my sister ties the knot

photos from my sister's wedding

my sister ties the knot, a set on Flickr.

Via Flickr:

photos by rob

charity fridays: Alberta edition

For this week's Charity Friday, I'm suggesting we make donations to support those affected by the flooding disasters in Alberta.  I saw some of it while I was in Edmonton earlier this week. It rained ceaselessly all day, flooding some of the streets until the sun finally broke out.

Cambridge Bay bake sale for flood relief

People have been really good and even creative about providing their support. It amazed me to see how people in Cambridge Bay, who often face poverty (not to mention extreme weather), organized a bake sale to raise funds for the Alberta flood victims. If these modest folks can spare a little change, so can we, right? Especially if even very poor Cambodian orphans are donating to the cause. Orphans!

So here are some ways to help:

• Donate to the Red Cross, or even volunteer for the Red Cross. They are especially looking for volunteer truck drivers or fork lift operators (403-461-6206) 
• Donate to the Calgary YWCA
• Donate to the Calgary Humane Society. You may have heard the story about the Calgary zoo hippos that made an attempt to escape into the river while flood volunteers transported other animals, but other animals have been displaced too and need support.
• Some of the communities that were the most affected and devastated by the floods were the Aboriginal ones, including the Siksika and Stony Nations. You can offer a donation here to support the rebuilding of their communites.
• Donate a graduation dress to girls who are about to graduate but had their dresses ruined.
• You can also donate a number of other things according to this Canadian Home Builders Association list including dumpsters, garbage cans, flashlights, food, generators and shovels 
• If you're in Edmonton, participate in the local bottle drive, "Cans for Calgary"

  Feel free to post other links to other charities that could use some support for the flood victims.

So what has been happening in Cambridge Bay since I've been away and not blogging? We missed out on a lot of things happening in Cambridge Bay:

• Most notably, kids caused an oil spill in Cambridge Bay. Apparently some children got curious about the tanks that hold used oil, and opened up a valve, apparently causing 15000 litres of oil to spill out into the Arctic Ocean.  Luckily, much of the ocean is still frozen so separating oil from the ocean was not as complicated as it usually is, but clean up is still going on around here. 


• Somebody spotted a grizzly bear wandering around on the street behind me.  My friends went out on an imaginary bear hunt, but with no luck. I heard someone from town tell a story about how people kept spotting a grizzly bear in town but whenever hunters went to go find it, they could never find it.  Finally, they discovered that the bear had been sleeping under one of the houses.  Excuse me while I go check the space beneath my house... 


• As a side note, grizzly bears weren't all that common up here on the island for a long time, but lately they've been making the trek all the way up here and hanging out. And breeding with polar bears.  This is a terrifying thought. Two of the scariest bears making scary bear babies....


• Folks have been complaining about kids swimming in the puddle in front of the elementary school. As I mentioned before, during spring time when all that ice is melting, there are huge puddles that form in the road.  Well, I guess it's all just too tempting for some of the local kids, because they have been putting on their swimming trunks and actually swimming in the puddles.  This is kind of a gross thought, not just because we're talking mud puddles (that are possibly also containing oil spill run off), but also because other kids have been spotted peeing in the same puddle. Oh, kids these days.  Sometimes they are raising hundreds of dollars with their lemonade stand of peace situated across the street from the Westboro Baptist Church; sometimes they're causing oil spills into the ocean.

back from Ottawa

As you may have noticed, I've taken a short break from blogging while I took a trip "down south" to my old home in Ottawa doing things that I don't normally get to do in Cambridge Bay, including laser tag, bumper cars, going to the driving range, glow-in-the-dark mini golf, catching some live music shows, eating my mom's homemade Korean food and helping my sister get married.

Ottawa has been hot, humid, and rainy. My skin is breaking out, unused to the moisture int he air. My hair gets greasy fast, and worst of all my allergies have flared up to such a state that my eyes are always itchy and my nose is always running. I seem to have developed a severe allergy to trees, which suggests I may have to live in the Arctic forever. Or maybe move to Arizona. At any rate, it was a bit of a relief to return to dry, cold Cambridge Bay, where the ocean is still frozen and the air is a brisk dry minus 3 degrees. And now I've resumed blogging - stay tuned!

 

Curtis Chaffey from The Split, hosting open mic night at Alice's Village Cafe in Carp

 

getting poutine at what Rob claims is the best poutine place in Ottawa, the Crispy Fries in the Canadian Tire parking lot on Merivale Road.

Rob plays with our niece Lucy

 

 

blurry photo of my brother-in-law Kevin's band HIGHS performing at Raw Sugar Cafe 

 

preparing for my sister's bachelorette party 

 

whacking a few balls at the driving range 

 

BUMPER CARS! 

 

Rob's cousin had twin babies! 

 

glow in the dark mini-golf, which is mostly dark 

 

 

Alium restaurant, where we ordered every plate on the menu.

the new Wild West

It's garage sale season, dictated mostly by the dates when the teachers leave town rather than by weather. In Cambridge Bay, garage sales are literally in the garage, because nothing would last long in 60km/hr winds and freezing rain.
More significantly, when there isn't freezing rain, our little Arctic community has transformed lately from a winter wonderland to a dusty town right out of a Western movie.  I feel like I should be trading in my Canada Goose parka for a pair of cowboy boots.  I'm half-expecting to see tumbleweed roll across the dirt roads. I'm half-expecting to see a gun fight break out between the County Sheriff and an outlaw. Instead of riding horses, though, the locals ride ATVs.  If only Sergio Leone could have made use of this unique setting for one of his movies...

 It's a losing battle against the dust in this town

spring in the Arctic

Spring has sprung! It's not the kind of spring that people down south are used to - the Bay is still frozen and people are still driving their snowmobiles over it - but it's considerably warmer now, hovering around zero degrees, which means the air doesn't have that cold bite anymore.

Cambridge Bay from afar. You can also see Mount Pelly behind the town.

inukshuk

The snow is slowly thawing, which means so is the dog poop and scraps of meat that people leave on the ground for their dogs to gnaw on. There's this one strip of town that I call Hunter Alley, because you can't walk down it without passing random half-eaten hooves, caribou heads, and other mysterious animal body parts lying on the side of the roads.

  

 an impressive collection of antlers

 don't look at this picture too closely if you get grossed out easily by butchered meat

Thawing body parts aside, Cambridge Bay really is a beautiful place in the spring time. Right now, the sun is spinning in this crazy loop around the sky, running laps like the Circle Dog, and never going down.   With the sun shining 24 hours a day, you get breathtaking sights like this: a midnight rainbow shooting into the frozen Arctic Ocean, in the middle of the night, during a sunshower.  Nunavut, land of magic!

 rainbow! midnight sun! sunshowers! magic!

With the Arctic Ocean ice getting thinner, the Bay has taken on a particularly beautiful shade of blue-green.  I can't wait for it all to melt so I can sit at the beach and watch the ocean, which is such a brilliant colour that it resembles the Caribbean. Except that if you try to swim in it, you might freeze to death.

 

you can start to see the colour of the water under the ice

 

so pretty

 

the good old Martin Bergmann icebreaker, still frozen in the harbour

For now, the ice is still thick enough to walk on, and even drive on, most parts of it. Snowmobiles race through the puddles on the ice, resembling jetskis.  They call it water skipping.

however, I would be nervous about driving out into this melting ice road.

As for the land, the roads have turned into mud and potholes.  It's a never-ending battle against the dirt. I stomp my boots, I beat the rugs, and yet the next day somebody's tracked mud and dirt all over the place inside. Hopefully it will become fashionable soon to wear mud on the back of your jeans.

 

The snow over the tundra has begun to melt, revealing the many small lakes that surround Cambridge Bay that you would never know of in the winter time.  With all the bodies of water around is, it's no wonder mosquitoes love it here in the summer. That's right. We get mosquitoes in the summer. Really really big ones too. You just can't get no relief. On the other hand, with 24 hours of daylight, our summers are relatively free of vampires (winter is another story though). Also, the Slender Man can't get you here, because there are no forests where he can hide.

 

I didn't know this pond existed, because it was all frozen tundra in the winter.

You can see the Distant Early Warning station in the background, watching out for Russians.

"You like my ride?"