Life in the 'Knife

Spring in the Knife

2010-04-22T06:17:00.003-07:00

Well... Spring has sprung here and we are enjoying seasonably warm temperatures (+20). Which is likely why this blog hasn't been updated recently (nice excuse eh!!). In fact I blame lots of things not getting done on the nice weather. For instance... last night, instead of cleaning up after dinner, we went for a walk to the park. My kitchen may be a mess but I have wonderful memories of Caleb walking around... looking at the willows budding... playing in the sand... sliding on the slide... etc. Definitely worth the big stack of dishes waiting for me this morning. Here are some other pictures of Caleb this spring.

Earlier in March we went to a small cabin for the day with some friends. It was a gorgeous day and we had a great time there.

Caleb and Winnie enjoying the beautiful day as much as one can in those snowsuits.

The Cabin was... rustic. Plywood rustic... not big beams rustic. It's the Scouts cabin up here (our friend is a Scout leader)... so it has all the basics but not much more (can't have those Scouts getting soft).

The inside of the cabin.

Checking the ice fishing holes with Daddy.

Later in March, Caleb and I traveled to Vancouver to visit my sister. We had a great trip and Caleb really loved those baggage carts!

Up late one night with Cousin Hannah banging out some tunes.

Well, our little boy is not so little anymore. This bed which has worked so well for so long is officially too small. Caleb was end to end and it's a good thing he likes to sleep curled up or he really wouldn't have fit. Soooo... we got a crib.

Which Caleb really likes and has adjusted to really quickly.

And last but not least... Caleb eating... finally. There were times when we really didn't think this day would come. Caleb didn't really start eating until a month or two ago and it is only in the last few weeks that he has finally figured out how to swallow anything that wasn't yogurt. H used to put lots of food in his mouth, suck on it for a while and then spit it out half an hour later (when he had been released from the highchair and was in the living room... on the carpet... lovely). In this picture, Caleb is attempting for the first time to feed himself yogurt. He was quite successful, what he lacks in technique and neatness, he makes up for in enthusiasm. And just for further evidence that Caleb is finally eating... a video.

Caleb is ONE!!!!

2010-03-10T05:27:00.006-08:00

Well, our little bundle is now a big boy. It's hard to believe that he has been with us a whole year... and yet we can't imagine life without him. As you can see from the two pictures below... he has changed and grown a lot in that year.

Day 1

Day ~ 330 - what a difference!!

Caleb contemplating life, the universe, everything... and the answer is... 42!

Caleb is now fully walking. He has gotten quite fast and motors around the house in record time. He would really love to run but can't quite manage it.

His new speed has resulted in many pictures like the above. You get the camera out to take a picture of something unbearably adorable and then before you can take a picture Caleb has abandoned whatever he is doing and already had his finger on the lens. Wonderful.

A selfie.

We had a few friends over on Feb 6th to celebrate Caleb's birthday. It was a great time. Caleb had lots of fun and did much better at opening presents than at Christmas. It seems to be a learned skill.

Caleb's birthday cake... made by Mommy! Her favorite part of parties.

Blowing out the candles. You will notice that Caleb has shed all of his clothes. Our apartment got quite warm with all 8 people in it. Caleb doesn't handle being hot well but loves to be naked. He was in just his diaper for most of the evening.

Which was perfect for enjoying the cake. Lots of fun to mush... not so sure if any got eaten.

One fine day we went sledding, I had fun, Caleb was ambivalent.

I think it's hard to enjoy it when you can't move at all.

Caleb and Mommy reading in the chair. What a cozy moment.

We borrowed this car from the Toy Library. Caleb LOVES it!!! He hasn't quite figured out how to move on it yet, so he pushes it around the house and then sits on it. He loves to get rides on it as well.

Last week Caleb got quite sick with the stomach flu. I know he looks rather pathetic in the above picture but this was actually one of his chipper moments when he had lots of energy so you can imagine what the whole week was like. It only took a few trips to the emergency room and some IV fluids for dehydration but he eventually got back to his regular self... Thank goodness.

And finally, here is Caleb showing off our brilliant idea for getting him to stay still during diaper changes...a book! If you know me at all you won't be surprised this works really well!!

Going Underground

2009-12-08T16:45:00.007-08:00

I will start this post with a warning:

There are no pictures of Caleb in this post

If you are looking for pictures of Caleb, please move to the next post.

Yesterday, the Underground staff at the mine invited all of the bean counters out to the site to tour the underground (it gives us context on the nature of the beans we count). Myself and three of my co-workers went out to site and took a tour of the Underground mine and the Open Pit mine.

For those of you who I haven't spoken to about this before, the Diavik Diamond mine is currently undergoing a transition from mining all of the diamonds out of two big pits in the ground to mining the diamonds out of tunnels underground. The transition is pretty exciting for the mine because it extends the life of the mine from 2013 to 2020 and beyond (the pits are almost all mined out).

Here is a giant picture of what the mine looks like. Click the picture to get the full sized version, but I caution you that the picture is huge.

Once we got underground, the mine managers took us around to see all of the equipment and some of the infrastructure. It is pretty impressive the amount of work they have done. The tunnels are drilled into solid granite, so the mine is quite stable; however, one of the biggest challenges of the mine is that the ore is all under a lake. As a result, it feels like it is constantly raining when you are underground. In order to prevent the mine from flooding, there are some very large pumping stations and a very large water treatment plant that could provide water to a city of a few hundred thousand people.

We also saw a few of the pieces of underground heavy equipment. This is a picture of me pretending to drive one of the big shovels.

We then took a tour of the Open Pit and saw some of the large shovels and haul trucks.

For reference, the tires on the truck below are twice as tall as I am.

After that, it was time to hang up our hard hats and head back to Yellowknife.

Anyways, this is a bit of a short post, as I am on my way out.

Merry Christmas.

Moving Day!!

2009-12-02T09:13:00.007-08:00

Well, we are now nicely settled into our new apartment. The move went very smoothly and Caleb was a real trooper. On Friday he helped mommy to move all the closet stuff over. He loved to crawl around in big circles in the empty apartment. On Saturday we started to move all the really big stuff and though he was a little confused... he adapted really well. He has already gotten the hang of our new layout and has spent the last few days exploring all the new nooks and crannies of our apartment. This will likely be our last post until after Christmas as Caleb and I are leaving on Monday for Alberta. (Hooray!!)

Caleb eating real food! Yeah right. Actually it's an onion that he discovered in the drawer while I was cooking. He played with it for a long time. But I don't think he ever really tasted it.

Caleb checking out our new kitchen cupboards. For those of you who have been to our old apartment, you know that the cabinets were not so lovely and made of metal. Our new ones are too but the cabinet doors are white instead of the horrible fake wood... and they have handles. Which our old ones didn't... making them especially Caleb-proof. He couldn't open them at all. He was very pleased to discover that he could open our new ones and spent many happy moments opening them, banging them shut and then opening them again. The cupboards have been rearranged so that everything Caleb can reach is okay (i.e. pots or tupperware). This is necessary because the cupboard base is metal so we can't attach any child proofing.

We walked around Niven Lake with our friends Nikki, Curtis and their baby Winnie. Here is Winnie all bundled up, being carried by Curtis.

And Caleb all bundled up getting a ride with Byron.

Caleb really enjoyed playing on the dolly we had borrowed to help with the move.

But not as much as he loves the camera. Shortly after the first picture, he flung himself off in his typical Caleb fashion (with little regard for personal safety) in a desperate attempt to get to the camera before mommy put it out of reach. Despite his best efforts he was too slow.

Our favorite part of the new apartment... the dining room.

And last but not least... a video. Now I didn't have a long clip of something interesting so I put together a bunch of shorter clips. Enjoy!

The Promised Video

2009-11-14T07:21:00.002-08:00

Winter in the 'Knife

2009-11-12T14:22:00.006-08:00

Well winter is here for keeps now. It hasn't been above zero for a while and we have about a foot of snow. It is actually kinda cozy. It has been between -5 and -20 for the past few weeks which is very tolerable. Especially with all the snow, you don't want it to get too warm or everything turns into a slimy, slippery mush. Sorry for the long gap inbetween posts. Let me fill you in with what's been happening.

Caleb is now standing on his own and has taken one or two steps. We aren't sure if we can really call it walking because he always falls down right away. But walking is probably very close. However, Caleb has discovered that the 'bear' crawl (on hands and feet) is very fast and scoots around the apartment in no time. And speaking of apartments, although we love where we are living it has become apparent that we need more space. So we're moving... down the hall. Yep we are moving to a 2-bedroom apartment in the same building... it's even on the same floor. Which mean moving will be a breeze (no stairs!!!) especially since it's freezing out. The layout in our apartment is a little bit better, most importantly it has an eat-in kitchen which means our table won't be on carpet anymore. This is especially important because Caleb has learned how to dump his food over the edge of his tray.

Well that's all the important news. Here are some pictures for your enjoyment

Caleb loves the laundry basket. I was trying to get a picture of him perched on top of it but he slid off just as I was taking the picture.

We decided to see if he loved be under the basket as much as he loves to be on top of the basket. Not so much.

This was Caleb's Halloween costume. We were just trying it on here. He was 'Super-baby'.
You can't really see in these pictures but he has a bib on for a cape.

This morning Caleb said goodbye to Daddy and then just sat by the door for a few minutes waiting for him to come back. I wanted a picture of it but of course, as soon as he heard the camera turn on, he forgot everything else and came to get it.

On November 5th, the Olympic torch came through Yellowknife. We went to the celebration in the evening. It was lots of fun. We got some great SWAG (glow sticks, cow bells, tamborines, coke bottles etc.)

Posing with the torch. For those of you who don't know... I LOVE the olympics... I am very sad that I moved away from Vancouver three years before they were held there as I would have loved to be part of it. But this was pretty great too.

They had a huge tent set up as a warming station. It was kinda strange because all the snow had melted inside the tent and so there was green grass and it smelled strangely like summer.

A picture of the mitten holding the torch.

Caleb's new favorite game... knocking over the ottoman in the living room.

When I looked at his picture after I took it, I thought 'holy cow, he's huge'. He really is getting big. I can't believe that big boy was my little baby.

Here Caleb has a little toy octopus in his mouth. He loves to suck on the head and have the legs sticking out of his mouth. Sometimes when he is trying the get the head in his mouth, one of the legs goes into his nose... his facial expression is priceless.

Another octopus picture.

You may be wondering how we keep Caleb warm in the stroller when it is so cold out. Well first we warm it up before we go out. It is stored on our porch so it gets pretty cold. About an hour before we go out I bring it inside (this takes lots of muscles) and open it up. I put my heating blanket into his cuddle bag to warm it up.

Caleb wears a hat, a coat and wool socks. You can see in the picture above that he has a pretty serious cuddle bag in his stroller. It is made out of an old down parka. It is actually so warm that if it isn't too cold (say -10 or -20) and I put him into his snowsuit and into the cuddle bag.. he get really really warm and sweaty. So today, it was only -13 and he only needed a jacket.

Then Caleb gets buckled in...

...and zipped up tight. When we arrived at the library he was nice and toasty. Hopefully we will be able to walk in all sorts of weather using this system.

Sorry, no video today. As I said before... Caleb loves, loves, loves the camera. When ever he hears it turn on or sees me holding it he crawls (really fast) to try get it and then cries if I won't let him hold it. So all are videos lately are of him crawling to the camera and then crying. I'll try to get something better.

Happy Thanksgiving

2009-10-12T18:31:00.013-07:00

We had quite a lovely, though quiet Thanksgiving meal up here. On Sunday there was a potluck at my church which we went to (lots of yummy food) and then today we had a small family meal with just the three of us. Winter has arrived up here so harvest actually took place a few weeks ago but we still ate some potatoes from our garden with our meal. Caleb enjoyed the meal a bit less than we did... as you can see from the picture. He was more focussed on smearing his food all over his face than actually eating. (if you click on the pictures they get bigger)After about five minutes he has really frustrated and so we took him out of his highchair and cleaned him up. At which point he discovered that food tastes much better when eaten from Mommy's plate.

Needless to say, after this meal it was straight into the bath for Caleb (which he really loves anyways). Getting Caleb to eat continues to be an interesting (and sometimes frustrating) experience. He absolutely refuses to be fed anything from a spoon but now that he has mastered the pincher grasp he is able to 'eat' things such as cheerios, grated carrot, chick peas, apple slices, toast, crackers and grapes. I use the term 'eat' loosely as it mostly involves Caleb putting food in his mouth, swishing it around and then spitting it out. Oh well, it's progress, no matter how small. In general Caleb enjoys eating (or at least playing with his food) though not always. See below. He is quite apprehensive about new tastes... hence all the funny faces.

Who knew Cheerios could be so rough.
As I said before... winter is here. And it seems to be here to stay. We still walk a lot, so to keep Caleb warm we have a cuddle bag in then stroller. He stays nice and toasty in there, at least for now.

Caleb's new nemesis is his snowsuit. He does NOT enjoy being zipped up into it. Probably because he can't crawl, stand, grab things or really do anything while wearing it. But he might as well get used to it because we have about six or seven months to go until we won't need it anymore.
Caleb is an active boy (no, really!?!) and changing his diaper has become a skill involving distraction and wrestling. It may take a while but we always manage it in the end.

Caleb loves to sit and listen to Daddy play the guitar.

And one final cute picture for the road. Hope you all had a great weekend.

A few more pictures

2009-09-27T07:10:00.005-07:00

Caleb and Winnie going for a walk one beautiful fall day.

Caleb's new carseat. He is now 30 inches (that's 2 1/2 feet!) so he needed a new one.

We took a little break from solid foods for about a week. Caleb was really not interested and it became a struggle to continually trick him into opening his mouth so we could sneak a spoon in. Then Caleb would give you this look of betrayal and spit everything out. So after our vacation we started back with rice biscuit and he really enjoyed it. Hooray!

On Saturday we took Caleb swimming. The pool was nice and warm and we had a great time.

Caleb Goes Exploring

2009-09-25T07:07:00.016-07:00

Hello everyone. It is now officially fall here, though we enjoyed a very lovely and warm September. During the past week we've had quite a bit of rain but being from the West Coast is doesn't seem that bad. People here start complaining bout the rain almost as fast as people there start complaining about the cold and the snow. Oh well.

As you'll see in the pictures, Caleb is growing by leaps and bounds. He is now tentatively creeping along furniture and occasionally stands on his own (for about 5 seconds).

He is Caleb crashed out one afternoon. He had gotten hot so we took off his shirt and then he found a hat and so this outfit came about.

By the way... does anyone know what these are? They grew on my potato plant. I'm guessing they are the fruits but I've never seen anything like it.

How do you carry something when you need both hands for crawing?? In your mouth of course.
You'll notice in a lot of these pictures, Caleb seems to be heading for the camera. He has figured out that the camera is pretty cool and once he hears it turn on he stops whatever he is doing and goes for it.

One lovely MID-september evening it was 25C (unheard of in these parts) so we got a supper to go and went to the beach when Byron got home. To put it in perspective... last year we had snow at this time.

Nice Hat Caleb!

Caleb and I go to the Library about once a week. He loves to play on the bean bags and grab books. They also have a bunch of puppets there that he plays with.

One of Caleb's favourite things is doing the laundry. Well, just the folding part. He is a big 'help'

And finally here are some pictures of Caleb and his new-found adventuresome spirit. He loves exploring all the nooks and crannies of our apartment, often with little regard for personal safety. About once a day he gets himself stuck in the bottom of the exersaucer and needs to be rescued (or photographed :)

And about eighteen times a day I drag him out from under the computer table where he is playing with the printer. It is his all-time favourite spot in the apartment. Particularly if either Byron or I is sitting in the chair.

Yikes, caught between a chair, a drying rack and an exersaucer. Caleb got here by crawling under the table and out beneath a chair... very pleased with himself.

Under the table.. how fascinating.

Trying the help Daddy type on the computer.

Caleb on the Move

2009-09-08T18:42:00.009-07:00

Well, it's September here and officially fall. We had our last nice summery day on Thursday. Caleb and I decided to ignore the mountain of laundry and go to the beach. Definitely the right decision. Caleb has become a very busy little boy. So busy that we had to get a baby gate (and we don't even have any stairs!). We put it by the entrance to the living room so that he is trapped in that one room. Other than teething... Caleb is doing just great. Here is Caleb playing with his cell phone. We had an old one of Byron's and he loves to push the buttons and flip the screen. However, he still tries to get our phone any time we are talking on it.

Who me?? No, I'm to cute to be trouble.

Fresh peas from our garden. Some were boiled and fed to Caleb who in no way appreciated the lovely organic and locally grown-ness of them.

When Caleb wakes up from his nap, he is quite quiet. You hear some rustling but that's it. Then he starts to call and I go get him. No crying necessary. This particular time I heard him rustle and then I heard some strained grunting. Apparently Caleb had stood up and then dropped his soother onto the bed (which is beside his playpen). He is tall enough to peek over and see it but not to reach it.

We are trying to teach Caleb to drink from a sippy cup (we tried a bottle but it was a complete flop... so we figured we'd go straight to sippy cups). He is still getting the hang of it.

Here is our new baby gate. When we first set it up Caleb thought it was really cool. He was using it to stand up and licking it and touching it. Then I climbed over to the other side to get stuff from the kitchen... it dawned on Caleb what the purpose of this gate was. He was not super impressed, but I suppose discovering that the universe doesn't revolve around your desires is just part of growing up.

Caleb's new obsession is with our wind chimes. He loves them, we actually had to move them once so he could concentrate on dinner.

Caleb Standing

2009-08-27T06:59:00.004-07:00

So earlier this week, Byron and I watched as Caleb was kneeling against our ottoman. Slowly, to our amazement, he pulled himself up until he was standing. Very pleased with himself he stood there and gazed around the room, then fell over. He didn't try again until the next day when once or twice he managed to do the same thing. Then on Wednesday something clicked and he figured our exactly how to repeat it. Now he is constantly standing up. It is so weird to look over in the apartment and see this little person just standing there. It makes him seem so big.

Summer Vacation

2009-08-19T19:13:00.017-07:00

Hi Everyone,
Wow, it's been a busy few weeks around here. Caleb had his six month birthday, we visited lots of family and Caleb has started crawling. Not just inching around anymore but across a room in 30 seconds crawling. Suddenly he is discovering all the corners of our living room that he didn't know existed. Seems like we baby proofed just in time.Caleb is fascinated by the little patches of sunshine on our carpet. He tries and tries to pick them up but can't quite manage it.

Who's that boy in the mirror?!?!

Caleb at the beach!! Sand is yummy!!

Byron and I celebrated out 2nd anniversary with a fancy dinner at home. Caleb had some rubber giraffe.

Here is Caleb at his Oma's house. There the floors are wood and slippery and Caleb ended up going backwards a lot. Here he ended up under the couch.

Caleb loved his cousin Hannah... a little too much. He would wiggle up to her and stroke her hair, sometimes not too gently. It will be fun to watch these two grow up together. I have a feeling that next time they see each other Hannah won't be quite so passive about Caleb's abuse.

Caleb meets his uncle Josh.

Caleb meets his great-Grandpa and great Grandma McCallum. We had a nice visit with them.

Baby Hannah in the exersaucer. This was a blessing on the visit... it kept the two babies happy for hours.

Caleb meeting some more family members.

The boys hanging out on the patio.

Saying goodbye to Grandma and Auntie Amy at the airport.

Future Legomaniac

Caleb showing off his new kneeling skillz

Look at me now!!!

2009-07-20T21:19:00.014-07:00

Well, our Caleb is getting big. It seems like every day he learns something new and shocks us with how grown up he looks. We've had a nice week here. Lots of sun and warm weather (up to 25 degrees!!!). It's been nice to go out without a sweater on. Here's a few pictures of what Caleb's been up to this past week.

We managed to find a used exersaucer which Caleb loves. He'll sit in there for up to half an hour bouncing up and down and playing with the toys. So long as Mommy stays where he can see her, he's happy.
Here is Caleb's new highchair. It was a gift from Grandpa Jim and Grandma Lorna. Caleb is proud as a peacock sitting at the table with us during dinner. We did feed him a little bit of mashed banana... he was not nearly so pleased about that!!!
Here's a picture of my garden for those of you who might be interested. You can see that it's really getting big. When I first started the garden I had all these visions of walking down there every other day with Caleb and taking care of it. Unfortunately the bugs can be pretty bad down there so I try to do as much as I can in the evenings when I can leave Caleb with Byron... or on the weekends. Oh well.
Here was one sunny, breezy day when the bugs weren't so bad so Caleb came with me to the garden. He sat in his little Bumbo chair and was happily playing for a while. Then I realized he was taking his toy and dragging it through the dirt and then eating it. Sigh. Well, guess I'm not as great a parent as I thought :)

Caleb and I enjoying a little snuggle before bed time.

It can get pretty hot in our apartment (30+) when the sun is shining because we have south facing windows. So in these next few pictures Caleb is just in his diaper. (and yes, he has a black diaper... we call it his 'ninja' diaper... he uses it to fight bad guys). So up above is Caleb on Saturday, you can see that he's doing a nice pushup. Getting pretty strong hey!!

Then on Sunday... we caught Caleb doing this...

and this... yikes, just once or twice though. I had to sit by the camera for a long time to catch him at it. However, by Mondy night, he was a pro, as you can see on the video below.

In the space of half an hour he did this many, many times. Which means crawling is coming. Oh dear.

Yeah for Picasa!!!

2009-07-13T07:52:00.017-07:00

Well folks, I have discovered a program that will resize pictures on our PC. Prior to this I had to transfer any pictures to a memory stick, pull out the old Mac laptop, transfer the pictures to the Mac, resize and then blog. It was a bit of a process. This is much easier. I knew there must be some way of doing it but had never bothered to investigate. I am very excited to be typing this at our normal computer.

It has been a very enjoyable past few weeks. We had a wonderful visit with Jen's parents and sister. They drove up in their trailer and stayed for a week at a local campground. Unfortunately it was pretty rainy the week before they came. This meant they had a small river running through their campground and... mosquitoes. Wow. Lots of mosquitoes. Luckily they brought their screened in dining tent.Here is Caleb in the dining tent, in his paypen, with mosquito netting over that. Despite all this they still managed to bite him a couple of times. Luckily neither the bites nor the mosquitoes bothered him at all. Unlike the rest of us.

Here is the campsite. Opa and Oma Batterink stayed there, while Auntie Kristin stayed at our house. Each day we would drive out to visit them or they would come over. It worked out really well.

Caleb meeting Oma again... he hadn't seen her since he was two weeks old. Lots has changed since then!!

Getting ready to hike the Prospector's Trail with Opa.

I managed to convince them to come help me weed and water the garden. Many hands make light work.

Kristin enjoying some Cable TV while at our apartment... a luxury since they only have 'Peasant Vision' at their house.

We managed to stop swatting mosquitoes long enough to pose for a picture.

Caleb desperately trying to reach something he thinks will be interesting. He wants to touch everything!!! He loves to grab at whatever we are eating or drinking too.

And finally some pictures of the incredibly cute Caleb. He is lucky to be so adorable, as some days, it is the only thing saving him from being sold to the funny farm... especially at 2am, when he is wide awake and wanting to play.

Summer!!

2009-06-21T17:44:00.012-07:00

Well, it's finally summer here!! This evening we went for a walk and I took along a sweater because up until now you needed it. But not tonight. It was so nice to be outside and not be cold. It does mean however that our south facing apartment roasts in the evening. We don't really get to enjoy the view because we have to keep the blinds closed all the time.

We have decided to stay in our apartment for another year. We did consider moving to a two bedroom but it would be quite a jump in rent and they can be rather difficult to come by here. In order to make it work, we have been decluttering and getting rid of unnecessary furniture.

Caleb is now rolling over regularly and in general wiggling around lots. He enjoys lying on his stomach now and putting anything he can reach in his mouth.

Well that's all the news for now. We are eagerly awaiting a visit from Jen's parents and sister. They are driving up with their trailer this week. It seems that we get a lot more visitors now that Caleb has come along (strange eh). Well here are some pictures of our not so little guy.

Here is Caleb in his Bumbo. He likes it in about five minute chunks right now. Then he needs a break. You can also see he is chewing on Sophie the giraffe. He loves any toy right now so long as he can chew on it.

We packed up and drove out to Pontoon Lake one Saturday and enjoyed some relaxing time out in the sun.

Here is our little setup by the lake

One evening we also went to dinner at a local restaurant called Bullocks. It in in the old part of Yellowknife so has some of that rustic charm. It also serves amazing (but expensive) fish and chips. Caleb was a reasonably good sport throughout the meal.

Another view of Bullocks, as you can see it is part of the tradition of the place the sign your name on anything and/or leave a picture/business card on the wall. It is a very interesting place.

Here is Caleb getting his toes dipped into Great Slave Lake.

And finally, here is a video of Caleb showing off his new skill. He's moving all over the place now... and that means it's time to start babyproofing. If you look in the background of this picture you can see a hug tangle of cords underneath out TV table. I think that might be a problem :)

Caleb in Vancouver

2009-05-29T12:58:00.016-07:00

This post will likely be mostly pictures as I am doing it while Caleb is taking a nap... which means I could have anywhere from 15 minutes to three hours. I'm sorry for the delay, Caleb and I returned from Vancouver late last Wednesday and promptly got colds. Another first for Caleb. We had a great time visiting with my sister Marie and her family. Caleb got to meet his cousins for the first time, go on a plane for the first time, leave Canada for the first time and go in the ocean for the first time... quite a momentous trip. Here are some highlights, I didn't take as many pictures as I meant to but between Caleb and his cousins we had four kids under four to deal with... this cut into my photography time :).

Here is Caleb checking himself out in the mirror at the Calgary airport during a stopover. They actually have really nice baby care rooms there but for some reason they have put the power outlet right by the change table... smart eh!
The trip to Vancouver was great, Caleb slept or played for the whole time. The trip back to Yellowknife was so unspeakably bad that I'm not going to go into details. I'm just going to apologize to whomever was on either of our flights.

Here is Caleb meeting his auntie Amy for the first time. We also had a nice visit from Grandma and Uncle Jeff (sorry no pictures). It was great to see them again and Caleb loved showing off his smile.

Two sisters and two babies. This is Marie and baby Hannah.

Caleb finally having a reason to wear his sun hat. We truly enjoyed the warmer weather in Vancouver. It was lovely to be able to go outside and not have to worry about the cold or the wind. However we also did get our fair share of rain while we were there, Caleb didn't enjoy that quite as much.

On morning Marie, Caleb and I were up before any of the other kids. Marie was holding Caleb while I got ready. When I got back she had two babies and Jacob to manage. I suppose this is how the mothers of twins do it.

Jacob and Sarah (Caleb's cousins) playing outside in their backyard. I really enjoyed connecting with them again. I hadn't seen them in almost a year and it was incredible to see how much they had grown and changed.

Caleb and Hannah playing on a baby mat. You can see the difference in head control and strength between a 3 month old (Caleb) and a 6 week baby (Hannah).

Caleb snoozing at the cabin in Point Roberts (on the coast of Washington) his first trip out of Canada... I don't think he even noticed.

Dipping his toes into the Pacific ocean. Surprisingly there was very little crying during this as the water was actually quite cold. Only three more oceans to go.

Getting ready to leave the cabin. For those of you who have seen our carseat up here you know that it usually has this big sheepskin cuddle bag on it that covers him completely. He looked so strange in there without it.

And finally pictures of Diavik. As part of Byron's new job he went there for a tour of the mine. As you can see in the picture below, it is an open pit mine up in the tundra. I'm not sure this picture really captures the scale of the gigantic hole in the earth. From the pictures I think the mine is every boy's dream with lots of huge (think the size of a small house) trucks, other machines and dynamite.

Lastly, here is a video of Caleb giggling for real (aka awake and actually thinking something is funny).

Caleb's Great Dream

2009-05-10T19:09:00.002-07:00

I just about forgot... I managed to catch Caleb giggling in his sleep. Too cute.

Random things in Yellowknife

2009-05-10T18:28:00.008-07:00

It's been a busy but relatively typical few weeks up here in Yellowknife. Caleb continues to bring a lot of joy to our lives but he has begun to have a few episodes of teething which aren't fun for either him or us. Byron's work tends to be very busy for the first week of each month, so it was nice when that was finally finished.

Here is a little comparison to an earlier picture that you may remember. These sunglasses definitely fit a lot better now. He still needs to practice wearing them, they only lasted for a few seconds before he tried to pull them off.

It's 'break-up' here in Yellowknife. This is the few weeks of spring where it has melted enough that the ice road over Great Slave Lake is no longer stable enough to drive on, but it hasn't melted enough for the ferry to cross the MacKenzie river. So for these weeks we have no road access to the South (or anywhere for that matter). In general you can still get everything you need but it does tend to be a little sporadic (i.e. one day no milk, the next day lots of milk but no fruit). Air Chilled Chicken anyone?? Maybe not.

Here was a day, not too long ago (if you look at the date it was April 24th) when it was -15 in the morning. This was a really cold and frustrating week(yes, the chilliness lasted for a week). We had a beautiful weekend just before this (up to +12) and then to go back down to -15 was a little soul destroying. Let's hope it's the end of temperatures like that for a while.

Caleb giving Buttercup a hug. This is about a week ago and you can see that he's really trying to grab onto Buttercup but isn't quite managing it. At this point he was only grabbing onto things with his fingers (not wrapping his thumb around), not very efficient.

And here, just a few short days later, Caleb discovered his opposable thumb (hooray). You can see the toy in his right hand. It was actually suspended above him and he managed to grab it and pull it off. He loves to lie on his mat (for up to 30 minutes) and grab at the toys above him.

And finally, Caleb's friend Winifred Mae was baptized today. Caleb was quite a good sport and slept through most of the service. That's all for now. Caleb and I (Jen) are off to Vancouver to visit his cousins. We'll try to take lots of pictures (We're also hoping to see Grandma, and maybe some other aunts and uncles).

Spring is Here....Kinda

2009-04-23T10:54:00.009-07:00

We are finally enjoying a few smatterings of spring up here. We have had a few days with temperatures in the positives, even up to +9 C!!! Unfortunately they are intermingled with days that are -12C (which are a bit soul destroying) But on the nice days we get out and enjoy the warmth. The snow is disappearing and leaving behind lovely piles of black gravel, garbage, dog poop and brown grass... don't you just love spring!!!

We are all doing quite well here. Byron is enjoying his new job, finding it both challenging and interesting. He is happy he made the change. Caleb and I are enjoying spending our days together and with the warmer weather we are getting out a lot more. I have also signed up for a community garden plot this year, which should keep us busy a lot this summer. You may be wondering what can possibly grow up here (for the gardeners out there, Yellowknife is a zone 0a - yes a zero!!) Well, by sheer will power you can grow potatoes, carrots, lettuce, snow peas, rhubarb, and some early maturing varieties of beans, broccoli and zucchini. The community garden is easy walking distance from our apartment so it will be a nice excuse to go for lots of walks this summer.

Caleb is growing lots and it is fascinating to watch as he learns more and more each day. He is now 13 lbs 4 oz and 25 inches tall. Which means he has gained 5lbs and grown 4 inches in 10 weeks... not bad, it's no wonder he eats all the time. He can hold his head up now and loves to sit on our laps and just look around at the world. He also loves to stare at faces and play ' head and shoulders' with his dad. He is starting to slowly reach for toys and try to grab them although he hasn't quite mastered this skill. Also, once he grabs something, he isn't really sure what to do with it. Overall, he is quite a delight to have around.

Caleb had his 2 months shots last week (3 needles), as you can see he was very stoic about it and barely complained :)

Here is Caleb enjoying some tummy time. He is getting really strong and can hold his head up for long amounts of time. He seems to enjoy it more when he is propped up on the pillow so that he can properly look at his toy caterpillar Abner.

This is Caleb's new friend Winnifred Mae. She was born April 11th to our good friends Nikki and Curtis. We are looking forward to lots of play dates with baby Winnie.

And finally, here is Caleb napping independently... a major step for us. Caleb slept on his own for three hours this morning. Previously he would only sleep for twenty minute chunks unless he was being held. Although I love holding him it really limited my ability to get anything done during the day. We shall see if this amazing feat can be repeated tomorrow.

Last but not least, here is the little guy relaxing in the bath.

2009-04-10T14:26:00.014-07:00

Hello everyone,
Sorry for the delay with this post. It's been a little busy here. Some of you may already know that Byron is changing jobs, he starts his new job at Diavik (one of the diamond mines up here) on Monday. So it has been a bit of a hectic week wrapping up everything at his old job. He is looking forward to getting some different accounting experience in a private corporation (as opposed to his old job which was public practice).

Caleb and I have been keeping busy. He continues to be a very charming little boy and is bringing a lot of joy to our lives. He is smiling and cooing a lot now. He has also just discovered that he is able to control his hands (somewhat)!!! He will sit in his little bouncy chair and just wave them in front of his face for ~10 minutes in awe of his new ability. He now enjoys waving them in the general vicinity of his toys to make them bounce around. (see the video... it's just too cute).

Well, I hope you all are having better weather than us. We have finally had a day where it was about zero for the first time since November!!! Hopefully it will continue to be nice out and the snow will soon be melted - because until the snow is all gone, whenever it is warm, Yellowknife turns into a big slush factory... yuck.

Here are some pictures (and a video). Hope you enjoy them.

Caleb playing with his best friend Buttercup (the cow). He loves to wave her around and watch her move.

Last weekend Caleb and I went to see the start of the Yellowknife Dog Derby... it is 15 minutes of waiting around for 30 seconds of excitement. You wait at the starting gate for the beginning of the race... the gun goes off... the dogs run... and then they are out of sight for the next 50 km. But it was still fun... Caleb stayed nice and warm inside my jacket. For those of you who are wondering we are out on Frame lake for the start of the race and then it goes overland out onto Great Slave Lake for the rest. It's a lot easier to make a track for the race when you don't have to worry about trees or underbrush.

Here is a typical Caleb smile... we finally managed to capture it on film.

Just in case you doubted that he ever cries... here is the evidence. Caleb can pitch a wonderful fit when he is in the mood. He also hates getting his face washed... which is what prompted this outburst :)

While we may still be fighting winter here, does anyone else have tomatoes growing in their garden??!?! I do!!! Nevermind that they were grown in a hydroponic setup that could grow tomatoes in the bottom of a mine shaft... I will still have some of the first
tomatoes of the season!!!

And finally, here is Caleb in his full set up to go for a walk. This was on one of our warmest days so far... he has on pants and sweaters and two pairs of socks and mittens and a hoodie and a toque and two quilts. The poor guy can really only wave his hands in there and look around. But luckily he slept most of the walk.

And finally, here is the little guy showing off his new moves. He sure has changed since the first video eh!!

Grandma, Grandpa and Uncle Jordan come for a visit!!

2009-03-28T16:32:00.015-07:00

Two weeks ago we were lucky to have more visitors. Grandpa and Grandma (Byron's parents) flew up with Uncle Jordan for visit. We had a great time and really enjoyed showing them all that Yellowknife has to offer (snow, subzero temperatures, wind, frostbite). I can't think of a better place to spend spring break!!

Here is Caleb having one of many snuggles with Grandma. He also loved playing with Grandma and she could always be counted on to convince Caleb to smile!!

We managed to arrange for Caleb to be baptized while they were in town. It was wonderful to have family there to witness Caleb's initiation into the the Church.

Here is Caleb sporting his beautiful white gown (note: although Byron would argue otherwise it is not a dress; it was a white gown which represented Caleb's nice clean white soul:). This is the same baptism gown that I (Jen) wore for my baptism.

Here is Byron and Jordan standing in front of the Snow Castle. Basically it is exactly what it sounds like - a castle built entirely out of snow. For those of you who are wondering... it is built on Great Slave Lake, that blue house in the background is actually a houseboat that is currently surrounded by ice. So... like I said Yellowknife during Spring Break (well, we might as well call it March Break because it is obviously not spring here!!) is obviously a prime vacation spot. Where else can you still have a lake so frozen solid you can have a parking lot on it!!

Our trip to the Snow Castle was Caleb's first trip outside (other than in his carseat where we have a 'snuggle bag' that covers him entirely). He stayed nice and warm inside my parka.

Here we all are inside an igloo inside the ice castle.

Caleb and Grandpa sizing each other up.

Jordan is now taller than Byron, so Byron needed to show him who is still the older brother.

My personal favorite picture of Caleb... isn't he gorgeous!!!

Caleb and Mommy having a snuggle

Caleb meeting his Uncle Jordan (this first aunt or uncle to meet him - thus imprinting on Caleb that he is to be the favourite and coolest uncle!!)

Caleb's first 6 weeks

2009-03-22T18:39:00.012-07:00

Hello everyone,
It's Jen here... I will be taking over the primary responsibility of blogging so please bear with me as I get the hang of it. Sorry for the long delay in this post... apparently having a baby makes you life a little hectic!! Who knew!! We have had a wonderful six weeks, it is amazing how quickly it sped by, I can hardly believe Caleb is six weeks already.

Caleb has grown from this (1 day old) (note the amount of hair)

...to this... in just six short weeks (note the complete absence of hair - where did it all go??) but isn't he handsome, all dressed up to go to church.

So far we are adjusting really well. Caleb is generally calm and is an amazing sleeper. I was looking through our first six weeks of pictures and realized that the majority of them were of
Caleb sleeping in some form. In the past week he has started smiling and interacting. It is a blast watching him grow, develop and change every day. I hope you enjoy the pictures.

All ready for summer!! Too bad it's still the dead of winter here, it was -25 C plus windchill this morning. But Caleb, being a true northern baby, simply got bundled up and tucked inside Mommy's parka to walk to church.

It's never too soon to start working on those early literacy skills!!

Parenting is tiring work... napping isn't just for babies.

We weren't quite sure what Caleb was doing here but it sure looked funny.

Conquering the world with Daddy!!

Snug as a bug.

(Caleb's) Life in the 'Knife

2009-02-08T21:32:00.004-08:00

The story of Caleb’s birth begins on Thursday morning. Jen woke up and noticed that she was encountering contractions of the “legitimate” variety. By 9:00 pm, we were able to time them and reliably predict when they should be coming. It took until 4am Friday morning before they were frequent and regular enough to warrant going to the hospital.

Upon arriving at the hospital, Jen was crushed to learn that she was not very far along. After another 5 hours of contractions, she didn’t get very much further. The nurse gave Jen a shot of Demerol and recommended that we go home for a while.

By 6 pm Friday, the contractions were stronger. We went back to the Hospital.

In the end, Jen decided that after several months of limited physical activity arising from the pregnancy, she would celebrate its conclusion with 28 hours of contractions every five minutes and a grand finale of six hours of pushing. While I commend her dedication to getting exercise and physically exhausting herself, I have counselled her that next time we should take smaller steps. Nevertheless, I am very proud of her effort.

While we were in the hospital, there were some other moms-to-be that tried to compete with Jen’s endurance. They were all weaker than Jen and gave up (or rather, gave birth) while Jen was still going strong. We had the satisfaction of hearing not one, but two babies being born in the labour room next to us while Jen was labouring onwards. Jen’s effort was so monumental, that the obstetrician was called in from his home to admire her and give her pointers on how to bring this Magnificent Opus to conclusion.

The pointers worked, and Caleb was born without further incident in the afternoon of February 7, 2009.

Upon arrival, Caleb found that the birthing process was sufficiently undignified that he did not need to belabour the point by shouting and causing a fuss. He gave a few coughs and some obligatory signs of good health. This was enough to convince the nurse that he was ready for life on the outside.

Since arriving outside, Caleb has had some serious concerns with this type of lifestyle. He has some (valid) complaints with how cold, bright, loud, and hungry life is outside the womb. But with the same stoic resolve that he showed at birth, he is quick to return to an agreeable demeanour once the offending situation has been cleared up.

Both baby and mommy are happy and healthy. We have obtained 3^rd party confirmation that Caleb is, objectively, a very cute young man with a pleasant temperament. He sends his best and looks forward to meeting everyone.

On resources and roads...

2007-05-29T21:34:00.000-07:00

[A note from your correspondent: this post is both exceptionally long and dwells on the economy of the North. I will not be offended in any way if you, my dear reader, decide that my writing is not interesting enough to keep your attention to the end, and instead log on to youtube to watch some men dancing on treadmills.]

"When I was a kid in the Yukon and a mine opened, the profits went to New York, the jobs went to Edmonton, the taxes went to Ottawa and all we got was a hole in the ground, which we could use as a garbage dump—if the federal government gave us permission."

These sentiments from Tony Penikett, a former Premier of the Yukon, during an interview the The Economist highlight much of what has changed in the North over the past few decades.

For much of its history as part of the Confederation, the North was ignored. It wasn't until after the second world war that Canadian politicians first began to take notice of the people that live there. The Canadian government, with an unfortunate lack of tact and knowledge, decided that they would make Canadians out of the the people of the North. They took the people off of the land, put them in communities, and, when gold was discovered, started selling the rights to the land under their feet.

It was under this system that Mr Penikett's memories were formed.

Most Canadians would not know what the difference is between a province and a territory, aside from an apparent requirement that you need to be south of the 60th parallel to be a province. In more practical terms, a territory is an extension of the federal government. The government taxes and spends in the territories as it would under any other federal jurisdiction. In the NWT, the important factor has always been mineral and resource rights, and the ability to tax those resources (to date, only the Yukon has mineral rights of the three territories).

Since the federal government has called the shots in the past, it often happened that the people of the north got little or no say about what happened. When you look at the size of the territories and the associated resources, and compare it with the representation it receives in Ottawa (the three territories each get one seat of the 308 in the House of Commons) you can see why the people of the North have felt a bit cheated in the past.

At least that used to be the case.

Since the 1990s, there have been quite a few treaties signed between the Canadian government and the various aboriginal and inuit groups, giving back the rights of the land. With the return of these rights, there have also arose some rather interesting corporate structures. The Nunasi Corp and the Inuvialuit Development Corp were formed in the wake of such land treaties with the inuit people, and have grown into economic powerhouses that own everything from barges, to helicopters, to optical centres, to airlines. With revenues totalling in the hundreds of millions of dollars, the original residents are of the North are beginning to take a piece of the action.

***

Due to the size of the available resources, and the relatively low population, the Northwest Territories has the largest economy per person of any of the other provinces. If the territory were to be considered its own country, it would have the highest GDP per capita of any country in the world ($95,000 compared with Luxembourg in second place with $83,000 and much higher than the sluggish Alberta at $66,000). The problem, is that not enough of this money stays in the North. Corporations take their profits back to New York, mine workers take their wages back to Edmonton, and Ottawa takes its tax money back to . . . Ottawa.

To solve this problem, the territorial government has tried to create value-added services in the North by doing things like guaranteeing loans for companies to set up diamond polishing operations. These efforts have had some success, but the fact remains that it is quite expensive to live and operate in the North. Other initiatives include tying mandatory northern resident hiring ratios to mineral rights, then using extra payroll taxes to claw back some of the money that would otherwise go to workers from the south.

Even with all these efforts, the federal government is still forced to spend over $18,000 each year for each person that lives in the territories, while only being able to generate $16,000 in taxes. And still Northerners are displeased.

Road access, behind mineral rights, is the second most heated topic of discussion in the NWT. I think I have mentioned before that there is no road access to Yellowknife for parts of the year, and that some communities are connected by a road for only a few weeks each year. Technically, the highway systems in the territories fall under federal jurisdiction, but politicians in the North are quick to point out that there has not been a single kilometer of road built in the NWT since 1987. When you combine this with shorter and shorter ice road seasons each year (if you don't "believe" in global warming, I will let you come up with a reason why this is happening), the end result is a crippling effect on the economy.

DeBeers has been building a new diamond mine called the Snap Lake Project. It will be the NWTs third such mine, but there have been delays in construction due to the short ice road seasons. When companies cannot rely on the winter roads, it is hard to convince them to invest.

The obstacles are not limited strictly to business either: I was in Rae Lakes (Gameti) again last week, and the residents there are having to send their teenagers to another community because even though money is waiting to expand the school to include high school classrooms, the government cannot convince any contractors to take on the job. The winter roads have become increasingly unpredictable in recent years, and the possibility of not being able to get all of the supplies into the communities in order to meet deadlines scares them all away.

Some would like to see a highway tracing the entire Mackenzie Valley from Inuvik to Yellowknife. This $700 million project is almost 20 times the annual highways budget for the entire NWT. And given the current construction environment in the North, I would bet on those cost estimates being on the "very low" side of the scale. This ambitious goal seems rather unrealistic, given that the government cannot even muster the $70 million required to build a year-round bridge to Yellowknife. However, if this project were at least started, it would certainly boost the economy of the North (if only due to the money spent on the road itself).

Another ambitious project is the Mackenzie Gas Pipeline. I have met people living in Yellowknife who first moved here in anticipation of working on the MGP . . . in the 1970s. Yes, the MGP is a throwback to the late 70s / early 80s, but the project ran into opposition from various groups, and when combined with low oil prices, interest in the project died out. As we can all attest to today, there is no question that the price of gas has increased enough to make the economics of the pipeline possible.

Unfortunately (for Imperial Oil), the various interest groups are now more involved in the process than in the 1970s. The project has been delayed several times due to another group, or council, or association coming out and insisting they were not consulted. In fact, the economy of Inuvik (where the Joint Review Panels have been taking place) has been booming mostly due to these meetings. As corporate and government lawyers fly back and forth from Inuvik to Yellowknife to Edmonton to Calgary, week after week, the small community has been more than happy to accommodate the extended talks. But in general, it is widely agreed that the economic benefit to the territory will outweigh the environmental impact of a pipeline carved through the North.

The project is so popular that there have even been rumors that the federal government wants to invest a controlling interest in the pipeline, rather than give tax incentives to the various corporate and aboriginal groups that are already invested. It appears that Ottawa's paternalistic tendencies die hard.

The road of luxury is paved with ice.

2007-03-02T20:56:00.000-08:00

I’m not sure how many people will read this. I suspect that during my 3 month sabbatical, I have lost some of my readership. But now that I have culled my audience to a manageable elite, I bring you the latest installment of “Life in the Knife.”

Part of the reason for my absence was that I didn’t have very much to write about the past few months. I have spent most of my time in Yellowknife where life is admittedly quite boring. I managed to finish module 1 of 6 of the Chartered Accounts School of Business (they are courses I need to take to get my CA designation), but other than that, I can’t think of anything worth writing home about.

However, last weekend I was sent out to a small community for a few days to attend an inventory count for one of our clients. This entry is mostly devoted to that weekend.

My entry will be about luxuries.

Roads are a luxury. In my mind, the greatest engineering feat in British Columbia in the last 30 years was the Coquihalla highway. Things are no different in the North. This time of year is winter road season. The community I was visiting goes by the name Gameti (or Rae Lakes if you prefer). The community is nestled in among some little hills which they call mountains and many, many lakes (as the alternate name suggests). The only road access to the community is during a four to five week period when the lakes freeze over thick enough to make a winter road from Yellowknife. The winter road is a true luxury. During this time, the community of about 300 will turn into a ghost town as everyone jumps into their trucks to drive to Yellowknife to stock up on Pepsi and ketchup chips (both are surprisingly popular in the North). As the weather warms, the road is eventually officially closed, at which time the residents will still brave the journey for a few weeks. Why do they bother spending the money to make the road? Well, unfortunately that is the only way that they can get the necessary fuel into the community to run the generators for the next 11 months. At this time they will also bring in any heavy machinery and building supplies that might be needed. The road is such a luxury that many community leaders are campaigning for an all weather road which, as you can imagine, is a great symbol of prestige for the community. Even Yellowknife does not have an all weather road (a ferry crosses the MacKenzie River in the summer, and an ice road in the winter). Unfortunately, this also opens the door for undesirable consequences for these communities, which are typically dry (no alcohol – the RCMP will search your bags coming off the plane, but a truckload of groceries is another matter). Yes, a road, like many luxuries, has its downfalls as well.

I will be in Vancouver until April 15th, so I will not likely be updating before then.
Until then, you will have to turn to other corners of the internet yet again.

Getting colder...

2006-11-14T21:08:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone!

When I wrote you last, I was on a brief layover before leaving again for some of the southern provinces (I have now been home for a personal record of two weeks). I spent a significant amount of time in airports and hotels to the point that I sometimes catch myself looking for liquids and gels when I pack my briefcase to go to work in the morning for fear that the airport security will confiscate them (yes, I have a briefcase now).

Air travel in the north is actually quite luxurious compared to the south. The airlines in most of the territories are owned by the Inuit nations, and the Inuit seem to know how to make someone comfortable. When I compare Air Canada’s “Pretzel Mix” packet on the flight from Winnipeg to Vancouver with the teriyaki chicken dinner I get on Canadian North for a flight that is half the duration, a little part of my soul dies, and the rest of my soul cries out for northern hospitality.

But now I am done with planes until Christmas. The catch, of course, is that I am back in Yellowknife, and it is getting cold. The rains that have been flooding BC the past few weeks have translated into almost a foot of snow up here in the north. Believe it or not, it is not actually that common to get lots of snow all at once in Yellowknife. Typically, it slowly builds up over the course of the winter (it is never warm enough to melt, and simply blows around from one side of town to the other). The lake outside my apartment has frozen over, and the snowmobiles are out in force.

One thing I will say about the cold is that it is never as bad as you think it will be, especially if you have the right equipment. I’ve invested in a scarf and decent mitts, (thank-you to Nienke for the toque!), and the 15 minute walk to work is definitely tolerable. The cold weather has also allowed me to indulge in a secret passion I have for long underwear. I have not resorted to wearing a full-length thermal suit yet, but it is certainly tempting.

Unfortunately it is getting darker out; it is just barely sunrise when I leave for work in the morning, and it is definitely dark when I go back home. It makes daylight savings seems like a silly concept to me. Within a week of the changeover, it is so dark that you barely notice. Yet that switch is the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Before that weekend, you can pretend that it is not quite winter; but after, there is no denying that it is getting dark.

Work has been interesting. The day after I got home, I found myself counting a few million dollars in uncut diamonds here in Yellowknife. It turns out that uncut diamonds actually just look like chunks of rock salt when they are not polished. The next question people usually ask is whether I took any. Given that I no longer need to get a diamond ring, I figured it was better to not test the security of the facility and the ensuing headaches. I will say that after examining 9ct diamonds, I am surprised that Jen accepted the one I presented (though a rock the size of a grape is hardly practical for a teacher’s finger).

The next week, I was shivering in a walk-in meat freezer.

Counting diamonds one week and frozen turkeys the next. They didn’t really cover these topics in my auditing class.

Well, this is by far the most I have written about nothing. So, with that I will say goodnight.

Some random pictures for you:
This is the auditor's natural habitat. You can see from the remains on the table what the auditor's diet consists of.

The smaller planes in the north often have writing on the insides of the pull-down blinds. I've started collecting pictures of them. Here are a couple.

(I especially like the warning that the seat I was sitting in was previously "barfed on")

I will try to get some better pictures for next time.

Tales from the tundra

2006-10-09T19:37:00.000-07:00

You may remember that the last time I wrote I said that I was possibly going to Rankin Inlet later that week. Well, three weeks and 180 billable hours later, I am finally home.

First off, let me thank all of you out there who drive vehicles that emit high levels of greenhouse gasses. I neglected to bring my snow clothes up there (I didn’t think I would be gone this long), but thanks to you, that didn’t matter. No snow fell when I was up there, which is very unusual. By this time of year, the primary form of transportation in Nunavut should be snowmobile, but this year the snow is late. Please continue to do your part for global warming!

This was my first time in Nunavut and I am proud to be part of the small percentage of Canadians that have actually visited Nunavut. It is neither cheap to get there nor to stay, so I am glad that my trip was paid for in full by my firm. It is a pretty radical change from the rest of Canada. My trip took two parts. First I was in Rankin Inlet for two weeks, then I was in Coral Harbour for a week (or so).

First, I will talk about Rankin Inlet, hometown of Jordin Tootoo, the NHL hockey player. His face appears often around town, which makes sense in a town of 2,500 people; not a lot of them attain that level of notoriety. Rankin Inlet is also the home of the world’s largest inukshuk. I suppose this is sort of like saying Hollywood is the home of the world’s largest Hollywood sign, but it is still impressive to see. I would like to take this opportunity to sidebar into a rank about how stupid it is that Vancouver, where the Haida and Salish aboriginal nations are, has elected to use an Inuit inukshuk as it’s 2010 Olympic games branding. It makes no sense to me. It is like Germany picking the Eiffel Tower to represent it: sure, they are both from the same continent, but they are not from the same nation. But I digress. When I first got to Rankin Inlet, where there is only one or two restaurants to go to and the roads are all unpaved, I thought it was at the edge of Canada (another sidebar: you can see in the map below there is a star at the geographical centre of Canada. Rankin Inlet is actually almost in the middle of Canada). This all changed when I left for Coral Harbour.

Flying into Coral Harbour, you understand that it is a small community. The airport consists of one small building where nobody works full time. The landing strip is gravel, and because there is no tower or radar, planes will not take off or land if it is cloudy. My co-worker and I were lucky to get a taxi to town 15 minutes away. When we got there, we discovered that the only decent hotel in town was full because there were construction workers, and we had been booked into the overflow “hotel” run by the local Co-op. I use scare quotes around hotel because that place barely qualifies as one. My complaining about this place could go on for hours. The rooms are all shared (4 beds to a room), the floors creak constantly when you walk, the bathrooms are small and unheated (yes, unheated), there is one phone, and if you are unlucky enough to be the last person to shower, you may end up running out of water. No, not running out of HOT water; running out of water. The water tank is only so large, so you may end up going to work smelly and coming back at lunch to clean up after the water truck has been by. All of this luxury will only cost you $200 per night! The upside of this “hotel” is that you meet lots of people. There were about ten of us staying there, and it was a surprisingly diverse group. I met a telephone-pole cable splicer in town working for a few days and who spent his weekends leading dog-sled teams for tourists. I met a Swedish ship-building mogul who was in the Canadian arctic hunting polar bears (he complained about the accommodations a lot too, haha). I met an electrician from New Brunswick who had his invention of a better light bulb sunk by government bureaucrats and who now had to work up north (at least, that is what I gathered from his story, because he had a wonderfully think Quebecois accent). It was a very diverse group.

We spent most of our time working in the schools, which is always more fun for me than working in an office building. One of the most interesting things is that every morning they sing the national anthem in the classrooms. The peculiar part is that it is sung in Inuktitut, the Inuit language. I would normally dive into a philosophical discussion about how tolerance-prone Canada allows its anthem to be sung in three different languages without batting an eye, whereas the American melting-pot cries bloody murder if the stars and stripes is sung in Spanish, but I’m tired and I’m sure you are losing interest.

One final note about Nunavut is how isolated it is. There is no road access between any of the communities in Nunavut (that I am aware of). The only way to get supplies in is by plane or by barge. Barge is a bit of a misleading term, because they are actually huge container ships that come through two or three times a year in the late summer. The window of opportunity is relatively short because the ice around the cape of northern Quebec breaks up in the spring and becomes impassable around this time of year. This means that if the community leaders don’t plan for enough fuel, for example, they will simply have to go without power if they run out. I chuckled to myself when a school administrator complained that their supplier had short-shipped them pencils for the year and the kids had to write with little stubs of pencil. But I guess that really isn’t THAT funny.

Anyways, that is a (not so) brief outline of my tour of Nunavut. It was always a big culture shock the further I went north (by the way, Coral Harbour has exactly zero restaurants), but as the communities became more isolated, they also became much more interesting. I hope that my adoring readers have made it this far, because now I have more pictures and video for you!

And a final note: my favourite anecdote from my trip involves all of the people in Coral Harbour listening intently to the radio to hear who won the commuity raffle. “What was the prize?” you ask? The winner got to shoot and keep the next polar bear that wandered into town! When that happened, they would have a new raffle for the next one.

So it begins...

2006-09-18T20:57:00.000-07:00

Well, I am here at last. Thus begins my “Life in the ‘knife” (clever name, no?).

So far, things seem pretty normal for a small Canadian town. The Wal-Mart parking lot is full of the Tim Horton’s drive through overflow. The local government offices are adorned in Totem poles (aren’t the nearest Haida people thousands of miles away?). And a lot of people drive new trucks. The sideways traffic lights take a little bit of getting used to.

There are some quirks. Today, KFC ran out of chicken when I went there for lunch. A meal at A&W will run you $10. And occasionally, the Extra Foods grocery store has nothing by empty boxes in the display stands at the checkout. Picture that for a minute. They are out of a high-profit, impulse-buy item. Shipments of food up here are actually a factor in the cost and availability. Savagery!

Some of the more interesting geological items are the abundance of lakes and rocks. Taking a rental car north for about 50 km will bring you to Cameron Falls. The number of small lakes you pass on the way out is incredible. And with all of it being (technically) drinkable, I understand where Canada finds its claim to the world’s largest supply of fresh water. The catch is that for six months of the year you need to chip it out of the ice. On the subject of ice, the glacial handiwork is evident everywhere. The huge rocky hills are all quite smooth to this west-coast boy. If this was costal BC, all the rock would be under a carpet of moss, but here there is nothing. Just bare rock.

The weather here is actually not that bad these days. The mosquitoes are gone (the balcony of my apartment is ominously equipped with a fly screen to keep the vermin out), the sun keeps to pretty regular hours, and the temperature is quite pleasant. However, I fear that this is coming to an end rather quickly. The sun sets noticeably sooner than it did a week and a half ago when I got here, and it is certainly getting a bit chilly out there.

My job is good so far. I’ve been in training, but I have recently moved onto proper work. Now, it looks like I might be heading up to Rankin Inlet as of Friday (it’s northeast of Yellowknife on the coast of Hudson’s Bay). Farther north, in Iqaluit, my firm’s sister office is equipped with bars on the windows to keep out bears. How exciting!

But, on a more somber note, the nearest Starbucks is thousands of kilometers away. Woe is me.

And now, pictures!

And video too!

That's all for now. I will try to update this whenever is appropriate, but I am lazy, so who knows. I'll try to send off an email notification too all you important people when I do.

First Post

2006-05-27T08:08:00.000-07:00

Only three months until I am up in the great hinterland.