Wow. There's been so much going on that I haven't had time to write a new story, but now there is so much to write about that it's going to take a while and I still have other stuff to do. Well, I'll do my best.
Last weekend was Folk on the Rocks, a popular local music festival that is held every July. Apparently it is one of those events that magically has beautiful weather every year. It certainly was this year. For those of you that worry about me freezing up here in the sub-Arctic, this should make you feel a bit better.
I actually just missed the photo op I wanted, which was these two talking to the girl with the purple hair who is walking away on the left. It was probably about 30 celsius both days, or at least it felt like it. There was a nice breeze and the combination of the two made the festival virtually bugless, which was a miracle in itself.
The people at the festival were a complete mix of races, cultures, ages and interests, but everyone was having a good time and it was a wonderful atmosphere. I have found Yellowknife to be extremely open-minded and tolerant, which is a quality that is often lacking even in larger multicultural cities. I think many larger cities seem open-minded because they have to be - there are so many people from so many backgrounds that it is pointless to fight it. However, if you ask people individually, many of them may have complaints about one group or another. Yellowknife doesn't seem to be like that; everyone I have met so far really is open-minded. There is a true "live and let live" mentality here that I find refreshing. Maybe I just haven't gotten past the surface yet to see the reality - I'll let you know.
Here's the mainstage at the festival in between concerts. There were four stages in total, although usually only two of them were in use when I was there.
I got a free weekend pass to the festival by volunteering to collect pop cans with Ecology North, a local environmental organization. I had to work two four-hour shifts to qualify, but that wasn't too tough. Here's the fruits of our labours as of 8:30 Sunday evening.
That is one thing that I have found tough here - recycling and composting are barely supported. Composting you can do on your own, but there is no municipal program. However, this is not unusual so I can accept it. However, there is no curbside recycling or deposit system for other recyclabes, mostly because the cost of shipping them south to recycling plants is seen as prohibitive. There is only a handful of recycling drop points where you can put your materials in big bins similar to dumpsters.
Ecology North and other environmental groups argue that a deposit system wouldn't be that expensive to implement, especially compared to the cost of road development here (I was given the figure of $1.2 million per kilometer). Also, the trucks that bring supplies north return south empty, which environmentalists feel is a wasted opportunity. I don't know enough of the facts and figures to know exactly how expensive it is, but I do know that the landfill is supposed to be full in 6 years and they're going to have a hard time finding a new location, so they should get smarter about reducing what goes into it.
On Sunday, one of my co-workers (Ingo) took me to Sunday brunch at the Explorer Hotel (apparently a must-do around here) and then he took Jasmine and me to a place called the Sand Pits. I don't think any of us would have imagined a place like this in Canada's north!
If you look closely, you may be able to see two specks on the sand at the left. That is Jasmine and a "friend" she found - another dog who was having a good run around his owners. It's too bad that the sand pits aren't closer to town - you really need a car to get there. I'd love to be able to take Jasmine there more often, but we'll have to stick to the buggy trail behind our building for now.
Here is another angle that shows more of the sand.
We threw sticks in the water for Jasmine, but her feeble retrieving skills caused us to run out of sticks fairly quickly. However, she got curious about a beer bottle that was bobbing in the middle of the pool...
It took her a while to get her mouth around it, but she got it and did her part for litter clean up. You can also see how clear the water is - you can see Jasmine's leg as she's swimming. I've never been able to see her swim so well as I could here - it was neat to see how she moved under the surface.
During the week, I took a couple of beading classes from a native woman named Alice Lafferty. She is about 81 and grew up in this area. Her beadwork is beautiful! It is a very slow art, so I don't have much done yet.
These are women's moccasin tops. The next thing I have to learn is how to make the rest of the moccasins. Alice says that she teaches that during the year at the Tree of Peace Friendship Centre, so I will be looking into that. Maybe by the fall, I will have finished beading these!
This weekend, Sonya from work took Bobby (my boss) and me yard saling, since we both need stuff for our apartments. It was fun and very busy. The local paper has a yard sale feature every Friday that includes ads for yard sales and a map. I had already gone through the ads and marked the more promising ones on the map, which worked well - we managed to stay ahead of the pack at most stops. Those of you who have lived in real yard sale communities (such as Hudson, Quebec) will know what I mean - you see the same faces at almost every stop and people are both thorough and efficient in their quest.
Sonya got a table and chairs, Bobby got three end tables, some glasses, a blanket and some towels, and I got a storage unit with sliding wire baskets, a blanket, some camping gear, some decorations, and a gorgeous, never-been-used wool rug from Uzbeckistan. Here's my new rug:
It is 5' x 10', so it's quite huge and I have nowhere to put it right now, but some things you can't pass up. Someday it will look beautiful on the hardwood floor I don't yet have. Some people suggested it would be better as a wall hanging; while I agree this would protect it better, I think it might be overwhelming as a wall hanging plus you'd need a huge wall to carry it off. Besides, I have some great northern prints that will look good on the wall of the room where this rug is on the floor - look how these go together:
The prints are by Dawn Oman, a local artist who was set up at Folk on the Rocks. Her work is wonderful. I would like to have one of her original oil paintings, but I will have to save up for that.
Another perk to doing the yard sales was that it gave us a chance to become more familiar with the area. At one stop, we saw beautiful gardens across the street - and something else altogether next door.
I cannot begin to explain the above picture.
Next we went to the air show. This was my first air show and I really enjoyed it.
When we first got there, we wandered around looking at the various exhibits, planes, tanks, etc. I learned about the Rangers, which I understand is a division of Canada's military that specifically serves the north and remote coastal areas. I don't know whether I had even heard of them before, but they were providing support at the air show.
Here's a few pictures from our pre-show time.
These are the people with me at the show: Jim (a pilot and Sonya's husband), Sonya (also a pilot and now the school's registrar), Brenda (the school's bookkeeper - she works for Nunasi, the school's majority owner and the owner of many things in Canada's north), and Bobby (my direct boss and manager of the school).
This tiny two-seater helicopter was on display for a helicopter flight school based near Edmonton.
These are some of the aerobatic planes used in the show (and Sonya in front of them). From left to right is the most agile, the smallest, and the fastest of the three. I learned later when they were performing that there are levels of accreditation for aerobatic pilots. The pilot of the small black plane was a mid-level aerobatic pilot so he had a working floor of 500'. The more experienced pilots in the other two were allowed to fly stunts right down to ground level.
The most entertaining of the aerobatic pilots was not in one of these planes; Sonya knows him and says he likes to keep his plane separate to add surprise to his act. His act is basically that of an aerial clown - he pretends he doesn't know how to fly and he dips and careens and plummets and has stuff fall out of and off his airplane. Not only was it very entertaining, especially combined with the announcer's part in the act, but it showed amazing flying ability - to come so close to things without hitting or having anything go wrong. Even Jim and Sonya said they thought he was going to touch ground with a wingtip on one maneuver.
It is the CF-18 Hornet's 20th anniversary and the plane got a special paint job for the occasion. It was an impressive (and very loud) plane to watch in the air. Unfortunately, the low ceiling restricted certain maneuvers that it would otherwise have performed.
Because of the plane's speed, it could not be in the air at the same time as any other planes. Other acts tended to overlap with their take-offs and landings, but the CF-18 couldn't. There was one point during its act when it had to fly away for a bit because an emergency Med-evac flight had to get out. Since this is the only local airport, regular flights continued to take-off and land between acts and Med-Evac flights apparently take priority over all air traffic, which was good to hear.
This RCMP plane is the same kind of plane often used for Med-Evac flights. Sonya said she has flown one for Med-Evac flights in the past.
The next plane is quite ugly from the outside...
But what an inside!
In front of the crate, you can see the back end of a Chevy Tracker.
At this point, you may be happy to hear I didn't get many shots of planes in the air - at least, not with the digital camera. It was too slow for many of the planes. I shot about two rolls of 36-exposure slide film at the show, though, so I don't think I'll have a shortage. It's too bad I didn't get a good digital picture of the Snow Birds to share with you - they were amazing.
I did get a few flying pictures, though. One is of a stunt exhibit that they did - first they had a helicopter drop an old Chevette on a pile of wooden palettes in the middle of the air field. That was neat. Then the CF-18 was supposed to do a simulated air strike in cooperation with the fire department. The fire department's role was to set fire to the car and palettes as if the CF-18 had struck them - but the palettes wouldn't light. The CF-18 pilot had enough fuel to do a second pass, which he did at his commander's instruction, but the pile still didn't light (although it smoked a bit at the corners). They had to give up with the CF-18, but the fire department finally got the pile burning, which set the show up for the next act - the Buffalo water bombers.
First, a bird dog plane flies over the area with its siren to warn everyone of water bombers in use in the area. Then the water bombers came in - the first one missed, and the second one hit the target but it wasn't enough to put the fire out. Oops! They had to fly off to Yellowknife Bay to get more water, then come back and finish the job.
It was a neat demonstration, despite the hiccups in the execution. It is also one that would be more difficult to do in the south, mostly because of drier conditions and other circumstances.
The show finished with the Sky Hawks, who had to jump from 2000 feet because of the ceiling but still looked impressive. I hope I can someday see them jump from much higher up.
The flag had a weight on the bottom - 50 pounds, I think the announcer said - which helped it to hang open.
Well, that's all for now! I don't think anything is going on next weekend - oh wait, it's a holiday, isn't it? I think it is NWT day here or something like that. I'll have to find out what happens for that.
Jan