All work and no play makes Lesley a dull girl…

Well, winter has definitely descended upon this sleepy little town. Temperatures finally dropped to the -30° that I kept hearing about, but it’s not so bad. With the cold come clear skies and beautiful sunrises and sunsets (that take place only five hours apart!). I stayed home from work today (haven’t been feel up to par this week) and this is the sunrise that I woke up to… just spectacular!

A little later in the day I went with Siu-Ling down to the dog yard to feed the dogs. They were all in good spirits today as usual. I really enjoyed seeing momma Gigi playing with her two pups. It’s really interesting because she plays with them, but at the same time there is a level of seriousness to her play. She is teaching them their place in the team, particularly picking on Bo, the more dominant of the two pups. He really needs to be put in his place… it’ll be good for him.

As you can see from the pictures we have lots of snow now! About a week ago we got a couple of days of snow and then temperatures dropped even further. Now Iqaluit is buried in snow and reminds me more of the town I first met. It was in early May that I was flown up here for my interview and there was a similar amount of snow on the ground, frozen windswept landscapes and skidoo tracks criss-crossing here and there. Everything was so unfamiliar then. It gives me a bit of a tingly feeling thinking about my first impressions back then and everything that has happened since…

I must say I don’t recall seeing skidoos driving around in traffic back then! But here they are…

On the weekend I rushed into Northmart just before closing time, only to find myself immersed in a crowd of anxious people in the baked goods department all looking up. I looked up to find myself below a net of balloons which I overheard someone say contained coupons for free stuff. That sounds like fun! Then I overheard someone else say that last year teeth were lost and blood was spilled over the same challenge, so I quickly got myself out of there. Yes, this may have been the most happening thing taking place in Iqaluit on a Saturday night… and no, I didn’t even see a drop of blood!

This blog entry is kind of lame! But so was my weekend… I’ll try and be more exciting next time :)

Embrace Life

I had a nice quiet, relaxing weekend for the most part, but I did manage to get myself out of the house on Saturday and to a show Saturday night. Early in the day I walked down to the dog yard (this is where most of the dog teams are kept for the winter, just outside of town in an open area near the park so heading out on the land with a sled is relatively easy) to watch Siu-Ling (my roommate) and her friend David take the dogs out for their first run of the year.

This is one of the dog teams closer to town with the mid-day sun setting in the background.

This is the dog yard with Siu-Ling’s team making up the string in the front, while the rest of the teams can be seen in the background. In other communities frequented by polar bears they have to keep their dogs in pens, but that is not an issue in Iqaluit.

I arrived before they did, so I had some time to take some pictures of the dogs and give them all a good scratch and cuddle. They are all very friendly. Caru is in the far end of this picture hiding behind Gigi. He is the oldest male of the group, but not the most dominant. He has some social issues and is submissive to most of the other males. Next is Gigi the small white female. She is mother to the six-month old puppies Bo and Shubert, who are now bigger than she is! I really like Gigi! The big black male is Giller, Gigi’s litter mate. He is only three, but he is Siu-Ling’s biggest male and he has been really testing his grounds lately, causing some trouble with dominant males and taking a licking for it, though he holds his own. When I was at the dog yard last weekend I witnessed my first dog fight, which involved Giller (who was tied at the time) and Adam, the dominant male of the group. Giller wouldn’t back down to Adam so they got into it. It happened right in front of me and really took me by surprise. They were surprisingly vicious, though they fought fair (no ear tearing, leg biting, etc.) and aimed for each other’s scruffs, trying to overpower the other by sheer force. Adam took Giller in the end, and was clearly quite proud of himself for it, running up and down the line bragging about it to the other dogs.

Next to Giller in the picture above is Tua, Siu-Ling’s alpha female. Tua is awesome! She’s got a great howl and she loves to pull and knows how to get everyone excited about a run. She is mother to Adam and Lewis (litter mates), and Gigi and Giller (making her grandmother to the puppies) and sister to Caru. The goofy brown pup on the far left is Shubert.

In this picture from the right is Bo, puppy number two, then Adam and his brother Lewis. Adam is the dominant male, and because he has his equally large brother to back him up, they are a force to be reckoned with.


From the right is a better look at Lewis, Lillian (half sister to Tua and Caru – they shared the same mother but different litters) and her brother Bedford on the end. Lillian is great, super friendly and loves a good tummy rub. Bedford is very sweet, but very submissive. He gets picked on by some of the bigger boys and I once caught him hiding in his house when Adam and Lewis were unleashed. Poor guy...

I must say, I like the girls the best; all three of them are lovely dogs, but really the whole team is pretty awesome, each of them with their own personality and endearing qualities.

Just a goofy picture of Shubert...

This is Larry. He is on one of the other dog teams and I love him. He is so pretty!

Because it has been so mild here there isn’t enough snow to run the dogs with a sled (you can see quite a bit of tundra showing through the snow in the pictures), but Siu-Ling wanted to get the dogs out for a run nonetheless. In times like these they actually run the dogs with a quad. Being the first run of the year and the first time the dogs were all of leash together in some time, especially with the trouble that Giller has been causing as of late, Siu-ling expressed some concerns that there would be issues while getting the dogs harnessed and lashed to the “sled”.

This process involves letting the dogs off and getting harnesses on each (they are really good about coming when they are called, and allowing you to put the harness on, though Tua wasn’t very impressed with me, her look said I was doing it all wrong). Then Siu-Ling lashed them to the “sled” one at a time. This is a really critical time to be in control of the team, having them go into a down command as soon as they are on the line to avoid entanglements, skirmishes, etc. This is when Siu-Ling is most stern with them and they clearly respect her authority… well, most of them. It was the first run of the year after all. It was impressive to watch; it has clearly taken some time to develop that kind of control, they would have eaten me up.

When she finally had everyone harnessed and lashed to the “bike”, she was trying a few exercises to encourage them to follow commands when all hell broke loose. I couldn’t tell who started it, but Giller finally got what was coming to him. He may have started it, but either way he was ambushed by half the team and schooled pretty fiercely. They actually managed to get him off his feet and onto his back. I have never seen such a big dog tuck itself into such a small ball, with his tail and legs tucked in tight to his belly, protecting his soft under parts. Generally, from what I’ve seen, which is very little, they fight pretty fair and mostly grab onto each other’s scruffs. I was pretty scared for a moment, and Siu-Ling had to get in there with a whip to break it up, but he didn’t even shed a drop of blood. He looked awfully sheepish though. It was probably good for him. The worst though was when Lewis jumped onto Bedford shortly after the first fight was broken up. This was completely unprovoked and made me feel really bad for Bedford, but with that one broken up, Siu0Ling quickly got the “sled” moving before anyone else could cause any trouble.

So they just put the bike in neutral and use the breaks when they need to. Most of the teams up here are run in a fan formation, with the lines of varying lengths so the dogs aren’t all running on top of one another when the trail is narrow. Even the puppies took off after them once they got moving; it was pretty thrilling to watch. I even got a little emotional watching them ride off into the mid-day sunset. That was a lot of emotions packed into a few short moments! Generally, once they get moving the troubles are few and Siu-Ling didn’t have any more problems with the team after that.

In the evening I went to see Susan Agkukark perform at a fundraiser for the Embrace Life Foundation. The Embrace Life Council is a non-profit charitable organization with a mission to support and encourage Nunavummiut to value life. Right before the show I saw her over by the side of the audience getting pictures taken with people and signing autographs. I always find that kind of cheesy, but I thought to myself “if dad knew I could get my picture taken with Susan Aglukark for my blog and I didn’t, he would not be impressed”. He wanted to get his picture taken with Polar Man while he was here (Polar Man got a new mask, by the way… did I tell you about Polar Man? I’ll save that for another day). So I went over and asked a woman to take our picture and as she was preparing to click they called Susan to the stage and didn’t I turn to find 200 people watching me get my picture taken with her! Embarrassing!

Her performance, though not well attended :( was wonderful. It was only a $10 show! Such a shame that the house wasn’t packed!

On Sunday night Siu-Ling very generously invited me join her and some friends for dinner and I shortly found myself sitting at the table with four pretty incredible women, three of which own their own dog teams, and two of which have been living in Iqaluit for 20 years. The eldest of the group, Mattie has been on several trips to the North Pole and presently trains people from all over the world on northern survival techniques. In fact, she has written a book called “On Thin Ice: A Woman’s Journey to the North Pole”. She is also an artist and teaches pottery at the Arctic College. We talked about everything from quilting to dog team dynamics, very engaging conversation. Now I think I want to make a quilt over the winter. You’re going to have to give me some pointers Kay!

That's all for now...

Beautiful day in Iqaluit...

I took this picture at 12:30 today and the sun was already well on it's way down. At its highest, it is not much higher than in the picture. Horizontally it travels quite a distance, hugging the horizon as it travels across the sky...

Rain.... again

Iqaluit is a buzz with snow machines and testosterone. Everyone in town has anxiously been awaiting the arrival of winter to get their skidoos out, and now that there is some snow down they are taking advantage. I am encountering fewer and fewer people on the sidewalks, and more snow machines (that’s what they call them here and I kind of like it). It has been a long time in coming though. The weather in Iqaluit over the course of the past couple of weeks has been… what’s the right word… confusing, surprising, astounding really. It should be -20 degrees this time of year, but instead it has been hovering around zero, in some cases several degrees above, and raining! I don’t have anything to compare it to, this being my first year in Iqaluit, but I know enough to know that this is not normal. In fact, it’s unheard of for this time of year. What’s going on with the world? The past couple of days it has cooled off a bit and we have had some snow, quite a bit of snow in fact, but it is supposed to be above freezing and raining again on Friday. The rain has made for a lot of slush and ice, making walking around town very challenging. I would prefer the cold… let’s see if I eat my words.

When the weather is clear, the scenery is actually quite stunning! I think as it gets colder the weather clears up most days... too cold and dry for clouds and precipitation. In fact, I was told that when the weather is bad and there is a blizzard, those tend to be the warmest days of the winter. Right now with things hovering around freezing, the formation of ice around Baffin Island is about four weeks late and counting.

Its pretty much dark by 2:30 in the afternoon these days and there’s still a month before the shortest day of the year! I don’t notice it too much during the week because my office isn’t right on a window, so I don’t generally notice when it is dark, I usually look up sometime around 4 in the afternoon and it surprises me. This weekend however I went to the dog yard with Siu-Ling and helped her walk and feed the dogs and repair one of their houses. We were there for a couple of hours and I had gone for a walk before hand, so when we were heading back up the hill in the pitch dark I felt like I had put in a good days work, only to discover when I walked in the door that it was only 3:30!

Because of this phenomenon I don’t have too many interesting pictures to share… I’m rarely out during daylight hours, but I’m going to remember my camera this weekend when I go down to the dog yard with Siu-Ling again. I expect she will be getting the dogs out this weekend and I would like to go down and walk. It’s the first trip out, so I don’t expect there to be room for me (she has a friend who helps her with the team regularly), but I hope to get out with her at some point. Those will be some great pictures to share!

I also went to the annual Christmas craft sale this weekend at the high school. It was great! It reminded me so much of the Halifax market on Saturdays, but with very different crafts and food. And it was packed! I got some of my Christmas shopping done ;)

Dad was telling me that the reason they don’t use salt up here is because it actually gets too cold for salt to be effective. Salt only lowers the freezing temperature of water by a few degrees, not enough to make it worth while here, so instead they use sand and dirt. It is really quite amazing. In some places the roads have built up several inches of ice and dirt, layer upon layer. It looks just like pavement, but it is indeed ice and snow. The snow that fell over the past two days was beautiful… big, soft, slow-falling flakes. What is it about that kind of snow that just makes you feel all warm inside? But once compacted it essentially turned into ice and was SO slippery. It is nothing short of a miracle that I have not taken a tumble yet.

While I was home I picked up these ridiculous rubber ice grippers from Costco. The first day I wore them I was thinking to myself the whole way to work how useless they were, how it felt like they weren’t even there... then when I went to leave work that evening I discovered that they weren’t in fact there! Gonzo. And I had no idea at what point during my walk to work that I lost them. I kept my eye out for them on the walk home and ended up finding them about twenty steps from my front door. Useless…

So, it is December 1st. Does that mean I can wish you all “Happy Holidays”? I think so  I am very much looking forward to Christmas this year. Only three weeks until I will be home! And within those three weeks I will be very busy at work with meetings, lots of distractions. Can’t wait to see everybody at home in Nova Scotia!!!

Did I tell you that the garbage fire stopped burning? It finally stopped smouldering while I was away earlier in the month…

Pictures from the craft fair... I wish I had taken more!

I took Siu-Ling’s two pups out for a walk on a beautiful morning. The only time I can get a clear picture of these is when they are sniffing at something. They are busy!

Looks like pavement, but this is actually a fresh layer of dirt over ice and snow on my way to work this morning.

This will pretty much be a permanent fixture for the rest of the winter... road, sidewalk, snow machine trail...