly, he then turned to my husband, who is white. “You have small eyes like China,” he told Rob.

“That’s the first time I’ve heard that too,” Rob answered.

By the time we were finished with the sale, we had sold every single plate we had made, within an hour, except for one plate that we gave to the small children, so they could experience the wonders of sushi. And also, to give Rob a chance to escape. I’d say it was all a great big success.

blown away

"Wow, it's only -10°C today," I said to myself as I got dressed. "I can totally wear my spring coat. I can totally wear my leather boots. I don't need to wear a hat at all. Hey, maybe I can actually dress nice to work today!"

wind inappropriate wardrobe

So I said to myself, walking out the door. Then I was blown away by the gust of wind that had apparently been waiting for me outside my house. I had forgotten to check the wind. Rookie mistake. Always check the wind, Gloria, always check the wind.

At first, I thought I could just grit my teeth and bear with the wind. This was mainly because I was wearing what I perceived to be a cool outfit and didn't want to ruin it with a hat. But the wind was biting. It felt like it was cutting right through my forehead into my skull. At some point, I lost the feeling in my ears. I felt defeat was imminent. Time to turn around and dress more sensibly. Luckily, I was only 100 metres from my house.

wind appropriate wardrobe

Yeah, it was windy. It g

ets pretty windy up here sometimes. It's nothing like I've ever experienced before. Down south in the city, sometimes I'll feel a gust of wind and be like, "Golly, that wind almost lifted my skirt. How embarrassing that would have been." Here, it could probably lift a cow like in that film Twister, if we had a cow up here, and that cow was on a diet. Winds gust up to 70km/hr. Have you ever experienced 70 km/hr winds before? I have not. It took some getting used to.

"Don't worry, I'll put up these flyers advertising for new board members around town." I said to my boss at work. And then I stepped outside, and the wind whipped those flyers right out my hand and out toward the frozen Beaufort Sea. Maybe some of the polar bears out in the wilderness are looking to become board members.

"Let me get that box out of the trunk," I said, reaching for the back of the office car, and found out that the reason why you're supposed to hold on to the car door when you open it is because the wind might snap it off.

There is a road under that blowing snow. Can you see it?

Then there was driving home from work. I had to stop by the police station on the way home, so I decided to take the coast line road home, because, stupid Gloria, I thought that oceanside scenery would be nice. Wrong. It was nice only if you had a thing for feeling terrified. Turns out that what the wind does is blow all the snow in from the frozen ocean and on to the road. Kids might think that riding through snow banks in the middle of the road is fun, but kids are stupid. The worst part was that if things went wrong and I lost control of the car (and the snow banks underneath my tire certainly were fighting me for control), I was painfully aware that the truck would go sailing off the road and towards the ocean, because there was literally, like, nothing between the road and the water. Suddenly I felt no comfort in the fact that I was driving in a four wheel drive truck. All the bigger thing to go down in. It didn't help that the best way to drive through snow banks is to speed up as you approach it. It is totally counter-intuitive to speed up towards a thing that is going to potentially cause you to lose control of the car. But then, you don't want to get stuck in it either. So...ramming speed. With each snow drift I drove over, I hoped that the crazy winds were at least pushing me in the right direction.

But even the fierceness of the wind is something you can get used to, and folks around here have adapted to it. I watched in amazement as my friend that I invited over for dinner arrived at our house on foot, having walked from the other side of town through the 70 km/h winds, pulling her two year old baby on a sled behind her.  Did I also mention she's 8 months pregnant? And then when I offered her a ride home after dinner, she declined, hoping that the walk home would put the baby to sleep. That's one tough mom.

going hyperlocal

Check out my entry for CBC's Hyperlocal story project, which collects stories about the changes people are experiencing in their local neighbourhoods in Canada. As of now, my story is the first entry from Nunavut, and it's also the most northern neighbourhood at the moment.

Read my entry on the CBC Hyperlocal website here.

Day of Pink

Today is Day of Pink, the International Day against Bullying, Discrimination, Homophobia and Transphobia in schools and communities. It began when two straight students at a Nova Scotia high school witnessed a gay student being bullied for wearing a pink shirt. The two students intervened, and then organized everyone at school to show up a few days later wearing a pink shirt to show their support. Now, on April 10, thanks to organizations like Jer's Vision, everyone has the chance to make a public stance against bullying and discrimination by wearing a pink shirt all day.

Here's my pink shirt. Incidentally, it's the only clean pink shirt I own, and it's not exactly the most business appropriate choice of wardrobe for a lawyer at a law office - but it's for a good cause right?

dispatches from a border planet

"Don't you ever miss the city?" my friends ask me sometimes.

Sometimes I do wake up, craving the city. I want to wander into a crowded coffee shop that's playing music by CBC Radio 3's latest darling, sit at a a small table, order a hot latte and nibble away at an organic date square, watch everybody ignores me because they're going about doing their own thing in a hurry.  We don't do things like that here. There are no coffee shops in Cambridge Bay.

We've been watching the TV show Firefly lately, and I've been finding myself relating somewhat to the border planets on the edges of the star system. Cambridge Bay really is far away from the centre of the universe that is Ontario. It takes two days' travel and at least fifteen hundred dollars to travel to the closest city "down south". Instead, we live our own world up here. Also, like in the moons of the show Firefly, there is sort of a sense of time dissonance here. I mean, I know it's 2013, but I also feel like I've been transported back to a familiar time before iPhones, where people still use the yellow pages and didn't have to dial the area code to phone locally, where you get all your local news from the bulletin board at the grocery store, and the postman knows your name. 

photo taken on one of my runs: kind of looks like an alien planet sometimes

I've been picking up hardcore survival skills, living here in the Arctic, like chopping my own carrots to make *homemade* carrot sticks, and actually using the stems of broccoli instead of throwing it out. This one time, we melted snow to make water. We’re like McGyver, guys.

But sometimes we spoil ourselves. My coworkers often offer me a ride wherever I’m going, whether it’s home, the gym, or the grocery store. I always give them a confused look, because the distance I’d be walking is like the equivalent of, say, from the Parliament Buildings to the World Exchange Plaza, or maybe Dundas-Yonge Square to the Eaton Centre. As someone who still has the brain of a student who will walk three kilometres rather than shell out the bus fare, it’s just confusing as to why I’d want a ride to the post office two hundred metres away. But then I’m reminded that we’re in the Arctic, and it’s minus forty without the windchill. And there is definitely a windchill.

me atop a snow bank

I've begun to really learn to love the little quirks of Cambridge Bay. For example, there's a sign in the fitness room that says "COUNCIL IN SESSION PLEASE BE QUIET" and I really have no idea why. Also, once in a while, I see notices like this on the grocery store bulletin boards:

There’s an alarm that goes off in town at noon and ten at night every day. It’s kind of like the church bells, letting the townspeople know that it’s time for lunch or time for bed, but instead of playing pretty melodies, the alarm is a loud air raid siren that is, well, kind of alarming. YOU GUYS. YOU GUYS. IT’S TEN O’CLOCK AND TIME FOR BED. YOU GUYS. I asked why we’ve chosen this particular sound, and it turns out its left over from the days of the Cold War and everyone was worried about the Russians coming. There’s a Distant Early Warning station (DEW line) that’s still functioning, right outside of town. [NOTE: it’s not that they were worried that the Russians would bomb Cambridge Bay. It’s more like, if the Russians sent a missile to Ottawa (cus we were totally a world power and stuff), we’d see it’d pass by us on the way and we could give those folks down South a call to let them know] So that makes sense. Except that I hope that if the Russians ever invade, it’s not at noon, because when the alarm goes off, we’ll all just think that it’s time to take a lunch break.

 Also, whenever it is time for lunch, I’ve got this instinct to duck and cover.

snow inukshuks made by children, DEW line station in the background

I admit that I do miss the conveniences of city life sometimes. I need to buy new hiking shoes, for example, and because of my oddly sized feet, I really need to go into a store to buy them, rather than ordering them online. Having a Mountain Equipment Co-op nearby would really be handy.  I miss browsing designer boutiques for cute new dresses I can't afford, and I miss watching movies in theatres.

On the other hand, sometimes I have beautiful moments that make me feel so thankful that I am here.  Yesterday, I went for a run along the ice road that stretches into the Beaufort Sea. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, a big beautiful Alaskan malamute dog came running and joined me, sprinting alongside me for the rest of my route. I've talked before about how beautiful the dogs of the north are. Have you ever done the Basic Run in the WiiFit, where the dog leads you on your virtual run? It was like that, except in real life, on an ice road, with a sled dog. I felt like a princess in a Disney movie.

dancing on the ice road

Arctic dogs

BEWARE THE ARCTIC FOX

"Don't look now, but I think we're being followed," I whispered to my husband.  We were out on a walk to enjoy the beautiful day, which was unusually warm and balmy at -29°C. 

"By that dog?"

"If that is even a dog. Might be a wolf."

"It's not a wolf. It's a dog."

"Might be a wolf."

The dog was huge, a thick frame, with gigantic paws that would never break through the snow.  Rob theorized that it was an Alaskan malamute.  He was watching us with great interest.

"Be careful," I said. "He might be a wolf."
"It's a dog. And he's got three legs."

"He's got three legs, but he knows how to use them," I said, ripping off a certain classic rock band from Texas.

Then my husband went over to pet it, because he apparently can tell when a dog is not a wolf. A good tip, I guess, is when they have a dog collar.

Lefty, as we decided to call him, was a friendly dog, curious about what we were up to. Unlike the other dogs in town, he wasn't chained up in the yard, and so he was free to wander, following us as we made our way across the frozen ice that formed the Beaufort Sea.

It was starting to warm up, to the point where walks outside where pretty pleasant in that you didn't get an instant windburn / frostbite if you accidentally exposed skin, and I only had to wear two layers of protective clothing, as opposed to my usual three or four. Long deep cracks were starting to form in the ice, ominous looking at first to people walking on the ice, at least until you remember that the sea stays frozen well into May and beyond.

Lefty followed us all the way, almost in a protective manner, keeping a respectful distance, but staying close enough to let us know he was there whenever we changed direction.  Malamutes have been loyal dogs to people in the North for a long time now, often used as sled dogs - although I'm pretty sure Lefty wasn't pulling any sleds these days, with his missing leg. There's a strong history between dogs and men up here in the Arctic, both helping each other to survive the harshest environments by pulling sleds and helping during hunts. The slaughter of sled dogs by the RCMP during the 1960s, citing health and safety reasons, provoked many bitter feelings by the Inuit towards the Canadian government. Nowadays, the folks in town use snowmobiles to pull their heavy loads, but many of them still keep dogs around, like Lefty.

Lefty, pondering

Lefty, in front of the Martin Bergmann ice breaker ship and the Distant Early Warning System. Talk about an Arctic view

Eventually Lefty had to go back to his owner. On our way back home, though we were discovered by another dog - a much smaller little puppy named Kilo.  A couple days ago, I'd seen the neighbourhood kids teaching the little puppy how to pull a sled. The little puppy was giving it his best, pulling and pulling, while a toddler sat on the sled.  Now, though, he was free to run around, and he seemed excited to play with me.  At least I figured he was excited, because he peed on my boots.

the road by our house

checking out the dump

"Time to go to the dump," my boss said. We had stuff to throw out. Just a day in the life of an Arctic lawyer.

I hadn't been to the dump before. I was vaguely aware that there must be some place where they carted off my garbage, but it hadn't been on the list of things I wanted to see the most when I first arrived.  Generally, we don't think much about dumps, right? But then my friends down South started asking me, where does the garbage go? We can't possibly be burying it, not when the ground is frozen for most of the year.  So where does our trash go? It was time to find out.

the road to the dump

We loaded up the truck and headed out.  The dump wasn't that hard to find. There are only a few roads that lead out of Cambridge Bay, and Google Maps would have you believe that they lead to nowhere. I mean, they do go on for a long time, but they don't lead to other towns - the only other town on Victoria Island is Ulukhaktok, which is actually part of the Northwest Territories. (Yup, on this island that is twice the size of Newfoundland, there are only two towns that are pretty much on opposite ends. How's that for isolation?)  There's one road that goes out to the airport, and another towards the old town ruins, and then there's this one that goes out to the dump, and then to a lake, that is awfully close to the dump.  I hope this is not the lake where our water comes from.

all roads lead to waste

Anyway, the dump in Cambridge Bay is like a regular dump, I guess (to be honest, I'm not all that familiar with regular dumps), but in the dead of winter it's a bit of a surreal sight, these random piles of garbage on what appears to be a random spot in the middle of the Arctic tundra.  As I unloaded our junk from the truck and threw them into the landscape, it felt weird.  Like I was just chucking stuff into the snowy Arctic wilderness.  Which, I suppose, I basically was doing. But in a designated spot.

The dump is actually marked off by a fence and signs, and off in the distance I could hear heavy machinery working at crushing the trash, or whatever it is these things do at dumps.  Sometimes in town, we can see the smoke in the sky when the dump's on fire.  As you can imagine, it's a pretty popular place for the ravens and the crows.  I asked my boss if there's any problems with wild animals at the dump. She said no. But I kind of have a hard time believing that polar bears would stay away from such a buffet if they'd ever discovered it.

giant ravens

Believe it or not, the road to the dump has become a part of my walking routes now. It's a great road to run on if I want to extend my route by a few kilometres, and the scenery on the way there is gorgeous, because it is, of course, pristine Arctic tundra. And no, there isn't even much of a smell issue, because everything is frozen.

running on the tundra

It's started to get warm enough lately that I have been able to go for a run out on the tundra.  My general rule of thumb is that if it's warmer than -30°C with the windchill, it's warm enough to run outside.  But it just feels so refreshing to be outside in the wilderness, working up a sweat while running on the ice, that I find myself pushing my own limits a little...what's -31°, -34°,  -39° but just a little bit colder, a little bit more of a challenge?

self portrait of me and my running gear

I had been warned that it's not easy running outside here - you tend to suck in big breaths of freezing cold air that feels like needles stabbing your lungs, or else you gotta deal with an itchy, smothering scarf that is too warm.  In the summer time, the dirt you kick up into the air adds an extra challenge to your breathing.  I also don't have the best shoes for running in the Arctic - you know, on ice.

To deal with the last problem, I bought these little rubber snow grabbers that fit over my running shoes that help grip the ice and snow, kind of like golf shoes:

Now I just have to figure out how to deal with a permanently runny nose.

Even with these bad boys, I tend to avoid the slippery icy roads and prefer to run on the frozen Arctic Ocean ice along the snowmobile tracks which offer a lot more crunchy traction. It's more scenic than running through town, anyway.

After having experienced running in both subsaharan Africa and the Arctic, I find that I much prefer running in the cold.  Also, these days I get some magnificent views while on my jogging routes.  My favourite route right now is to run along the coast line and then cut through Millionaire's Lane and trace the edge of the town along the tundra. It's about a 5 kilometre route, a neat little perimeter around town.

tundra...and a small cabin in the middle of it

cabins along the coast (and my finger in the corner)

I see some unique sights along the way too, so I let myself take a lot of breaks on my run to take photos.  Little girls in traditional Inuit coats training their new puppy to pull a sled.  Kite skiiers, letting their beautiful sails in the sky pull them toward the horizon.

if you look closely, the two black dots over the horizon are kite skiiers

On a clear day, I get a great view of Mount Pelly off in the distance.

Legend has it that Mount Pelly is the body of a giant that starved to death.  Can you see the lines that form his ribs?

Sometimes, I'll watch dogs wrestle with each other. The dogs up here in the Arctic are all tough, sturdy animals that can spend the night sleeping outside in the freezing cold. They are beautiful, magnificent creatures.  Sometimes they wander through the town without a leash and approach me.  My first instinct is to be a little scared, a throwback to the days I used to go running in the townships of Khomasdal in Namibia where there were hungry stray dogs that would bite your leg quicker than a blink, but these Arctic dogs just stop and stare at you, politely asking you if you have any meat, before running to the next thing of interest.

dog, watching me

hey buddy

The last time I went running on the ice, I discovered a new ice road.  I'm not sure where it leads, but it looked like it heads out straight into the middle of the Arctic Ocean.

It makes for a pretty invigorating yet peaceful run.  It's easy to zone out in the tundra, which means I can run for longer periods.  Sometimes I pretend I'm Atanarjuat the fast runner (except I'm not running naked and no one's trying to kill me).