In the airplane seats in front of me, I listened to a young Cambridge Bay couple try to teach their toddler son about our destination.
“Yellowknife,” said the dad.
“Lellalie,” repeated the child.
“Yellowknife.”
“Lellalie.”
The child’s attention shifted as he looked out the airplane window.
“Those are trees,” the father explained, pointing at the forest below.
“Cheese?”
“Trees. Yellowknife has trees.”
“Tees?”
“Trees. They get in the way. The make you feel boxed in, like they’re all
over you.”
We flew into Yellowknife over the forest fires that threatened to consume
it. That day, there were over 200 fires
blazing in the Northwest Territories. The closest one was only 30 kilometres
out of town and the residents near the highway had been evacuated for the night
as a precaution. More firefighters were
being flown in from Ontario and other provinces to bring reinforcements; some
firefighters were being sent out for medical treatment for smoke inhalation. On
Wednesday, the sky had turned a sickly yellow, and then an eerie black, dark as
night in the middle of the day. It felt
like the apocalypse.
On the airplane, I was struggling with a cold (possibly pneumonia), and I
couldn’t taste a thing or hear very well or smell, but my husband told me that
it smells like smoke, even inside the plane. This would normally be a little
alarming, but it smells like campfire, the lovely, almost delicious smell of
wood burning, just before you dangle your marshmallow on a stick over the
flames.
I love the architecture of the buildings in Old Town
I had been looking forward to spending some time in Yellowknife with my husband, who hasn’t had a chance to explore the city. Despite the smoky haze, we walked over to Old Town where we discovered Bullocks Bistro, a Yellowknife establishment famous for its fish and chips, the shockingly expensive price of said fish and chips, and its notoriously cranky owners who had no use for fools. Think of the soup nazi on Seinfeld, or the efficient but curt workers at Schwartz’s in Montreal. The place is so well known and the food is so good that the owners don’t have to pretend to like you.
The walls were decorated with all sorts of souvenirs and signatures that
previous diners had left behind. Real estate agents’ business cards, fond poems
about the fish dish, international dollar bills a surprising amount of comments
in Korean, and on one wall, a bright pink bra hung up with a pin on it that
said “FALVO” (Side note: I happen to know Falvo). Even the ceiling fan was
covered with writing.
walls
Ceiling
Arctic Air was here!
Our fish dish arrived, but by then my stomach had shut down, between the
cold-possibly-pneumonia, my asthma being triggered by the cold-possibly-pneumonia
and exacerbated by the forest fire smoke, and on top of everything, my
allergies caused by the trees, which really do get in the way. Instead, my
husband was forced to eat the entire meal on his own, although he did say he
enjoyed it.
The next morning, the smoke was even thicker, and covered the whole city in a blanket of what looked like fog. I could barely breathe, even in my hotel room. Out on the streets, I overhead a cook muttering to himself while smoking in an alley, “This is the worst I’ve ever seen it.” He was wearing his apron like a mask to cover his face.
I covered my own face with a handkerchief, like a protester or a
sun-fearing ajuma, and wondered how
quickly I could leave Yellowknife.
When we returned to Yellowknife three weeks later on our way back, there was still the smell of wood fire in the air, but at least we couldn’t see the smoke. It was getting better. Still, my entire stay was one long asthma attack.
We split my favourite pogo dish and my husband ate a bison burger while I
ate a fancy dish of pulled duck confit with tomato, corn, zucchini, and
jalopeno in a cream-based succotash with a sweet and sour fennel jam. I still don’t know what a succotash is, and
neither did my server, but I lapped it all up.
I have stopped eating vegetables on my vacation out of principle, but
now as my vacation came to an end, I ate my stewy dish of veggies and it was
delicious.
After dinner, we climbed up the stairs of the cliff to the Pilot’s
Monument, because I insisted that the romantic view at the top was worth
it. The whole way up, we were huffing
and puffing, I like to think because of the smoke-induced asthma, but I suspect
actually because I’m out of shape and I was really full from dinner.
view from the Pilots' Monument
In the evening, we stayed at the Super 8, with the intention of doing some last minute shopping at Wal-Mart, but I ended up falling asleep with the TV on by 9PM. This meant, of course, that I was wide awake by 5:30AM. Luckily, I was happy to discover that the hotel had a fitness centre, so I squeezed in an early morning workout before enjoying my continental breakfast of a croissant, yogurt, and tea. And then I realized everything about this paragraph made me sound like an old person. Guys, I swear I am twenty-nine and three quarters.
