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THE PLAY BY PLAY

So, now that you have a sense of actual roads and road trip part of our Northern adventure  let’s chat about the places along the way (we are backtracking a bit as I realized I posted the Southern Yukon stories before I sent you all this.  So push pause at Whitehorse and come back with me to Inuvik for a spell).

From Eagle Plains it was off to Inuvik and the Great Northern Arts Festival.  At the tourist info they gave me a “glossary” of Northern idioms which included the first pavement at Inuvik off the gravel as “first kiss” unfortunately, my first kiss included a backhand… I whacked an unmarked frost heave at 80 and arrived with a great crunch.  All that gravel without an incident and the first 30 seconds on pavement I whack it. Fortunately no harm done other than rattled teeth (but I didn’t really know that for a while).

On arrival I found my hotel, which turned out to have really nice young staff going for it, and little else.  The promised AC was a portable household unit which had been venting into the room all day, adding heat not getting rid of it, the carpets were all bubbled, and in the place where the TV should have been there was a hole in the wall with a wire hanging out of it.   The heat, which I am glad to have not needed, came from a gas fireplace and, given the state of the rest of the place, I suspect it would have gassed me or blown up.   I went and talked to the dear young girl at the desk who looked really apologetic but had no idea what to do.  So, stage manager Maria swings into action.  We found some duck tape (I was not donating the expensive gaff I had in the car) and I showed her how to tape the hose to the hole in the wall to make the AC vent outside.  Then I turned it on, nope, still just a noisy fan, so I decided I would just open the window despite the “city view” of the highway off ramp and dust… nope again, there is a fist sized hole in the screen (I am not sure if there was a fight in the room or just one of the Cessna size bugs slammed into it).  So, back to the desk and get the Duck tape, covered the hole. 

Given that it was 30C in Inuvik the AC was a key selling feature of the hotel so, AC fail was a deal breaker.   Channeling Kelly and her “why am I dying in this non AC hostel in Ottawa when I have a visa card and there is a hotel next door with AC” moment I went down the road to the nice hotel in the middle of town and asked if they had a room with functional AC.  They did.  I went back to the other place, talked to the onsite day manager who was very sympathetic and refunded me the nights I had not used and away I went.  It was interesting in talking to the day manager.  She was quite candid that the company had done nothing with the hotel in 20 years and the owner had not even been to Inuvik in years.  I promised her I would send a nasty complaining letter to head office to try to support the cries of the staff for some maintenance.  They are even calling in favours from friends to try to keep the place running.

Down the way, The Mackenzie Hotel, was lovely.  Comfortable beds, AC that worked (and in the one room that it did not work, a call to the desk had the maintenance man there in an instant and me moved to a different room).  The maintenance person had come from Newfoundland and had most recently worked at the Carriage House Hotel, where I think we stayed when we were there many years ago.  He also happened to be the dad of the new manager.   If in doubt call home for reinforcements.  It also had a nice restaurant that I ate in several times, the options in Inuvik being somewhat limited at best (the local where to eat list includes the little cafeteria in the hospital as a destination), and bonus it is one of the Inuvialuit businesses so I could contribute to the local economy as well as not poach to death in room sized sauna.

Inuvik is the central supply town for the Western Arctic so it serves a bunch of different functions, local resource industry, tourism both for hunting/fishing and the Dempster/ITH roads, healthcare for the region (they have a really nice little hospital/long term care facility with one of the most friendly security guard/info person that I have met in any hospital anywhere), is the hub for the local Inuvialuit Economic development endeavours.  I was also somewhat surprised with the lack of visible unhoused folks.  I saw 4 people sitting with a  bottle in a vacant lot one day, and had a pleasant brief chat with them, but that was it for the entire time I was there.  In chatting with the staff at the hotel, there are significant addiction issues in the community but people do more couch surfing or come and go to the remote communities, even in the summer when it is possible to live rough (while the Indigenous people from the area lived on the land in winter they had skills and gear that your average person struggling with homelessness and/or addiction do not have, rather apples and oranges).

One of the things I timed my  trip to Inuvik for was the Great Northern Arts Festival.  This happens annually and is a showcase of a variety of different creative work from the Arctic.  I was there the closing weekend.  I managed to catch a few things and was really impressed with the offerings.  It seemed the schedule was a tad mutable, so I missed a couple of things I had planned to see and got to a couple of others I had not.  I got to the tail end of a fashion show of locally designed clothing.  The work ranged from traditional parkas from the Eastern Arctic and beaded moccasins and hide jackets from the West to some absolutely stunning accessories worn with conventional settler clothing,  and jewellery.  I wished I had made a point of getting to all of it, but who would have ever thought I would be a fashion show person?!?  There was music by a brother and sister duo from Whitehorse, Sechile Sedare,  who played original folk/singer-songwriter stuff and a fellow from Toronto, Neel Dani, who is a DJ, musician, and music educator who played everything from his guitar to a digeridoo.  There was an art show/sale which had some truly spectacular work in it (probably a good thing that I still had 3 months in the car or I would have loaded it up to the gunnels with things I have nowhere to store).  The art ranged from traditional beading to painting to sculpture.   Then there were more typical performance based offerings.  I saw a The Yukon Circus Society who did some very nice work on silks as well as some cute clown with guitar stuff.  Their performance was aimed at the kids and they had them all out on the floor with hoops and ribbons and all manner of other movement and sound things, and even let some of the non-toddler aged ones have a go with the silks. Gwaandak theater also presented two readings of new works from Indigenous Northern authors.  I only got to one but it was very good.  It was too bad that there were only a handful of people there for the reading, along with a bunch of little kids playing about and running on the metal risers of the outdoor tent venue, making it a bit hard to hear sometimes but they were having so much fun the cast managed to ignore them until their adults fetched them, or they wandered off out into the field.

Many of the tourism type activities in Inuvik involve hunting, fishing etc., not really my scene.  There are some offerings with dog carts/sleds (depending on the season) but I was just there for a few days so I spent my time other than the arts festival in town.  I would like to come back in the winter sometime when there is a completely different set of activities and things to see.  While I was deciding if I was going to chicken out on the drive to Tuktoyaktuk I was introduced to a woman who runs a local accommodation and who has winter tours with ice road trips to Aklavik (you have to fly in in summer), a night out in the bush at their cabin and learning to run her dog teams.   There is also a sunrise celebration when the light comes back, local recommendations on that were mixed from “it is a lots of fun” to “no, come in the spring when all the local communities have festivals and gatherings.  The sunrise is just standing around looking at fireworks at -50 while your feet freeze no matter what you do”.  We shall see, that trip will involve a good size chunk of money and planning.

One of the main attractions in town is the “igloo church”.  This Roman Catholic church is built in the form of an igloo, which is a very practical Northern design, and was built without permits as the drawings were done by a missionary volunteer with no architectural training and Ottawa couldn’t understand them.   It is constructed with a huge among of bent wood, as are the pews, with some of the materials sourced from what was on hand.  You can see a couple of hockey sticks incorporated into the walkway in the cupola.  I happened to stop in just as s tour was starting, so I joined in.  It was an excellent tour and allowed us to go up into the cupola and down to the basement.  The building is built on a cement pad on gravel, which insulates the permafrost and then is on posts.  Most buildings are on posts or have cooling systems to keep the permafrost from melting due to the heat of the building and then falling into the tundra.  In the basement of the church there are also now a bunch of screw jacks.  Not because the original posts are failing but due to the permafrost starting to melt, after many years of solidity.  The jacks and other equipment were installed both to keep the church floor from falling in and to provide an opportunity for scientists to study the effects of the thawing permafrost and plan for other building as the climate changes and the permafrost becomes less “perma”.   Other buildings in town are also having trouble, the green house floor has shifted, and the local pool has had to have multiple closures to fix cracks as the earth shifts under it.

The church also contains paintings of the stations of the cross done by a local Inuvialuit woman, Mona Thrasher.  She had not done any large paintings before the priest at the time asked if she would like to do them.  It was interesting to watch her skill and style develop as she went from the first to last station.  She was born in the 1940’s on the land between Aklavik and Inuvik.  Her father was the captain of the Our Lady of Lourdes, a mission supply boat in the Western Arctic in the 30’s to 50’s.  You can find some information about Mona and Billie thrasher on line (Billie, not to be confused with contemporary Inuit musician Willie Thrasher who now lives in Nanaimo, likely from the same family though).

I was watching the weather and the weather guessers were not in my favour for the final stretch North to Tuktoyaktuk (or Tuk for short as everyone calls it locally).  I tried to find a tour going up there that I could hitch a ride with, but no such luck.  So, off I went as I was not coming this far and not finishing the journey!  I stopped and grabbed some groceries, as there is only one restaurant in Tuk as far as I could see, Grandma’s food truck.  As with all things North, you want to be prepared for all eventualities… and away I went.

As it turned out the road was fine.  It is gravel, in some places loosed and in some a little a little deep but Aurora made it just fine.   I found my BnB and checked in.  It was a beautiful 2 bedroom place with a large living room and a full kitchen, and an impressive collection of teas and coffees, and all the things needed to make a nice not breakfast.  It included eggs, which on first glance appeared to be polar bear eggs… although on closer inspection it was just the name of the company, “Polar eggs”, and their logo of a bear that led to the confusion.  My host, Maureen, was lovely and very helpful.  She is a lifelong Arctic resident and her dad started one of the biggest contracting companies in the North.  He was born in 1919 and went from hunting and trapping to a very successful businessman.  If you do a search for Eddie Gruben, obituary, CBC there is a good story about his life (seeing as this is still going on FB you will have to look it up yourself to avoid me landing in FB jail).  When I found a puddle under my car which I was concerned was oil she suggested that I could get one of the mechanics at the local Grubens yard to have a look at it.  Needless to say a puddle under your car on the Northernmost tip of the Canadian road system is not ideal.  I managed to have just a small panicked fit and then decided that I would try to figure out if this was a constant thing, an intermittent thing, and if it was in fact oil.  There was a reasonable chance I had busted something hitting the frost heave on the way into Inuvik but had not noticed the puddle in Inuvik.  So, my amateur diagnostic… move the car… new puddle… move the car again and stick some paper under it… phew water not oil.  In the end, it turned out that my friend Heidi solved the mystery liquid.  It was water from my AC system.  Being from Vancouver I have never had my AC on for more than about 20 minutes at a time.  I had no idea that it made water puddles under the car.  Heidi had discovered this while living in Croatia when her car did the same thing.  Thanks Heidi!

Second order of business was to find lunch.  Next door at grandma’s kitchen I was able to get a nice chicken burger and fries which I could eat in the relatively bug free dining room that she has built next to the food truck, right on the beach.   I chatted with a group of people who had come up the day  before who had managed to blow a tire along the way.  In the brief amount of time that they took to get out of the truck to get the spare and get back in after there were so many bugs got in the vehicle that they drove the rest of the way in their bug nets, inside the truck.   Fortunately Grandma’s kitchen is also the home of Grampa’s tire service so they were having lunch before heading back South once they got their tire back.   They had bumped into the mayor of Tuk the day before and had been treated to a tour of town which was cool. Gotta love small towns.   After lunch it was off to bag our second ocean and first direction.  To the tip of Tuk.   I managed to find a spot that I could stand in the ocean without drowning.  One side of the little spit drops off very quickly and has an undertow so there are signs saying that swimming is not allowed, and it is a fishing ground for the local Inuvialuit community.  On the other side it was shallow, but still chilly, and had a nice background view for a selfie.   While I was there I chatted with a couple from Brazil who had a well decked out van for camping/travelling.  They were doing Ushuia to Tuk and have been on the road for 2 years already travelling about the continent.  Sounds like quite the journey.  I am guessing they are some of the many people who are now able to work remotely so can pair up earning a living with wandering.

The next morning dawned sunny and windy, providing great photo taking and a little relief from the bugs.  Everyone who spends any time outside there seems to wear bug jackets/hats, including the fellow who fueled up my car who popped his on before going out to the pump, leaving me relatively bug free inside.  I did not get completely eaten alive but I can imagine any amount of time outside and the bugs would be picking your bones clean in no short order.  Despite the sun the weather forecast was calling for 15 mm of rain for Inuvik the next day.  I really did not want to drive down in the rain so I decided to head back a day early.  It is about a 3 hour drive so I had time to do some more touring about town, took a bunch of pictures and don’t really feel like I missed anything big.   It really is a tiny town.  I thanked Maureen my host, who I think thought I was being a bit of a wimp as she said the rain does not last long, but I decided better safe than sorry, and the picture taking would be better in the sun, and away I went back to Inuvik.

I had a couple more days in Inuvik before I headed South.  I checked out some of the art shops (I behaved and did not acquire more art that will not fit in my house, but it was close!) and got some patches for the camping jacket I am working on (to replace my camp blanket that was lost with all my badges and patches on it may years ago).  The staff person at one of the shops suggested that I check out the greenhouse as they had their craft market that night and it was a cool place to see, and they offered tours during the day.  It is located in a building that is now part of the university there but which was the site of the hockey rink at a former residential school.  It only closed in 1996.  The garden is basically a community garden plus some research.  Local people have plots and then the garden itself grows some veggies to sell to help support the program.  As lots of people come and go from Inuvik many plots had cute little signs that said “my gardener is out of town, please water me”.   They also had a trailer that the university had co-sponsored to look at the viability of hydroponic gardening in the North.  It was currently closed as they did some rejigging and planning as it had ended up costing $14,000 a month to keep it warm and running!!!  Cheaper to fly/truck in your lettuce given that the Dempster is a year round road (although it closes at Eagle Plains a lot in the winter due to drifting snow and being impassable).  In the evening as it turned out there was also a workshop by a local Indigenous artist working in mixed media with antler and paint, during the craft market.  The craft market was tiny, two artisans, both of whom I got something from, who then came and did the workshop with us.  It was a small group of us and a lot of fun.  The hosting artist, Danielle Nokadlak, also gave me an extra slice of antler to bring home to work into a piece of jewellery which I am planning to make with materials gathered along the way.  I made a key chain and a pin, both of which turned out pretty good, even if I do say so myself.  Danielle is currently involved in Pow Wow pitch.  A program supporting Indigenous Entrepreneurs started by Sunshine Tenasco, an Indigenous woman who found investors for her own business on Dragon’s Den.

After my return visit to Inuvik I headed South again.  I got my first camping in, at Tombstone Territorial Park.  I also got some WiFi and checked for messages.  One was an article Heidi sent me about how local folks are calling for improvements to the Dempster Highway as it is getting too busy and it is too dangerous for the amount and type of traffic on it… glad that showed up once I had pretty much done the driving on it.  I can’t say I disagree given the size and speed of some of the trucks and the narrow winding parts of the road, but my slow and steady plan has served me well and I have not felt unsafe as I dawdled along.  I also did not see anyone with vehicles that were not suitable for the road (but apparently people do it) and I did not hit any of the big trucks on the nasty curves. I think one of the big safety concerns is the cyclists and maybe motorcyclists.  I can’t imagine what it is like to be on a bicycle when one of those big double trailer trucks goes by.

Now, back to Tombstone Park.  The park is home to both short hikes and some longer back country ones, and the park staff offer guided day hikes in the area.  I managed to hit the perfect weekend there.  The weather was lovely other than one brief downpour which I was able to sit under my awning snug and dry, read my book and watched it sparkle through the sun as it passed.  I set up my full campsite, with my screen room and awning and made myself at home for a few days.  It was too warm to bother with a fire but I did find out that Graham’s old hatchet that I have with me does in fact work when the fellow from the next campsite came to borrow it as he had not brought his and his wife really wanted a fire.   They were headed to a day hike to the backcountry in the morning and he usually boondocks but his wife declared she wanted a campsite and campfire.  He was originally from the South but had come to the Yukon in business many years ago and had never left.  He was sufficiently successful so as to retire in his late 40’s and now spends his time fishing, hunting, and hanging out in the woods, sounds like his wife may be less of a fan of the boondocking part.

It was also parks day on the Saturday and the Dawson Music Festival had just finished, so there was programming in the campsite/park centre all weekend.  I arrived on Friday and one of the parks staff was offering an educational talk on Moose.  It was most informative and, best of all, she had brought come roasted moose for us all to share, and as prizes for the knowledge testing quiz at the end of the talk.  On Saturday there was a free hotdog barbeque at the park centre and also the closing reception for the artist in residence program for the summer.  They have had all sorts of artists over the last 10 years from writers to fabric artists to painters.  The artist in residence spends 2 weeks in the park creating art and interacting with patrons.  This year was a woman who does fantastic stitched pictures.  Over the two weeks she had done several, including one collaborative piece.  The picture was of the mountain by the visitor centre and she had invited everyone to add some stitches to the piece, which she will then give to the visitor centre to display there.  It was a great idea, and I left a few French knot fireweed flowers in it as my contribution.  It was a really nice evening with the reception and parks staff playing music on keyboard and fiddle to entertain us.

The next morning I went along to join the guided hike which was just a few km and not mountain climbing (some of the others are 5-6 hours and up the hills which I decided to pass on).  As it turned out, they had been so busy with the previous days festivities they had not really been pushing the hikes for the Sunday… so I got a private hike with Annie, the parks staff who had given the moose presentation.  It was really interesting to learn about the local natural area, the traditional keepers of the land, and also Dawson where she lives when she is not in the park (they do an in/out rotation in the summer and then she comes up for a winter animal count, I can’t remember which animal though).  She was the one that told me they have 4 teams in their women’s hockey league.  After the hike it as back over to the visitors centre for the final festivity of the weekend.  A group from nova Scotia called “Quilting” had been in Dawson for the music festival and had come out to perform in the open air at the park.  They are an improvisational group with a harp, guitar, banjo, and an Asian instrument of some sort I think which I have never seen before, and a person on a mixing board with some sort of thing that film was pulled through to make sounds and a foot shaped pedal installed in a road case with his mixing boards.  They would sort of pick a theme and then run with it from there.  It was mostly slightly ethereal sounds which were pleasant, and it really worked in the open air in the middle of the mountains, nature and music have rather a symbiotic relationship in this case.

After the concert I went and had some dinner then packed up my campsite, so I did not have to deal with it being all damp with condensation while trying to pack up in the morning.  Then it as off to The Top of The World Highway to catch our first direction, East, at the Little Gold Border Crossing to AK, which you can read about in the tail end of my “great gravel getaway” post from a few days ago.

… and now back to your regularly scheduled programming.   The next post will start our journey briefly back into BC and then on to Alberta… coming soon.