Back to the north

View of Repulse Bay from the air

Well, I am back up north! School started on August 5th, so I have been pretty busy getting everything organized and put together for my class. I am still the grade 4 teacher and it looks like it is going to be another great year. I am also the computer contact person now, so that is keeping me busy!
I have also moved to a new apartment and I have a new roommate - Chris, my better half! We really like the apartment and are settling in nicely. Chris just started work last weekend as the local homecare nurse. He is liking that so far. Right now he is planning to stay up here until the middle of October. I will probably be home for Christmas, then come back up to finish up the school year.
Other than work and school, Chris and I have been able to go out on the land and by boat to see some pretty cool local wildlife. Chris was out in a boat with a local man and they saw two polar bears close up in the water! We saw another polar bear while on a boat trip with the staff from our school, although it was pretty far away.
Our first weekend up here we went out for a long walk just south of town. Someone went flying past us on an ATV and told us that there were some whales swimming off of the shore not far from where we were. So, Chris and I followed them and we got to see some narwhals swimming around. Several boats were out in the water as well . . . we weren't sure if they were just watching or if they were hunters (I knew that the locals had already had a big narwhal hunt a couple weeks ago and they used all of their tags). The boats surrounded the whales and brought them right in to shore not far from where we were. We watched as one of the men harpooned a narwhal! It just happened that he was from Rankin Inlet and he had a tag to kill it. I think narwhal are beautiful animals, but it was still pretty cool to see them hunt it (I am a hunter as well so maybe that's why it didn't bother me). They brought it in to shore and Chris and I asked if we could watch as they cut it up. The guy was really friendly and let us watch and take pictures. We even got to eat some of the skin/blubber. It wasn't that tasty but I had to try it once!
Repulse Bay has been given one tag for a bowhead whale! They get a tag about once every five years, so this is a pretty big deal!! The hunt started on the 16th and they are able to use the tag until December (hopefully it doesn't take that long!). The weather has not been very cooperative as we have had rain, fog, and recently the wind blew the ice right into the shore so no one can go out in a boat at all. It is supposed to be really windy (from the north) the next couple of days, so that may help to get rid of all the ice. A couple of men have offered to take Chris out on their boat when the whale has been killed. In case you are not aware of how big a bowhead whale is, they are the second largest whale in the world! They can get up to 66ft and weigh over 130 tonnes!! They are also the longest living mammal as they can live to be up to 200 years old.
The teacher's boat trip last weekend was a lot of fun. We stopped at the harbour islands (where we saw the polar bear running away over a hill). The whalers used to camp out on these islands as they helped to shelter them from the wind during the cold winter months. They would be stuck there after the ice came in. There were some graves there and even some human bones exposed to the elements. We had to drive around hundreds or thousands of huge chunks of ice floating around the water. We also saw a seal and a caribou and the guides did some Arctic char fishing (with nets). We had a delicious fish dinner that night!
Other than that, Chris and I have just been doing a lot of walking and exploring near town, but not too far out of town as we don't have a gun yet and don't want to get eaten by a polar bear!
I'm sure I have missed something, but I will write more in my next entry.
Here are some pictures from the last 3 weeks:

Arctic ground squirrel (siksik)

Narwhal head and tusk

View of town

A skull from one of the whalers with offerings (bullets, smokes, a pocket knife)

May update

Ok, so I haven't posted anything in a while . . . so here is an update of what I have been up to lately. We now have pretty much 24 hours of sunlight! It never gets dark out. I have been having trouble sleeping although I have tin foil over my window . . . I think my brain knows that it is still light out! It is hard to get used to so much light. It will be nice to get home to a more normal sunrise/sunset pattern! Only 17 days until I'm home!
Also, we only have 7 teaching days left! Tomorrow, Monday, we are having a teacher's workshop. Friday we are done at noon as there is a big fishing derby near town. There are some big prizes! I believe that first place is $5,500!! There are four lakes north of town that will be used for the derby. The closest one is 2 hours by snowmobile. I'm not sure if I'm going to head up or not . . . depends how much work I get done in my classroom and if I can catch a ride or not!! Definitely too far to walk! The last day of class for the students is the 28th of May! Us teachers have to be in school on the Monday, then I will be flying home on Tuesday, June 1st, but have to stay overnight in Winnipeg that night. The only bad thing about being done in May is that classes start back up the first week of August.

Last weekend I was invited to a birthday party in an igloo! It was Arden's first birthday and her parents thought it would be special for her to have it in an igloo! We had cake, hot chocolate, and marshmallows. It was a perfect day for her big event. Here are some pics:

This is how we get around in the north! This is Heidi and Jenn with Arden in the Snow Coach.


Me in front of the birthday igloo.


We had a bonfire on the frozen lake. The ice was over 6 feet thick, so no worries about going through! Wasn't easy to find wood to burn as there are no trees up here! Luckily there were some extra skids from a construction site.

We played bocce ball!

A sic sic (Arctic ground squirrel) must have smelled the hot dogs! He ran down the hill to visit us.

I was also invited to go out and watch a caribou hunt! To get a caribou tag I have to be a resident for at least 3 months. . .which I was about 10 days away from, so I was only an observer. I'm hoping to go out hunting when we come back up in August. I went out with a fellow teacher, Jake, who had a tag and it was his first time caribou hunting. He got one with his first shot! He shot it in the butt, but it went down. The other two we went out with were Michael and his girlfriend Wendy. They are locals and Michael has shot tons of caribou. Wendy also shot her first caribou while we were out (took about 6 shots!) but she finally got it. Michael also shot one (also took about 6 shots!). It was nice to be able to get out on the land and see what it looks like outside of town. It is very hilly around Repulse with tons of little lakes (all frozen right now of course). It seems crazy how the caribou and other animals can survive in such a harsh climate!


This was the caribou that Jake shot.

The Inuit love to eat caribou eyes and tongue. Jake and Michael ate the eyes! I've been told it has a hard jelly-like consistency. Jake spit it out . . . yuck!

This was Wendy's caribou. It was all alone out there. It had already been shot in the leg, so must have been left behind the herd.

Sunset while out hunting.

The grade 9 class spent a night out on the land and did some fishing. They gave us an Arctic Char that they caught. Irene and I tried to clean it but it wasn't a pretty sight!

Earth Day

Well, nothing says Earth Day like going ice fishing! We actually had a meeting scheduled for Earth Day (April 22nd), so we celebrated at the school on Friday, April 23rd instead. In the morning, we started out with a game of Earth ball (grades 4-6). I wish I had taken some pics of this as it was pretty funny!! We have a soccer ball that is about 10 times as big as it should be . . . so we played a game with it. After that, we had some recycled Art activities and a movie for the kids. The afternoon was the highlight of the day as we took the bus to "Old Water Lake," not to be confused with "New Water Lake," which is the current water source for Repulse Bay. Holes were drilled for ice fishing (it was about 6 ft of ice- glad I didn't have to drill the holes!!) and a couple of tents were set up for hot chocolate. A nice tobogganing hill was located just off of the lake, which was tons of fun! I made a few trips down the hill and only wiped out a couple of times. It was the perfect weather for our outing. I think it had to have been the warmest day of the year so far. A bunch of us had our jackets off and enjoying the beautiful sunshine! Only two fish were caught in the afternoon (lake trout), but everyone was having fun.


This is a pic on top of the hill looking back down on the lake and the ice fishing.

This is a picture of one of my students kneeling on the ice . . . there were some pretty cool designs!


Now this is the way to fish! Not sure whose chair it was, but it was comfy! I didn't even get a bite! We were jigging with sticks that had fishing line connected and some lures. I believe there was a bit of bait put on some of the hooks.


First fish of the afternoon.

Dogsledding and Ugly fish

I can't believe how quickly time goes by . . . I will be back home in less than 2 months already! I am looking forward to having a couple months off for visiting and enjoying the "south."
We had another blizzard the Saturday before Easter weekend. It was a good one! There were 90 km/hour winds mixed with snow . . .and we couldn't see the house next door. Here is a picture of what it looked like out our window:



A couple of days later I went for a dog sled ride with a fellow teacher. The weather was a lot more co-operative! The dogs are the same ones from a previous post. They have 9 dogs up here. I sat in the kamatik (sled) while Bill managed the dogs. We had a bit of an adventure in the beginning when the dogs took off in the wrong direction! When sled dogs take off (and these ones are only about 9 months old) it is hard to stop them!! We headed straight into town up and down over some hills. If we had of gone another 30 feet, the sled I was in would have been toppled over and I would have been dragged over some rock mounds. Luckily, Bill was able to stop them just in time and I hopped out! His wife followed us with the snowmobile and we were able to tie the dogs up to it and steer them in the right direction. Apparently, the dogs have never done that before, but it was kind of exciting and no harm was done. Once we got back on track, we headed out on the ice and enjoyed a beautiful evening ride. Here are a couple of pics getting set up and one out on the ice:




On Easter Monday, the community had a small fishing event. I received a phone call from another teacher telling me to go check it out. So, I got bundled up and headed out on the ice. There was a good number of locals out there jigging for "ugly fish." They really were pretty ugly!! One of our Inuktitut teachers gave me her jigging contraption to try it out for myself. I spent a good 10 minutes trying to catch one without success. I then walked around to see what everyone else had caught. I'm still not quite sure why they catch these fish as most of the people said that they don't eat them!? Some said that they boil the meat. Personally, I think they are just too ugly to eat! You be the judge:






One of our grade 8 students was out hunting with his grandfather last week and shot a muskox! They were north of here in the Pelly Bay region. The hide and skull were out drying at his grandparents house and they let us take some pictures. It was such a beautiful day, so I took a walk around town and took some more pictures.




Our school's maintenance guy shot 8 caribou last week. These are some of the skins.


These are a couple of views from up on the hill behind our house. Too bad there are no windows from the front of our house!!

Rankin Inlet

So, I haven't even been in Repulse Bay for two months, and I already have the pleasure of taking part in a teacher's workshop. The fun thing about workshops is that you have to be flown out to attend (no roads come in or out of Repulse). That means that I get a paid "holiday" to Rankin Inlet. We are doing a Reader's Theatre workshop here Tuesday and Wednesday. It was pretty good today. We did a lot of practical activities that I will be able to use in my grade 3 and 4 ESL classes. I have some non-readers in both classes which makes it hard doing Reader's Theatre, hence the "reader's" part, but some of the activities are drama based, which I'm sure the kids will love.
Anyways, enough about teaching. The other cool part about being in a bigger community is that I can go to a restaurant!! There are no restaurants in Repulse Bay, other than the Inns North, which no one goes to eat there other than guests. There are a few places to eat here. I had sushi for lunch today!! That was so exciting for me. It may not seem that exciting, but really think about living somewhere where you have NO restaurants. There are so many things that we take for granted in the "south," as it is referred to up here. Other things that excite me about being in Rankin Inlet is that there is a pharmacy, pottery studio (heading there tomorrow), and a much larger variety of things to buy at the Northern store and Co-op. Tomorrow I'm going to print some pictures from my camera . . . yippee!
I brought my cell phone here as I use it as my alarm clock. I completely forgot that I could get cell phone service here! I haven't cancelled my Bell phone plan yet. . . I guess it's pointless to cancel now as I will be home in a couple of months.
The owners of the Lodge I am staying at (Nanuq Lodge) have about 40 dogs! There are 4 dogsled teams in total, plus some puppies! The woman who runs the lodge is the aunt to Jordin Tootoo. Anyways, I will be taking a couple of bags of dog food back to Repulse for some fellow teachers who have sled dogs (see pics below) and in return they are going to take me dogsledding this weekend! I am really looking forward to that. I haven't been able to see very much outside of Repulse yet. I am also looking forward to warmer weather and being able to go out on the land . . . fishing, hiking, etc.

I had mentioned in my previous post about some meetings that we attended at the school back in the beginning of March. There were some elders present from the community, as well as members from the DEA (District Education Authority). We talked about the Lands Claim Agreement, new school curriculum, etc. It was a very informative couple of days for me to see and learn more about Nunavut and the community here in Repulse. There was an interpreter present which was very useful. I was able to hear testimony from some of the elders and other locals who spoke about earlier days, before the first houses were brought to Repulse Bay (1960's). They spoke about the first time they saw money, white people and schools. It is hard to comprehend how much change has occurred here in such a short period of time. I feel lucky to be able to live in a very traditional community where Inuktitut is still the primary language and people still go out hunting on the land. A lot of culture is being left behind, however, which is really sad. I imagine it won't be long before their language and other traditions start to fade away too.

Heritage Day

On Monday, March 1st, we celebrated Heritage Day at Tusarvik School. This was a great introduction to Arctic culture for me! There were several activities, such as making (and eating) bannock, tool making, drum dancing, storytelling, igloo making, traditional Inuit games, and dog sledding. It was amazing!
The bannock was made with flour, water, baking soda, salt, and lard (traditionally they used seal, walrus, or other types of lard, but now it is often made with Crisco). I guess it depends on what is available.
There were a couple of elders from the community there to tell the students about traditional tools and what they were used for. Most of the tools were made from animal bones, antlers, etc. They also talked about some of the games that they played with the bones.
There were a couple of ladies (elders) who sang/chanted while the students and teachers used the drums. Yes, I gave it a try, and I think I did a pretty good job.
In the gym we played some Inuit games. There was leg wrestling, balancing, tug-of-war, and a number of other games & activities.
A couple of elders told stories from their childhood. It was in Inuktitut, so I didn't understand what they were saying. I was lucky, however, to hear elders talking about days when they were younger at a workshop yesterday, but I will talk more about that in another post.
There were a couple of guys from the community who came and constructed igloos. It looked really hard! It was super cold outside, but I would say that this activity was one of my favourites!
We then headed down to the ice to let some of the students take a dog sled ride. It was really cold out on the ice (very windy!!). I had to take a group of students back to the school early as we were freezing! The wind chill was -43, which isn't that bad, but it was bad enough that some people got a touch of frost bite.
Anyways, being a new teacher in the community, it was fun for me to experience these activities with my students. They were great and explained a lot of things to me. Everyday I am learning more about the culture and traditions here and I am very appreciative of the opportunity that I was given to live and work in this community!