Inuvik Sunrise Festival 2014

I rang in the year of 2014 with some new friends Arctic style.  We began with a heaping pile of nachos at my place and hot mulled wine.  We brought the wine in a thermos down to the frozen lake and watched the northern lights dance across the sky.  Our music did not last as long as intended.  Note: Apple products last about 12 minutes when it’s -30C (-22F), $30 Costco speakers on the other hand last 45mins (?!).  We lit sparklers at midnight and wished each other a happy new year making it was a pretty special night.  I made the mistake of putting the sparkler in my mouth for a second to have my hands free to find the lighter.  It was right up there with a tongue on the flag pole and it took a layer off.  Ouch. Unfortunately, I don’t have a good SLR camera to capture the lights.  I got up in the middle of the night once to go out with a friend with a good camera but it was too cloudy and they couldn’t be seen.   On a clear night though they are almost a given.  The auroras will just have to be captured in my mind, a memory not ever forgotten.  They are magic.

 

After 30 polar nights of darkness the sun was supposed to return January 6^th.  Well, they were wrong.  It returned on the 4^th.  You would think they could be a bit more accurate.  I heard on CBC it depends on atmospheric changes that are hard to predict. 

Here is a clip https://soundcloud.com/allisondev-1/early-to-rise from Allison Devereaux's CBC interview with Canadian Astronomy Data Centre

On January 6^th it was cloudy and it really didn’t get clear again until mid-January extending the polar nights even longer.  It was almost 6 weeks before I felt the sun on my face.  Too long!  That time was really hard for me.  After a stretch of 4 night shifts, you don’t have the light to reset you back to a normal schedule.  It’s almost impossible to get back on track.  I get to sleep but don’t stay asleep, and seem to be up at the wee hours of the morning.  I never have issues sleeping so this was a real challenge.  I’m pretty confident I have that Seasonal Affective Disorder and living in Vancouver through the winter as a shift worker is hard enough.   It’s amplified up here due to the isolation and not having your own friends around.  The worst is over though.  I made it.  People say the constant daylight, starting in 4 month in the summer, is worse.  I can believe it.  Your poor circadian rhythm has no idea what is going on.

The Sunrise Festival January 10^th-12^th was something to look forward to at the end of this darkness and it really brought the community together.  As mentioned there was zero sun but it was bright and at least there were events to get out of the house for.  The weekend started with the Taste of Inuvik on the Friday night at the Midnight Sun Recreation Complex.  I was hoping to try all the local foods, but the majority was potato salad, sloppy joes and couscous. There was some arctic char chowder, muskox meatballs, bannock and reindeer tortilla bites that were super good though.  For $5 it was by far the cheapest meal I have had in the Arctic. 

 

After that were the Drum Dancers in their traditional dress of leathers, furs and beads.  This was amazing and the drums made of stretched caribou hide made your bones shake.  It was cool to see some authentic culture up here.   The dances portray legends and stories.  There is a revival of this art in the North as the elders try to keep the tradition alive by teaching and including the younger generations.  I'm trying to upload a video, it's not working.  Sigh.

The Saturday consisted of a pancake breakfast at the Legion then a snowmobile parade.  I was ready with my camera and waiting for a snowmobile decorated worthy enough for a photo when I realized it was over.  The parade had about 7 sleds.  Wait.  What?!  Ok...  

Next up was the snow carving completion.    Some new friends took on the challenge with no tools other than a few kitchen knives from the nursing residence.  I think it was harder than they thought.  The snow was pretty dense and took them almost three hours to complete their mushroom.  Unfortunately they were up against some very famous local carvers.  It was pretty stiff competition.  First place won $500, second $300 and third $200.

This was my piece.  I call it...."feta"...   

That night we went down to the lake where they had an igloo and a traditional hunting tent serving some “country”(traditional) foods.  I tried maktaak “muktuk”, a delicacy here, which is beluga whale skin/fat/blubber.  It was kind of a gelatinous three layered fishy rubber boot.  Very chewy.  I see now why the Inuit smother it in HP sauce. It is very high in Vitamin C which is why the Inuit never got scurvy.  I read that European whalers did not fare as well because they did not include maktakk in their diets. I also had some beluga whale jerky, phonetically called “mipgoo”.  It’s very tough, a little stringy.  You tear off a corner and work at it for a few minutes before you can swallow it. One beluga yields close to 500lbs of food for the community, dogs and oil for cooking and lamps.   The skin, once traditionally tanned, is used for tents, boat covers and footwear.  The Inuit are allowed one whale per household in hunting season.  They use harpoons to spear the animal, then a gun to kill it.  They use a boat to drag it to shore and butcher it. Like anything they hunt up here, they use 100% of the animal, and don’t hunt more than they need.  As Inuvik is inland, the closest place to get beluga in Inuvik is in Tuktoyuktuk 185km north at the Arctic Ocean.

 Clockwise starting with the  big thing: Eskimo donut, dried fish (herring), beluga jerky, muktuk (boiled beluga skin/fat/blubber, bannock)

 this is the face of 'not convinced'

Moose hide gloves, sheared beaver fur cuff and hand beading

Wolf gloves.  His hands...warmer than mine!

After the lake we walked across the street to the golf course where they had a huge and I mean HUGE bonfire.  I think they said it was 600 pallets they lit up.  It was nice to have some warmth after a day in minus 25C.  It almost got too hot, you had to stand 30 feet back.  It was managed by the firemen/women as was the firework display.  It was pretty impressive for small town budget.  There was a mass exodus once the fireworks were over so instead of driving the road back to town we hopped on the frozen Mackenzie river/ice road to drive back. In winter the frozen rivers act at highways through the Arctic.  It’s pretty cool. 

The night ended with a Barney Bentall concert put on by the CBC at the Igloo Church in the middle of town.  It wasn’t that well attended but it was a great show.  The acoustics were perfect and I loved the lighting that allowed shadows of the performers to dance on the walls of the church.  The CBC was recording it.  I’m sure they recorded me hacking away in the back of the church.  I had terrible cough that weekend that was exacerbated by the cold that was pretty hard to avoid. 

The ceiling of the church

We had a few weeks of the flu running rampant though town.  Confirmed cases of H1N1, lots of them.  There is a swab that can be taken to confirm the flu virus and Edmonton, where we send the samples for testing, told us to stop.  Just assume and treat the people as confirmed cases.  They had too many swabs to process.  I did get my flu shot in Vancouver before I came up for round two up here.  I almost didn’t but couldn’t imagine another week of solitary confinement like when I had my eye infection.  At Lions Gate where I work we are mandated to get our flu shot.  That always made me angry but as I work with newborns I always begrudgingly did get it.  I think as I normally work on a perinatal floor I don’t see the effects of the flu.  Here I did and I’m a firm believer in the flu shot now.  We only admitted the elderly, children or pregnant women, mainly treating with Tamiflu and fluids but there were dozens more that came through emergency.  There is obviously pretty poor compliance with flu shots up here. 

This isn’t my youtube video, but it ‘s a good 2.5 minute summary of the weekend.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gEajgDUgv0

-30 is the new +20

I know I haven’t written in a while.  I feel like there isn’t much to write about, but then when I sit down I can type for hours.   I figure December 31^st was a good night to catch up.

I’m back for round two.  Arrived December 19^th and am here until January 31^st.  Right before I left, on December 5^th, the sun went below the horizon for the last time, not to be seen again until January 6^th.  It’s called “polar nights” What a sunset it was! I was at work but able to get outside for a bit to get a few photos.  Photos never do sunsets justice so from these colourful shots you can only imagine what it was like in real life, just breathtaking!

Check out this link, courtesy of Jay Millington, of a time lapse of the final sunset.  Keep an eye on the horizon and watch how low the sun sits:

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jZhkQrNmsHM&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DjZhkQrNmsHM

Look at the time of the sunrise/sunset!

I had 10 days at home before  Christmas.  It was silly of me to think I to go back to Vancouver to get a break from the darkness.  The day I arrived it was sunny and the day I left it was sunny but it rained the whole time between.  Sigh.  And of course there was an “arctic front” in Vancouver with record low temperatures.  Sorry folks!  You can’t really bring the weather with you right?!

On the flight back up we stopped in a small town of Norman Wells.  I saw them filming the show “Ice Pilots”.  My dad likes it.  It’s a reality show where they follow Buffalo Airlines.  They fly WWII propeller airplanes throughout the Canadian north.  In one shot you can see the camera man.  What a hellish job that would be, standing outside all day filming.  Egads.

Both the Yellowknife airport and the Inuvik airport have polar bears on display.  A little strange considering polar bears are not seen in either town, but I guess they are a symbol for the Northwest Territories.  In that one display you can see the bear chasing a stuffed seal into the ice.  Seal skin is popular up here, mainly used for gloves and boots.  Very durable.  There was a pair of polar bear mitts at the craft show in December.  I thought polar bears were endangered but that’s not the case, at least in the western Arctic.  They have actually increased the number of tags for hunters.  I’m not sure if it’s a bear you eat, it’s at least used for the fur.  They don’t waste anything in the hunted animals.  I heard they use caribou brains to tan the hides once they are stretched.  People still stretch and tan their own hides.   These little things make me appreciate where I am.  How cool.   I mentioned in a previous blog one of my patients was a trapper and sold to Hudson's Bay.  When I was back in Vancouver I went to the downtown store and there it was - sheared beaver blankets ($4,000), muskrat hats, sealskin gloves.  I guess you don't notice the continued sale of fur until you go look for it.

It is not totally dark up here.  We get about 4 hours of dusk from about 11-3pm each day.  Here is a photo of the nursing residence I am staying in this time, so you can get an idea of the light.  The nursing residence is much better than the hotel from round one.  It’s a fully furnished little apartment with a full kitchen and oven.  Yes!  And I can still see the northern lights from my window.  Nothing like finishing your day with a glass of wine, sitting in the dark watching these ribbons of green dance across the sky.

The darkness is difficult.  I knew it would be.  Add night shifts and -30 Celsius outside (-22F) and it’s damn near impossible to get anything done.  Even with fistfuls of Vitamin D (6-8000 units a day) my body wants to sleep/hibernate.  I say to myself “just one more hour of sleep” an awful lot. Now that my stretch of 4 night shifts are over I’m determined to get to the gym more and get out for those few hours of light more.  Once the sun comes up again in January it will be the never ending sunsets again.  The other locum nurses that are here are finding it hard too.  The dark just makes you inherently reclusive, a little depressed and want to carb load.  We have agreed to help each other get out, socialize, stop by for a drink or dinner.  Anything really – even minus 35 walks!

I have learned -25 degrees Celsius (-13F)  is about my threshold.  Anything below that and you get an outside in brainfreeze, the face hurts (mainly my forehead/bridge of my nose) and it really takes your breath away. It makes the short walk across the parking lot from the hospital to the residences fairly uncomfortable with just a thin cotton layer of scrubs protecting your thighs from the cold. I’m not sure where my brain is but it sure feels like the air is going in one ear and out the other and it aches terribly.  A hat with ear flaps has become mandatory. 

Although I don’t have a car up here, I am learning what NOT to do with your vehicle, such as don’t leave your emergency brake on.  It will freeze and you won’t be able to move your car and it will destroy your brake pads.  Always keep the engine >1/2 full.  Condensation will form in a tank that is more than half empty and freeze and you will get water in your tank.   Who knew!  I’ve never had to know any of this living in Vancouver.

It was my first Christmas away from home and it was harder than I thought.  I worked 4 night shifts straight through the holidays which was probably the best thing for me to do.  Stay distracted.  The hospital had the best Christmas tree I have ever seen.  Someone handmade a banner that said “acute care nurses, cute enough to stop your heart, skilled enough to restart it”.  The nursing hats were all handmade too and there were some creative syringes.  I can take no credit for this, but I thought it was awesome.  I’ve been saying to Logan that I live very close to the North Pole so I could personally pass on to Santa that he has been a great boy this year.  Santa/CEO of the hospital came by on Christmas Eve and I got a photo for Logan.  I guess he studied it pretty carefully.  This guy looks like this at the best of times (sans suit) and it gets kids pretty excited when they see him in the grocery store I guess.  How fun.

My secret santa got me a pretty fabulous gift.  A wine cover that matches my jacket.  Talk about a wine pairing.  So funny!

I’m still braving some new food.  Right before Christmas I had reindeer (that’s right) stew.  I think it was Prancer, not sure, but it was delicious.  Thanks Jay!   I’m a full fledged Arctic Explorer now! Or at least that’s what my certificate says….

The Legion is still a main go to.  I’ve asked to become a member, of the women’s auxillary, but by the time I get approved, it will be time for me to leave! You usually need a family member that has served in the Canadian Forces to become a member.  I listed my grandfathers, great uncles, uncles etc that have served in the US forces and that seemed adequate.  For Christmas they had a big raffle.  You had to be a member to enter so I couldn’t buy tickets but it was fun to watch.  There was 186 single draws of hams, turkeys and “perfume”.  It’s illegal to raffle booze (wink).  It took almost three hours. I just sat and watched people waste their money on pull tabs, they LOVE the pull tabs!

We have something pretty amazing planned for New Years eve that I will save to blog about, and January is going to be action packed starting with the Sunrise Festival Jan 9,10,11.  I’m trying to figure out where my next adventure takes me.  I really want BC but it doesn’t look like there is any opportunity there right now.  I am considering coming back but I have to pay $22/day in rent up here and for the same hourly wage I don’t have to pay rent if I work for the agencies.  The groceries up here are VERY expensive.  I spend about $100 per week which is a lot as a single person.  We’ll see.  Stay tuned.