The Last Suppers

Here we are enjoying what's been for me one of many wonderful meals at the home of Aggie and Terry. (Behind Aggie are their friends Lois and Pat.) Terry had just returned from a filming project outside Kugluktuk (formerly known as Coppermine) about a cultural camp for elders and youth. He came home with Arctic Char, which we enjoyed on Saturday night.

We watched some of his footage from the trip above the treeline where the people are wearing their parkas already. During Terry's stay, they caught a bearded seal and the immense hide was spread out on the tundra, drying in the sun. He had scenes of women chewing on caribou to soften it and of the young people working on the hides. Terry pointed to one of the youth, commenting, "I'll be surprised if he's still alive in a few years time."

In one of my previous postings I showed Terry with his flute cane--one of many novelty canes in his collection. Here, his brother Steven plays one of the most unique canes --the fiddle cane.

On Sunday night Brian and I were invited to yet another feast, at the home of Magdy El-Beheiry, who recently moved to the CBC in Yellowknife from Mississauga. He's been here since January, but his wife Debbie and their children Sabrina and Tarik joined him at the beginning of July, after school ended. They cooked up dish after dish, including stuffed grape leaves, taboullah (after searching high and low for fresh parsley) and baklava to die for. Magdy is from Egypt and Debbie moved to Canada from Zimbabwe at age 15.

Magdy had invited several people to the feast, including the regional director for the north, John Agnew and his family. Here, his wife Jody and their two kids, six-month-old Jane and three-year-old George are engaged in pre-dinner play with Tonka trucks and dinky toys.

Going to the Dogs

What I really wanted to post here is a video I made of Brian at this dog depot. But I can't make it work, though you're supposed to be able to download video to blogger now.

So, here's a photo of this crazy place on the edge of town in an industrial area called Kam Lake, where people keep their sled dogs in a communal kennel. It's as big as a football field, with all these makeshift dog houses and hundreds of barking, howling canines, which don't look like anything you'd think would pull a sled. It's quite surreal--and noisy.

We went there after dinner at the Wild Cat Cafe, as I searched for a different setting for his arrival photo. Stay tuned for the movie...

Today we had lunch together at the museum. True to his Slow Food philosophy, Brian ordered the Bison Burger. (He had the muskibou stew (muskox and caribou) at the Wild Cat.

I returned to work and he explored the museum and the legislature, then made the trek back to Nova Court on the Frame Lake Trail.

Here's a wideshot of the cafe--quite a stunning setting.

culinary note from Brian...
When my Bison burger arrived the server recommended that I put HP Sauce on it..
Later, while viewing an exhibit about hunting and eating Beluga whales in the Beaufort Sea I saw a reference to a dried whale meat that the aboriginals enjoy best with HP Sauce!
First we spread religion...then we spread HP Sauce...nice going, White People...

As promised, here is the video of the sled dog compound...

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Wild Time at the Wildcat

The afternoon radio show celebrated the Wildcat Cafe's 70th anniversary today with a live remote from the summertime restaurant. It was a fabulous show that ended with a live play written by the CBC's own David Miller, who also played the role of "Gumshoe". Dubbed the honey bucket caper, it featured local personalities, including the mayor, an RCMP officer and MLA Sandy Lee (above) who, Dave wrote, has "more curves than the Ingraham trail", yet sharp enough to cut a man in half.

Trail's End host Norbert Poitras went into the kitchen to interview chef Pierre LePage, who is known for using northern ingredients creatively.

Pierre cooked up a sizzling dish of muskox and cranberries, one of the menu items available for $44.

Marie Wilson and I had dinner together at the Wildcat, after the remote. We haven't connected since I first arrived; it was great to meet up again now that I've had a few weeks back in the north under my belt. Rumours are that she's running as a candidate in the upcoming territorial election but, wisely, she neither confirmed nor denied. Marie and her family live in an amazing house in Oldtown, designed by architect Gino Pin. The interior is organic, all angles and curves, with soaring ceilings, lofts, and hideaways. And it's packed with arts and crafts from the north. The yard, too, is far from conventional, with its own twists and turns and surprises. Exposed boulders share the space with trees, lawn ornnaments, perennials and plants potted in everything from buckets to shoe-shaped planters.

Stormy Skies and Fresh Fruit

I'm in a race against time to do my blog because I just know the power will go out again soon. It's been on and off all day long, starting at about 5 a.m. this morning. My fan shut off and I immediately woke up. At work, the power went out repeatedly until about 12:30. Many people are on emergency power, but I'm not set up for that so I kept losing emails that I was trying to write. The cause was lightening to the south of us where there were storms and heavy rain, while in Yellowknife the sun shone. However, this evening, as you can see, the skies are threatening. The power went off once during the supper hour news.



So, I went out to take pix of the sky and to check out the fruit guy. Let me rephrase that: I went to check out his fruit. He parks his truck in the Walmart parking lot and ships in fruit and veggies from the family orchard in Summerland, B.C.

He's been doing this for eight years, from the end of June to mid-August. Then he heads to farmers' markets in Alberta. I got some cherries, blueberries, peaches and tomatoes. After weeks of eating California stuff, I'm excited to get some Canadian produce. And that's about as local as it gets here.

The Prodigal Son

The Mountain Man arrived on time this evening at the Yellowknife airport, after a long bus ride from Jasper and short flight from Edmonton via Canadian North. He's sporting a new beard and moustache. I'm angling to get him over to the Chopping Block for a trim while he's here.

We dropped off his gear, then headed to Old Town for a drive and dinner.

I've been wanting to try Bullocks, which I'd been told has great fish and big prices. It's a crazy little place, covered in posters, bumper stickers, photos, business cards and names etched on the walls. The fish is served pan-fried, deep fried or grilled. Tonight, they had cod from Great Slave Lake, trout and Arctic Char. I ordered the cod and Carsten the char which was listed as 'market' price. When I went to pay the bill, market price turned out to be $34! And I'd been warned that beer runs at $10, but we went ahead and helped ourselves from the cooler. Total price: $75!!! The experience, priceless.

We started out eating at the picnic tables outside, overlooking the lake. But a light rain fall shooed us indoors for the rest of the meal.

That gave us the chance to see all the crazy stuff inside. And right beside Carsten I spotted the CBC logo on a biz card. Turns out it's from Pauline Daikin, the health reporter in Halifax.

Standing with the Enemy

Grizzly's are cute when they're stuffed. This guy at the Visitor's Centre looks friendly compared to the wolverine and fox, which are posed in the act of devouring birds.

I'm taking a break during the second day of our regional leaders' meetings. Leadership competencies, behavioural interviewing--this is the stuff we're talking about. Believe it or not, I'm enjoying these sessions and learning so much about both management and leadership.

And we played another team building game that involved putting stickers on our foreheads that indicated how others were supposed to treat us during an exercise to come up with a solution to a problem. We didn't know what our particular label said, but it didn't take long to figure it out. One person was designated as the leader who must be obeyed; the others had such labels as "ignore me", "interrupt me" or "laugh at me". During the cash game, groups of 3 were given two five dollar bills. We had five minutes to figure out who should get the money. If we didn't decide, it would be forfeited. None of us fought over the money, because the stakes weren't high enough. In our group, we decided the two women should get it.

For dinner, we all went to the Wild Cat Cafe--I've been there more than most people who live in Yellowknife! I had the special of the day-- pickerel, with a garden green salad and rhubarb crumble for dessert. Jeff Gardiner, who heads up IT here, says he has tons of rhubarb and I can come over to pick some. Yahoo--I've been missing my spring hit of rhubarb.

Back to the bears: Apparently, the black variety have been known to wander the more ungroomed portion of Frame Lake Trail, where I walked on Sunday. It's been suggested I get some kind of Bear flare--you let it off and it should scare him or her into running away. But you have to make sure not to let the flare hit the bear because that pisses them off.

Better than Breadcrumbs

Yellowknife has an ambiguous attitude towards its trails: they're well publicized in all the pamphlets, but try and find the entry points and it's a game of hide and seek. Tonight I was determined to walk the trail at Range Lake, the one I couldn't find the other night.

I'd been told I could get on it behind the Shell station (such is the juxtaposition of commercialism and nature in this city). When I couldn't find the entry point, I wandered about the subdivisions around the lake and, by chance, found a path to the lake. As I climbed the boulders, these painted footprints appeared, clearly essential to navigating around the trail. But just as I made this discovery, it started to rain. The weather is even more changeable than in Nova Scotia: it can be sunny one minute and rain the next and back to sunny again.


Another phenom the north seems to share with the east is power outages. For no apparent reason the power went off while I was watching Northbeat, which is why I headed out on the walk. And, also like home, the Power Corp here is asking for rate increases. Some people in the communities pay a horrific amount for electricity. But that apparently doesn't stop them from frivolity.

On my way to the trail, I came across this Inukshuk, planted in a garden and all decked out for Christmas.




I lunched today with Harmen Meinders, the news producer here, and one of many King's grads at the station. We went to A Taste of Saigon, one of two Vietnamese restaurants in town. It has an extensive menu, from "Sliced Well Done and Sliced Rare Beef Noodle Soup" to "Steamed Rice with Fried Seasoned Quails". I had the Vermicelli with Charbroiled Lemongrass Chicken Breast and felt as though I was back in Halifax on one of my Let's Do Lunch ventures for Information Morning.

A Trip Down Memory Lane

Very few people I hung out with 29 years ago are still in Yellowknife. However, tonight I connected with Marie Wilson, a CBC reporter back then. It was a pivotal time in the North during those days: the last commissioner left his post, the territories got its own government and the battle brewed over the pipeline. We were a bunch of young passionate journalists reporting on the transitions, both at News of the North, where I became editor, and at the CBC. (We also partied hard in between.) Marie became a national reporter in Quebec during the referendum and, eventually, regional director in the North. Meanwhile, she had married Stephen Kakfwi, who became head of the Dene Nation, and later Premier of the NWT government. At that point, Marie left her job at the CBC because she felt it would be too difficult to continue on, given her husband's political profile.

My apologies to Marie for posting Stephen's photo and not hers--that's all I could find on the web. Marie and I attempted to catch up on almost 3 decades of life, from careers to families, over dinner at Le Frolic Bistro, where Stephen joined us later in the evening. Marie and I split a buffalo burger and Fresh Great Slave Lake Pickerel. I passed on the special of the day: PEI mussels cooked 7 different ways.

Of Hummers and Snares

When I got to work this morning I had the good fortune to meet Mabel English before she headed back to Inuvik. She's the announcer/operator of Nantaii, a daily show broadcast out of Inuvik to the Gwich'in communities of the western Arctic and Old Crow, Yukon. Mabel is retiring from the CBC in November, after five years of hosting the show. She's 70 years old.

That five years has helped her to buy a truck and a cabin in the bush. Now, she wants to spend time with her 20 grandchildren, taking them out on the land, teaching them about their traditions, from the medicinal uses of spruce gum to how to set a snare.

The radio day sounds quite different up here, with several shows broadcast in aboriginal languages. No Jian Ghomeishi; no 'Q'. And the morning show effectively ends at 8 a.m. to make room for 3 news packages in different languages. Those who broadcast out of Yellowknife come to the morning meeting. There's lots of interchange about stories and ideas.

I got a car for the weekend--it's a Ford Focus, that looks like a dinky toy next to all the hummers and humungous pickup trucks on the road. At first, the rental place tried to give me an Escort with a crack right across the windshield.

I went to the Co-op Store to load up on groceries, where I found everything from fiddleheads to frozen Saskatoon berries. Granted, the fiddleheads looked as though they had jet lag. There were also strawberries from California for only $2.99. But they were scary--almost as big as my head. Meanwhile, I hear people at work talking about trying to grow tomatoes, a challenge given the rocky terrain, sparse topsoil and short growing season.

Slow Food Yk style

Situated in what's called Old Town, this historic log cabin cafe only opens during the warm months. Elaine Look and I had lunch there on Victoria Day. Elaine had picked me up at the airport on Sunday, after my flight arrived four hours late from Calgary, and just before she had to work on the taping of a live concert.

The menu at the Wildcat Cafe includes Buffalo burgers ($15) and a Musk-ox caribou stew ($29) for dinner. I opted for the breakfast menu, which includes a northern version of Eggs Benedict that comes with smoked Arctic Char --as good as, if not better than Atlantic salmon! Food is more available and less expensive than I'd expected in the stores.

This is my alternative to the Wildcat...my kitchen.
The accommodation is located in commercial alley, right across from Foods Extra, a 7-day a week grocery store that carries President Choice products.

A quart of milk costs $1.25 and almond butter is $7.59. Some of the shelves are bare right now because the ferry has just started to operate again for the season. Yogurt and hangers are two items in short supply.

From the balcony of my suite it looks as though I'm in New Minas. I'm next to the Hospital and very close to Tim Horton's, Wal-Mart, and Coyote's Bar and Grill. But just a couple of minutes away there's a wonderful trail around Frame Lake that I take to get to and from the CBC.



The temps have been quite cool and, as you can see, there's still some ice on Frame Lake. Bikes and pedestrian share the trail that goes around the large lake. For me, it's a quiet pleasant walk that takes under 15 minutes to get to work.
I come out at the Aquatic Centre and right across the road is the
headquarters for CBC North.

Aldous Last Supper

Wine, food and friends--what better way to spend the second last night before leaving. Using lettuce from her cold frame, tomatoes from her greenhouse and a chicken raised on the property, Kathy cooked up one of many scrumptious meals we've enjoyed at Armitage Farm. Don pours a crisp Riesling from Gaspereau Vineyards, which was followed by a bottle of one of his own wines.
Dessert included baked rhubarb, picked from the rows of plants where I usually gather a winter's supply. It is these fresh local foods, from the asparagus to the zucchini, which I will be salivating for in the North.