Solo Sojourn

I remember my well intentioned grade 6 teacher Mr. Blue, who always smelled wonderfully of pipe tobacco after our recess breaks, making an important announcement one day about a new student coming to class. He made a point of encouraging us kids to be welcoming and went on to discuss that the student, who’s name if I recall correctly, was Dean, was black. Yes, his skin colour spawned this discussion.  It was the 70’s after all and my hometown was in the heart of white bread Canada. The end of the discussion came with a firm warning that discrimination would not be tolerated.  It seems almost humorous now. I recall Dean being readily accepted, not because of this discussion, but because he was willing to play games at recess. Valuing diversity was not an issue for children to wrestle with.

Photo by Eli Lacourse: a talented young
photographer from Stratford

I grew up in a "Welcome Wagon" generation.  I just checked online and, yes, this organization still exists. New neighbors were welcomed with food and social invitations. It wasn’t long before the new was removed from the reference and folk simply became “the neighbors”. This did not change when the resettlement of the Vietnamese refugees began in the late 70’s and to this day, thanks in part to the terrific work of the Stratford Multicultural Society, continues with the welcoming of people from all over the globe. I was and am proud of my community for its ability to embrace those that elect to make their lives there. They were proud moments when in 2009 Stratford was named a “gay friendly town” by Outlook magazine travel reporter Randall Shirley and this year with the opening of the Mosque. 

I am steeped in a small towns’ culture.

Photo by Eli LaCouse: a talented young
photographer from Stratford

I am also an outgoing guy. Anyone who has spent time with me will pretty soon realize that I make friends quickly and easily. I don’t shy from social situations and I give my attention readily. So granting all of this, given that I harbor, nor tolerate any discrimination against others, granting that I learned manners and hospitality growing up, given that I practice it and am a social creature I was fully prepared, nay suited for this move to a remote Northern community right? Wrong.

Six months in and taking stock of my connectedness to this community I have to make the realistic assessment that I have not connected very deeply with the people in this hamlet I call home. It is not through lack of trying. I participate where I can in community events. I volunteer and make myself available to others just as I have always done. But the outcomes have not been the same. Don’t get me wrong. I have come to know many people in the community, enough so that it is hard for me to remember all their names although admittedly I have poor skills in remembering names generally. I have even had some social invitations although I have learned that plans change in the moment and being stood up is a far more frequent experience than follow through.  It’s a cultural trait where immediacy takes precedence over future planning.  There are a group of other transplants to this community, “Mola” (the North Slavey word for white folk and often used as a pejorative), who will include me in their infrequent social activities. I am not utterly alone.  And I will say that Jean and Dennis, who are also new to the community, have been immensely helpful to me as I stumble through this experience and they share their own personal struggles and perplexity even after years of living in Northern Communities.  

Photo by Morris Neyelle who lives
in Deline and I think is part of the
fabric of the place

It should be no surprise really. Well intentioned and not so well intentioned white folk have come and gone from this place where the water flows and behind them left both successes and tragic failures. The damage to the community from alcohol abuse is directly connected to the history of the Dene peoples’ dealing with whites all the way back to Mackenzie who used the moniker “slaves” to describe the reserved and passive nature of the Dene and openly wrote of European superiority. It is documented in Mackenzie’s journals that initially he could not convince the Dene to trade for tobacco or alcohol as they cared for neither commodity but were very interested in axe heads and other metal goods. What happened I wonder? White folks still come and go and leave holes where they played to roles of teachers, advisers, health care providers, social workers, and labourers. 

But this is a blog and not a history exposition. And my experience is present and not past. And I live here amongst the Dene, I am not a visitor bringing gifts or novelties but we all know how this story is going to end as someday I will leave too.

The ice road is open and is carrying the stream of transport trucks that keep the community fed and powered will begin crossing the 10 km stretch across Great Bear Lake. A few trucks have made the journey. I helped at the grocery store on a bright and bitterly cold Sunday to unload the first of the trucks and found it somewhat humorous that the first 1/2 dozen skids off the truck were the years supply of toilet paper.  Furniture and cases and cases of pop made up the rest of the load. More pop than furniture as the North is addicted to softdrinks.

400 dollars worth of booze
and common trash 

The community is at times very quiet as many people make the journey on the winter road in their vehicles, the ubiquitous pickup truck, to Yellowknife to visit, to shop and to simply get away from the community for a while. Neighboring communities such as Tulita and Norman Wells are other destinations. Bootleggers travel the winter road to Norman Wells and back with boxes of liquor as a mickey of vodka (the preferred fuel of drinkers in the North) will net 100 dollars in a community which has no place to purchase liquor and quantities allowed are strictly limited. Funny that everyone, and I mean even grade school children in the town knows who the folks are that bootleg booze in but despite public outcry over the damaging social effects of alcohol abuse in the community and many outspoken people who state that bootleggers should be caught and charged there are relatively few seizures of bootlegged liquor. Prohibition, which is actually just limits on amounts of alcohol one can possess has been a failed measure in stemming the Smirnoff tide that washes over this community leaving damaged people, at its worst children, in its wake. Still the prohibitionist continue to insist that their is the only way to combat alcohol abuse in the community.

I took a journey on the ice road a few weeks back by skidoo before much of the traffic started. It was a beautiful Saturday morning when I left Délįne and headed out across the ice. A fresh layer of snow had fallen and the undulations in the ice provided lift when you hit them at speed.  The ice road is a stretch across Great Bear lake and crossing it is as close to being in a desert as I have yet to experience in my life. It is flat and barren and cold but provides wonderful views of the town if you stop long enough to turn and look and maybe snap a photo or two.  Once off the lake the road, which is really just a cleared patch of ground follows the Great Bear River as it winds for 95km more before connecting with the main winter road leading North along the Mackenzie River through Tulita and to my destination of Norman Wells.  This road was part of the infrastructure for the now defunct Northern Territories Company Limited and served as a part of the sealift and barge order trade to the Délįne

After reaching the main junction where the Deline winter side road meets the main winter road my travels turned from West to North and the road widened significantly.  I arrived in the village of Tulita, where the rivers of Bear and Mackenzie meet. I warmed up here with a coffee and a walk about the Northern Store while I waited for the gas depot to open for it's Saturday hour (yes,hour) of operation. It was a balmy -19°c with a wind chill of -30°c and I can only guess at the temperature my wrapped and goggled face was being blown whilst riding the skidoo. I'll happily report before my family panic in reading this that I was so well mummified in my gear that only a dime sized portion of the bridge of my nose got frost bite and even then it was only first degree. Ok, maybe second.
At Tulita the landscape changes utterly. The winter road winds beside the Mackenzie river for another 20 km or so before it turns into the village of Tulita (where the waters meet).Here are the foothills of the Mackenzie Mountain Range which runs North-South. This is the country of Dall's Sheep and mountain goats. The road is rough and graded on a steep angle at times making speed a relative issue. Skis tend to slip along these stretches. Even frozen and barren I can imagine the grandeur of this trip and hope to have an opportunity to canoe along this same route when the ice is off the river.
While the journey was some 260 km one way the time flew by quickly. I was rewarded by dinner with some colleagues who graciously provided me with a bed for the night. A beer and burger served to you is a big treat nowadays.
The return journey was full of more magnificent scenery and I took many opportunities to stop along the route. A thermos of coffee and binoculars kept me happily occupied for the day. Gas ran quite low toward the end of my journey and at one point about 20km from Délįne I realized that there was a real possibility that the skidoo might not make it back to town. There was a moment of palpable anxiety created by this thought. I was alone. I had not come unprepared and I was sure that cell reception was not far off but I recognized that I was alone. It's a frequent reality that I am quickly having to adjust to.
Clearly I made it back else this entry would not have been written. Perhaps for the reader this is a less than engaging entry. Looking back over what I've written for this month I recognize that I have struggled with how to describe and share this understanding that I am coming to. What is to be learned from it and how I will ever be able to write about that is a question for another day. Stay warm.