Rae of Sunshine

Brian reporting:

Okay, first the irony...I am reading a book about John Rae, the Scottish doctor who is a legend in the North (albeit mostly unknown to average school age kids and even their teachers, I suspect)...
Rae worked for the HBC, solved the Franklin mystery and is linked to the discovery of navigation through the Northwest Passage by Europeans...and, he was the best snowshoe traveller of his age covering thousands of miles across Canada...Moose Factory to Montreal - no problem!..



So, where did we go yesterday? To Rae (I didn't even realize the irony until today), the Fort established by John Rae in the 1850's on the shore of Great Slave Lake, 100 kilometres from Yellowknife. Today it is called Behchoko and its 2000 Dogrib descendants, having survived measles, tuberculosis and influenza epidemics brought by the fur traders, now spend their time fishing, hunting and in arts and crafts and local services...



You don't sense poverty here and the houses are spartan but maintained and the kids have a modern school to attend...large pickup trucks are everywhere and each house has a dish pointed towards southern culture....
there are some attractive band offices and a great collection of canoes parked on shore...
















A modern highway connects Rae to Yellowknife and the only restriction is speed...anything over 90 will get you in trouble when you bounce over the little asphalt valleys that appear out of nowhere on the road surface as you are cruising along...However, it was immeasurably better than Saturday's mud derby on the Ingraham Trail...

The scenery is pretty consistent along the road....scrub bush and rock outcrops and little lakes dotting the countryside...
Perfect countryside for a paddle or a hike or a little fishing or hunting...
except near Yellowknife where you can head out for a little walk carrying a bag from one patch of elevated grass (the tee) to another elevated patch of grass (the green) connected by a long stretch of sand (the fairway)...it's called golf..