On
the morning of January 2, a mere day after welcoming the year 2014 with old
friends, I was driven to the Ottawa airport by my father. The time had come to fly back to the far
north. The new semester was starting on
the sixth and all staff were required to be in town on Friday, January
3rd. I bid my father farewell after
placing my belongings on a baggage cart.
I had arrived a good two hours before departure and the lineup to the
First Air check-in counters weren't long.
The only hassles I had were dropping off my luggage in the oversized
baggage area and going through security.
The lineup through security was long.
Sigh, First World Problems.
The
other southern teachers arrived several minutes after I sat near the departure
gate. We chatted about our Christmas and
New Years adventures while we waited for boarding. The First Air jet plane was almost full with
just a few empty seats remaining. I sat
at the back of the plane so that I wouldn't be bothered by parents with crying babies;
they usually sit at the front. We arrvied
in Iqaluit three hours later, the time being just after noon. Since the Arctic Bay flight wasn't until
2:30pm, I lounged around the airport terminal and watched the minutes tick by.
As
usual, the passengers of the Arctic Bay/Resolute Bay flight were driven to the
turboprop by bus. First Air flights to
remote northern communities adhere to an 'open seating' policy. Your plane ticket just guarantees that you're
allowed on the plane. The plane lifted
off into the cloudy, afternoon sky and travelled northwest, up Baffin Island
for 3 hours. About halfway, day turned
to night. Back into the dark void, I thought.
This flight also reminded me of when I first flew to Arctic Bay (a
little over a year ago at the time of this post).
The
turboprop gently landed on the brightly lit gravel runway and taxied to the
terminal. Everyone disembarked so that the
ground crews could refuel and restock the plane with food. The southern teachers and the principal
collected their bags at the front of the terminal and were driven back to their
homes by taxi. I got a lift from Frank. The first thing I had to do when I arrived home
was shovel the front porch; it was covered by several inches of snow. I got out my shovel after placing my luggage
inside. It's good to be back, I thought as I looked around. The next task was putting everything inside
back the way it was. Several hours
later, my residence looked as if I never left.
Friday, January 3rd was a staff
day. Teachers had the morning to clean
their classes and prep their opening lessons.
"Welcome back!" & "Happy New Year!" phrases were
exchanged between all Inuujaq School staff.
I would hear these same phrases again from students who would see me
shopping at the Northern & Co-op stores.
The afternoon was dedicated to cleaning & organizing the storage
room, resource room, equipment room, and staff work room. At the end of the day, the rooms looked clean
& orderly. I was surprised by how
much unwanted stuff we threw out.
I spent most of the first weekend of
2014 at the school, writing course outlines, looking over the materials I had
in my classroom, and crafting my opening lessons. For the winter semester, I would be teaching
Grade 10 English, Grade 10 Social Studies, and High School Guitar. An added prep period would give me time
during the school day to correct work and make photocopies.
The first day of the semester, as
well as the first week, moved a lot faster than I thought. For each class, I welcomed the students,
introduced myself, handed out folders and notebooks, and went over the course
outlines. Grade 10 English would be my largest
class with 13 students. My smallest
class was guitar with five students. For
the first day, my English students copied notes on literary elements, my Social
Studies students started the module on Canadian government, and my guitarists
learned the parts of the guitar and how to properly take care of it.
For the rest of the week, my English
students read two short stories and completed the accompanying activities. My Social Studies students briefly learned about
the history of Canada and how it adopted Britain's style of government
(federalism). And my guitarists learned
notes on the first & second strings, how to read guitar tablature, how to
count, as well as playing together. It
would take some time for them to read traditional music notation without
difficulty because it's like learning a whole new language.
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| Source: BBC News |
When I flew back to the high Arctic
on January 2, a cold wave was beginning to form across southern Canada and the
northern United States. The polar vortex, usually confined above the 49th parallel, moved further south due to
sudden stratospheric warming (SSW). This
led to record breaking low temperatures in southern Canada and the United
States. In fact, at times it was colder
down south than in Nunavut. For
Canadians, the sudden drop in temperatures came as a surprise, but everyone
adapted rather quickly because us canucks thrive in cold weather. As for our American neighbours, the extreme
cold wave resulted in thousands of flights being cancelled, schools &
businesses being closed, and many inches of snow. Snow even fell across the state of
Tennessee! According to Wikipedia, the
whole bitter episode cost $5 billion USD in damage. As for me, I escaped the extreme cold by
flying to the high Arctic. How ironic.
Since the late 1990s, blogs have
become very popular in the Digital Age.
Accessible to anyone who has a computer and Internet access, blogs
contain: commentaries on any given topic; instructions on how to complete a
task; online diaries; and provide an alternative to mainstream media. Readers can also contribute to a blog by
leaving written comments and/or links to other blogs, videos, and
websites. This enables bloggers to build
social relations with their readers and other bloggers. As of today, there are over 150 million blogs
on the Internet. With so many blogs out
there, it is a huge challenge to attract readers. Your blog has to be unique in its approach to
a particular topic and offer enough content to keep people coming back for
more.
I'm now into my sixth year as a blogger
and it's still amazing to see readers from all corners of the world accessing my
five blogs (4 inactive and 1 active) and leaving comments if they choose. (Thank you, Google Stats). Currently, my Iqaluit blog is leading in
pageviews. I strongly doubt I'm the only
person blogging about Canada's Arctic but at the same time, I don't think there
are a lot of us. Anyway, the point I'm
getting at is that it wouldn't be long until one of my blogs would attract some mainstream attention.
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Back in October 2013, I received an
email from Steven Chase, an Ottawa Parliamentary reporter for The Globe and Mail (G&M). He explained that he and
other G&M reporters were being sent to the north to write articles for a
special series titled, The North: Myth, Reality, Future. The
special series would be published in late January 2014. Arctic Bay was one of the communities he
would be visiting in late November and my blog had appeared during his Internet
searches. He wanted to speak to me about
life in Arctic Bay and who to talk to about getting a tour of the Nanisivik port facility. Feeling surprised and
excited by the request, I hastily replied to the email and spoke with Chase
over the phone several days later. I had
never spoken to a reporter from a major newspaper publisher before. The informal phone interview went well and I answered
all of his questions to the best of my abilities.
We met up at the Tangmaarvik Inn in
late November and talked about a variety of issues. He said he enjoyed visiting Nanisivik, the
site where the federal government wants to build a naval refueling facility,
and being taken out on the land by a local Inuk. I invited him to come to my classroom and
speak to my Grade 12 Social Studies students.
He happily agreed, wanting to ask my students about how they liked living
in the north and what they knew about Canada's Arctic policy. Chase came to my classroom the very next day
in the afternoon and had an intelligent discussion with my senior
students. Afterwards, my students &
I thanked him for visiting and wished him all the best in his future
travels. He left for Resolute later that day.
This experience has taught me
that you never know who is really paying attention to your blog(s) until they
come calling. And when they do, the
results can be positive and/or negative.
Obviously, this was a positive encounter, one that makes me think that I may have what it takes to write for "the press".
(Final Note: I've
now spent a little over a year in Arctic Bay).
