Hudson Strait

Goodbye

2011-06-22T07:31:00.003-04:00

A couple of years ago, there was a nurse who was leaving Wakeham after 10 years of service. One of her Inuit colleagues said to her, "Qallunaat. They leave after they've taken enough." I'm not exactly sure how the nurse looked back on her decade of service, but I'm almost certain that she had never thought of it primarily as an exercise in taking.

I try not to think of the relationship that Kangirsujuaq and I have in terms of give-and-take. I try to think of it as an exchange of service.

Once, a friend of mine told me an interesting story. He was working in an isolated reserve, and by isloated I mean isolated. Each week, he had to travel two days to get to the reserve, work two days, and travel one to get back (I know it doesn't make any sense, something to do with ferries). He asked the chief one day, "You know, if you found some lodging for me, I could stay on the reserve and work five days a w...."

The chief cut him off. "You aren't welcome on my reserve. You are here to provide a service, nothing more. So, you can continue to travel two days in, work two days, and travel one day out each week, thank you very much."

Although this story is not at all indicative of my experience in Kangirsujuaq, I have kept it in the back of my mind as an angle through which I see the qallunaat teacher or other professional experience in the North. If I see it as an exchange of service for money, then I don't have to come to terms with what I have actually taken out of this place compared to the insignificant amount I have put back in. But now, because I like torturing myself, I'm going to go through this process anyway.

I have taken a great deal out of Kangirsujuaq. Sure, Kangirsujuaq provided me with a salary substantial enough to save myself from near financial ruin and get many of the material things I wanted, but that's not what I'm talking about. It was Kangirsujuaq that provided me with a loving relationship with a beautiful woman. I'll never forget those first few weeks Sophie and I spent together walking on the tundra and talking, and well... Kangirsujuaq also provided me with two amazing children (actually, I think one of them was made in Quaqtaq, but that's just splitting hairs). I hope I can also take some other long-term relationships with the friends I have made here. Indeed, it appears that not matter how much I gave or even could have given to Kangirsujuaq, it has paid me back a thousand-fold.

Yes Kangirsujuaq, I have taken enough. Thank you so much for all you have given me. I hope someday I can come back, even if just to visit, so I can take a little bit more.

Thank you

2011-06-21T10:11:00.004-04:00

What can I write in my penultimate post? Today, I've been busy cleaning the house and packing the last couple of things. Mostly, I've been trying to keep myself occupied to stop me from thinking about what is happening. Every once in a while, a rush of emotion comes over me and I have to pause from cleaning the walls to breathe deeply and take pause, before being able to continue on.

I would like to reflect on some of the things I will miss about living here. I will miss the country food. I will miss my former students, colleagues, and friends. I will miss the sense of community that comes with living in a small, isolated village, even if I am largely disconnected from the community itself. I will miss the slow pace of life and my one-minute commute. I will miss hearing Inuttitut. Mostly, I will miss the many people who have welcomed me and my family into their community, if only for a short time.

Finally, I will miss writing something interesting enough for at least a couple dozen people to read. I feel like I have been extremely lucky to have had the chance to say goodbye like this over the past few weeks. About a month ago I realized that there have been five long-term teachers who have left Kangirsujuaq since I arrived. Sophie and I will make seven. Over the course of those five years, not one of the other five people left at the end of the year. Some departed in the midst of depression and sickness, while others left to have children mid-year and ave yet to return. Most of them never got to say a proper goodbye to the place they loved so much. I'm sure in some way, it still haunts them. By contrast, the past month has been like a farewell tour for me that will, at least I hope, bring some closure to my northern sojourn.

Thank you for sharing in my experience for the past five years. I'll miss you too.

Fifth Year

2011-06-21T06:03:00.004-04:00

This year, I had the best job at the KSB. Teaching secondary 6 afforded me the opportunity to wake up in the morning and actually want to go to work. I'm not talking about tolerating work, or even accepting it. I wanted to go to work.

The task seemed simple enough. Take KSB graduates who were not strong enough to get into college and give them the skills to succeed in post-secondary education. At first, it seemed like the quintessential colonialist position. I was to get these kids ready for assimilation into the most Western of institutions: post secondary education. It didn't take me long to accept my mission openly, for at the very least, I wasn't trying to ready young Inuit for life in the North like I had been naively attempting to do for the past four years. This year, I didn't have to pretend.

My students were fantastic; that is, the ones who stuck it out. Over the course of the year, I had 21 different students enrolled in secondary 6. Only 8 finished. But they're all going to college next year. I hope I did my part to give them the tools to last more than a couple of weeks. I guess only time will tell.

The F Word

2011-06-20T13:05:00.008-04:00

Last weekend was beautiful. The sun was out, it was warm enough to wear only a sweater, and there was no wind. On Saturday, we went for a picnic about 5 km from the village with our neighbours who then fed us a steak dinner later that evening.

On Sunday, we didn't do much, but at 7:30 last night, Noah asked me, "Daddy, can we go up the little mountain and see the big inukshuk?"

Just like that, my son wanted to go climb a mountain. So we set out quickly, and a few minutes later we were basking in the beauty of Kangirsujuaq. Thankfully, Sophie brought her camera to capture the magic.

This morning, when I awoke, I wasn't surprised by what I saw. I had checked the forecast, and knew that the beautiful weather we had this weekend was bound to be finished. In a word, it was foggy.

Around these parts, "fog" has become more vulgar than its four-letter counterpart. Among travelers in Nunavik, it is the most vile concept ever hurdled upon mankind. Fog wreaks havoc on people's lives. It separates families, and it torments even the most stoic of migrants. Flights cannot get in or out. When the fog rolls in over Kangiqsujuaq, it feels like mother nature has spread her blanket of isolation over a place that has only just recently been opened up to rapid travel by technological progress.

I once asked a nurse what would happen if there was someone who really needed to get out of the village with a medical emergency, like a heart attack or a ski-doo accident. I had expected her to tell me something about a helicopter or special plane, but she just said, "Well, that person could die."

Last year, not one but two babies were born in Kangiqsujuaq because it was too foggy to get the mothers to Kuujjuaq in time. Most recently, this morning the search for three missing hunters from Salluit had to be postponed due to fog. Yes, the f-word can be a very serious thing indeed.

And routine. Personally, I've been delayed so many times that I really have lost count. I've contemplated starting a semi-fictional blog called "stuck" to try to share the feelings of stress and helplessness that the f-word brings out of even the strongest of people. However, my attempts at capturing the frustration always implode, and the blog just sits there like the fog, waiting for something to happen.

Let me give you an example. It was December 16th, 2009. Sophie had gone down to Montreal by herself a few days earlier to rest her tired, pregnant body while I stayed with Noah in Kangiqsujuaq. The day after she left, the fog rolled in. And like that quiet uncle who comes to your parents house at Christmas, eats, watches television, and overstays his welcome, it didn't leave for another six days. No flights came in or out of Kangiqsujuaq.

The fog teased us. It would open up just a little, and we could hear the planes trying to cut their way through the shroud of condensation en route to and from Salluit, but to no avail. We were called out with our luggage onto the street so many times that I lost count and stopped caring. There were fights between teachers and one even threatened to stay here over the holidays. At least that way, he could feel like he was in control.

In the midst of the fog-induced chaos, there was a little boy who missed his mama. He had been promised that he would see her in no more than three days. But those three days came and went, as did another three days. Have you ever tried to explain the logistics of air travel and inclement weather to a two-and-a-half year old boy? Amazingly, Noah held it together. Once, he was frustrated with my attempts to reason with him and he just couldn't hold it in anymore. Lip trembling, eyes watery, he stammered, "Where's mam..." Sensing the lost look on my face, it almost seemed like he knew it was no use, as he stopped short, buried his face into my chest and sighed deeply.

On the fourth and final day of our delay, we were at the airport. I asked Pierre, a teacher of 20 years in Kangirsujuaq, what the longest he had ever been stranded had been.

"Me?" he replied. "10 days. But I remember talking to another teacher when I first arrived. He had been here for 20 years before me, a time when there was no airport. Back then, the flight only came once a week, and it landed on the bay. Every time the plane attempted to land, it was too windy, and the waves were too big. He was stuck here the whole summer."

Although Pierre's story did little to comfort a group of stranded travelers who were trying to get to their destinations in time to get at least the leftovers from Christmas dinner (we actually arrived on the 22nd, but it felt like we were going to miss it), it did say a lot to me about how much the north has changed in the past half-century. I might complain when there's no milk in the village for a couple of weeks or no eggs for a month. However, life is pretty comfortable up here compared to the way is was just a couple of short decades ago.

This time, it doesn't matter to me whether the f-word rolls in on Wednesday. Don't get me wrong, I would like to spare myself the stress of not knowing when we are going to leave. However, it might be evident to you from my daily doses of melancholy that it's not exactly like I want to get the "f" out of here or anything.

Fourth Year

2011-06-19T08:17:00.011-04:00

On August 1st, 2009, Sophie and I came back for a fourth year. We had come up a couple of weeks early to go to Pingualuit National Park. Pingualuit is an almost perfectly circular crater made when a meteorite crashed into the Canadian shield some 10 million odd years ago.

The mountains created by the impact are the only major topographical feature in an otherwise flat plateau that dominates the Ungava Peninsula. I can only imagine the first time an inuk, probably hunting caribou, climbed up to the top of these mountains to see what was on the other side. This is what he would have seen:

In 2009, the park was fully operational, and we flew in for a three-day camping trip. The first day was beautiful. We climbed up to the crater and basked in its beauty. The next two days, however, were rainy. One night, it was so rainy and windy that I didn't sleep a wink and actually got out of the tent to check the pegs not once but twice.

As we were getting ready to fly back to Kangirsujuaq, the skies opened up. We were in for a treat.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJvIzVT8rpY

Actually, the more impressive part of the flight came when we flew in the valley of the Wakeham River as we were approaching Kangirsujuaq. Unfortunately, the battery on the camera died en route from the crater, and we have only our memories of its incredible beauty.

That year, I taught social studies. I was able to take my students on a trip to Qajartalik, an island which is home to Canada's only arctic Dorset-era petroglyphs. There are hundreds of masks carved into the rocks at Qajartalik. We set out by boat on the Hudson Strait on October 1st and had an amazingly beautiful day.

We rode in a Peterhead boat named Qilalougak (beluga). We towed a canoe so some of the guides could go seal hunting.

We had fresh seal for lunch. I was a bit apprehensive at first, but found the heart and the ribs to be delicious.

One of the masks.
What a perfect day.

We arrived home after dark, tired and hungry, but completely content. The next day, I was bed ridden with a migraine headache and nausea. I couldn't even move. I think it may have been a combination of to much sun, not enough water, and camp stove fuel exhaust, but whatever, it was still worth it.

After Christmas, Sophie and I didn't return right away. Sophie was due to have Evie on the 17th of January, so I took a leave of absence from work until the beginning of April. I had asked for a shorter leave, but the school board suggested that I take a longer one because it would be easier to replace me. I obliged. By the time we had left, they had hired someone. He contacted me, and right from the beginning, I could tell that he was not going to go through with his commitments. I wrote him no less than 30 different emails, trying to allay his fears about everything under the sun. I even spent an hour and a half on the telephone with him on Christmas Eve trying to explain this and that. Sure enough, on January 5th, he was a no show at the airport.

This is one of the biggest differences between teaching in the South and in Nunavik. When you're sick, there is no one to replace you. If you take a paternity leave, there is no one to replace you. If you quit, there is no one to replace you; and if you don't show up for work, there is no one to replace you.

At one point, I wrote my flake of a would-be replacement an email. I'm not sure if he ever read it. In fact, I'm sure he flagged it as spam and went on with his life. I leave the text to you:

You probably have your reasons for backing out, and I'm not going to question them. I just thought that you should know that those students still do not have a teacher.

"There are two types of people in this world: those who do what they say they are going to do, and then there's everybody else." - Anthony Bourdain.

Sincerely,
James.

My students went weeks without a teacher. Just as this began to weigh heavily on my mind and we began to consider coming back early, the school board found Jacob, who came for the last six weeks of my leave and later stayed to fill another position. Since then, he has become a dear friend to all of us. In the end, it turned out to be a good thing that my replacement didn't show up.

We returned in April to finish out the year. When we arrived, we had no intention of coming back. However, I was outside with Noah on our first day back, and I was staring at the horizon that I had come to know so well. A rush of emotion welled up inside me and it was all I could do to not break down. I knew that Kangirsujuaq and I were not quite finished with each other. When we announced that we were moving to Montreal, the outpouring of support for us was so intense and overwhelming that when another opportunity to stay arose, we decided to take it.

More Goodbyes

2011-06-18T14:58:00.004-04:00

Last night, we went to our friend Mary's house for what she called "the last supper" (I wonder who is going to get crucified). Actually, it was also the first at her house, but who is counting.

On the menu was roll-it-yourself sushi, featuring fresh arctic char as the star of the show. I sat at the table and gobbled roll after roll. I think I said "I'm really going to miss this fish," about thirty or forty times last night. I have been stuffing my gullet with country food for the past few weeks, trying to cram in as much as I possibly can before we re-enter the industrial protein chain. Mary and her husband were more than happy to oblige. For the first time in my life, I was also able to eat wild caught eggs.

Lukasi and a group of local hunters had spent the day on the land chasing eider duck, Canada goose, and seagull hens out of their nests in order to steal their brood.

We were able to try each of them. The eider duck egg was mild and rich, as was the goose egg. The most interesting was the seagull egg. I know you all are probably thinking how disgusting (or enticing, depending on your point of view) a McGull egg would be. But these animals do not dine on day-old buns behind the neighbourhood KFC. They eat fish, like you would imagine that something named "seagull" would. The shell was a dark camouflage. The inside was orange and soft-boiled. The yolk was very creamy and tasted of the ocean. With the combination of the texture, the surprising taste, and the temperature (it was cold), a few bites were more than enough. After satiating ourselves on fish and eggs, we walked home and I reflected on this and other dining experiences we've had over the past five years.

I remember once Sophie and Noah were in Montreal and I was here. The school's Centre Director came up to me just before lunch and asked me who was cooking for me. I motioned to myself, and he immediately insisted that I go home with him for lunch. "We don't want you to starve now," he said, matter of factly. Obediently, I followed.

We arrived to a spread of beluga muktuk (skin and fat) and arctic char. I sat down on the floor (the table in his house is covered in stuff and doesn't look like it gets used) with him, his wife, a couple of his grandchildren, and Adamie Inukpuk, who once played Nanook of the North in the movie Kabloonak. I remember thinking, "this is the coolest thing ever." I have had several similarly interesting culinary/cultural experiences over the past five years, and I am truly grateful for having lived each of them.

As much as I like to reflect on northern cuisine, I've spent an equally substantial amount of my time here thinking about what I'm going to eat when I get to Montreal. Near the end of every four-to-six month stint in Kangirsujuaq, my mind begins to wander and inevitably ends up fixating on one thing, and one thing only: Bangkok. I can't wait to go to Bangkok. I know, it's just a food court vendor, but over the past several weeks, I've again developed an obsessive craving for some squid with eggplant.

In Kangirsujuaq, we don't have access to a lot of the things that make city living agreeable. There are no restaurants. The produce comes in intermittently and often arrives in an already inedible and expensive state. They don't carry my type of razor blades at the Co-op Northern doesn't carry razor blades at all. A few weeks ago, I saw that they finally started carrying contact solution. My glasses are currently being held together with a piece of a twist tie because there are no opticians within 1000 km who could supply one of those little screws that holds the arms onto the frames.

But the protein... oh the protein. Fresher fish than you can find at any market. Organic, lean, and socially responsible caribou, fowl that lives outside and actually flies, and the freest of free range eggs.

I am going to miss that fish. I am going to miss that fish. I am going to miss that fish.

Day Care

2011-06-15T06:47:00.007-04:00

For the past two years, I have sat on the Board of Directors at the day care. Let me tell you, when the school secretary called me in September 2009 to ask me if I wanted to be nominated, I was touched. However, I never expected that being on the day care committee would be such a tough gig.

The day care itself is a Southern concept, just like the school or the fire hall. After moving into villages and starting the 9-5 life, it only made sense for the Inuit villages to start day cares. Unlike the school, however, the day care is run and staffed almost exclusively by Inuit women.

Shortly before I started my two-year term, we had a group of five educators graduate from a CEGEP-level programme in Early Childhood Education, and not a moment too soon. Before that, the educators tried really hard, but most were really not trained well enough to know what to do to keep a group of 13 kids busy. It was often hard for us to send our son there.

After the educators graduated, the day care started to function more smoothly on a day-to-day basis. However, because it's such a small village, and such a difficult job, there are only just enough qualified educators to cover each of the classrooms. When your kid's educator is not there, they are often taken care of by someone who doesn't know what she is doing. I'm not being condescending or mean here. The replacements are just not trained. So, because I have a view of the day care from my kitchen table, my morning routine includes sitting at the table with baited breath, hoping to see my daughter's educator's car and my son's educator's Honda. When both are there, a smile spreads across my face.

Working as an educator in a day care is an extremely difficult job. If you have an office job, no matter how hard you work, these ladies are working harder. Have you ever taken care of 12 three-year-old kids at once? Would you? Not me, thank you very much. I couldn't take more than two years of looking after a dozen 11-year-olds, and had to move to teaching at the secondary level.

My term on the day care committee has been chock-full of small town drama. In-fighting between staff members, bickering between the staff and parents, and battles between parents themselves. When you are working with people's children, the expectations are high and the emotions are raw. When something happens, there is plenty of complaining and even more passion, and that's understandable. Two years ago, I had several issues with the day care, and that's one of the reasons why I joined the board.

Let me give you and example. At our meeting last week, we re-hired someone who we had previously fired because there was an opening and we realized that the kids needed her back. During the same meeting, we banned a parent from entering the day care for his transgressions. Both of these people had grown angry because of something that had happened to their child, and ultimately had to pay a hefty price for it.

As I was sitting there in the meeting, I realized that I was the only non-Inuk in the room (there are actually two qallunaat on the board but my colleague had to leave early). I was sitting there with five Inuit ladies. I scanned their faces and realized that three of these five women had buried their full-grown children during my 5-year tenure in Kangiqsujuaq. One of them had been beaten to death, another was killed by a drunk driver, and yet another committed suicide. On top of that, one had just buried her one-year-old grandson who died of poisoning. What is truly telling is that their experiences are not the exception, but rather the rule around here. There is enough pain and suffering in these little villages to fill a town ten times their size with paralyzing grief.

I couldn't imagine the pain that these women must have suffered and were in the midst of suffering. Yet amazingly, they continue to function and work hard to ensure the safety and happiness of the village's children.

Over the weekend, the drama with the parent we suspended had continued, so when I heard that we were going to have another meeting last night, I wasn't surprised. I was, however taken aback to discover upon arrival that all of the staff and board were throwing my family and I a going-away party. Each one of them took turns thanking us and telling us how much they love our kids.

Over the past few weeks, I've been thinking that one of the things I won't miss about Kangirsujuaq would be the day care. I stand corrected. I won't miss the drama, but I will miss the people.

Nicknames

2011-06-12T12:01:00.004-04:00

Inuit leader, philosopher, and former politician Zeebedee Nungak once wrote in his excellent tongue-in-cheek article "Qallunology: The Inuit Study of White People" that "qallunaat were born to be nicknamed when they are living among Inuit". The practice originates from a time when there were few qallunaat here, and virtually no Inuit spoke English.

A few days ago, I got my nickname. I was sitting in the staff room with several Inuit teachers and another qallunaaq, and everyone was speaking in Inuttitut. As usual, I was sitting there with no idea what was going on. When this happens, I just sit there and passively listen, completely lost, soaking up every last minute of something that I won't get to experience in 10 short days. At some point, I clued in that the younger teachers were asking an elder how to say my colleague Jacob's name in Inuttitut. Apparently, it's Jakupusi. Then, they moved on to me. I've heard "Jaimisi" so many times that I knew what was coming. However, the elder didn't say "Jaimisi", she said "Kayuapik". Then I realised what was happening. She was giving Jacob and I nicknames.

Jacob had clued in too. "How do you decide on a nickname?"

"Well, in the old days Inuit couldn't say qallunaat names, so we made up a name by looking at their faces. I remember there was this old missionary that everyone used to call "umigaaalaq" (forgive/correct me if I'm wrong), because he had a huge beard."

In "Qallunology," Nungak adds that "it was not mere inability to pronounce English or French names, which gave rise to this custom. There was an attitude of ‘During your time in my space and environment, I will call you as I see you’ about it."

"So, what's mine again?" I asked

"Kayuapik," the elder replied.

"What does that mean?"

"Ummm.... brown." Later, I found out it actually means "little brown". Wonderful.

"So, does everyone have a nickname?"

"No, we don't do it that much anymore. We can say all of your names now."

I had read "Qallunaology" several times before that, so I knew very well that this practice was in the process of dying out. Nungak writes, " [Qallunaat] are now so common in such great numbers all over Inuit Nunangat that they have ceased to be the novelty they once were. Besides, the Qallunaat turnover rate is such that it is literally impossible to get a ‘feel in the bones’ handle on a subject sufficient to rate him or her with a decent atinnguaq [nickname]."

It only took five years for me to get my atinnguaq; just in time for me to become another statistic in the turnover rate.

The Red House Dance Club

2011-06-10T21:22:00.005-04:00

On Thursday, we had a garage sale.

We didn't make signs or take out an ad in the paper (actually, I made signs, but Sophie just laughed at me. She was right). Rather, the day before and the day of the garage sale, I simply called the local radio station, known simply as the FM.

Ever since complaining that white people don't speak enough Inuttitut, I've thrown off my shroud of shame, and have been flaunting my pathetic vocabulary just to make people smile. Now, I'm repeating it to impress you (actually, it's totally the only reason I wrote this whole post). I called the FM and announced the garage sale. "Ullumi, garage salelangnaju, illu aupartuk iliniatitsiji Sophielu Jaimisilu, 4:00-6:00. Nakurmiik. Bring your money!"

Almost immediately, I got a call from the school secretary telling me how well I did. "You sounded just like a missionary!" He told me. I was touched. You see, years ago, when the missionaries began coming to Kangiqsujuaq, they all learned how to speak Inuttitut. They had no choice.

Well, let me tell you, if you want to throw a party in Kangiqsujuaq, just announce it on the FM. At 4:00 sharp, the red house was packed. It was seriously just like a dance club. We actually had to turn sideways and put our arms over our heads just to get from place to place. As the bartender, I didn't even have a chance to understand what was happening.

I felt like a bookie at the Kentucky Derby who was giving great odds. Everything was really cheap. Some things were so cheap that people actually giggled and made big eyes at each other.

At one point, an elder was eyeing up a glass bowl. Sophie had actually bought it at her daughter's garage sale five years ago before she moved to Montreal. She insisted that the elder take it for free. At another point, a woman tried to buy a little vase with flowers on it and a little poem about friendship that her husband gave me three years ago for my birthday. I also had to let it go for nothing. Only in a small village.

Anyway, the point wasn't to make money. It was to get rid of our stuff, and get rid of it we did. Then, all of a sudden and altogether too soon, it was over and our house was empty. I felt like a prostitute who had just had sex with a rich, teenage boy (whoah, slow down... hey... oh... that's it? Where are you going? Where did all of this money come from?). In twenty short minutes, a Sophie-James-Noah-Evies's-stuff-diaspora had spread throughout the village. Hopefully, people will think of us from time to time when using our old forks, binoculars, and unopened cans of shaving foam. If not, at least our stuff didn't end up in the dump.

Goldilocks and the Three Bears

2011-06-10T08:02:00.004-04:00

This morning, Noah woke up screaming from a nightmare. I went in to comfort him, and had the bright idea to tell him a story. I thought that "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" would be a good one, so I started in.

You see, Sophie and I read to Noah all the time. However, we don't ever just tell him stories. We had discussed this fact after speaking to our neighbour, an Inuk, who grew up in a home where the parents' stories were a large part of the entertainment in the home. In an era like ours in which early childhood education is becoming more and more scientific (or at least that's what scientists would have us believe) books reign supreme. I guess I figured that Noah was going to miss out on something, so I told him a classic.

Let me tell you, I was rusty. Here's my recollection of how it went (with my simultaneous thought process in parentheses):

"Noah, do you know the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears?"

He looked at me like I had a golf ball-sized tumour growing out of my forehead.

Goldilocks was walking in the forest (you know Noah, with trees? Those things on TV?) one day and she got lost (is that how this thing starts?). Goldilocks was a little girl with beautiful blonde curly hair, and she didn't listen to her mama, who said "don't go into the forest" (shit, that's Little Red Riding Hood). So, she was walking through the forest and she got lost.

She came upon this house, and she could smell oatmeal. She was so tired and hungry from wandering around all night (was she wandering around all night? Oh boy, am I in trouble). She smelled the oatmeal and followed her nose (Dear God, that's so lame). She went into the house and saw three bowls of oatmeal (where the hell are the bears anyway? Who leaves hot oatmeal on the table?).

She sat down and tried papa bear's bowl. It was too hot. She tried mama bear's bowl, and it was too cold. She tried baby bear's bowl and it was just right. She ate the whoooooolllllle bowl. (Hit the panic button. How the &%$@ does this end? Does she get eaten? I'm not telling him that. That's ridiculous. I know she goes to sleep. Uuggghh, this is going to get worse before it gets better.)

Then she realized that she was really tired and climbed up the stairs and went to bed. The end! (I'm such a failure. Where the hell is google when you need it? Why can't they just wire it into my brain like in Feed? Then I wouldn't have to remember anything. I'm googling "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" later.)

I looked at Noah, he laughed at me. He had never heard the story before, but he knew. Oh he knew his old man %&$#ed that one up.

Anyone else? What happens?

Clean Shaven

2011-06-08T22:09:00.003-04:00

Today, I shaved off my beard. Before I moved up here, I almost never wore a beard. I did all sorts of ridiculous stuff with my facial hair, but I never rocked the full beard. In my first year in Nunavik, I definitely had a little Farley Mowat/Grizzly Adams mentality going on, so I let it go. Plus, it's really freaking cold here. It snowed about four inches today. Anyway, over the years, my beard has become part of my identity.

The last time I shaved off my beard was in January. I set two feet outside to go for a run in the -30 winter before deciding that it would not come off again before I left Kangirsujuaq. However, my desire to pack the clippers today got the best of me, and I found myself clean shaven at 7:55 p.m.

Not that any of this really matters, but it did get me thinking about how different I am than I was when I arrived. I know that the changes go a lot deeper than the follicles of my facial hair, but I can't help but think that a more than significant part of me will stay here with my shavings when I go.

It's not that I want to pine over the North forever. I want to be able to get on with other things. However, I don't want to leave behind everything that I made here for myself. I guess it's a good thing that the most important things I made living in Kangirsujuaq were a couple of kids and a loving relationship with their mother. I guess I just hope that some of the other relationships that I've made will endure the distance as well.

People say they will visit, and I say I will stay in touch, but there is a part of me that wonders if Kangiqsujuaq and I will cut off our ties to each other the way I cut off my beard today. I hope not.

Our First Last Year: The Best of Times and the Worst of Times

2011-06-07T06:10:00.002-04:00

Our third year was the year we began playing the game of cat and mouse which has taken over my consciousness and has had me spilling my thoughts onto the page for the last month. Our third year was supposed to be our final stint in the North. I had forgone my permanent position as the grade 7 teacher to move into the secondary side of the school and do a six-month replacement for a teacher who was on maternity leave. Then, that was supposed to be it. We were done. It was a done deal. We told all of our friends that we would be moving back to Montreal.

Of course, after leaving in March, I came back to replace another pregnant teacher in May to finish out the year, and then replaced her all the next year and then took another job this year, but that's beside the point. Our Northern journey was coming to an end, and what a year we had to end it.

2008-2009 provided the best and the worst that the North has to offer. In a school that has ample staff and available replacements, a principal would never let a permanent teacher take a replacement contract for part of the year. They could just as easily find someone to fill in the holes. Being a principal here, as far as I can tell, is not unlike sticking your fingers in the dike to plug the holes as they appear, and using every available extremity to delay the inevitable flood of discontented parents and students who understandably are confused as to why there is no teacher for such and such a class.

That year also humbled me as a teacher. I remember painstakingly trying to help a student to simple arithmetic in a secondary 3 Math class only to look up and see that the rest of the students, who were much quicker than the one I to whom I was devoting all that attention were asleep; tired of waiting for me to get to the point. All of these boys have since dropped out, no doubt in part due to having had their patience tested for so many years. It was at that point that I began to really appreciate how teachers' will to leave no one behind often pulls everyone down and drill holes in the hull of an already sinking ship. Since then, I've tried to raise the bar and have the students grab it instead of lowering it so the weakest can hurdle it while the strong students couldn't be bothered to leave the starting blocks.

On the plus side, another teacher and I organized a graduation trip to Rome and Athens without really thinking about it. We asked for money, and it came (one-third of it came six months after we had taken the trip, but that's splitting hairs, right). We asked to go into the Vatican Vaults, and they let us in. I was supposed to go on a leave of absence on the day I left Wakeham to go on the trip and I asked to get paid. To my utter surprise, the school board paid me to go to Europe.

The North also offered up enough money for Sophie and I to use the break between my contracts to go to Cuba and cycle around for a month. And what a month. But even during our tropical sojourn to Cuba, we felt a little sub-arctic village pulling us back. Mid-way through the trip, we called our neighbours only to find out that our favourite student had killed himself. I know we're not supposed to have favourites, but anyone who taught that boy knows what I'm talking about.

To be brutally honest with you, the part that I found most frustrating was that I wasn't here when it happened. I'm not so naive as to think I could, or better yet should, have done something to stop it from happening. My motives were much more selfish than that. I wanted to be here for my own grief, for my personal closure... and to not miss it. I needn't have worried. We arrived back here only to have another student take her own life a couple of weeks later.

Finally, upon coming back to Nunavik, Sophie became pregnant with Evie. I mean it. Upon arrival in the North, Sophie became pregnant. I'm not sure if there's something in the water here...

What a year. No wonder we decided to come back for more.

Skis

2011-06-06T18:25:00.002-04:00

I packed my cross-country skis today. Up until last week, I thought this year was the worst ski season ever. We hadn't really had any snow since February, and the bay was glare ice. I had been able to run across it a couple of times this year, but found it too icy to ski for more than a few minutes. Last Sunday, Sophie asked me if she could pack the skis. I said that I wanted to go one more time.

The next morning, I took them out and skied down to the bay. I had to dodge the bare patches of land on the way down, but when I arrived, I found the best ski conditions I've ever had. I skied all the way across the bay and back, a distance of 10km round-trip. It took less than an hour. I went again on Wednesday, and skated all the way there and back. 47 minutes. And again on Friday, 44. I'm not exactly and expert skier, so I have no idea if that's any good. Let's see... google 10km cross-country ski race times... In the 2006 White Pine Stampede 10km I would have been about 60th. If I was 45 years old, I would have been close to the lead in my age group. Which is to say, not better than mediocre, but it was fantastic for me. Once, one of my iPod earbuds fell out, so I started gliding, took off a glove, put the earbud back in, put my glove back on, and I was STILL GLIDING. However the sun had been beating down on the sea ice all week, so it wouldn't be long before there were puddles on top of the ice, thus rendering skiing impossible. I knew my time was limited.

On Saturday night, I was baking bread (I know, my life is that interesting. Jealous?). I went into the laundry to get my apron. The closet door was open, so as I was walking by, I pushed it shut and kept walking. One of my ski poles was stuck in the door jamb and the door bounced back.

A sudden pain rushed to my temple as my glasses fell to the floor. I went to touch it and found myself weak in the knees. I fell onto my back and stared up at the stars (I was inside). I remember struggling with all of the concentration the door hadn't knocked out of me, desperate to not lose consciousness. I saw myself get up and dust myself off, but it didn't actually happen; I just laid there on the floor, holding my head. After what seemed like an eternity, I felt the pain rush back to my temple. I couldn't tell if I was bleeding or not, so I stood up to take a look in the mirror. I foresaw a nasty gash and some stitches, but instead just found a measly lump protruding from underneath my eyebrow.

I took it as a sign, and as soon as I found the courage to venture near the closet, I grabbed the poles and put them and the skis away. Well that, and now there are puddles on the bay. At the very least, Kangiqsujuaq saved its best ski conditions for the end.

Cut my finger

2011-06-01T21:32:00.002-04:00

Sorry all (seventeen of you). I cut my typing finger. It's not too bad, just painful while typing. Actually, I use four fingers to type, but blogging and reminiscing will have to wait a day or two. It's okay, I was looking for an excuse to take a mini-break. It's hard to be productive every day. I realized that the quality has been going downhill, and I probably need to recharge anyway.

Second Year

2011-05-31T07:50:00.004-04:00

At the end of my first year, I had a meeting with the principal. He informed me that he was trying to get one of the problem students who needed to repeat grade 7 into another program called Individual Paths of Learning (or IPL). I told Sophie. She made me promise that this kid, who drove me crazy, would not be in my class in the following year, or we would not be coming back. I did.

What she didn't know was that it was still up in the air when I left with three weeks left in the school year. Sophie was 8 1/2 months pregnant, and I didn't want to miss the birth of my son, so I wrapped up exams early, planned a few projects for my replacement, and went to Montreal.

A couple of weeks later, the principal called me up and told me that the student who was supposed to go into the IPL program would repeat grade 7 and again be in my class. There was just no way around it. I had had such a hard time with him, but I really did not want to leave Kangiqsujuaq just like that. So, I neglected to tell Sophie.

Let me tell you, when we arrived and I announced my class list to her, she wasn't very impressed with me. However, secretly I think she was glad that I hadn't told her. She wanted to come back too.

I had a much more enjoyable year. Despite the challenges posed by the student in question, I had a much stronger and more well-behaved group than in my first year. It certainly helped that I had a year of experience under my belt. At the time, I thought that four of my students would graduate in five or six years. We were able to do much, much more than my first year class. At the end of the year, I was generally more upbeat about education in Nunavik.

However, even though I had a more agreeable year, the results are much the same. From that first tough year with the enormous behavioural problems, I had one student who made it as far as grade 10. From my second year, so far there is one in grade 10, with the possibility of one more moving up to grade 10 next year. The others, for one reason or another, have all dropped out.

Uggghhh. That's not exactly an uplifting note to end on, but I'm just not feeling it today.

First Year

2011-05-30T08:34:00.011-04:00

My first year was tough. Like all first year teachers, I sucked. Fortunately, I had the toughest class in the school. I was faced with inappropriate, unacceptable behaviour on a daily basis, and I had no skills to deal with it. I often found myself frustrated, even angry, and on several occasions I lashed out at my students. I basically felt overworked and under-appreciated.

Every year, the school board holds a "teacher appreciation week". There is very little fan fare, and almost no activity, but the local administration usually doles out gifts from head office and buys everyone coffee and cake. The head office communications officer also send out a message to the teachers thanking them for their service. It's not much, but there's nothing teachers the world over like more than appreciation (except possibly the sympathy that comes along not being appreciated enough).

During my second year, the long-time principal of a couple of KSB schools sent out a message to the entire board thanking everyone for their hard work, but also asking the teachers to try to "limit the damage" they inflict upon the students. Admittedly, I remember feeling a bit hurt by his message, but in retrospect I see it differently.

There's nothing like a good scolding from someone who has been up here a long time to get the hair on the backs of the teachers' necks to stand up. Teachers in general, but especially those who work with disadvantaged students are used to hearing from their friends about how "noble" their profession is or how "admirable" their patience, dedication, and perseverance are. Some teachers get infected by what I call their selfleshness and start to believe the hype. I've heard such things as "I'm tired of giving," or "I give, and I give, and I give, and what do I get out of it (lots of $, it's a job!)". Once, I even heard a teacher justify keeping some school property by saying, "I've given enough to that school". Seriously.

Now, before everyone thinks I'm anti-teacher, I realize that most teachers do not say things like that. However, we're certainly not used to being accused of inflicting damage upon the students we are ostensibly trying to help. I'll be the first to admit that I probably inflicted some damage during my first year. I had no idea what I was doing, and my class was so difficult that it had been split into two the year before I arrived in an effort to maintain the teachers' sanity. One of them stuck it out until the end of the year, God bless her heart, but couldn't take it anymore and left. Which is where I came in.

I faced many, many challenges that year. Some of the behaviour was clearly unacceptable to anyone regardless of culture, but much of it had to do with neither me nor the students knowing what to expect of each other. While in the class, I was constantly running on an elevated level of stress, and the kids could tell. It wore me down and inevitably, I would reach a breaking point and lose my cool. It didn't happen often, but I sometimes found myself yelling at children. Let me tell you, that does not feel good.

A great deal of this frustration came out of a clash of cultures. I had different expectations of the students than they were used to from their parents or the more experienced teachers they had had before me. It takes a great deal of effort and time for most Southerners to adjust their expectations and their reactions to behavior problems in class. Most new teachers find themselves frustrated by this at one point or another.

The problem is complicated by the extremely high teacher turnover rate in Nunavik. Every year, dozens and dozens of new teachers arrive, and through no real fault of their own, prevent a healthy school culture from developing.

Unfortunately, some of the kids sometimes do incredible stuff. Violence and disrespect are fairly commonplace. Often, the kids are mirroring anti-social behaviour that they see happen in their homes. Much of the misconduct is a manifestation of the depression borne out of a loss of traditional Inuit cultural values, including parenting and education. To a large extent, loss of traditional identity can be chalked up directly to the imperialist education system that shattered many of the familial bonds that had existed for centuries.

With the possible exception of the church, the school has been the most important tool of colonization in the North. Last year, I remember bringing my students to the elders' residence to conduct interviews as part of the social studies curriculum. My students asked these ladies, who had actually lived the transition from the nomadic to sedentary lifestyle all kinds of questions. Most notably, one asked, "What was the biggest change you've seen in your life?"

She answered, "The biggest change happened when everybody had to bring their kids to school. After that, we couldn't travel for months at a time. We had to move to town."

I'm not trying to rationalize some of the things that we see happen in the school. There may be a logical explanation for the unacceptable behaviour, but that doesn't justify it. Violence and disrespect need to be recognized as such and condemned readily. Schools also need to offer positive alternatives to violence and reinforce them. However, the kids are under all kinds of pressure at school to follow a bunch of rules that they don't really understand and aren't willing to follow. Most of them go to school in spite of the fact that they don't really see the point. Eventually, the vast majority (85%) become disillusioned and drop out. The education system is failing them. It's not like we're not trying to do the right thing. We just don't really know what we're doing. Any white guy who tells you different is either delusional or arrogant.

So, when you take it all together, the teachers up here are just the tip on the pencil held by a colonialist monstrosity which is attempting to write Inuit culture into the pages of history. Indeed, perhaps the best we can do is to try to "limit the damage".

2011-05-29T07:39:00.002-04:00

Last summer, Sophie and I were in Montreal. We were walking with our kids and one of our generous hosts along the Lachine Canal in Pointe St. Charles. From a distance, I saw a shirtless man in cut-off jeans and in-line skates approaching us on the bike path. He was swinging his arms widely and rhythmically back and forth as if he was a long-distance speed skater. It seemed like he was taking himself a bit too seriously, so I pointed him out to Sophie.

"Hey, look at this guy...." I was about to continue, but then I realized that I knew him.

"Pierre!" Sophie called out.

It was out former principal in Kangirsujuaq. I started to feel guilty about almost having made fun of him, but whatever he didn't know, right?

"Bonjour! Sophie! James! Ça va?"

We introduced our kids and began a round of small talk. He told us that since moving back to Montreal, he had become the assistant principal of a school for kids who suffered from autism. Sophie, who for years worked with an autistic boy conversed with him about the school. At one point, he asked me what I was doing these days.

"Are you still teaching grade seven?" he asked me.

"Well, after two years of teaching grade seven I began teaching in secondary, but this year the school board moved the grade 7 class into the secondary side for budgetary reasons (secondary students are more-well funded than primary ones, so can you blame them?), and they call it pre-secondary. I thought I had gotten away from teaching it, but this year, I became the grade 7 homeroom teacher again."

"Are you going back next year?"

"Yes," I replied. "But I won't be teaching grade 7. Next year, I'll be teaching secondary 6."

"Good for you! I've got to go. I'm training right now for a race in which we skate all the way around the island of Montreal (I don't even know how far that is, but it's long. 60km?)."

Hence the swinging, sweating, and seriousness. As Pierre skated away, François, who had been standing next to us listening to the conversation, asked us, "What the hell were you guys talking about? Grade 7? Secondary 6?"

These two levels do not exist in Quebec outside of the Kativik School Board. The students up here don't start learning in either French or English until grade 4. So, they get an extra year of school to prepare for the secondary programs, and yet another one to prepare them for college. I've spent the majority of my time teaching two things that don't exist outside of the very small context of Nunavik. Explaining the need for these two additional years is pretty easy. However, explaining what it is to be a teacher in Nunavik is not.

I will spend the next couple of posts trying to make sense of my five years of teaching experience up here. I hope I can be sensitive enough to my former employer that I don't get any bad references. I hope I can be clear enough that I explain the role of the parents without offending anyone in the community. I hope I can do justice to the situation the kids find themselves in when they arrive at the school. This is not going to be easy.

If you like it, do it

2011-05-28T07:30:00.005-04:00

I normally don't write about my dealings with my colleagues. It's not that I don't have any interesting stories. Oh, I do. By far some of my most noteworthy experiences come from my working relationships. It's just not very professional to write about it. (If you ask me, over coffee sometime, I'll probably tell you some good ones. Hey, I live in a small town. We all gossip behind each others' backs.) Come to think of it, I don't know what the difference is between telling tales about co-workers and bosses and writing about my life in the community. I guess I can't get fired for it, and I like money. Today however, I am feeling liberated, so I am going to write about a conversation I had with a colleague. I can't get fired if I don't have a job! Not that this conversation is that controversial or anything.

I can see Sophie rolling her eyes as she reads this. If you find my writing tangential, try having a conversation with me. It's just one long parenthesis after another. You don't know how many times I am writing and go to put a phrase in parenthesis (like this whole paragraph), only to realize that I'm already writing in parenthesis (this has already happened once in this post). I have actually had to make a unwritten (until right about now) rule that I cannot double-up and employ the square parenthesis [like this] to get me out of a literary mess. In fact, I have already used up my self-imposed parenthesis quota for this post (like you care!) Anyway, on with it James!

"How are you doing?" she asked me.

"I'm great! I haven't worked in a couple of weeks," I replied.

"No, I mean you're leaving very soon. How do you feel about that? Happy, excited, depressed, melancholic?" she inquired.

"Exactly." I responded. She really hit the nail on the head. "What about you, are you coming back next year? Have you decided? When do you have to decide?" She arrived here a few months ago to replace another teacher.

"June 1st I think." she said. "I keep flip-flopping back and forth. Being single here is tough, and I just don't know if I need to spend more than a few months up here."

"Yeah, I whole year is quite a commitment," I replied.

"I admire you guys for having come back year after year like that..."

I interrupted her "I'm sorry, but I don't find what we have done to be admirable. We love it here. We get paid well to do something we like. I would agree that it's very hard sometimes, but not admirable."

"But if you talk to people in the South, they mention all of the things you give up to be here. You sacrifice a lot."

She's right, there are some sacrifices involved in living in the North. We don't have access to quality fresh produce all year round. Once in a while, there's no milk or eggs in town. But it's not that bad. We don't get to hang out with our friends from the South. However, I had moved around so much in the decade before coming up here that I was already quite used to that feeling, and besides, we've made some excellent friends here too. The biggest sacrifice is our extended family. You can make new friends, but you can't make new grandparents for your kids. At a certain point, we realized that this was too much for us, so we decided to move to Montreal.

However, there are plenty of advantages to living in a little community like this. I made sure to let her know how I felt. "Sacrifices? Like an hour-long commute? I can leave the school and see my kids one minute later. We also don't have to stress about money while we live here. And, the people here are very nice to us. We like it here, no... I love it here. That's why we kept coming back. I guess my advice to you is this," I could detect a little condescension building in my voice for which I will have to apologize the next time I see her. She didn't deserve that. However, I would offer this advice to anyone who is working in the North. "If you like it, come back. If you don't, don't. Otherwise, you're going to be miserable."

The Vatican Vaults Revisited

2011-05-27T06:33:00.002-04:00

You can do things in the North that you can't do anywhere else. Two and a half years ago, one of the graduating students informed my colleague that the graduating class of 2009 would like to go on a school trip. After a couple of weeks of hemming and hawing, they decided that they wanted to go to Rome and Athens.

Such a trip in the South would involve a lot more students, a great deal of planning, and some fund raising. Here, however, things can happen a lot more quickly. The parents are not expected to contribute much to such things in Nunavik, but there is plenty of governmental money to be had for positive youth projects. Normally, they have to be cultural. So, before proceeding any further, I did a quick google search: Inuit Rome. The first hit at the time was about a Toronto businessman who had heard about a massive collection of Inuit artifacts in the Vatican vaults. Half of them had not been seen by the public for 85 years. It had been more than a century since the other half had been on display.

I thought, "It would be cool if we could go see that."

So, we wrote letters to the Vatican, to the guy who saw them, to anyone who would listen, not really expecting anyone to respond. It was merely a means to an end. As long as we were trying to make this happen, we would probably get enough funding from local governmental programs to get the students to Europe.

The Avataq Cultural Institute took us seriously and put us into contact with a Quebecois-Italian anthropologist named Gabriella Massa (for whom I have the greatest of gratitude and respect), who had made an Inuit exhibit for the 2006 Turino Olympics. She got back to me, and said she would contact the Vatican on our behalf. She was sure to mention that it was highly unlikely that this could happen. However, it gave us a glimmer of hope.

A couple of weeks later, Dr. Massa wrote me an emphatic email exclaiming that they had, beyond all expectations said yes! Apparently, archaeologists at the Vatican were actually in the process of cataloging the collection and even restoring some of it in hopes of doing an exposition sometime in the future. We were going to do it!

After that, the money began rolling in and soon enough we had booked a trip and were on the red-eye across the Atlantic.

Upon arrival, we were immediately ushered to the Pigorini Museum. En route, our EF tour guide (we booked a tour with them and took eave of them from time to time to do our own thing) mentioned in passing that all museums in Rome were closed on Mondays. I approached the door of the unlit, empty museum, and pulled on the door. Of course, it was locked. A security guard arrived shortly, and I mentioned Dr. Massa's name, at which point he stopped speaking to me and turned around. He motioned for me to follow. We stopped at a telephone and he dialed. He handed it to me. It was her. She said she was about to arrive. We were let into the museum, and Dr. Massa arrived shortly.

We followed her to a laboratory where we sat down, and a team of anthropologists and archaeologists brought out boxes of artifacts and bombarded the students with questions about the artifacts. The students were not ready for this to happen. After a few minutes, I politely told them that this was not a very open cultural exchange, and asked them why all of this old Inuit stuff was in Rome anyway. They looked at me funny, and I explained to the students that there was a movement for the repatriation of much of the cultural artifacts that had been taken by anthropologists all over the world. After that, the scientists cut the kids a bit of slack, and the rest of the visit was enjoyable.

The next morning we met Dr. Massa outside the Vatican Museums, which are some of the largest museums in the world. There were thousands of people outside waiting to get in, but we were able to jump the queue like millionaires. We actually by-passed the security, but a guard made sure to look in my bag, where there were three sculptures from local artists that we were going to give to the lab and to Dr. Massa. They guard was about to confiscate them, but Dr. Massa said, something like, "It's okay, he's with me," at which point the kind man handed me my bag and turned around to deal with the hordes of tourists clamoring to get in.

We were whisked away through dark, closed, and empty parts of the Vatican Museums, where new exhibits were being prepared and old ones were being taken down. We arrived at a lab only to find another team of archaeologists there to welcome us. We were brought in to the lab and I thought, "here we go again," but to my surprise, the experience was far more agreeable. The scientists still did bring out artifacts and ask my students questions about them, but it seemed to be less abrupt, and more respectful of the students. Perhaps a few hours sleep in a good bed merely changed my perception of how things were going down.

At one point, an archaeologist laid what she thought was a game in front of one of the class. She said,"How do I play this game?"

Now, I must say that many Inuit teens, including this one, are pretty disconnected from their traditional roots. But this was her moment to shine.

"That's not a game," she said as she rearranged the pieces."It's a necklace."

She may not have known much about old games, but she sure knows beautiful jewelry when she sees it. The archaeologists were completely floored. They had spent a lot of time surmising as to what this thing was, and they were not even in the ballpark.

After about an hour, we were then led to the vaults themselves. The archaeologists led us down some stairs where they opened two stainless steel doors only to reveal an incomprehensible amount of ... stuff. We walked past the treasures of the cultures of every corner of the globe. My eyes did not even know where to focus. I saw thousands and thousands of artifacts but cannot remember a single one. Eventually, we arrived in front of a kayak from the 1870s. The archaeologists asked us a few questions about it, and one of the students interrupted.

"Can we take it back?"

The scientists didn't know what to say.

"It is ours, isn't it?"

They started to explain how it was very difficult to repatriate things when there was nowhere to put them.

"But we have a museum," he continued. "There's even an old kayak in it."

They started talking about red tape and complications at which point the student asked, tongue-in-cheek, "Well, maybe we could just take some Ancient Roman artifacts instead?"

I beamed with pride.

Pizzas

2011-05-26T09:27:00.004-04:00

An important part of teachers' tasks in the North is ordering materials. This year, I was able to order two new novels for the Secondary 6 program. I chose a book called Cut, by Patricia McCormick, and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. Little did I know that there is a cool teacher in Kuujjuaq who had already taught the latter to three of my students. So, I went on a search throughout the school to find a novel that no one in my class had read. Between the students, who come from several different communities, they had read them all.

So, I asked them what to do. We had no more budget, and we needed to buy something to read.

"Let's fund raise."

Fundraise to buy a book to read? Uhhh, my students were apparently much cooler than I had thought. We decided on a book called The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian which comedically chronicles the adolescence of Sherman Alexie, a Spokane Indian who left his reservation to go to an all-white school in a nearby town. It was not only appropriate for my students to read, but also ridiculously hilarious.

So, after a few minutes of brainstorming, we decided to do a takeout Pizza night, using the school's kitchen.

I make great pizza. At least that's what everyone tells me. It involves a lot of work, but with the team I had, it was not going to be a problem. Making enough money to cover the cost of the novels was not problematic either. There is no restaurant in Kangirsujuaq, so anytime people can go a night without making their own food (which is not very often) they jump at the chance.

The class decided, to make it worth our while, we should make 40 pizzas. At 15 bucks a pop, that would give us $600. Because of our participation in an earlier contest, we had the ingredients furnished free from the school's cooking program. It would all be profit. The cost of the novels was a mere $115, so we needed to find something else to do with the money.

"We could buy more books," one of the students suggested.

At first, I thought that this was a good idea. My students want to work to get money for books? Okay, no problem.

When I mentioned it to Sophie, she had some questions. "Cooking pizza once during school hours is not exactly work. It's fun. Why not have them buy books for little kids that they know so they can read it to them?"

Thus the Youth Partnership for Nunavik Literacy was born. The goal of the group was to promote literacy of the very young by providing them with books to read with a role model (my students) who also loved to read.It was an ad-hoc group that lasted all of one afternoon and held but one event, but I thought it sounded cool.

We started to make pizzas. I am normally my own worst critic when it comes to food, but I know my pizza is good. Thus, I was confident that this was going to turn out well. Nevermind the fact that I had not made them in mass quantities before. Nevermind also that I am not familiar with the convection ovens in the school. I know my way a round a kitchen, and I was ready.

It all started off reasonably well. In the morning I had one student make the sauce while the others prepared the dough. My pizza dough is much more humid than most, and the students had a hard time battling the stickiness, but eventually, everyone conquered the crust.

The sauce, however, was a different story. The onions and garlic went fine. It was when we added what I thought were two huge cans of crushed tomatoes to a pot that I first became aware that something had gone seriously wrong. It was very thick and hard to stir even for the largest of my students, who had sweat beading up on his forehead. I took a second glance at the cans and realized that we had used tomato paste instead of crushed tomatoes. After some reassurance from other teachers that pizzerias often use only tomato paste as their sauce (yeah, but have you tasted their disgusting pizza?), and that it didn't matter that much, I reluctantly decided not to start it all over.

After lunch, we constructed the pizzas, which went off without a hitch. We popped one in the convection oven at 400 F and 12 minutes later we had our first pizza. We used it as a test, and although I wasn't happy with the sauce, I knew that if they were all that well-cooked, it wouldn't arouse any complaints from the hungry masses.

We began baking them on a mass scale using the two convection ovens in the kitchen. We could make 16 at a time. This was not going to take long. The hot pizzas were coming out quickly, and we bagged them, ready for to take home.

At one point, the students cut into another pizza. It was raw in the middle. You know when you order pizzas and the crust doesn't go "crunch" when you bite into it? You know, the pizza doesn't stand up on its own but rather flops in your hand? Well, this was much, much worse. It was raw. I couldn't believe it. I suspended my disbelief long enough to eat not one but two pieces. Then I realized we couldn't sell them like that.

I began thinking, "Why was the first one so good and the rest were not cooked enough?" I began to connect the dots. We didn't have pizza boxes, so we found some aluminum plates at the Co-op. We only had 36 plates, so the first four pizzas we cooked were cooked directly on the large sheets that go into the convection oven. The rest, on the other hand, sat on the plates, on top of the sheets, thus leaving the crust undercooked. The one we cut into happened to be on a proper pizza pan on top of one of the sheets, which made it inedible.

We had time to salvage most of the pizzas, as they had not yet been sold, and we put them back in the oven. They weren't perfect, but the people who bought them would not be returning them or going on the radio to tell everyone how bad they were. Some, however, went out in partly-cooked form.

I began to feel a knot growing in my stomach. I couldn't decipher whether it was the disappointment or the several ounces of uncooked white bread in my gut, but it was truly a humbling experience. The final nail in the coffin holding my dignity was pounded by what happened when I returned home with a couple of pizzas for supper. Between the bad sauce and the worse crust, I found my family picking at the toppings and leaving the rest of it behind. I swear I could actually see the face of Edesia, the Roman goddess of food laughing at me in Sophie's cheeseless, mushroomless mess as I shamefully cleared the table (I should have tried to auction that sucker off on Ebay). I even started calling around and asking the people who bought pizzas if they were undercooked. Everyone politely said that they were excellent, although I wonder how many of them had to be returned to the oven before hitting the table.

So, probably contrary to popular opinion in Kangirsujuaq, I really do make good pizza. Seriously. Believe me.

Inuktitut

2011-05-24T14:26:00.005-04:00

Yesterday, while I was at the Co-op buying an ignition for my Honda, one of the concierges from the school asked me, "James, aren't you supposed to be teaching right now?"

"No," I replied, "My students are all gone for the summer. I'm not working anymore."

"So, are you just going to stay here for the whole summer?" she inquired.

"No, we'll be leaving at the end of June," I responded.

Then came the inevitable question. "Are you coming back?"

"No, we're moving to Montreal,"I informed her.

"Why?"

I responded truthfully with one simple word: "Grandparents."

"Asuu," she replied softly. I understand. "Why do you guys have to leave now that you speak Inuktitut?"

"I don't speak very much Inuktitut." I answered. "Sophie and I just know a little bit more than the rest of the qallunaat."

That's not true. I've met plenty of white people who can speak more Inuktitut than me. All but four of them are either children (like Noah), or are in mixed relationships. One is Father Dion, the oblate missionary who has been in Kangirsujuaq for more than five decades. No one considers him to be a qallunaaq, or at least not one in the same sense that I am. Two of the remaining three were teachers who lived in Kanirsujuaq for eight and nine years respectively, and for one reason or another were able to get over the hump, so to speak. The last is a French anthropologist and friend of mine who really speaks Inuktitut. Fluently. Enough to make the rest of us feel bad. The guilt doesn't actually motivate us to learn how to speak Inuktitut, it just makes us sweat a little bit.

Let me give you an example of how little Inuktitut white people speak around here. At the beginning of the school year, we hold a general assembly. The teachers all line up at the front of the gym and introduce themselves (the turnover rate is so high that the kids will not often know as much as a third of the staff) to the students, parents, and community.

This year, when it was my turn I said, "Jaimisivunga. Iliniatitsijivunga secondary six qallunaatitut." My name is James. I'm the secondary six English teacher. That's all I said.

Two things happened. First, the crowd broke out into applause. I'm not talking about a few hands clapping here and there, I'm talking loud, sustained applause with whistling and whooping. Second, teachers, some of them who have been here longer than me, began to approach me and ask me to teach them how to speak in Inuktitut. I was incredulous, almost angry, and very ashamed that white people are known to speak so little Inuktitut that three ordinary words could evoke such an extraordinary response. I didn't even know (and still don't) how to say "secondary six" so I said it in English... and yet the people truly appreciated it.

I'll give you another example. A few weeks ago, I was at the Co-op and the phone was ringing. I was standing next to it, at the time, so I thought I'd answer. "Ai."

"Aa. Levina Arnaituk." The person on the other end said. In Inuktitut, there is no mandatory small talk on the telephone to start the conversation. You simply and politely name the person with whom you would like to speak. I've been in the Co-op countless times when someone called, so I knew the protocol intimately. However, I wanted to make sure I got it right. "Kina?" I asked.

"Levina Arnaituk."

"Levina!" I announced.

There were plenty of people around, and someone in the crowd responded, "she left."

"Tamaaniungituk." I replied. Not here.

"Taima." The brief exchange was over and I hung up the phone. I turned around and faced the dozen or so people in the two lines at the cash registers. I scanned their familiar faces, and I detected surprise, appreciation, and pride. One, an Inuk teacher, was clapping. The school secretary was giving me the thumbs up. I once again became embarrassed on behalf of my people. How is it possible that we are not expected to be able to have even the simplest of conversations in the local language?

Moreover, how are teachers, as the gatekeepers to knowledge, able to pretend that we are doing more than paying lip service to Inuit culture if we can't even be bothered to learn the language? Even as we expect them to openly try to learn ours? The people here really appreciate it when we attempt, no matter how feebly, to try to speak Inuktitut, and yet we're too shy or not interested enough to oblige? That is, in a word, unacceptable.

Sure, some of us try to learn how to speak Inuktitut. It's true. I began in my first year by taking courses with Father Dion who in an odd twist of fate, has become a guardian of the language. This is a man who, excuse the pun, practices what he preaches. However, I didn't find his lessons very helpful. He attempted to explain the grammar of the language, and he was doing it in French. When I arrived in Kangirsujuaq, I spoke some French, but not nearly enough to be able to take language lessons for yet another language in French... or at least that's what I was able to tell myself, and I stopped taking them. Now, I definitely speak French well enough to get more out of it, but something keeps me from going back.

I guess the reason that I'm feeling so crappy about this is because I'm leaving having not learned to speak Inuktitut. As long as I stayed, I could point out that I was improving, even if very slowly. The sentiment is even more acute now because I feel as if my knowledge of Inuktitut is on the cusp of exploding just as I am about to sever the fuse.

I don't know why it is that the vast majority of white people who move up here do not learn how to speak Inuktitut. Maybe it's the continued colonial mentality. It certainly has a lot to do with the fact that we don't have to learn how to speak Inuktitut in order to function in Nunavik. Whatever it is, we could do better. You know it's true. Shame on us.

Commuting

2011-05-24T06:04:00.005-04:00

As a teacher in Nunavik, one never has a long commute. Sure, Kuujjuaq is now so spread out that, depending on where one lives, life could require a car. But it's not that big. There are no freeways, no jerks on the metro who won't get up for a nine-month-pregnant woman, and much less honking and fingering than almost anywhere else I know of.

For years, I regularly took the Greyhound from Edmonton to High Prairie. It used to stop in Slave Lake, but I'm not sure if the bus station still exists after the wildfires that destroyed 40% of the town last week. So, it would stop in Slave Lake for a half-hour while Orest the bus driver (I'm sure that there are many different ones but I have actually met not one but two Orests who drove the bus on that route) sat down at the diner in the Sawridge Truck Stop and scarfed down a hot-turkey sandwich with fries, gravy, and little peas (okay, sometimes Orest would get a hot hamburger sandwich too. As they say, variety is the spice of life). Then we would climb back on the bus and begin the hour-and-a-half trip to High Prairie.

Once, just as we were pulling out of the parking space, a woman ran up to the bus and banged on the door. Orest brought the bus to a stop and opened the door. A woman with whom I used to go to High school climbed the stairs and said, "Sorry I'm late. You know, traffic."

No kidding. Let me guess, you got stuck at the only light behind the other car? I digress.

Kangirsujuaq too has become subject to rural sprawl. In the last few years, a new development has popped up in which all of the houses on each street are the not only the same model pre-fab, but the same color too. I've heard it referred to as nouveau Kangirsujuaq, Wakeham by the lake (as it borders a lake instead of the bay), and East W-Bay. Actually, I made the last two up, but you get the point. Even living on the extreme periphery of the village would involve an eight-to-ten minute walk to work.

Luckily, I don't have to suffer that burden. I live in the teachers' ghetto, as much as there is one. Almost all of the teachers live on one street bordering Nunavik's premier golfing attraction, the Wakeham Bay public golf course. We've become accustomed to calling the street "Chemin du Golf" (Golf Course Road). Actually, the road has a proper name, "atsuuk", which roughly translates as "I don't know". You see, after five years, I am completely and utterly embarrassed about how much Inuktitut I can speak. I'm so out of it that I don't even know the name of my street (I'll bombard you with a rant about this tomorrow). Anyway, Sophie once wrote "Chemin du Golf" while filling out her address on some form, and it has stuck. Really. As far as the Canada Revenue Agency is concerned, I live on Chemin du Golf.

Right next to the red duplex on Chemin du Golf is the Mikijuq Day Care, where my children have been receiving their early childhood education. Our house, the day care, and our place of work are so conveniently located that we may have the shortest commute in the world of any parents who brings their kids to day care before going to work.

I'm not exaggerating. The day care is next to our house. It takes Noah sixty seconds to walk there (although most of the time he requests "something to ride" like a sled or bike before we leave the house). From there, the school is across the parking lot, a mere seventy seconds away. I timed it. Twice. We often leave the house at ten minutes to nine, drop the kids off at day care (which invariably consists of taking off at least three layers of their clothes), before heading out the door and over to the school where we can be comfortably in our classrooms before the bell sounds at the top of the hour.

I don't think such a short commute is possible in Montreal. Sure, it would be possible to live in a building which houses one's work, home, and childcare service. However, living and commuting in such a building would most likely involve waiting for elevators, a contingency that would inevitably have to be included in the time line of the daily routine.

All of this to say that life in a little northern village can be challenging, for sure. We are isolated from many of our friends and family, whom we miss dearly. We must make all of our own meals from scratch from a limited selection of ingredients. However, our commute is one of the many, many advantages of living here. And I'm sure I'll appreciate it even more as I'm commuting at least a half hour (if I'm extremely lucky) on the way to work in Montreal.

I love my commute. Love it. Love it. Love it. Who said that you don't know what you got till it's gone, anyway?

BluePrint

2011-05-22T08:30:00.005-04:00

BluePrint for Life arrived today. What's BluePrint for Life?

BluePrint is the brainchild of Stephen Leafloor, Ottawa area social worker and one of the founding members of the legendary Canadian Floor Masters, a break dance crew from the early 1980s. Leafloor, whose B-boy name is Buddha, makes his living these days by combining hip hp and social work. He takes people from hip hop culture (b-boys and b-girls, DJ's, beat boxers, rappers, spoken word artists) and brings them into at-risk communities all over Canada, spreading positivity and agency among the communities' youth. A sizable chunk of BluePrint's time is spent in the Arctic, and much of that in Nunavik.

Last fall, BluePrint spent a week in Kangiqsujuaq. For one week, Blue Print completely took over the secondary program in our school. The students had a wonderful time. The mornings were spent dancing and the afternoons provided workshops that touched on social issues that the many of the youth in our village unfortunately have to struggle with from day to day.

From the beginning, I could see that this project would have mass appeal among students and drop-outs alike, and I wanted to jump on board as well as I could. But something was bothering me, so I asked Buddha about it.

"Buddha, this is a great project. I really love what you're doing here. I just have one question for you: what do we do when you're gone? I mean, the students will have a wonderful time and probably do some short-term healing, but what are they going to do when you're not here to help them and they have to go back to their (sometimes ab)normal lives?"

"Yeah, sustainability is always a problem. Some people in other communities started hip-hop clubs. If you want, later on in the week, I'll give you some stuff that can help you start one up."

The week was wonderful. The students were introduced to a world that they had previously known only through 50 Cent videos and "Step-up 2" (I'm old, there's probably like "Step up 14" by now). BluePrint's dancers are some of the best b-boys and b-girls in Canada. They showed them all kinds of moves and short choreographies in preparation for a one-night only dance battle that took place on the Friday night. They brought powerful and innovative messages, and the dancers drew upon their own personal experiences to show the kids that it was okay to open up and seek help. At best, Buddha and his crew were able to help the kids open up and give them a few tools to deal with their growing pains. At the very least, BluePrint provided the kid with a week-long break from whatever their usual circumstances happened to be. It was marvelous.

On the Thursday afternoon, the dancers and kids formed a cipher, which is the circle in which b-boys and b-girls perform their solos and short dances to show off their skills. I was impressed by just how much they had learned, and even more so by how much they were willing to put themselves out there.

One of my former students, who I had in my very tough first year (he was the brightest and one of the toughest students) challenged me to show off what I had learned. I had participated off-and-on during the week, and hadn't really learned much. I declined.

"James," he replied. "You always push me to try stuff that I don't want to do. Now it's your turn."

I didn't know what to say, but I didn't have anything to offer, so despite much insisting by the people around me, I couldn't find myself able to do it. I'm not exactly a hip hop guy, and I really don't dance. However, I don't wear hypocrisy very well, so, I decided to dedicate myself to learning something that I could perform without completely embarrassing myself at the dance battle. About 30 hours later, I found myself break dancing and throat singing in front of the whole community. I found myself break dancing and throat singing in front of the whole community.

BluePrint afforded one of my former students the opportunity to turn the tables on me. He found the confidence to challenge and inspire me to step out of my comfort zone and do something I never thought I would do. Good for him, and good for me too. I had a blast.

So, BluePrint's back this week to do poetry, dance, and healing workshops after school with some of the kids. I'll let you know what happens.

One Month

2011-05-21T10:19:00.004-04:00

In one month, I'll be leaving Kangiqsujuaq, not knowing when or if I'll .... that's right. You read it correctly. It will be one more month before we go.

Originally, Noah and I were going to leave on June 8th to get our new 95-year-old house ready to inhabit before Sophie and Evie arrived on the 22nd. Indeed, there is a lot to do; much more than two weeks' worth of effort could provide. The house needs to be painted from top to bottom. We have no furniture, save a couple of mattresses and an old table and a few chairs that Sophie found on the street many years ago. We have no appliances except for the ancient dishwasher that our tenants left behind when they moved into their new house. We need new faucets in the kitchen and the bathroom, new window treatments (I think), and then there is the matter of receiving all of our many boxes of crap that we send South from here and have in storage that we're somehow magically going to fit into 750 sq. ft. of living space. And that's before we get to the real renovations that will eventually have to happen at one time or another. You can probably see where my desire to get a head start on all of this was coming from.

However, as the departure date grew nearer, I decided that I couldn't just leave like that. If I left that early, I would miss the end of the year, the graduation, and the traditional time when people get to say goodbye to those people who will not be returning. Most of all, however, I didn't want to leave early.Much of the time , I feel like I don't want to leave at all. Since moving out of my parents' house, I have never lived in one place for as long as I've lived in Kangirsujuaq.

I would never go as far as to say that I consider it my home town. I remember once during me first year, I saw some young men walking around the school. They seemed to just be loitering, and as far as I knew, they weren't students. I followed them, meaning to ask them if I could help them find someone or something, but eventually, they stopped by the office and began speaking to the schools' centre director. He is not originally from Kangirsujuaq, but Quaqtaq, the neighbouring village to the Southeast. He moved to Wakeham more than thirty years ago and has since become very involved in the community. He and his wife are preachers at one of the local churches. I basically saw him as one of the community leaders.

A few minutes later, after the young men had left, I went up to the centre director and asked him what those two young men were doing in the school. He said, "those are some of the original inhabitants of Kangirsujuaq. They have the right to ask me what I am doing here."

It reminds me of this joke I once heard about small-town Vermont:

There are these two old guys sitting in rocking chairs discussing their recently deceased neighbour, who had moved to the town some five decades earlier.

"You hear the new guy died?"

Anyway, I'm not so naive as to think that the people of Kangirsujuaq think of me as more than a johnny-come-lately, as much as they might think of me at all. When we announce to people that we will be moving to Montreal in June, the almost unanimous response is "already? Why?"

At times, it makes me feel bad, almost guilty, for moving to a place where my kids' grandparents can afford to regularly visit them. On the whole, however, I feel pretty good about the reactions. The disappointment people show when we say we are leaving makes us feel loved. At any rate, it's much better than a shrug of the shoulders or "good riddance"... not that the people here would say something like that to anyone.

The NRG

2011-05-21T07:19:00.007-04:00

On April 27th, the people of Nunavik voted in a referendum on whether or not to adopt the final agreement, of the Nunavik Regional Government. The product of more than 10 years of negotiations, the NRG would have seen the three major governmental organizations, the school board, the health board, and the regional government amalgamate into one. An elected executive would have been placed on top of it, in order to make budgetary and executive decisions.

A former colleague of mine explained it to me thus. Right now, it is as if the government of Quebec gives each organization an envelope full of money (LOTS of money). The proposed system would have seen Quebec City give the NRG executive one envelope with $300 million dollars in it, and people who were directly elected by Nunavimmiut would decide what to do with it.

For two years, I've been trying to get my students excited about the NRG. I took all of the promotional/informative material and sifted through it several times. I wanted to find something that my students could get excited about. Despite the fact that under the proposed system, the people would directly elect an executive (which doesn't happen anywhere else in Canada), I couldn't really get turned on about the NRG... and I'm a complete nerd.

I was looking for something cool, something tangible. I wanted to teach to my students (who had learned about treaties and land claims last year, and democracy in the Middle East and North Africa this year) about real self-government. This was not nearly as exciting as the Egyptian or Libyan protests, and I found that frustrating. Anyway, I came to the conclusion that although there wasn't much to get excited about in the agreement, it was probably going to pass.

Boy am I out of touch with the people. In the weeks leading up to the vote, my good friend Sarah wrote a series of articles in the Nunatsiaq News, the North's only newspaper, covering the story. One, entitled "Nunavik debates new government on Facebook", directed me and my students to a Facebook group where the debate seemed to have heated up. There were almost a thousand members of this forum, and the debate was lively. People on the "yes" side argued that the NRG would be a refreshing change from the status quo, and signaled hope in a place often riddled by cynicism and misunderstanding. The "no" side, for its part, cried out for "real Inuit self-government" instead of the public government (in which newcomers to the region could also have their say) that would take shape under the NRG.

For my part, I didn't really think I should have a say. I guess I was a soft "no" until the day of the referendum. Two things made me change my mind. The mayor of Kangirsujuaq, who I deeply respect, had spoken out on behalf of the "yes" side. I also had an email exchange with a well-informed friend who convinced me that I was wrong and that the the proposed government was probably a step in the right direction.

When speaking to my students, who were all old enough to vote, I tried to remain completely objective. We studied both sides closely, and I deflected any questions about how I felt about it by saying that I don't think my opinion should matter much when it comes to what Inuit want to do with their governance.

The day of the referendum came and during our last period, I took the students to vote. Several of them said that they couldn't make up their minds as to what to do. They argued that they were not well-informed enough to make such a decision. After pleading with them to vote one way or the other and realizing that most were not going to do it, I came up with a compromise. I showed them how to spoil their ballots. I argued that spoiling a ballot is a political act and, although not perfect, it sure beats staying home on referendum day.

We went down to the local municipal office, where the students waited in line and eventually all voted. One of them looked at me and said, "well, aren't you going to vote? You made us do it."

I firmly believed that I shouldn't have had the right to decide. As I opened my mouth to say as much, I realized that this was a huge cop-out, and entered the office with the sole intention of spoiling my ballot. The returning officer looked at me and said, "you're not on the list". I had studied this sucker for years and knew that I met all of the criteria, so I said, "I should be, that's weird."

She made a phone call to Kuujjuaq, but the person at the other end said he would call her back. As we waited, I said to her, "I came here so my students could have a say in their own government. I don't really believe that I should get to decide. I was just going to spoil my ballot anyway."

She looked at me like I had two heads. "What? Why would you want to do a thing like that?" The tone of her made it clear that she thought I was a weirdo.

There are many millions of people who would fight for the chance to have a say in who governs them. Furthermore, most people who don't feel they have a right to decide probably don't head out to the polling booth. I realized at that point that I then represented the ultimate in privilege: a guy who is arguing that he should be on the voters' list in order to have a chance to spoil his ballot because he doesn't think he should be on the voters' list. The worst part is that for a minute, I actually felt a little bit cheated out of the process. White people.

For better or for worse, on April 27th the people of Nunavik rejected the proposed NRG. There has been much debate on Facebook and in the Nunatsiaq News about why the people did so and what that bodes for the future. The results are available at Referendum Nunavik 2011. If you look at the results closely, you'll notice a slightly higher number of rejected ballots from Kangiqsujuaq. Unethically, I asked my students if they had actually spoiled their ballots. They each assured me that they hadn't. I'm not so sure.

Lost

2011-05-20T06:16:00.006-04:00

Sometimes, I'm really good at finding stuff. Once, when Sophie and I were camping at Pingualuit Park (which I guess I have yet to tell you about) I lost the pin that holds my watch face onto its band. I had just walked a kilometer from our tent to the park's three cabins. We were camped just past the end of the airstrip, which seems a little unromantic I know, but it's not like your normal airstrip. It's very remote. The only planes that came in during our three day stay were the twin otter in which we arrived, and the other twin otter upon which we left. There wasn't another one for a week after we left.

Anyway, the path upon which I had just walked didn't look much like of the rest of the surrounding land. It was made of sandy gravel which had been poured over the tundra to make a road. And I had lost my watch pin somewhere along it. I told Sophie that I was going to go look for it, and she scoffed at me. However, I went anyway, determined to prove her wrong. I left and began scanning the ground immediately. Within ten minutes I was back in the shelter, repairing my watch to the surprise of everyone there, which is to say, Sophie.

As good as I am at finding stuff, I am amazing at losing things. Every day begins with a constant struggle to find my glasses, and it just gets worse from there. I regularly have to turn the house upside down looking for my keys, my iPod, and my wallet, but above all it's the honda key that I lose the most often. Like yesterday. Sophie needed to run to the store at lunch, so we got dressed. On our way out the door, I began what turned into a 15-minute frantic search and research of all of the usual places. Eventually, I lightly snapped at Sophie and she understandably decided to walk to the store. After she had left, I continued the search. I focused on these two boxes on top of the freezer that welcomes you when you enter this style of KSB duplex. These boxes contain our mitts and hats, and the Honda key about sixty-four percent of the time. At other times, it somehow finds its own way into various other places in the house.

I had diligently rummaged through each of the two boxes at least half a dozen times already, and Sophie herself had even taken a turn. A cold sense of panic had begun to slither up my spine, and soon enough my forehead became clammy just as my ears grew hot with rage. And then I saw it, right where it was supposed to be. It was right under my nose the whole time, as if it had been hiding somewhere undetectable until such a time as it chose to reveal itself to me. I swear that its cracked plastic hole which once held a key ring was smiling at me. I laughed it off and caught up with Sophie.

This morning, I began to plan writing this post with James, the hero, triumphant in his self-assuredness. I had even titled it "Lost and Found". Then the unthinkable happened.

I had planned my whole morning around my loaves of bread. Such is the life of an unemployed, stay-at-home dad. I had left the bread to rise for the second time, and the kids and I had an hour to get to the playground, have Evie tire of it and Noah complain that he wanted to stay, and then run to the Co-op to pick up a couple of essentials before lunch. I got the kids dressed in full-on, three-layer winter gear (it's still cold here) and stuck my hand in the box to feel around for the key. It was gone. For real.

A half-hour later, as Noah patiently sat on the Honda and Evie was waiting not so patiently in the unheated vestibule; after a couple of humiliating phone calls to Sophie at the school; after I lost my cool and rapidly and repeatedly smashed the woven box down on the freezer seven or eight times; after I screamed out an expletive so loud that Noah, sitting outside on the Honda called back "what daddy?"; and after finally I laughed, sighed, and replied "nothing Noah" I gave up.

At lunch, I followed in the footsteps of my daily forty-five minute walk to the waterfall in a vain effort to find it. My spirits were weakly and pathetically buoyed by the fact that years before Sophie had dropped a sealskin mitten that she had made for me on the very same walk and returned to the house defeated by its loss. I immediately walked outside, walked to the waterfall, and upon arriving looked down to see the mitten waiting patiently for me. While editing this, Sophie reminded me that I had also lost one of those mittens only to have Iggaak miraculously find it and bring it home. At which point I remembered that I had since lost one of them all together.

That's something great about living here. You can drop something and it waits for you. No one else comes along and decides that whatever you dropped would make them happier than it would make you. Even if someone does pick it up, you are more than likely to get it back. Sophie once dropped a package of American Apparel baby clothes on the way back from the store and I had received the news before she even got home.

It vaguely reminds me of the time that I was a toddler and my mom hit the ditch on the drive home to Nampa from Peace River. My father had found out before we arrived. Apparently, one of my dad's friends had seen us in the ditch and kept on going, only to make sure to drop in at his workplace to give him the news. With friends like that...

Anyway, in Montreal, something like this would never happen. The car accident thing happens daily I'm sure. I mean when you drop something on the street in Montreal, forget about it. It's gone. I remember moving apartments on July 1st, 2004. I had brought an ugly chair that I had paid $10 for at the Salvation Army two years earlier down three flights of stairs and set it on the curb. I returned into the apartment and came back out immediately with a box or something else only to find an octgenarian Italian walking away with my chair upside down and resting on the seat of his bike, and waving at me. This is just how Montrealers roll. Perhaps that's why Sophie didn't believe that I would find either the mitten or the watch pin that had been lost only moments before returning to look for them.

Alas, the Honda key has not yet decided to let us in on its cruel joke. I know it's out there, hidden in plain sight, taunting me. I tell you, I will miss many, many things about living in Wakeham. I will most certainly not miss looking for my Honda key. On the other hand, I will miss having a Honda very, very much. Oh, how my life is about to change.

Iggaak

2011-05-18T21:09:00.004-04:00

In 2001, Nunavik politician and social commentator Zebedee Nungak presented a paper at the Human Image Conference at London's British Museum. His paper was entitled "Qallunology: The Inuit Study of White People". It was basically a comical commentary on European and North American people's obsessions with other cultures in general, and Inuit culture in particular. It pointed out peculiarities inherent in white people's behaviour, and also made fun of how Inuit saw white people as well.

Ever since I came across this article while browsing back issues of Inuktitut Magazine (I am most certainly one of those people Nungak was poking fun at), I have used it in my English classes to see what my students think about me and my kin.

I've also been known to take the piss out of "white people" and how we treat/change/observe/help/ruin the cultures that we so eagerly desire to encounter. I'm not talking about everyday white people who go about their business doing white things and living white lives. I tend to leave them alone. When I make fun of "white people", I am talking about that thin slice of the Euro-North American population who purposefully displace themselves and land themselves in the midst of another culture, ostensibly to observe, live the adventure, make money, or "help" (or any combination of these characteristics). Which is to say, I like to make fun of myself.

"White people" don't even necessarily have to be white, per se. A good friend of mine is an Egyptian, Venezuelan, Cuban-American Jew who lives up North and has an Inuit family. He is a psychologist who is doing great work with the kids and with researching things like the social determinants of health. He once told me, "I had to come to Nunavik before I could be considered a white guy." I digress.

I have a dog. Like every other white person who moves to Nunavik, I adopted an abandoned puppy. Some people adopt non-abandoned puppies, thereby landing themselves in a lot of trouble. I had heard as much when I moved to Nunavik. At the KSB orientation, the pedagogical counselors warned us that we would be drawn to adopting these cute little things, and advised us not to do so in the first two weeks. I was determined not to be one of these people, so I waited at least three.

I was sitting around with a bunch of other "white people" when I was trying to think of a name for my dog. At the time, she had dark circles around her eyes, resembling sunglasses. Another teacher who had spent the previous year in Kangirsujuaq, and had picked up as much Qallunuktitut as any other sensitive newcomer who puts in a half-assed effort (but no more) to learn the local language, suggested "Iggaak". Perfect! The name of the traditional Inuit sunglasses.

After a while, the name started to weigh heavily on me. Was it okay to use an Inuktitut word to name my dog? Was that disrespectful? Had I appropriated someone's voice? All of those post-colonial theorists I had read in university would clearly have shunned my choice of names. I then realized that no one really cared, and it was probably okay.

When I would bring my dog to Montreal dog parks, sometimes I would want to just sit there and not talk to anyone. Inevitably, some well-meaning owner of a less-beautiful canine would ask me about my extraordinarily stunning dog. Soon, this white person would be asking me about her name, and where it came from, and soon enough, a plethora of questions about Inuit life, language, and culture. Even now, after five years, I feel basically uninformed about these subjects, so these were not conversations in which I really wanted to take part.

It almost made me want to change her name. Well, that, and (mostly) the fact that the circles around her eyes have faded, thus making her name confusing even to Inuit. I tried to find something that sounded a lot like Iggaak and was never really successful. Maybe I didn't try very hard, but her name remains the same.

Last year, when I got back from my paternity leave, I was fortunate enough to meet Jacob, the guy who replaced me, and then actually went on to replace Sophie. He and I are a lot alike. He's an intelligent, sensitive guy. He has light brown hair and green eyes. We both went to Concordia and studied history. We even basically have the same name for crying out loud. And, we both like to make fun of ourselves. Once, when we were sitting in the staff room both wearing green sweaters, jeans, and beards, he said to me, "James, can I tell you something? I've been thinking that we're too similar. I'm going to shave."

Anyway, in his first few weeks here, he too adopted a dog. She was in pretty rough shape, and his sensitive side got the best of him. He took her in and nursed her back to health. During the Easter Break, he brought her to live with his parents in Hudson. He called her Nuka, which is short for Nukapi, which he thought meant little sister, but it turns out is a misnomer as well.

After the summer break, he brought Nuka back to Kangirsujuaq. On his first day back, I noticed that he was calling her "Rosie". I asked him, "what's that all about?"

He told me that one of his friends took him to task for being such a "white person". He asked him, "why would you name your dog in Inuktitut? It's not like you speak Inuktitut. If you were to go to Samoa and live there, would you get a bunch of tattoos on your face? That's ridiculous!"

I stood there, rubbing my arms and laughing. We both looked at each other and said simultaneously, "white people".

Evie

2011-05-18T06:16:00.003-04:00

When Noah was a baby, a couple of ladies from Iujivik and Povungnituk came to teach the students at our school how to do traditional throat singing and drum dancing. They came into my class to give my students a workshop on these and other aspects of traditional Inuit culture. Both women were energetic, beautiful and talented. They represented real role models who my students could emulate. It was a fantastic exercise put on by the Avataq Cultural Institute, and I wish that there were many more projects like this one.

One of the things they did was to teach the children a song, which has become a commonly used lullaby in my house, called "aya". It's a tale about how an owl gets a new pair of boots and is showing them off to his friends and falls down; a cautionary fable about not being too cocky. Anyway, Sophie brought Noah into the class to take part in the workshop, and one of the animators, Evie Mark from Ivujivik, softly sang the lullaby to Noah. He LOVED it.

More than a year later, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra came to Kangiqsujuaq. Kent Nagano, in partnership with Avataq, brought a chamber ensemble to Nunavik for a three-date tour of the region. In Kangiqsujuaq, we were lucky enough to play host to one of these shows. Along with the chamber ensemble came Evie Mark and Tarqalik Partridge, two throat singers who performed with the MSO musicians in some pieces composed by Alexina Louie. It was a fantastic experience.

As the show ended, everyone approached the stage to congratulate the performers and to their collect autographs. There were hundreds of people mulling about in the post-performance euphoria.We approached Evie Mark as there were literally dozens of people surrounding her. We recounted the story of her singing the lullaby to Noah and how much he loved it, and to our joy and surprise, she sang it to him again. Right in front of everyone.

When Sophie became pregnant, both of us thought she was going to have a boy. Her pregnancy was similar, her belly looked the same, and we sort of just felt it. So much so that when Evie emerged in the birthing room, I announced her sex to Sophie like this, "It's a ... girl?" Seriously.

We weren't caught totally by surprise, as some couples are. We had prepared both boys' and girls' names in advance. For boys, we had narrowed it down to three names: Manu, Miro, and Leo. For girls, however, there was hardly a doubt. There was only one name upon which we could both agree: Evie.

As I told you in the last post, naming your child after someone is a big deal in Inuit culture. We told Evie Mark we had just given her a new saunik the way that everyone tells everyone everything these days (Facebook), and she was ecstatic. Since that time, Evie has visited us several times. She has made Evie not one but two parkas, given her a dress, and showered her with gifts and copious amounts of love. Evie (Jr.) has yet to return the same intensity of affection, but she has warmed up to her over the course of her visits. Noah, on the other hand, has fallen head over heels for her sister's saunik. Every time she visits, Noah ends up pretending to be a panther, continually stalking Evie, his prey. Come to think of it, Sophie and I both have a pretty intense crush on her too, but of course we hold back on the feline advances.

We hope with all sincerity that this relationship will continue after we leave. Evie lives in Montreal, so we can't see why it wouldn't. It appears that being someone's saunik is extremely meaningful to Inuit, and since getting to know Evie, it has meant a great deal to us too.

Noah

2011-05-17T07:22:00.003-04:00

I've told you about Evie's namesake. Evie Mark: throat singer, mother, all around great person (and hot). However, I've never told you why Noah is named Noah.

He too has a saunik. Noah Annahatak is a local hunter and guide for the Pingualuit National Park. I met him playing hockey in 2006. I was teaching his daughter at the time, and he often asked me to tell him if I needed any help with his daughter's attendance or behaviour. It was years before I took him up on his offer. In my first year, I could have used all the help anyone had offered, but I was really too embarrassed by the state of my class and my teaching to explain its daily operations to the parents of my students.

Anyway, Noah is a man's man. He is an exceptional hunter, plays hockey, and even usually enters a team in the Ivakkak, the region's dogsled race that runs every two years. 2007 was no exception. The race was to run from Quaqtaq, which is 180 km east of Kangirsujuaq, to Ivujivik, some 300 km to the northwest. It ran right through the village, to much fan fare.

The first days of the race were not kind to its mushers. It was disgustingly cold and windy (-50 plus the windchill, thus making it almost as cold as Steven Harper's shriveled and dead heart). The race was delayed two or three days due to the inclement weather, and the teams waited for reprieve in tents and igloos out on the land (can you even imagine?)

The night that they finally made it to Kangirsujuaq, there was a big feast and party in the municipal gym celebrating their arrival and the revival of such an important part of Inuit culture. After the festivities, I stood next to Noah as he told me this story (whose details may not be exactly correct due to four years of memory[loss]).

On the second day of racing, the blizzard blew in. Some of the teams' dogs were in pretty rough shape due to the tough terrain and the ridiculous weather. Jusippi Qisiiq, another local musher, and his partner, stopped their team short of the checkpoint because they could risk going no further. They set up their tent and got their kerosene stove going to try to ward off the cold and wait out the storm.

During the race, the teams have some support. There are snowmobiles who follow them and track their progress, and each team has a radio which they use to communicate with race officials and their competitors. Noah and his son Elijah were safely in their tent at the checkpoint, but certainly worried about some of the other teams who had not made it. He was relieved when his friend Jusippi checked in that they had taken refuge and were safe.

A team passed Jusippi, still trying to forge its way on to the checkpoint. Some time later, they too decided to set up camp too because their dogs and bodies were exhausted. They checked in with race officials, and competitors who were horrified to hear the news.

"We've set up our tent, but we've run out of fuel for our stove. Our dogs are extremely tired and so are we. We're wet, we're cold, and our stove is going out. We cannot keep the snow from invading our tent. We keep shoveling it out, but it keeps coming back in."

When Noah told me this, I revealed my naivete. "So, did someone go back by skidoo and help them?"

He looked at me with surprise. "Have you ever gone anywhere by skidoo in a blizzard when it's -50?"

"Uhhhhhhh, no?"

It was at that point that I realized how serious he was. Up until then we stood side by side, staring at the kids running around in the gym. As if to emphasize the bleakness of the situation, he turned to faced me.

"So, what happened?"

Noah returned to the story. He and all the competitors and race officials heard the anxious announcements of the stranded mushers. They all felt extremely helpless and began to imagine the worst. Jusippi, on the other hand, decided to take matters into his own hands. He left the relatively comfortable confines of his tent, aroused his exhausted dogs, and risked life and limb venturing blindly into a blizzard, in what seemed like a vain attempt to help his comrades who were in deep trouble.

Astonishingly, he succeeded. He proved able to lead his dogs (or the other way around) to the team in need. When he arrived, they were both exhausted, sweaty, cold, and still. But still alive. He refueled their stove, and gave them something to eat and drink.

"He's a real hero," Noah said to me as he stared into my eyes, even as his began to almost imperceptibly tear up.

I recounted the story to Sophie later that night. Although it was months before we actually settled on naming our son Noah, I think his fate had probably been decided at that moment.

Sophie and I didn't realize what a big deal it is to name someone after someone else in the Inuit culture. We hadn't asked permission or anything, and the first few times I saw Noah upon returning after the birth, I felt a bit awkward.

Once, Noah asked me straight up, "did you name him after me?"

"Uhhh, yes," I said, embarrassed and looking at the ground and acting like a child.

"James, it's okay," he reassured me. I looked up, and I think I sensed some pride in his posture that was virtually undetectable.

Over the years, however, the clumsiness of the situation has melted away. Last Hallowe'en, we took Noah (Jr.) to Noah's (Sr.) house. We walked in.

"Sauningai!" he said to my son.

"Aa." Noah responded. "Sauningai." I don't think I hid my pride as well as Noah had.

Slave Lake

2011-05-16T07:29:00.003-04:00

Last night, I was half-asleep when Sophie asked me, "What's going on in Slave Lake?"

A friend of mine had posted on Facebook that he hoped "everyone was okay." I remembered having read something earlier about the winds in Alberta, and we quickly visited the Environment Canada website. Sophie navigated to the Slave Lake page (which is the one I use to check the weather in my hometown, because EC doesn't have a station there) and we were both surprised by this icon with some flames and a bunch of smoke in place of the sun, clouds, or very often in the case of Kangirsujuaq, blowing snow.

I called my dad, and he told me that his neighbour's brother had just been evacuated from Atikameg (one of the outlying Cree reservations near High Prairie). He had heard that the hospital and police barracks in Slave Lake were gone, everyone had been asked to leave their homes, but at the time, could not leave the town of 7000 because the fires were burning along the highway in all three directions out of town. Read about it here.

Since our conversation, I have had a lump in my throat. It appears that a piece of my childhood is going up in flames even as I write this.

Slave Lake and my hometown High Prairie are situated at either end of the 110 km long Lesser Slave Lake (actually High Prairie is landlocked but I spent so much time on that lake that the area is all melded together in my mind). There are no major towns in between them, and are basically neighbours.

Naturally, this leads to a healthy rivalry between the two towns. The rivalry was most exciting (at least to me) when it came to minor hockey. We loved playing Slave Lake, which was a much bigger town than High Prairie. At one point, Slave Lake, which is really situated in a no-man's-land, decided to change leagues from one that encompassed the Peace Country (and High Prairie) to another further South. Although it was early in my adolescence, I realized that this had implications for us. We would only see Slave Lake in tournaments, and not during our regular league play. I remember being disappointed even then.

One of my former teammates families moved to Slave Lake mid-season, and I remember feeling let down, even betrayed, by something well beyond any of our fourteen year old abilities to control anything. The next time we played Slave Lake, we gave it to Kelly as hard as we could, and shook hands with him after the game remembering the good times.

The pinnacle of the rivalry happened during the annual home-and-home series between the two towns' principal public high schools: The E.W. Pratt Chargers from High Prairie, and the Roland Michener Rams from Slave Lake. It was always an intense match-up between the two teams with plenty of tension, energy, and fisticuffs.

Having attended Catholic school, I experienced this rivalry from the stands. Throughout my later teenage years, we travelled back and forth between communities supporting the Chargers. I'm not sure who won or lost most of these games (late-teens in Northern Alberta have been known to indulge from time to time), but I do remember one thing. The Chargers' faithful had come up with a clever, yet vulgar, chant to taunt the Roland Michener players. Imagine a small arena bursting with all of a town's young, enthralled by the tension and energy, screaming their mantra at the top of their lungs (cover the kiddies' ears), "RAMS FUCK SHEEP! RAMS FUCK SHEEP!"

I'm sorry Slave Lake. I hope you can bounce back.

First Kiss

2011-05-15T08:13:00.004-04:00

I was working at the student's residence the first time I kissed Sophie. One of the animators had gone to Kuujjuaq to prepare for the opening of another residence, and I was spilling off his partner for a week save for the time I was teaching at the school. I thought it was going to be a piece of cake, because I didn't have to do much.

The senior animator made supper before he left, and all I had to do was come in, hang out with the students, lock up at 11:30, and wake the kids up at 8:00. The first six days passed by without incident. Everyone had respected the curfew and I had had a thoroughly enjoyable time. On my final day, the day Sophie and I shared our first kiss, one of the students was still missing when 11:30 rolled around. I locked the door and prepared to go to sleep. Promptly, at 11:35 I heard the missing student banging on the door. The animator had told me not to open the door under any circumstances after the curfew had passed, but it had just been five minutes, I thought to myself, "I'll cut the kid a break."

I opened the door to see a young man, who was visibly drunk at the door. He demanded that I let him in to "see his cousin". I refused. He forced his way in between the two doors and asked me, "do you want me to fuck you up?"

"No." I replied honestly.

"Do you want me to fuck you up?" he repeated.

"Uhhh, get out of here."

By this time, a group of students had amassed behind me, and they stood there, watching. I looked back and told the crowd to call the police. Nobody budged. I began to feel isolated.

"If you call the cops, I'm going to kill you," the young man stammered, as he made and awkward gesture towards me. A bottle of vodka fell out of his pocket. I looked down at it. It was a 40 oz. of Smirnoff.

As I looked up, I saw it coming. A slow, uncontrolled left hand approached my right cheek. For some reason, I found myself unable to move. I've only ever been in one real fight (which I won, but it hurt so bad nevertheless that I decided at that point to try to use my mouth to get out of sticky situations). His left landed squarely, but surprisingly softly on my cheek.

I grabbed the bottle and pushed him out the door. He grabbed onto a handle on the inside of the door. I hit his fingers but he didn't lose his grip. I grabbed the same handle and slammed the door on his forearm but yet he did not let go. I did it repeatedly until he finally relented, and the incident was over.

During the melee, one of the students had actually called the police. They came many minutes later and took a statement. They told me to come in the next day and press charges for assault.

I was uncomfortable with the prospect of pressing charges against someone who had done so little damage. I had only been in the village for a few weeks, and I didn't want to ruffle anyone's feathers. In addition, even a few hours later, I understood that I could have handled the situation much more confidently and without incident if I had just pushed his drunk ass out the door to begin with. On the other hand, I didn't want the guy to feel he could come to the student's residence in such a state at such a time and hit me in the face and get away with it.

I decided to consult some of the leaders of the school community about what I should do. Without fail, they all told me to press charges. One of them told me that he was a troubled kid who constantly did bad things to good people. She told me several stories about what he had done in the past which had gone unpunished.

Only one person, the other residence animator, told me to do otherwise. "He was just drunk. Forget about it, James," he told me calmly.

I felt even more uncomfortable about going to the police after hearing about the other things he had done. However, after school, I found myself sitting across a desk from a police officer, recounting the events from the night before. The young officer quietly took notes.

As soon as I finished telling him the story, his partner approached us and asked what was going on. The nice young man who had heard my story recounted the major events to his partner, who immediately blurted out something like, "Oh that guy? Good. We've been looking for an excuse to get him. Why don't we go find him and tie him up to the hitch of our truck and drag him back here?"

I got up, said "I'm dropping the charges," and walked out. I decided to take the animator's advice and forget about it.

Fortunately, in five years in Kangirsujuaq, this was the only time that I have experienced violence. It is truly not representative of my life here. If it was, I would never have decided to raise my son and daughter in the village.

Even more fortunately, it wasn't the only time I got to kiss Sophie.

25 days

2011-05-14T08:49:00.002-04:00

In 25 days, it will be over. I can hardly believe it. Last week, I finished working as a teacher in Nunavik, and on June 8th, Noah and I will be leaving his hometown, not knowing if or when we'll return.

Years ago while I was looking for a book in Concordia's stacks while doing my master's, I came across a misplaced M.A. thesis about teacher turnover in Nunavik. I sat down and read it from cover to cover. At the time, I had grown tired of academia and wanted to do something else. Basically right then, and unbeknownst to anyone else, I decided to become a teacher for the sole purpose of teaching in Quebec's far north.

It took me a couple years, but in 2006, I found myself on an airplane which was about to land in Kangirsujuaq. The two-hour flight from Kuujjuaq had two stops, as it always does, in Kangirsuk and Quaqtaq. Landing in both of those villages was enjoyable enough. I found their landscapes to be beautiful and novel. But I'll never forget the feeling when I first saw what was to become my home for the next five years. I looked out the window to see the green mountains, orange and black lichens, and the deep blue waters of Wakeham Bay. I looked over my shoulder at Neil and Sayard, whom I had met the week before, and who were to become very good friends. We all sat there, speechless.

When I took the job in Kangirsujuaq, I had no idea what to expect. Not even in my wildest dreams could I have imagined what was in store for me. Five splendid years, a new partner, two amazing kids, and the warm welcome of a community of people that I have yet to fully appreciate.

Over the next twenty-five days, I will attempt to recount 25 of my most lasting memories of my life in Kangirsujuaq, in no particular order. I have no idea how I will say good-bye to this place. I love it here. I'm hoping that writing about my last five years will help me to let go.

That was unexpected

2010-10-03T08:18:00.001-04:00

Most of my students come from other villages in Nunavik3w. They have come here to prepare themselves for a chance at going to John Abbott College in Montreal. I have fifteen students, and the dozen who come from Kuujjuaq, Salluit, and Inukjuak, live in a residence, which is a beautiful building (by northern standards of course, it is still utilitarian) that overlooks Kangiqsujuaq and was constructed last year to the tune of six million of our taxpayers' dollars.

The program I teach is really not part of any Ministry of Education guidelines. It doesn't exist anywhere else. So, on one hand, I am sort of free to teach the content that I desire. On the other hand, there is no curriculum, and the whole thing rests on my shoulders. One of my goals is to try to create a relationship between the program and the college, and to build up a bank of resour..... wait. I sound like the rest of the Secondary 6 teachers who have come before me. I can tell myself that, but the few of us who have done this job realize that even four years of experience teaching ESL in Nunavik still leaves me feeling like I'm running around like a chicken with its head cut off. Gideon, who taught the program last year, did leave me some of his tricks on his desk. So far, the one I've used the most is his schedule. He gave courses on English, World History, Current Events, and something that he simply labeled "Projects".

Quickly, I decided to follow his lead. So, since most of my students live in a residence, I thought that it would be a propos to do a project about Residential School. They have to interview someone from their home community who went to residential school and use that as the basis to make a podcast.

On Thursday, I thought, "well wouldn't it be great if I could give them an example of a good podcast?" Of course it would! So, I remembered that the Secondary 2 and 3 students at our school made a podcast about the rapidly changing ways that Inuit learn about their culture. Author Joseph Graham and ex-CBC producer Mark Goldman came to our village a couple years ago and helped the kids make the podcast which was then presented at the "Voices from Quebec" exhibition of the Blue Metropolis literary festival in 2008. It was very cool and professionally done. Anchoring the podcast were three interviews to three different generations of one of the original families from Kangiqsujuaq. Naalak Nappaluk, recently deceased, was a local patriarch, legendary hunter and guardian of cultural knowledge. He passed much of this knowledge on to his son, Lucassie, who the students also interviewed. Finally, The students interviewed Lucassie's grandson and one of their classmates, Attasi, who revealed that he had not learned so much from his family, but rather from school. In addition to the interviews, the soundtrack of the podcast includes traditional throat singing, dog teams, skidoos, and even some heavy metal. It is truly well made. Check it out here.

So I played it for the students. Over the past two years, I have listened to this podcast many times. As the podcast nears its end broadcast journalist Mark Goldman says a few kind words about Attasi, who died shortly after the project's completion. I remember the first time I listened to it. I could feel the grief building up inside me and manifesting itself through a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes. However, so much time has passed since then, and I had listened to it so many times, that I didn't really give it a second thought.

When I was a kid, I was a huge crybaby. Whenever I experienced an infinitesimal injustice, I screamed and cried for my mommy. My sister quickly learned that this was fun, and she was more than happy to oblige. Repeatedly. However, for the past 20 years, I can count the times I have cried on my fingers. Thus, I was really surprised to find that as I walked over to turn off the speakers, I suddenly went weak in the knees. I quickly decided to sit back down and try to collect myself. One of the students from Kangirsujuaq got up and left the class so no one could see him cry. I looked at another and tears were streaming down her face. I suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, found myself unable to speak as I wept.

"What's going on?" a student from another village asked. "What's wrong?"

"I'm sorry," I struggled. "Give me a minute." I stared at my desk and took a few breaths. "Attasi killed himself," I said quietly. I took another moment to shed a couple more tears. "After all this time, I didn't know that it was still going to hurt so much." I looked at the two crying students from Kangirsujuaq again. I apologized.

Finally, I looked at the third, who smiled oddly and said, "Well, that was unexpected," at which point everyone giggled. I tried to explain the quality and creativity involved in the podcast without blubbering any further. Indeed, that was unexpected.

Year #5

2010-09-04T06:14:00.002-04:00

When I came up here four years ago, I had no attachments. I had come because I didn't really know what else to do. I truly was interested in living in an Inuit village, and taking on the challenge of teaching kids from another culture. Certainly, my upbringing instilled in me a desire to "help". However, I'm pretty sure that if you suggested that I would be back for a fifth year with a girlfriend, two kids, and a dog, I would have looked at you like you have two heads.

"This year is going to be our last year." We've been saying that for three years in a row. "This time it's for real." People heard us say that last year too. It has gotten so our friends don't really believe us anymore. Or they don't even listen. Or they don't even ask.

This time however, is different. Last spring, Sophie and I bought a duplex in Montreal. The excellent renters' laws in Quebec (from which Sophie and I have benefited for many years) don't allow us to move in until July 2011. Undeterred by this fact, when we came back up last year after my forced extended paternity leave, we were certain that we would not be returning this year. I even resigned from my position.

However, things have a way of working themselves out. The day after I handed in my resignation, I was standing outside my house while Noah rode his tricycle in circles. I began to scan the horizon, staring at the mountains, just as I have done countless times before. I began to choke up, and soon enough, a single tear welled up in my eyes and rolled down my cheek.

The next day, my boss told me about another job that might open up at the school. It was to be an eight-month contract teaching high-school graduates who were not yet strong enough to enter CEGEP, but nevertheless had an interest in doing so. I went home and had an interesting discussion with Sophie, who too had been harbouring melancholy about our departure.

Then, as we began to tell people at the school and in the village that we would be leaving, they unequivocally responded a generous outpouring of support and love. We were completely taken aback as to just how nice people were acting towards us. It felt really good to feel appreciated, especially because in the day-to-day drudgery of the job, it is very easy to feel un(der)appreciated.

The most telling, and most flattering comment I received, came from the Centre Director at the school. I went into his office and told him that we would not be returning the following year.

"What? but why not?"

"It's not that we don't love it here. We do. We've been missing our families a lot, and we really don't get to see them enough."

"I understand. You are welcome to come back to Kangiqsujuaq anytime. We like you here. You don't bother any Inuit."

"You don't bother any Inuit." The words have been ringing in my head ever since. These words from a community leader who was born in an igloo. It was truly one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me.

It was these words that really made me want to come back. I applied for the job, and after some confusion (ask me in person, it's a great story), I got it. And so we're back.

My new job is so much easier than teaching the younger kids. Sure, my students are much more capable of progressing through their work, which leaves me with a considerable amount more planning and correction to do. However, so far, my heart hasn't broken as many times as it had teaching young adolescents, and I don't find myself as frustrated with behaviour and cultural differences as I did before.

However, I know at some point I'll have to come to terms with the fact that my job is one of the most overtly assimilationist possible. I've always been uncomfortable with my own position in the colonialist structure that is alive and well in the north. I am well aware of the irony that despite my discomfort, I am overtly trying to provide Inuit students with the skills to succeed in a Southern context. However, I think I'm more comfortable doing that than what I've been doing for the past four years, which is trying to give students the necessary skills to succeed in the North. That was truly scary.

At any rate, I'm happy to be back, and I think I'll enjoy my year... as long as I keep my goal simple: don't bother any Inuit.

Our bed

2010-09-01T07:54:00.005-04:00

For the last four years, we have been sleeping on beds provided by the school board. While they have sufficed, this year, we decided that sleeping on our comfortable bed for six weeks in the summer and sleeping on inferior mattresses for 10 months a year was probably not the best way to stay rested. So, we had our bed sent up on a cargo plane, which, I'm sure, made my carbon footprint for the year bigger than someone who drives a hummer.

Anyway, for those of you who have lived in the North and have dealt with getting cargo into a fly-in community, here's what I remember of my conversation with Air Inuit yesterday, as I was trying to track down my lost queen-size mattress.

I must preface this conversation by saying that this was the third time I called Air Inuit Cargo in Montreal. The first two times, the man who answered said the system was down. The second time I called, he asked me for my name, number, and the waybill number. I gave him the first two, but said I could not provide the latter. He said that it was no problem, and that he would call me back when the system was back up and running. He never called. I called back.

"Air Inuit Cargo."

"Hi, I called yesterday. I'm trying to track down a piece of cargo that never arrived. Is your system up and running?"

"Yes. What's the waybill number."

"I dont have it, but when 'I called you yesterday you said it was no problem."

"I need your waybill number."

"Look, a guy from my school board dropped off my stuff and did not give me the waybill. How do I get it?"

"What community are you in?"

"Kangirsujuaq"

"Kangirwhat?"

"Wakeham Bay. YWB."

"Okay, you have to call.... let me get the number.... okay... Wakeham Bay. 819-338..."

Of course, I already know the number to the local airport, so I finish his sentence while he's fumbling with some paper "3245. I'll call you right back."

I call the airport. "Hi. It's James Vandenberg. I'm looking for my mattress that didn't arrive with the rest of my cargo. I need the waybill number."

"Just wait." Silence. "Okay, it's 245-31289226."

"Thanks."

I call Montreal again. "Air Inuit Cargo, bonjour."

"Hi, I just called. I have the waybill number."

"Okay. Go ahead."

"245-31289226."

"Okay let me plug that in.... Sir, that's a First Air waybill number. Air Inuit doesn't have your mattress."

"Ummm, I have to tell you that I live in Kangirsujuaq, First Air doesn't fly in here. The plane bringing my bed will be an Air Inuit plane."

"The waybill number is for First Air. It starts with 245. You have to call First Air."

"But First Air won't know where it is unless it's still in Montreal. They don't Fly to Kangirsujuaq."

"It's definitely not in Montreal. But you gave me a First Air waybill number. First Air is another airline company. You have to call them."

"Look, I called the Air Inuit agent here in Kangirsujuaq and asked them for my waybill number. The Air Inuit agent gave me that number."

"But it's the First Air waybill number. So, you..."

"Have to call First Air. Thanks."

So, I hang up and find the number for First Air Cargo. In Kuujjuaq.

I call.

"First Air Cargo, bonjour."

"Hi. I'm looking for a piece of cargo that didn't show up at my house"

"Okay, what village do you live in?"

"Kangirsujuaq."

"Let me transfer you to Air Inuit." Ringing and my muffled laughter.

"Air Inuit Cargo, bonjour." This time, I'm speaking with someone else in Kuujjuaq.

"Hi, I'm looking for a piece of cargo that didn't show up at my house."

"Do you have the waybill number?"

"Uhhh, I have to tell you. The number I'm going to give you is the First Air tracking number."

"That's the one. What happens is that First Air gives you a tracking number and we use the same one through to destination."

"Can someone please tell the guy at Air Inuit Cargo in Montreal that? He doesn't know how it works. I just gave him the number and he told me to call First Air. I did, and they immediately transferred me to you."

"Okay, what's the tracking number?"

"24531289226."

"James Vandenberg? You're waiting for a mattress, right?"

"Yes."

"Go to the airport. Your mattress is on the flight today."

"You must be joking."

"No joke. You can sleep well tonight."

"Thanks."

The whole thing made me think that people often call the airline "Air Maybe" because of the oft-delayed flights. I'd like to try out a new one. "Air Inuit: You Never Know".

Unfortunately, my sleep was interrupted mid-way through the night by a little boy who wanted to see his mama, which inevitably relegated me to his single bed. Maybe tonight?

Where's Sophie?

2010-08-17T07:31:00.005-04:00

I've been thinking that I should start a blog about traveling with kids. Evie is six months old, and yesterday, she took her 11th flight. Noah tallied up sixty flights before his third birthday. We've taken our kid(s) to Alberta and Nunavik many times, and we've also been to Cuba and Central America. After taking a break this summer, we're planning to go cyclo-camping in Italy and Tunisia next spring. We have plenty of tales. Some day, ask me about Ramon.

You'd think we'd be good at traveling with kids by now. While I think Sophie's skill level is at least loosely correlated to her vast experience, I've shown over the past few flights to be a bumbling idiot. I haven't exactly lost a kid just yet, but every time I arrive at a terminal, I can feel a wave of impatience I no doubt inherited from my father coming over me. When it is compounded by the inevitable reality that I will be among the last people to deplane (when did that become a word?) carrying seventeen carry-on bags, a baby in a sling, and a three year-old on my shoulders, I forget stuff. On top of that, without fail, I think I'm so good at parenting that I couldn't possibly have forgotten anything. I scoff at Sophie as she checks under the seats and in the pockets in the back of the row in front of us, and guilt her into leaving the plane before she's satisfied that nothing has been left behind.

It happened again yesterday. We arrived in Kuujjuaq and waited to connect to Kangirsujuaq. For those of you envisioning a normal connection at Pearson or Trudeau, let me explain connecting in Kuujjuaq. You get off the plane down some stairs and walk across the tarmac, into the small, yet modern terminal which was finished about a year and a half ago (the old terminal was a labyrinth of Atco trailers that constantly smelled of urine). So you walk in and get your luggage, or more specifically those pieces which decided to follow you from Montreal or wherever you came from, and drag them across the terminal to check in at First Air or Air Inuit, depending on where you came from. Then, you go to the other counter with your luggage tags to find out when the rest of your stuff will arrive. After going through the motions and then finding out our plane would be delayed for a few hours due to fog in our village, Sophie asked me, "Where's Sophie? Did you forget her?"

Seems like an odd question, but all trendy young parents like us know that Sophie is a giraffe, made in France from natural rubber, and she is a classic. Sophie will celebrate her 50th anniversary next year, and is a must have for a teething baby. We needed one so bad that after we lost our first one a few days after purchasing it, I had to go across the city to buy another one. Picture a thirty-something yuppie wearing an American Apparel t-shirt holding out a squeaky toy for a dog with a far heftier price tag in front of a screaming baby. "Come on baby girl. (Squeak! Squeak!) You wanna play with Sophie?" Anyway, I took mild offense to Sophie the younger questioning my superior parenting abilities. "Why don't you look in the bags before accusing me?" I replied with certitude.

I looked in each bag. Three times. Sophie is indeed on the plane to Yellowknife, via Iqaluit and Rankin Inlet. I wish I could say it was the first time. Last time it was Freddie, one of Noah's trains. It turns out that my mountain of fantastic parenting skills was nothing more than a house of cards. It soon came tumbling down.

We found out that we would be staying in Kuujjuaq. A nice man from the school board came to drive us into town. I walked toward the door, loaded down with stuff, and Sophie, who was holding a sleeping Evie asked me, "do you have everything?"

"Yes," I replied. Well, not exactly everything. I remembered almost all of our checked luggage. When I realized that Noah was not pulling his suitcase, I dropped everything I was carrying and said quietly but very clearly, "shit!" I ran back into the terminal and collected his suitcase. When I came back out, a three year-old parrot was chirping "Shit! Shit! Shit!" I gave him his suitcase and laughed. I got into the van where Sophie informed me that our driver had graciously picked up all of the things I had forgotten: the baby carrier, the nursing pillow and a backpack.

I guess I need to rethink my awesomeness.

Packing

2010-08-15T16:23:00.000-04:00

We leave for Wakeham tomorrow.

If you had asked me four years ago if I would be going back up to Kangirsujuaq for a fifth year with my girlfriend and two kids, I don't know what I would have said. The familiar feeling of excitement and dread intertwined has been building up inside me all day. All of our boxes have been sent, and we just have our luggage left to pack. My suitcase has Noah's clothes, 24 notebooks, and a few of my things. By now, I've learned to travel fairly light for myself. Kids take up a lot of room. The 24 notebooks are a precaution I felt I had to take. The school board furnishes all of the students' school supplies, and last year, after being promised by a succession of principals that my notebooks would soon be arriving, I ultimately had to make due without them all year. This week, with some prodding from Sophie, I decided to take measures into my own hands.

Anyway, a new school year begins on Wednesday. This year, as always, I have found a new position that affords me the ability to work as few months of the year as possible. I'll be teaching the Secondary 6 college preparatory program for graduating students who were not strong enough to go straight to CEGEP. Stay tuned for a little fun and a whole lotta liberal guilt.

My summer ends tomorrow.

The dishes

2010-05-14T22:31:00.005-04:00

When I was living in London, Ontario, I lived in an old farmhouse in the top floor apartment of Andy and Lori's house. I met some wonderful people in London, but I clicked with this couple who didn't know me, but who nevertheless welcomed me into their home at the suggestion of a mutual friend. No, not the Facebook kind of mutual friend, a real one with whom one of them had grown up and whose daughter I dated for six years kind of mutual friend. Anyway, Friday afternoon rituals were one of my favourite times in my short tenure in London. I would stroll in around 4:00 and Andy would offer me libations. Without exception I accepted. We wouldn't get drunk, but we would have a drink or two, and sometimes we would even put off supper by a couple of hours. When this happened, we would have conversations.

Sometimes I would tell them about living in Quebec, and how nationalism wasn't dead (although now I think it's irrelevant). Other times, he would educate me about the blues. Once, when we had put off supper for a couple of hours, Andy changed my ritual of doing the dishes. I don't know how we got on the topic, but I explained to him my order of dishes, and he calmly explained to me that the utensils had to soak while washing the mugs. Lori laughed at the both of us and upon reflection,we too decided that perhaps it was time to fire up the barbeque.

When I tried to do the dishes this morning, I got through the glasses and a few mugs, and I pulled the plug, leaving the utensils lying there in the bottom of the sink, waiting. I couldn't do it anymore.

You see, I have a skin condition called vitiligo. It's a lack of pigmentation that leaves weird, funky white patches on my skin. Apparently Michael Jackson had it, and as a black man, he couldn't take it. So, he somehow dyed himself white. For me, it's usually no big deal. Most of the time, I just forget about it. I have accepted the white blotches of skin on my hands and face and the white spots in my beard like I did the loss of my hair, or the growth of it on parts of my body that it shouldn't be.

I'll get to the point. Yesterday, the municipality invited the staff of our school to use one of our pedagogical days to go fishing. It was awesome. There is still a lot of snow, and it was about 8 or 9 degrees, and although I caught nothing, I had a great day.

I've always been a bit snake-bitten as a fisherman. I grew up in Northern Alberta and have gone fishing several times each year since I was a young child. I've caught a great deal of fish over the past two-and-a-half decades, but I would never consider myself good or even lucky. Invariably, if you fish for 25 or 30 years, you're going to snag a few from time to time.

A couple of years ago, I went fishing with my students on May 1st and got the worst sunburn of my life. My face was so sensitive that I lathered it repeatedly with a bunch of lanolin (used by nursing mothers for their cracked nipples) and didn't sleep for days. So, before we left the village, when we arrived at our destination, and a few more times throughout the day, I applied SPF 15 (the only lotion we have) to my face, neck, and ears. However, I neglected to touch the back of my hands. I spent the better part of five hours laying face-down on the ice with my head in a hole and only the back of my extra-sensitive, increasingly blotchy hands exposed to the sun's harmful rays.

By the time I got home, I knew I had made an important omission. I ran my hands under cold water for a few minutes, but ultimately underestimated the damage. This morning however, it took just seconds of submersion in the suds for me to realize that my hands were suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. After I had finished the glasses, I noticed my hands were extraordinarily red. But it wasn't until half-way through the mugs that I realized that they were swelling up like Violet Beauregarde masticating a piece of experimental blueberry gum. They soon began to throb, and in the absence of a juicing room, I ran the cold water for a few minutes in a vain attempt to turn back time.

I went to school, and throughout the morning, students and teachers alike, several sporting sunburns of their own, remarked at my florescent pink, swollen hands. I could only answer one thing to them:

"Sure it hurts, but at least I can't do the dishes."

Here we go again

2010-04-24T08:00:00.000-04:00

When you walk past someone in a small village, no matter where you are, you wave, or say "hello" or tip your hat or make some sort of motion of recognition. Here it is no different. In Kangirsujuaq, and I'm assuming other Inuit villages, you say the person's name, followed by the greeting. I usually get one of two greetings: "James-ngai" or "Jaimisia".

So, when I walked by the residence one May morning last year to see one of the students I had taken to Europe two months before, standing on the front steps, I expected her to say one of these two things. She stood there and stared right through me. I said "good morning", and continued walking. I chalked the snub up to early morning cobwebs, and thought nothing else of it.

About an hour later, Neil came into my class and said, "Have you heard? There was a suicide at the residence."

"What?" Immediately, I flashed back to my awkward meeting with one of the residence students. At the time, there were only three students living in the residence. Two of them were my students, and one was in the French sector. Having seen one of my students that morning, I involuntarily prayed to myself that it hadn't been the other.

"Who?" I asked.

Neil confirmed that it had been the student in the French side. I began to feel odd, but I couldn't quite place the emotion. Another teacher, who is normally calm, collected, and polite walked into my class and let out a very uncharacteristic, "Again? What the fuck is going on?" in a shaky voice.

We discussed some of the details, which need not be repeated, and stared out the window at the gathering crowd of teachers, emergency workers, police, and students. It was 8:55. A sombre announcement came over the intercom, "School has been canceled for the day."

I didn't know this student very well. She was from another community, and had come to Kangirsujuaq to finish high school because her village is too small to support a secondary 3/4/5 teacher. However, it's not as if I had never interacted with her. She always wore a smile and was playful and apparently happy. She was a strong student, and seemed to have a positive attitude.

I walked down the stairs and sat down in the staff room. There was a group of Inuit teachers sitting in the lounge in silence. I sat down. We sat there, stewing in our confusion, and said nothing for what seemed like two eternities. All of a sudden, I felt an enormous wave of pressure that started at the floor and slowly rose until it almost forced tears from all of our eyes. For a millisecond, it appeared as if it would boil over, but then everyone got up simultaneously up and went in separate directions. One washed her hands. Another grabbed a coffee. Yet another went to the photocopier, and two disappeared out the door, one wiping her eyes.

I still couldn't place the feeling I had in the pit of my stomach. I realized I had to go home and tell Sophie. I put on my boots and walked outside to see a group of twenty or more people mulling about in what seemed like an organized confusion. I scanned their faces, and for some reason none of them registered. I knew every single one of them, but they seemed to be strangers. My panorama was interrupted when I laid eyes on one of the residence animators. These guys live with the students for one out of every two weeks. They cook them meals, help them with their homework, and try to ensure their safety and happiness.

When I saw this man, I recognized it: the complete and utter desperation that was certainly written across my face when I received the news about Attasi. His face was red, his lips were trembling, and a wrinkled brow that screamed out "why?"

Considering he and I shared a duplex at the time, we weren't very close. Inexplicably and unconsciously however, I walked up to him and embraced him. He exploded. After a few seconds, I let go, said nothing, and continued home to break the news to Sophie. On my way home, I identified the emotion that I had been feeling ever since I had heard the news.

It was a mixture of four things. I felt an enormous amount of relief that it wasn't one of the other two students, who I knew very well. I felt an equal amount of guilt for feeling the sense of relief. I felt good that, in a way, I would get to be part of the grieving process that I had missed a few weeks before. Finally, I felt nauseous that I felt good about something so horrible.

It had been a rough night with Noah, so I found Sophie and Noah in bed. I lied down next to Sophie.

"What is it?"

I told her. She held me. I cried.

My first mansage

2010-04-20T21:04:00.001-04:00

I got my first mansage last weekend. I've been massaged by a quack, a physiotherapist, and even once by a massage therapist, but never once by a man. Until this weekend.

Last Friday was Culture Day at the school. Which means we loitered around outside for a few hours and took part in some interesting activities. I had a breakfast of frozen char topped with frozen walrus fat. The last time I ate walrus, it had been fermented, and it was the only time eating country foods that I wasn't able to go for seconds. However, I mustered up enough testosterone to give it another shot. This time, it was just frozen raw, fatty, and delicious. It was a lot like butter. I took generous chunks of it and spread it on my beautiful char steaks and stuffed my face.

Fresh off my conquest of raw meaty breakfast, I decided that I was man enough to step into the squared circle with Jacob for a little traditional Inuit wrestling. Inuit wrestling consists of two men putting each other in a semi-headlock, putting both hands on the ground, and then trying to push each other out of a circle drawn in the snow.

As we were about to dig in, one of the Inuk teachers said to me, "Hey James! After, we will do the women's contest. In the old days, we would take off all of our clothes and stand there naked. The one who lasted the longest with no clothes was the strongest." I have no idea if she was just pulling my leg or if she was being serious. Either Inuit ladies are really strong or really funny, but either way it left me with a smile as I entered the ring. Jacob quickly snapped me out of it.

Jacob is the guy who came to replace me while I was on parental leave (after my students had not teacher for a month, but more on that later), and took another position for the remainder of the year. He is about 5' 8", has dirty-blond hair, blue-green eyes, and a beard. We don't really look alike, but to the kids, we're one in the same. Sometimes the students in my classes call me Ben (who is six-feet tall) or Neil (who has all of his hair and is on a leave of absence) or even Thomas (who is apparently 6'4" and weighs in at over 250 lb. and left before I arrived... oh yeah, and he's black). Thus, Jacob has been called James a lot. Our names even have the same root for crying out loud.

I was sitting in the staff room a couple of days ago when Jacob came in and said, "Hey, do you have a shirt that looks like this?"

"Uhh, a little." I replied.

"I've decided to shave," announced Jacob, "we're too similar."

"If you think it will help, go ahead."

Jacob, however, has his aquamarine or raspberry belt or something in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. That's the one where two guys try to make each other say "uncle" by dislocating each others' shoulders and twisting their tendons. Unfortunately for me, he and I are very different in this regard. I had made a New Year's resolution this year to fulfill my lifelong dream of becoming a ninja, but I decided not to go through with it after realizing that since the outlawing of the niqab, I would probably no longer be able to receive public services in Quebec without revealing my secret identity.

So, considering that my wrestling experience consists of giving my sister a DDT in the basement once when I was 13 and thought I could finally take her on after many years of abuse (we've gotten along swimmingly ever since) and watching the 62-year-old Cuban Assassin smack some other has been with a foreign object in the Polish Hall in Edmonton in 1998, I found myself completely outmatched. We dug in for the battle, and it was over before it started. My neck began throbbing almost immediately after Jacob tossed me out of the makeshift ring.

So, a few hours later, I stopped in to see my neighbour, who is a registered massage therapist. I explained the situation, and he told me to wait until Sunday, when he would see what he can do.

At 11:00 on Sunday, I went for my first mansage. I'm pretty comfortable with my sexuality. I'm no homophobe. I've lived with a gay couple for months. Moreover, my manseur isn't even gay. Still, getting touched on roughly 80% of your body by a male, former naturalist is still a bit weird. I didn't really know what to expect.

I lied down on his heated massage table in nothing but my underwear and waited. He touched my neck softly, and I had a George Costanza moment, thinking, "What if it moves?" However, I quickly laughed that off and, as he began to work on my feet, I promptly fell asleep.

My manseur woke me a couple of times to reposition me so he could work on my back, or my neck, or my arms, but really I was completely out of it. Just before I left to get the mansage, a friend was visiting our house, and she remarked, "I'd pay $50 just to go have a nap on that heated massage table." And that's what I did.

I remember the first time I got some sort of reflexology treatment. My girlfriend at the time gave me a gift certificate for what is called a Bowen treatment. It's a homeopathic procedure that follows the spirit of homeopathy pretty well. That is, less is more. I'm not exactly sure how swallowing sugar pills that may or may not contain one or more molecules of whatever is making you sick is supposed to help, but I can tell you something. I went into the place expecting a massage, and was left in a dark room for an hour, periodically being readjusted or cleansed or something. Not having paid for the treatment, I actually asked the Bowen Therapist for my hour back.

This time was not like that. My neighbour is a professional who takes pride in his work. Although I was comatose for the better part of an hour and a half, I awoke to aches and pains and at the same time felt refreshed. My first mansage was a success!

Noah Skis

2010-04-20T06:24:00.001-04:00

Evie Coos

2010-04-18T19:30:00.000-04:00

My tattoos

2010-04-17T09:04:00.008-04:00

Ever since Sophie and I decided to have another baby, I started to dream about getting two tattoos. One on each arm, mid-bicep, simply stating the name of each of my kids, in Inuktitut. In fact, I had had the idea to get Noah's name written in syllabics even before Evie became a twinkle in my eye.

I wanted to get Noah's name tattooed in Inuktitut on the back of my shoulder, thinking I would get our second baby's name on the other side. However, there was one small problem with that: my old tattoo. When I was eighteen, I went to Edmonton with a friend, determined to get a tattoo. Neither of us knew what we wanted, but we knew we wanted something. So, I sat down at "Raptors" tattoos shop, and flipped through a book. I didn't really see anything that was super inspiring. Clearly, the artists at the shop had talent, but their drawings meant very little to me. They didn't reflect who I was. Nevertheless, sitting in the shop, having told everyone I was going to get a a tattoo, I happened upon a simple sun which now situates itself in the middle of my back.

It hurt. A lot. I remember the tattoo artist saying, "If it hurts, wiggle your toes."

He touched me with his pen, and immediately, my toes started wiggling. Every time he crossed over my spine, the pain was almost intolerable. For the rest of the time, it was just interesting. 60 minutes later, I walked out in pain and $100 lighter. To add insult to injury, fifteen minutes after having been tattooed, I wondered,"now why the hell did I do that?" and "Well, at least it's on my back. I don't have to see it."

I spent years trying to explain why I got a tattoo. I made stuff up for a while. I began studying Latin American history, and tried out a story that it was a Mayan thing. That sounded pretty lame, so I ran through a few other possible significations, and settled eventually settled on the truth. When someone would ask, "What is that?" I would say, "my tattoo."

"Why did you get it?"

"I don't know."

"But what does it mean?"

"Nothing."

"Oh."

Awkward silence.

Thus, I couldn't put my new tattoos, the ones that mean so much to me, anywhere near my old one. I needed a clean break, and this time I wanted to enjoy them. So, when we found out Sophie was pregnant, I thought of getting them on my arms. For each and every baby name that we thought of, I almost immediately consulted my syllabary to see what kind of tattoo it would make.

After Evie was born, I went to Pointe St. Charles tattoo shop on Centre, and explained what I wanted to one of the tattoo artists, named William. He told me to bring him the symbols so he could draw them. We discussed the style. Sophie suggested that each symbol be composed of small dots, resembling traditional Inuit tattoos, and William said he could make them look like rocks. I mulled it over, for weeks, and finally decided to get simple, bold, black lines. I rang up William and asked him if he could still do it before we came back to Kangirsujuaq.

Unfortunately, he was going on holidays the next day, but found a compromise. He could get Tony to do my tattoo. I asked, "does Tony know what he's doing?"

"He's been doing it for more than 50 years."

So, I went into the shop and waited while William took the syllabary and drew the tattoo. Apparently, Tony wasn't into that part, and William said he was honored to tag team with Tony.
As he was drawing the tattoo he looked up at me and said, "Ce n'est pas juste n'importe qui qui te tattoo. Tu peut dire que il est un légend." (ie Tony is important).

So, I sat down and watched the old man tattoo me. He said almost nothing. I just watched as the knife/pen thing jabbed into my arm thousands and thousands of times. Tattoos are really violent, but the pain is moderate and somewhat enjoyable. I got up, and stood there awkwardly waiting for instructions on payment and care.

"Oh, you want to pay me." We discussed the price, and I walked out pleased.

I went home with William's words ringing in my head. I googled Tony, and found out that he is indeed a legend. He had a tattoo shop in New York in the '60s where he tattooed gangsters and the who's who. There are articles about Tony in tattoo magazines in which he laments the lack of traditional tattooing. Other artists emulate his work, and it appears that there was some truth to what William had said.

I love my tattoos. However, there's just one hitch. I was teaching last week and one of my students noticed my tattoo. He asked me to show it to him. "Ivi?" he said, confused. Another student got up, looked at me with disgust and shook her head, walked over to me, and drew a little circle over the first syllable. My mind drifted back to a conversation with Sophie which centred around this little circle, which would put the emphasis on the first syllable. I didn't think it was necessary.

I decided to write to Evie's saunik (namesake) to find out what I should do. She wrote back.

"You should change that soon. Otherwise, she'll be Ivi, which means "dirty hands and mouth." After you've eaten food, there is left over food on your face, usually blood, you say ivi. She is Iivi."

I'm debating what looks more ridiculous: a stupid qallunaat with "dirty hands" written on his arm, or a stupid qallunaat with a tattoo that says "dirty hands" and a little circle made with a black permanent marker above the first syllable.

I wonder what Tony will say when I tell him the story. Probably nothing. But at least this time I have a story.

My Writer's Block

2010-03-12T19:50:00.011-05:00

I haven't written much in a year. I've been struggling with this story. I've been thinking, do I really have the right to write about this? What are people in the village going to say if they read it? Should I include his real name? How will I synthesize the roller coaster of emotions that I went through a year ago? Am I ready? Indeed, even for me it still seems almost too raw to share.

About a year ago, I returned to Montreal and bid goodbye to the four students and my colleague with whom I had visited Italy and Greece. They went back to Kangiqsujuaq, and I prepared myself and family for a month-long cycling trip to Cuba. Sophie and I had purchased folding bicycles and a trailer for Noah, and we were on our way.

What a place to go cycling. The roads are in decent shape, and there is very little traffic. It was amazing. We spent the third week of our trip at an all-inclusive resort near Holguin for our friends Chris and Erin's wedding. All inclusives aren't really our thing, but we were able to hang out with friends we normally would not see outside of the country and it was fantastic. We were also able to do things that we weren't able to do in the rest of Cuba, like check our email. For those of you who received spam from my yahoo account about a year ago, this is when it happened. Alas, the spam was not the worst thing that happened as I sat at the internet kiosk in the hotel lobby.

I opened a two-week-old email from my then pregnant colleague Sayard which read:

James,

We have some horrible news. It would not be appropriate to share it through email.

P.S. My baby and your dog are fine.

I immediately found Sophie and asked a friend to look after Noah for a few minutes. I said nothing, but he could read my face like a manual. "No problem James," he said, "Take your time."

What could be so horrible that it could not be written down? As we were walkind back to our room, we started to try and guess what could have happened. I thought that there had been an ATV accident, a disgruntled student came into the school armed, a murder in the village, all kinds of ridiculous things. Then Sophie stumbled across the magic word: "suicide". Even though there hadn't been any suicides in our community for over 20 years, our hearts started pounding as we realized that this had to be it.

We started naming names as we were cutting through the jungle to get to our room faster.
The most likely suspects immediately came to mind. They were all troubled teenagers who obviously had problems at school. We were terrified.

I rang up Sayard when we arrived at the room.

"Hello," she answered.

"Hi Sayard, it's James," I said.

"How are you?" she said with a shaky voice.

"We're having a wonderful time. But I was reading my email and..." I could tell she was already crying.

"Here, talk to Neil." she muttered.

"Hi James," he said. And then he immediately ripped off the band-aid, "Attasi killed himself."

Sophie could read the desperation on my face. "WHAT!?" she said.

"It's Attasi." I said. As she began to scream, I dropped the phone. I didn't hang it up, just dropped it, and let my friend and colleague hear us disintegrate.

This was unthinkable. He was the most polite and one of the strongest students in the school, a teachers' favourite. All kinds of disgusting thoughts raced through my head. I began by thinking "what happened to that poor boy?" as my mind raced through potential situations that he had gone through since we had left.

I turned to thoughts of what I could have done to prevent Attasi from doing what he had done. I searched and searched the inside of my mind and heart and came up empty-handed. This made me even more upset.

Then, more sinister thoughts began to bubble up from the depths of my subconscious. "Why couldn't it have been ...?" I became nauseous.

My nausea snapped me out of it. I realized that the phone was still off the hook. I picked it up, and Neil was still there, struggling himself. "Neil," I said, "let me call you back."

After we had gathered ourselves together, we called him back and got the details, which I cannot share here.

We wanted to do something. Call his mother, his brothers, his friends, and share our condolences, but we quickly realized that this would give them little solace. Their Attasi had been in the ground for over two weeks already.

We felt so far away, so helpless, so unable to do anything. There we were, in the lap of luxury, and there was a poor little northern town suffering without us. Not that we could have done anything to make it any easier for the people in the village. In fact, I was overwhelmed by the feeling that I had missed it. It was my own suffering and grief that was worsened by the fact that I couldn't mourn and get closure with the collective in Kangirsujuaq. When I realized that it was thoughts of myself and my suffering that were overwhelming me, a dark shroud of good old guilt settled in for the long haul.

When I again set eyes on the mountains of Kangirsujuaq, more than a month had passed since that tragic day. I didn't know what to do. The first time I saw each of his brothers, I hugged them and told them I was sorry for their loss. It was all I was capable of doing. I realize that it probably meant little to a family that was (and still is) hurting so deeply, but I couldn't just pretend that nothing had happened. I missed him, and I wanted them to know it.

The teachers themselves were still in the midst of the grieving process. Some were angry, some were brought to tears upon seeing us and realizing that they were about to revisit the pain that they had begun bottling up a couple of months before. I tried very hard to soothe my own grief, get some closure, and ease the guilt I felt. However, a few short weeks later, we would all revisit our frustration and desperation. But that's another story.

Noah holds Evie

2010-02-15T20:27:00.001-05:00

For Grandparents' Eyes Only

2010-02-04T17:51:00.000-05:00

The rest of you will be bored.

2010-02-01T17:14:00.002-05:00

A New Addition

2010-02-01T16:14:00.001-05:00

At 4:00 on Sunday morning, Sophie's uterus woke her up. At 6:30 she woke me. By 8:30, we were at the hospital, and by 11:54, 9 lb. 12 oz. Evie Anna Vandenberg was born. Will add more later.

Laser Tag

2010-01-11T11:09:00.002-05:00

It's been months, I know. I've been procrastinating as much as I can. There's a post that I have to write one day, but I've found yet another way to avoid writing it. The last time you heard from me, I had my students on a ferry from Italy to Greece.

Our trip culminated with three days in Athens. By this point, we had been ushered into the Vatican vaults, had seen the Colusseum, visited Pompeii, Olympia and Epidaurus.

However, as far as one of my students was concerned, the best part of the trip so far was playing laser tag in Montreal. Because you cannot bank on getting out of Kangirsujuaq on the day you are scheduled to leave, we went to Montreal a couple of days early, and stayed in the Youth Hostel downtown. This alone was a pretty big deal for some of the kids. I was trying to show them that they could come down to Montreal and not stay at the Travelodge in Dorval where many Inuit stay when they come to Montreal. I wanted to show them what the city really had to offer. One of the students was adamant that we play laser tag. Begrudgingly, I acquiesced, and took the kids out. It didn't take very long for me to get into it. I must admit that laser tag is a whole lot of fun.

For one of the students, the experience couldn't be surpassed by the cultural and historical gems offered by Europe's ancient empires. At every turn, I asked him, "Is this better than laser tag?"
Without fail, he responded, "It's great, but no."

After getting our bearings in Athens and visiting some of the most important archaeological sites in all of Europe, I became comfortable with the city. It was easy. Athens is compact, busy, and easily walkable. One of my goals became taking the students out to see some live music. I consulted the tour guides and my guide book, and all signs pointed to Exarcheia.

Exarcheia is traditionally the leftist/activist neighbourhood of Athens. In the 1970s it was the centre of political activism and Marxist/anarchist thought. It was the site of the Polytechnic uprising in 1974, and parts of the 2008 riots as well. Indeed, while we were on the boat from Brindisi to Greece, I sat down in the café and began to watch the news. All that was being shown were scenes of chaos and fires and molotov cocktails and tear gas and rubber bullets and cops with their batons crashing into young adults' skulls. It made for good television, especially since I didn't understand any of the commentary. I asked a man what was going on. He told me there were riots happening in Exarcheia.

For all of its reputation, Exarcheia seems to be a neighbourhood which is going through an identity crisis. Although there were pallets burning in the central square as we approached, it was easy to spot the signs of gentrification. We sat at an chic café drinking coffee, and we could see that there was a crêperie on the other side of the plaza. Its sign read "αναρχία", which means "anarchy". I rolled my eyes... and then got a crêpe with nutella on it. Anarchy never tasted so delicious.

After coffee and crêpes, we went on the hunt for some live music. We passed a bar with a bunch of posters on the window. The posters were in Greek, so I asked a few locals who were sitting on the patio to translate for us. The locals turned out to be Irish, but they lived in the neighbourhood, and knew about a party that would have live music. We followed them to an empty lot, which was about to be converted into a community garden. There were about 100 people milling about, drinking, and talking to each other. We had missed the music, and as much as I would have liked to have stayed, it wasn't exactly an appropriate situation for the students. We moved on. We came to the border of the neighbourhood, and realized that there were police at every corner. I asked one of them if something was going to happen.

He replied, "You mean a riot? Probably."
"So... we should get out of here? Probably."

We scurried away, and just as it looked like we weren't going to succeed in finding the concert we wanted, we could hear some loud punk music coming from what looked like a three-storey house. We walked into it through a haze of smoke. The venue was really cool, and the band had just finished a set. Sayard, my colleague was about six and a half months pregnant at the time, and did not want to deprive her child of oxygen in this smoky venue, so she left with the girls. That left me alone with the guys.

The band began playing their second set, and I knew that the music would be right up the students' alley. Youth in Kangirsujuaq listen to almost exactly the same music as I did when I was their age. Metallica, Rage Against the Machine, Nirvana, and other angry stuff. The two boys who had come to Europe are in a band called Samati, which is also in the metal/punk genre.

I turned to the guys and asked them after the band had finished its first song, "Have you ever been to a concert before?"

Both answered "no."

After a few more songs, I asked them, "Is it better than laser tag?"

They stopped banging their heads, looked up, nodded, and went back to enjoying themselves.

The Firefighter

2009-12-05T15:06:00.000-05:00

Noah was a firefighter for Hallowe'en.

Finally

2009-12-03T21:55:00.001-05:00

Success!!! After weeks of trouble with YouTube, I figured out a new way to upload videos.

Here's Noah's first time on skates.

Bread

2009-10-22T08:42:00.002-04:00

Noah is very cute in this video, but for those of you who have never been treated to my wonderful/tone deaf singing voice, here's a little taste.

Noah's First Temper Tantrum

2009-10-22T07:39:00.002-04:00

I realize that this is a bit mean. Noah had his first big temper tantrum a couple of weeks ago, and Sophie made a video of it. This is about 15 minutes into the tantrum. It lasted about ten minutes more. You may notice the smirk on my face. However, you may also notice that the camera is shaking because Sophie is giggling.

Enjoy.

The Bus from Pompeii to Brindisi

2009-09-26T07:35:00.001-04:00

It's a long way from Pompeii to Brindisi. Hours and hours and hours. A bus ride this long with fifty-odd teenagers is bound to sprout a few problems. Especially if the teenagers come from different cultures.

We had to get up at 4:30 in the morning to part from our hotel in Rome (actually a two-hour bus ride from Rome, stupid EF Tours) and we were off to Pompeii. After spending a few hours at the archaeological site, one of the most important in the whole world, we were off on a six-hour bus ride to Brindisi, from where we caught an overnight ferry to Greece.

Our group of four students and two teachers had piggy-backed on a much larger tour. In the group were four people from North Carolina, and forty-odd grade 10 students from North Vancouver. Originally, I had thought that this would be one of the best parts of the trip. The students from Kangiqsujuaq would be able to meet people from other parts of North America. As it turned out, the two smaller groups found themselves swallowed up in the vast sea of North Vancouverites. At times, it led to some friction.

Near the end of the ride, I went to the back of the bus to tell my students to get their gear together, and one of them was almost in tears. I asked her what had happened, but she just looked at the floor and shrugged her shoulders. Another of my students complained, "Why do they have to talk so much? It's so annoying!" The students immediately surrounding her went quiet and looked away.

I pressed further and eventually one of them coughed up the apparent source of tension. "When [my student] was sleeping, that boy put an orange peel on her and took a picture." I felt confusion, shock and even a bit of rage building up inside me.

"This boy?" I pointed to a guilty-looking lad who sat on the seat in front of her.

"And his friend." she replied, gesturing with her eyebrows to the boy seated across the aisle.

I went back up to the front of the bus and spoke to the teacher who seemed to be in charge of the group. "I think we have a problem with some students."

The bus came to a stop. We had arrived at the port at Brindisi and were about to get off the bus and on to a boat. "Can we deal with this once we're aboard?" he asked.

"Certainly, I'll come see you at supper."

I joined the students to get a more complete picture of what was happening. They were all standing in a group, a few metres away from the bus, having a cigarette. One of the North Van students remarked, "do you have to smoke every time we stop? Sheesh."

I stared at the girl until she left, and then turned to the students. "I wonder what's up with her," I said.

One of the boys piped up, "they say something everytime we smoke."

* *

In our school, I can think of only a handful of secondary students who do not smoke. I've heard stories from other teachers who have seen pre-school aged children crawling around underneath the school looking for butts. At recess in the morning and afternoon, I often see children younger than ten come up to the smoking secondary students softly asking, "after you?"

Although I find it very sad, I don't try to fight this battle. No matter how many times a teacher tries to "catch" a student smoking and goes through the motions of calling the parents and notifying the school counselor, it is a losing battle.

I used to teach grade 7; the last year of primary. At the end of each year, I would have the students write in their journals what the most exciting thing would be about going from the primary side of the school to the secondary side. The most popular response was always that they could smoke at recess. It's like a rite of passage for these kids.

I also grew up in a small town in a different time and place. As junior high students in Northern Alberta, we all admired our older siblings who would stand in the church parking lot across the street from the school, smoking at recess while we played soccer. We wanted nothing more than to fast-forward life a few years and be them. We too waited our turn and then claimed top spot on the totem pole.

Not only are anti-smoking crusaders fighting peer-pressure, but addiction. Smoking is a self-destructive behaviour. Although the literature and knowledge that smoking is unhealthy took more time to get to Nunavik, everyone knows that it's bad for you. But to a smoker, that doesn't matter. I smoked from when I was in grade ten until Sophie became pregnant with Noah. There was a time when I had quit for three-and-a-half years, and thought I had kicked it. I was at a party where someone was smoking, and I thought, "that smells good. I can have one." I bought a pack the next day. Even now, when not faced with the absurdity of pre-teens puffing du Mauriers, which is to say whenever I go to Montreal, I struggle. Even if it's only a couple puffs, or for a couple of days, without fail I smoke.

* *
I had supper with the teacher that night. I explained what had happened with the orange peel and what was continually going on with the smoking situation.

"When we found out we would be traveling with first nations, James," he said to me, "we had a cultural sensitivity workshop for our students, where some of these things were explained to them. But you have to remember that these kids have been bombarded with anti-smoking literature since they were babies." There we were at a cultural crossroads. Juxtaposed with the four Inuit students who smoke were forty teens from possibly the least smoke friendly place on the planet.

To me, this was not the biggest gulf between the students. The smoking issue was just a manifestation of deeper differences. When I first asked my students what was going on, they did not object strongly to the orange peel nor the anti-smoking comments, or even the self-righteous attitude. "Why do they have to talk so much?" was the way one student chose to voice her concerns.

I thought at first that it was just by their simple presence that the forty kids from North Van were overpowering the four quiet Inuit. However, I came to discover that the more profound cultural difference lied in the fact that the kids from North Van felt a sense of entitlement. They didn't see the problem with telling people they didn't know what they should and shouldn't do. Inuit don't do should.

* *

"As far as the orange peel, James, What should I do? What would be a culturally appropriate response? Should he make an apology to her? Should he approach her at all?" It was clear that this teacher wanted his student to make up for what he had done.

I was dumbstruck. I had no idea what would make things right. In fact I knew nothing would.
"First, give me your word that your student will erase the photograph. Do not make him apologize. That would make her even more uncomfortable." I was grasping at straws. I came up with an idea and pretended I knew what I was talking about. "Every time he's in her presence, he should appear submissive. He shouldn't make eye contact. Perhaps he could stare at the floor."

"Consider it done."

The teacher came through. I sat down for a game of cards with my students a couple of hours later. The student who had taken my student's picture was in the lobby as well. "Are things allright? With the boy, I mean?" I asked.

"Well, I think he's a jerk. But it's pretty funny, he won't even look over here. Look at him," one replied.

We looked over and there he was, emasculated of his entitlement, staring at the floor. I felt bad for him. My students laughed. I scolded them, holding back a smile.

Kirikou

2009-09-25T13:51:00.000-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, Noah started to watch TV. Well, more specifically, Kirikou. It's a Belgian cartoon based on African legends. It's cute, and apparently, Noah loves it.

Jam

2009-09-12T17:31:00.002-04:00

My mother sent us 12 jars of Rhubarb-strawberry jam. Noah likes it.

On another note, I must eat a crow. Last week, I mentioned that I was at a loss as to how the village would keep its shiny new black-top clean. This week, two young men came up our street on their rollerblades carrying shop brooms. They proceeded to sweep the entire street. Now Noah has a fantastic place to use his new tricycle. I love public works.

Oh Yeah

2009-09-07T17:30:00.000-04:00

Sophie's Pregnant.

Tricycle

2009-09-06T10:39:00.002-04:00

This fall, the villagers decided to pave their streets. While I have some questions about why they didn't use the money on a new swimming pool, or at least to fix the old one, and more about how they will maintain the roads (street sweeper, potholes, etc.) with no equipment or operators, Sophie and I decided to profit from the new asphalt nonetheless. The day that they paved our street, Sophie asked her mother to find Noah a tricycle.

Here he is, just seconds after I assembled it,

and a few minutes later, outside.

Rome

2009-08-30T15:28:00.005-04:00

In March, another teacher and I took our four graduating students to Europe. In order to do so, we had to do two things: find some sort of link to Inuit culture; and raise loads of money.

We were in search of a European destination with a great deal of the "wow!" factor. Sayard, the other teacher, came across an itinerary for Rome and Athens. Perfect: the Acropolis and the Colosseum. Wow.

So, I googled "Inuit Rome", and found out that there is a large collection of Inuit artifacts in the Vatican vaults in Rome. Virtually no one had seen any of it for eighty years. It had come to Rome for two separate exhibitions, one in 1909, and one in 1926. Since then, it had been put back in the basement and basically lost until a real estate developer from Toronto heard about it at a dinner party. Since then, Ken Listera curator at the ROM has gone to see it, and the Vatican archaeological staff has begun to restore and document some of it.

We tried several different ways of asking about seeing this collection, and we were put into contact with Dr. Gabriella Massa, an Italo-Quebecoise archaeologist who had put together an exhibition of Inuit artifacts for the Torino Olympics. She asked the Vatican on our behalf, and, low and behold, they said yes. Dr. Massa then arranged for us to visit both her collection, now located at the Pigorini Muesum and the Vatican, who were actually in the process of cataloguing and restoring part of the Inuit collection we wanted to see.

After actually getting access to these artifacts, raising the money was simply a matter of asking the right organizations. The money began to flow more or less freely. On March 18th, were were on our way to Rome.

We arrived at about noon. We had decided to use EF Tours, an educational tour company, to organise our itinerary. In retrospect, I wish we hadn't. I spent much of the trip wishing we had more freedom to proceed at our own pace, but that's another story. Our tour director, Michael, took us to our first rendez-vous with Dr. Massa, at the Pigorini museum. We arrived, an the whole museum was dark. "I neglected to tell you," said Michael, "all of the museums in Rome are closed to the public on Mondays." Uhh, what?

We approached the front door of the museum nonetheless. After Michael spoke with the security guard for a few seconds, a woman came to the door. She was the curator. I spoke with her in English, the French, then finally, Spanish. She replied in Italian. We understood each other. A quick mention of Dr. Massa's name was all it took to open the doors. There were welcomes and introductions all around. We went upstairs and sat in a room, to which the curator brought pieces for us to peruse.

Dr. Massa shows us a few pieces, as well as the catalogue of pieces that she showed at the 2006 Olympics in Torino.

The archaeologists started to bombard the students by asking them what each piece was for. I don't know what they were expecting, but the students, who had spent the previous night on an airplane, most of them leaving Canada for the first time, were less than enthusiastic. I'm not sure that they would have been able to identify the pieces even at the best of times. To me, is seemed that the archaeologist from Pigorini, who had never met an inuk, did not understand, or at least not expect, the cultural disconnect between the youth of today and their grandparents.

Traditionally, much of Inuit children's leisure time would have been spent listening to the stories from their grandparents in a tent or igloo. Now, the children rarely speak with their grandparents. Much like in the South, Inuit youth enjoy modern forms of entertainment, like killing zombies or terrorists in some first-person shooter game.

The next day, we went to the vatican museums to look at the artifacts that we had planned to see all along. We arrived as it museum was opening; there were already thousands queuing up. We met Dr. Massa and jumped the queue.

We were ushered in to the museum complex, behind ropes, and through a maze of unopened and unfinished exhibits featuring artifacts from all over the world. Eventually, we arrived at a laboratory, where the spoils of a century-old pillage by Oblate priests throughout the Canadian Arctic were laid out on a table, just for us.

Our students were well-rested and ready. The Vatican staff was much more relaxed in their approach. However, eventually, the questions started to come out. At one point, an archeaologist showed our students a pile of polar bear teeth and asked them how to play this game. One of the students, who iis not themost traditional of the group, but certainly knows her accessories quickly rearranged the pieces and explained, "It's not a game. It's a neckalce."

As we pored over the artifacts, discussion led to to the reasons that so many things from all over the world are in the Vatican. Eventually, one of the students asked if the things could eventually be given back to the Inuit. I suggested to the archaeologists that first-peoples all over the world have been given the short end of the stick. There has been a one-way cultural exchange. As they say, all roads lead to Rome. In one of my proudest moments as a teacher, one of the students suggested that the Vatican give us something from Ancient Rome to put in our local museum. Unfortunately, they declined.

After an hour or so, we had exhausted the collection that they had prepared for us. We had read that the Vatican had a kayak in its vaults. I asked, "Can we see the kayak?"

After a short discussion in italian and some nodding heads, we were led once again through a maze of artifacts, and down a set of stairs where we came upon a thick set of stainless-steel doors. One of the archaeologists opened the doors, revelaing a room filled with rows of countless shelves filled with treasures from all over the globe. It was truly amazing. We walked to the back of the vault, where we were shown this:

The kayak is so old and deteriorted, they have had a hard time dating it, or even figuring out where it came from.

From there, Dr. Massa took us through the halls of the Vatican, leading us to the Sistine Chapel, St. Peter's. and out to the Piazza.

I cannot believe that visiting the Sistine Chapel was the second coolest thing we did at the vatican.

These pictures have been provided courtesy of Sayard Chartrand, my colleague on the trip. On the overnight flight, I decided to recharge the battery pack on Sophie's brand-new Canon Powershot. When I stuck the battery back in, the camera read "Internal problem" and shut down, leaving the zoom half out and the lens half-opened. It remained like that until we returned to Montreal to have it repaired.

A few minutes after taking this photo, we went to eat lunch at a restaurant, where Sayard promptly left her camera. It was the last photo she took in Rome. Luckily, very luckily, the staff at the restaurant later returned it to our hotel.

Back up

2009-08-24T19:25:00.003-04:00

So, two things are back up. We're back up North, and Hudson Strait is back up and running. Well, at least the videos of Noah. Last year we had a couple of rough patches at the school and I haven't yet been able to wrap a narrative around them.

In the meantime, here's Noah on our first day back in Nunavik. Our flight overshot Wakeham due to fog. We spent the night in Salluit, the next village. It's gorgeous.

Cheers,

James.

The Malecon in Havana

2009-05-10T16:45:00.002-04:00

We went cycling for a month in Cuba with Noah and his trusty trailer. He loved it, so did we. Here he is walking along the Malecon in Havana at sunset. What a city.

James.

Cereal

2009-04-15T06:07:00.001-04:00

Congratulations to Chris and Erin Hartley, who will be married on the beach in Guardalavaca, Cuba today.

Baking

2009-04-08T06:06:00.001-04:00

Greetings from Remedios, Cuba. Where every single citizen, young and old, can read the sign in the government shop that says that they can only get one bread roll each everyday.

In Which Noah Discovers his love of Potato and Rosemary Bread

2009-04-01T23:26:00.000-04:00

Now, where could he have possibly learned such behaviour?

Greetings from Havana. The weather is here. Wish you were beautiful.

James.

The Police Bear and the Day Care

2009-03-25T23:22:00.002-04:00

We leave for Cuba in three days. We'll be on our Bike Fridays.

Noah looks petrified. I'm afraid of polar bears (and pigs) too.

In which Noah shows us what he learned at day care

2009-03-18T19:43:00.003-04:00

He got better, so he went back to day care, where he learned a few tricks.

"Alla loo!" Means shut up. That's what he said. I felt like a paparazzo taking pictures of Alberto Tomba.

Noah is Sick II

2009-03-11T19:40:00.001-04:00

And this:

P.S. I'm in Rome.

Selfleshness

2009-03-09T21:11:00.000-04:00

Once in a while, I have a bright idea. Well, at least I like to think so.

A few years ago I invented something brilliant. I was on hold with some company, and I thought, "why in the hell do I have to sit here on hold? I should be able to hang up the telephone, and when the line is no longer busy, the company should call me back! I am their customer, damn it!"

I really thought I was on to something. I thought about how to market this system to telephone companies, I thought about how it should be set up. It was to be a service that companies could subscribe to, much like call waiting or call display, that their clients could enjoy. It would have been an innovation which would help to undo much of the customer disservice that seems to go on in modern-day life. Damn it, I would become a consumer champion. All I needed was someone who knew how to actually make it happen practically, and someone else to invest all of the time, money, and effort into making it a reality... because I was broke and had no idea what I was doing.

Of course, the technology already existed before I had thought of it. I was being sincere. I had thought of it independently, having never experienced it. What's up with that? Why hasn't this caught on?

Anyway, so, I've been spouting out the word "selfleshness" for months now. A mixture of selfishness and selflessness, it infects many of us who come up North.

In my first year, someone said to me that people go up North for three reasons: the 3 Ms: Money, Missionary, or Socially Maladjusted.

For the most part (with some notable exceptions) I think people who head up North have all of their marbles in a row, and are in the North following a combination of the first two Ms. I certainly have my issues with being a qalunaat imperialist sometimes, and think I can at least not do any more damage to the culture in which I am immersed, and I also realize that my job affords me a certain standard of living that would not be possible if I taught in the South.

The thing is, that our jobs are really hard. This year, teaching secondary, I had almost forgotten that. However, over the last few months, Sophie has been replacing a teacher who left in December, herself consumed by the heartbreak and isolation of the job. Each day, as I walked through the door of the house, Sophie would already be in mid-sentence releasing the incredible stress of taking care of truly tragic children for five hours a day. I did the same thing to her for two years, and I cavalierly used my blog as a catharsis one too many times.

Some teachers lose the mission and focus on the money. They begin to forget about what they are doing day to day and focus on a future goal: a house, a retirement, something. They stop living their lives and start postponing it. They start talking about what they are going to do after the North.

Others who end up trying to do this for too long seem to lose perspective about what they are doing. They tend to forget about the money and begin to focus on the mission. Their work becomes all consuming and they find themselves at the school until all hours of the night, taking students into their homes, trying to save somebody. In a way, it's truly admirable, but in other ways it's naive to think that they are doing more than providing band-aids for wounds that run deep through the society.

Regardless, even if teachers who become consumed by the mission put in all of the extra effort, it at least doesn't do any harm. Well, it doesn't until said teachers start to feel entitled because they put in all of the extras. I've heard teachers say things like, "I'm just so tired of giving," without remembering just how much they are taking too. Once the giving ceases to feel good (and even this is just as often assuaging one's own guilt) and becomes a chore, they can begin to feel like they should be entitled to more. Hence, selfleshness. They give because they want to feel entitled to more, and to assuage their own guilt and complicity in the system that continues its colonialism in the North.

Alas, before composing this, I googled "selfeshness" and got a billion hits. The first few were interesting and made me hopeful. They focussed more on the "flesh" of the matter. However, when it came down to it, I found a plethora of sites which more or less used my new word in the same way.

Nevertheless, I've made it my goal to not become infected by selfleshness and to remain completely cognizant of the fact that I get a lot out of teaching up North. For instance, this year I chose a job that ended in March so Sophie, Noah and I could go spend a month in Cuba. I also feel extremely lucky that we were able to organize a trip to Rome and Athens with really little difficulty and a fraction of the work it would have taken in the South. I also feel fortunate to be able to go back up for six weeks at then end of this year to replace someone who will go on maternity leave.

Ultimately, however, I, and especially Sophie, have been very nearly consumed by the guilt of leaving vacant the position for which Sophie had been replacing for the last two months. We had said at the end of last year that we were coming back to Wakeham because we would be able to leave after six months. Sophie didn't take a full-time job this year primarily to take care of Noah, but also because we were going to leave early.

We try to remember that Sophie did the school a favour, by replacing a teacher who was too sick to come back, and giving the kids the benefit of her presence and expertise for two months while the school waited for the news about the teacher's leave, and then while they searched for someone to replace her long-term. It nearly tore Sophie apart.

In the end, we have left. We'll be back up for the months of May and June. After that we don't know.

So far, we haven't been consumed by the mission, and we have yet to focus entirely on the money. In fact, it still feels good to teach the kids. A few weeks ago, Sophie was speaking to an older woman in the village about a nurse who was leaving after ten years. The woman said that "qalunnaat leave when they've taken enough."

I think I'm comfortable with that perspective. I hope I am. It's better than leaving when I become "tired of giving".

When Noah Was Sick

2009-03-04T19:35:00.002-05:00

Over the next few weeks, some videos will post themselves. Featured in them is Noah's increasingly fluent Inuktitut.

A couple of weeks ago, Noah was very ill. We had to stay home with him and all he did was sleep all day... and do heartbreaking stuff like this:

"Auka" means no.

Anyone Interested?

2009-02-21T12:37:00.002-05:00

Our fourth/fifth grade French second language teacher has gone on a medical leave. Anyone need a job for the next four months?

Leave a comment with your contact information.

The Vatican Vaults

2009-02-14T13:48:00.003-05:00

Sophie calls me lucky. I call it intelligent, hard work.

One of my colleagues approached me in September to see if I could help her organise a graduation trip for our Secondary V students. She has done the bulk of the work, but I agreed to help them raise funds. Organizing a graduation trip in Nunavik is (at least I think) a great deal different than doing the same thing in the South. First of all, we have only four graduates. Second, the parents here are, as a rule, not affluent enough to afford to fork over the three grand it takes to send a kid even as far as Montreal. So, we have had to raise funds to get these kids to Europe.

Raising funds is not exactly the same thing as it is in the South either. When I was a kid in High Prairie, AB, the best way to raise funds was to work a bingo. Everyday there would be hundreds of people who would go to the "Bingo Barn" to gamble away their day's earnings. The Bingo Barn was disgusting. The air inside was always blue and smelled of foul, stale, Number 7s. It was (is?) the biggest regular social event in town. I remember working one such bingo for our local bantams hockey team. I must have been 15 or 16. I was walking around with a cart selling coffees, and a man asked me for a light.

At the time I didn't smoke, or at least I didn't have a light, so I asked Kelly, my friend and coffee cart partner, if he had one. He handed me the lighter and I insisted on holding it while the man leaned over to light his smoke. I flicked the lighter a few times. Sparks, nothing more. Determined, the man leaned in closer, and just as determined, I struck the flint again. The flame roared to life, eight inches high, singeing the poor man's eyelashes and eyebrows and leaving little but the smell of confusion and burned hair all around.

"Uhh, I'm sorry." I squeaked out.
"No problem," the man replied, "wasn't the first time, won't be the last." I shit you not. That's what he said.

I digress. We don't have a Bingo Barn in Kangirsujuaq, but we do have motivated students. Because of the exorbitant cost of airfare, we have had to raise a great deal more than a school in the South would have to do. Before Christmas, we held several fundraisers from which we raised close to $9000, a mere $20,000 short of our goal. To make up the difference, we have solicited numerous governmental programs and industrial organizations. With less than three weeks left to go, we have promises of funding, but very few cheques have actually arrived. It's beginning to become a point of stress.

Coupled with the stresses over the money is the excitement of actually going on the trip. I have traveled substantially in the Americas over the past 15 years, but I haven't been to the other side of the pond since I was myself in high school. Our itinerary includes leaving March 6th to Montreal, where we will spend two days before flying out to Rome. After a couple days in Rome, we will head out to Pompeii and on to Greece via an overnight ferry. In Greece, we will spend some time traveling around before ending in Athens and flying back to Montreal on the 16th, where I will take my leave of the students. They will come back up, and I will not, having no position to return to (more on this another time).

In order to justify the expensive price-tag, and extended absence of our graduating students from school, we had to make the trip a cultural as well as educational and recreational trip. Months ago, I came across this story from a few years ago about a great collection of Inuit artifacts in the Vatican vaults. They had been brought to Vatican City by missionaries at the turn of the 20th century for a large exhibition. They have been sitting in the vaults in crates and boxes ever since. Despite the fact that the only non-Vatican staff to have seen these artifacts for decades was an ROM curator, we decided to ask if we could go see it. After all, how often do Inuit go to Rome?

Not expecting anyone to take us seriously, I had each of the students email someone who might be able to help: the curator at the Vatican, the curator at ROM who has seen the collection, and Avataq, the cultural arm of the regional government. The latter put us in touch with an Italian archaeologist who enthusiastically took up our cause. Dr. Gabriella Massa, it turns out, put on an exhibition of ancient Inuit artifacts for the Turino Olympics. Her collection lies in the Museo Pigorini in Rome, and she has invited us to see it. On top of that, she asked the curator of the Musei Vaticani for special pemission to let us go into the vaults and see the collection that only one other Canadian has ever laid eyes on.

Unbelievably, they said yes. It turns out that part of the collection is being restored, and we will get to see it.

Sophie says I'm lucky. Sarcastically, she asks me, "Why did you set your sights so low? Why don't you try to meet the pope?"

Maybe I'll get the kids to write more emails this week.

Sliding

2009-02-11T12:26:00.001-05:00

Noah Feeds Himself

2009-02-10T19:58:00.002-05:00

Every time I post something to YouTube, I have to give a description and category and the like, so people searching YouTube can find it. There are plenty of videos entitled "Noah Feeds Himself". This one is a little different than most of the babies feeding themselves.

James.

Heart Attack

2009-02-01T09:03:00.006-05:00

When Noah was a newborn, I would always think he was dead. No shit.

He would be napping away, and I'd have to check if he was breathing. Not all the time, you understand, just every thirty seconds or so. He was just so tiny and fragile. I'm sure all parents out there can understand. Of course, you get used to everything, and start to understand that it doesn't work like that, no matter what the baby safety/parent paranoia industrial complex would like you to believe.

Every once in a while however, Noah will give me a heart attack. One of those things happened a little more than a week ago. Moms and dads out there, especially with little ones, you might want to stop reading here, lest you go into cardiac arrest.

Noah went for his first snowmobile ride outside of the amautik. It occurred without incident. He got all dressed up in his winter gear and sat on the seat between Sophie and I while we putted around in the tundra. We went down to the co-op to pay for the gas which we then went to the gas plant to get.

After Sophie took her turn driving excruciatingly slowly down to the bay and back, we returned home, much to the chagrin of our little boy. He was some kind of upset when we got off the snowmobile. He writhed and screamed and kicked, and we brought him in the house just the same. After undressing his many layers, we left him by the door screaming, and trying to pry the door open by stuffing his fingers into the space between the door and the frame. Alas, he couldn't wrench the door free, and finally he gave up. It was about 11:30 a.m., so I thought about making lunch, but Noah sat down with his mom and promptly fell asleep without eating.

He took a three hour nap and awoke as fresh as ever. He was happy, laughing and energetic, but we noticed that he had a bit of a temperature. "Maybe it was a little cold for him," Sophie thought out loud. After living through weeks of sub -25C weather, a crisp -18C with a lot of sun and no wind feels wonderful on the face.

After supper, he began to look tired and feel warmer. Sophie gave him a bath. Normally, it is his favourite playground, but he just sat there shivering. At around seven o'clock, he fell asleep again. We thought that to be early, so we put him in his stroller, where he usually naps, instead of bringing him to his bed.

We could hear him fussing in the stroller, which is normal for a feverish, tired baby, but then his fussing became erratic, and he stopped whining. Sophie and I looked at each other and I bolted for the stroller. I came around the corner and saw Noah's eyes rolled in the back of his head. He was convulsing uncontrollably and foaming at the mouth. "He's having a seizure! He's not breathing! Call Nursing!" I yelled as I pulled him out of the stroller, his arms and legs flailing away.

Sophie called the emergency number for the nursing station. Our friend picked up the phone, and Sophie explained what was going on. A million scenarios raced through my head, most of them including either permanent brain damage or burying my baby in the graveyard at the foot of the mountain. Sophie, for her part, was languishing in guilt over having sent Noah to daycare full time for what imminently appeared to be the last week of his life. After what seemed like a month, Noah took one deep breath and started crying.

"That's better." I said, relieved, as a tear rolled down my own cheek.

Apparently, such febrile convulsions are totally normal.

"These seizures are brief, self-limiting, and rarely harm baby, but may leave parents trembling."

So writes Dr. William Sears. Indeed Bill, indeed. Just recalling the incident makes my heart skip a beat.

Difference

2009-01-11T09:27:00.008-05:00

I

In the South, You don't say hello or lift your eyebrows or somehow otherwise acknowledge the existence of everyone you see. It would be crazy, overwhelming, impossible.

Michael Pollan argues that what humans do all day is forget. That is our primary cognitive function. To prove his point in A Botany of Desire, he describes all of the sensory stimulation he experiences while sitting at his desk. His description of everything he sees, hears, smells, feels, and tastes is truly overwhelming and poignant.

One of the things I liked immediately when moving up here was that things were seemingly a lot less busy. There wasn't all of the hustle and bustle of the big and small cities that I had lived in for the past decade. There was no advertising (I didn't have TV), no traffic, no crowds. It appeared that there was less visual stimulation.

Over the past two and a half years, I've started to notice more nuances in the way the wind makes the power lines which are connected to my house sway back and forth. I can more or less accurately judge the windspeed by looking at them swing or at the municipal flag pole waving away. The sky and the clouds have begun to reveal their many patterns and layers and sophistications, and I am coming to intimately know each of the three-hundred sixty degrees of horizon surrounding me. It appears that I have begun to focus more on the natural beauty that surrounds me, and I'm making it up by ignoring the podcasts infiltrating my consciousness through my always connected, if somewhat isolated, iLife.

I have begun to think that there is not less stimulation up here, just less of it is man made.

II

Up here, Noah is like a rock star. Everyone knows his name and calls it out emphatically virtually every time they see him. I love the way the Inuit gravitate towards babies. It doesn't matter if it is a five-year-old girl, or a macho forty-year-old hunter. When someone drives by us on a Honda, it's routine to hear them yell out, "Noah Noah!" and wave. Noah has become accustomed to the attention. He smiles and waves back either from inside his stroller or from on his mom's back. Lately, he has gotten used to random people running up to him, full speed, and scooping him up off the ground, dousing him with kisses and love.

The South is a less personal place. At Christmas it almost seemed as if Noah was waiting for a show of public affection towards him. Sure, some people may give a "beau bébé" here and there, but it pales in comparison to his deification up here, where babies are gods.

Oh, I've been out on the town in Montreal and had people stop to comment on the beauty of something that was walking next to me. But it was not Noah. A man has actually made an illegal u-turn in the street just to stop me and say, "Il est beau en tabernacle!" But the man referred not to my son.

Just this past Christmas, I was waiting outside a shop on Ave. Mont Royal. A man walked past me, turned around, bent over, reached out his hand and said, "Il est vraiment beau". Of course, Noah was not the focus of the man's affection. The man was infatuated with Iggaak.

In Montreal, it's Iggaak, who is the rock star.

Iqiana

2008-12-16T13:12:00.002-05:00

Sometimes, I am almost brought to tears in my class. Thursday morning was one of those times. Sophie and I team-teach a split class, and lately, the attendance has become abysmal, especially in the morning. On this particular day, I had 3 students out of seven in my half of the class. They were all late. Sophie had one, who had been on time, but hadn't slept a wink the night before, and thus collapsed on his desk at the stroke of nine.

My students were groggy too. Too groggy to learn about linear relations and proportions. As two of the students slept, the third was hard at work, trying to differentiate between a partial variation and proportional relation. It is a simple matter of finding patterns and analyzing them. For instance, we had a table that looked like this:

x y
1 2
2 4
3 6
4 a
5 10

The student had to figure out 1) what a is, and 2) if the ratio of variations was proportional.
I asked her to complete the table.

"I can't," she said.

"Think about it this way," I replied, "Just tell me what comes next. 2, 4, 6..."

"Seven!"

"No."

"Nine!" She was just guessing. She may as well have said 1000.

"No."

She began to laugh. I wanted to cry. "At least she's got a sense of humour about it," I thought to myself. I looked at the other kids who had made it to class and realised that they were completely disinterested. More than half of them hadn't even bothered to show up.

It began to sink in. I was teaching to the weakest student in the class. It's not her fault at all. She has bounced around from school to school, some in much worse shape than ours, and so she has big holes in her education. However, I began to realise that perhaps my unwillingness to leave this student behind may have been one reason the other kids were completely not engaged in the class. Were they all thinking, "Can we please get on with this shit?"

One of the Inuttitut words that every teacher in Nunavik (I assume) has heard a multitude of times is iqiana. It means, for lack of a better explanation, boring. I think it can be literally translated as "it makes me sleep", but I could be wrong. Students use it for myriad reasons. It means "too hard" or "too easy" or "I'm tired" or "help" and occasionally, it even means "boring". Although you could have heard a pin drop in my class, the word rang clearly in my head. My students were all saying "iqiana".

It seems to me to be a catch 22. This is the only student who comes everyday and tries to do all of her work. Others sort of traipse in when they want to and leave at their leisure, gracing us ever so often with their presence and, here's the problem, still passing! Because I was moving so slowly, they could get by, some of them with really decent grades, by showing up a couple of times a week.

It leaves me in somewhat of a conundrum. I can continue as is, and risk losing the students who are capable of doing well in the class, while concentrating my efforts on a student who is as unlikely to pass the class as she is hard-working and well-intentioned. Or, I could push the others in hopes that they respond well to the challenge.

I think under most circumstances, this is a slam-dunk. Go after the rest of the class, and differentiate for the one who is slow. Here, however, differentiating a class is sure to obliterate what is left of students' already depressingly low levels of self-esteem. Moreover, I don't know if I have just become jaded, but I harbour some doubt as to whether the rest of the kids will be up to the challenge.

That's one thing about teachers. For all of our supposed altruism, we're often very self-centred. Chances are, I'm probably not that big of a factor in my students' attendance. Indeed, several of these students are repeating this class precisely because they didn't attend when another teacher taught the class. Although this may allow me to escape some of the blame for my students' boredom, it raises much larger questions about what teachers and Faculties and Ministries of Education are doing more generally. After all, it's not just my class that is half-full of sleeping students. Then again, my class is half-full of sleeping students. I digress.

After Christmas, I'm going to try to push them. Maybe the students will surprise me and start to come back. Perhaps the one who comes will find herself capable of keeping up. I hope so.

Making up for the past few weeks

2008-12-08T18:25:00.002-05:00

Sorry about the sound quality.

This has been his favourite thing to do for more than a month. He'll drag a chair from the dining room, and sometimes even bring a preferred dish or two to wash. We've been letting him do it, and basically everything else he wants, except play with the oven and stove. Normally, we let him play with the microwave after unplugging it. Last week, I was doing dishes, and Noah began dragging a chair over to the kitchen. I thought little of it. He stopped at the microwave. I didn't really give it a second thought. I heard him playing with the buttons, and slowly but surely, the wheels began to turn in my head. Before I was able to make it over to the microwave, Noah had indeed figured out precisely how to use it. I got there one second too late; one second after the light and familiar hum of the fan had come on; one second after he microwaved the telephone.

In case you were wondering, it only takes one second to cook a cordless phone.

A Little Harsh?

2008-11-30T13:17:00.007-05:00

When you come from another province and start teaching in Quebec, you have to do a few things to earn your full citizenship (just as a teacher, for now). One of these things is to complete a probationary period overseen by your school principal. This includes a few meetings, creating a portfolio, and two observations. A probationary teacher is assessed on 120 different criteria which fall under 12 competencies. Just as Quebec moves towards a more holistic philosophy towards teaching students, the education ministry has made evaluation a more convoluted and confusing process, even for teachers.

Last year, I finished my probation, and passed my evaluations, basically with flying colours. My principal had very few criticisms of my teaching, and, having never taught in a primary class, I'm sure she felt a little under-qualified to do so (this is speculation). However, she mentioned that sometimes, I can be "a little harsh" with my students. I prefer to say that I treat them like adults, and am very direct with them. Nevertheless, I'm a sensitive guy, so I've spent a lot of time reflecting on her comment (I've of course ignored all of the good things she had to say).

This past week, we had parent-teacher interviews. The parents of one of my students came into my classroom. The father shot a look at his wife when they entered and she let him pass, then turned, and shut the door. The student is not the strongest in the school, so I thought that perhaps they were anticipating hearing bad comments from me and didn't want anyone to hear. This was not the case.

They sat down, and I broke down their daughter's grades for them. When I was finished, I said that she was, for the most part, a polite and enjoyable student to teach, to which the father responded, "Look, James, I know my daughter can be a smart mouth, and that she's very sensitive. But one time this fall, she came home during school hours and just shut her door. That wasn't like her to be missing school (very true), so I went in and asked her what happened. She told me that there was this time when you thought she swore at you, when she didn't (also true), and ever since then you've been treating her differently. I asked her to give me an example, and she told me that once she was in your class when you were watching a video and you told her that she was talking to much and that if she didn't be quiet you were going to kick her out of school."

"Now, I support everyone who comes up here, nurses, construction workers, teachers, and police, but I can't support someone who says they can kick my daughter out of school."

"Let me tell you what I remember," I replied. "Your daughter was speaking in my class. I warned her, and she continued, so I said 'You have a choice, you can be quiet, or leave.' She left. I followed her into the hall and told her that leaving was just like skipping, and that she would have a detention if she walked out. She kept going."

"I'm not here to kick anyone out of school. That's not part of my job, and I'm also not here to make students feel bad. But, they're not allowed to talk out of turn in my class."

That night, after the parents left, I began thinking to myself. I had been completely caught off guard by the father's concerns. I thought that the student and I had a pretty enjoyable relationship. The principal's remarks began to resonate in my head. Perhaps I had been "a little harsh" with her.

What really got to me was the last thing he said. "Look, I support everyone who comes up here but..." This was really a slap in the face. It was as if he said "I like everyone who comes her, but not you, qalunaat." I thought about it increasingly throughout the evening, and brought my concerns up to Sophie.

She basically laughed it off and said that the student had arrived home in the middle of the day when she was supposed to be at school, only to find her dad there asking her tough questions. She made up the best story she could.

My mind was not at ease. A few weeks ago, we had a guest who happened to have been in the school when there had been a very loud and embarrassing misunderstanding between the principal and a parent. He is married to an Inuk, and has been around the schools in Nunavik a long time, and he cautioned that we have to constantly remember that the Inuit speak English as their second or third language. "They speak less English than we think they do," he had warned me.

Perhaps the message had been lost in translation. Maybe she thought I had threatened to kick her out of school. Maybe I was being "a little harsh" with her. Despite Sophie's always sound advice, I went to school the next morning intent on being a little more sensitive to this girl's situation.

She gets one-on-one help during one of the classes, and I noticed that she had forgotten her workbook. So, after getting the rest of the class in motion, I brought her book down to her. At recess, she came into class as I was speaking to another teacher and handed me her workbook. I smiled, and she opened her mouth. I thought she was going to say "thank you". Instead, she burped in my face. I could tell that she hadn't really meant to, and she looked a little embarrassed. Yet, she didn't turn away, or try to stop her extended belch. I laughed.

A Visitor

2008-11-15T07:39:00.001-05:00

Because there is not very much room at the overpriced hotels in town, we tend to get visitors every year. What normally happens is the principal of the school will get a call from some company, government agency, or from the school board asking if any of the teachers will house someone for a couple of days. The principal then either takes the visitor in, or farms him/her out to one of the teachers. The teachers are compensated more than adequately for their troubles.

We have housed engineers, surveyors, nutritionists, other teachers, psychologists, students, and so on. We enjoy doing so not only for the money, but because we basically lack unfamiliar stimulation, and it's nice to have someone new to talk to. We've certainly had some interesting guests in our house. Some of them we've contacted after going South, and will continue to do so even after we've left for good. This September, we had a remarkable visit from a wonderful man.

A few days after the MSO concert in Kangiqsujuaq, we received a telephone call from a man in Kuujjuaq. Sophie spoke briefly with him, and then hung up the phone. She asked me if we wanted to have a visitor in our house. My eyes turned into those reels from slot machines, and both stopped on the $$ sign. A bell went off.

"Uhh, yeah."

She then explained what she meant. There was an artist in Kuujjuaq who was doing portraits of Inuit in Nunavik, and wanted to visit a smaller village than Kuujjuaq. He could not afford to stay at the hotel (at $260/night), and he had run into one of our friends who happened to be in Kuujjuaq working as the photographer on the OSM Nunavik tour.

Sophie had asked him if he had encountered any suspicion from the people in Kuujjuaq.

"No," he replied. "I am very lucky. When people see my portraits, they think I'm a magician."

At first, to tell you the truth, I thought he was being a bit pretentious, but after I met him, I knew that he was genuine.

The next day, he arrived on the plane and hitched a ride into the village. That's when we met Pierre Lussier. A bearded man in his early sixties, Pierre greeted us with a smile as we helped him bring his gear into the house.

The day after he arrived, Sophie began to introduce him to the people at the school. He made a couple of portraits of people who worked there and spoke to the staff. One of the teachers asked him, "How long do you plan to stay?"

"Oh, not long," he replied. "Only about ten days."

"TEN DAYS?" I thought to myself when I heard about this. "Wow, that's a long time to have someone in your house. I think I'll tell him that he can't stay ten days."

But I didn't. Pierre was nothing but a pleasant guest. He did the dishes, babysat Noah, and even washed the f*&#ing floor! In the evenings, we had dinner amongst stimulating conversation, mostly about Pierre. He's a modest man; it was difficult to get stories out of him, but we insisted. He told us about when he moved with his wife and four daughters to Italy, when he met Emilda Marcos, and when he went to Vietnam as a tourist during the Vietnam War.

During the day, he drew portraits of elders, adults, and children in town. He also found the time to draw a couple of landscapes. Sophie worked tirelessly as his agent, finding people for him to draw, and taking photographs of his portraits to give to the models. He did encounter some suspicion from elders and others, but for the most part, people were very receptive. Indeed, when even one of the most cautious saw the finished product, her suspicions melted away, and she let Pierre work his magic. Here is a sample:

The second night that Pierre was here, I looked at one of his drawings, and my own suspicions melted away as well. I spoke with Pierre, and he said that he didn't know how he could repay us for our hospitality. I said I had an idea.

A little over a week later, we brought Pierre to the airport, and as he left, we all had tears in our eyes.

James.

Hallowe'en

2008-11-02T10:17:00.007-05:00

I remember going around from house to house as a child on October 31st in Northern Alberta. More than a few times, the first real snow of the year came down that night, and it was often bitterly cold. Memory however, is a funny thing, and now it seems that it was the same every year. We would dress up in our costumes and either try to put our winter clothes over top of our disguise and hope for the neighbourhood's sympathy, or comically stretch our costumes to fit over our ski pants and coats.

Of all of the places we visited year after year, the dentist, Dr. Cysz's house, was easily the most memorable. We would often go there first to make sure we got a full-size Oh Henry! bar each. Even then, we knew what he was doing was pretty evil and crazy, but we didn't care.

Just as memorable was going home with my sister, taking our pillowcases and emptying our booty out onto the floor. I would meticulously divide it up into different categories, then plan to ration it until Christmas, shortly before eating a quarter of my ration and making myself nauseous. Amongst all of the caramels, Twizzlers, chocolate and rockets, without fail there would be something that would stand out: a lonely apple. I could never place who gave us the apple; after all an apple is no Oh Henry!. "Assholes," I remember thinking.

This year, I became that asshole. We gave out apples to each of the hundred or so kids who came to our door. So far, no one has thrown one back at our house (knock on wood). It's not that I'm against the tradition of giving sweets to kids once a year. I don't want to rob any child of her special night where she can gorge herself on chocolate and sugar that she collected herself. The problem is sadly, that apples are much more special here than candy. Kids' diet here, by and large, is horrible. And they have the teeth to show it. Not a week goes by that at least a few of my students has to leave my class because of a toothache.

"James, can I go, and take my test tomorrow?"
"Why?"
"I have a toothache. How would you like to take a test with a toothache?"
Touché.

I have many students who have already lost some of their teeth. It is absolutely and completely depressing. Imagine how losing two or three of your front teeth would affect your self-esteem?

When I came back this year, I ran into one of my local friends. A guy of about forty years, he is a real Inuk. Hunts, fishes, races dog sleds, the whole deal. He stopped me on the side of the road the day after I arrived, and offered me his hand, welcoming me back to Kangiqsujuaq.

"Hi, How was your summer?" I asked.
"Good, but I lost a tooth." He replied, hiding his smile with his lips. This normally confident man's smile was one of his defining features, and now he struggled to hide his shame.

Now, imagine a thirteen-year-old.

So, we decided to give apples. Next year, if we are here again, we'll make something home made, like cookies or muffins, and dole them out at Hallowe'en. Although the situation with the diet and teeth of the kids is pretty depressing, it is possible to give out home-made treats at Hallowe'en. In the South, you would be hard-pressed to find one parent (I could be wrong) would let his kids eat something made by someone else. Sadly, I think most people would rather give their kids the guaranteed poison that comes in nice, commercial wrappers than expose their kids to the infinitesimal risk that that urban myth of a razor blade in an apple or poisoned cookies might actually come true. Sometimes city life can be depressing too.

Anyway, the trick-or-treating was over promptly at seven o'clock (It's dark at four). Sophie and I got Noah into his costume, and we headed to the Hallowe'en concert, a fundraiser for the Secondary V trip to Scotland, or Italy and Greece (we're not exactly sure yet). We walked up to the Qaggiq (the local gym) and entered to hear someone screaming "DIE!!! DIE!!!"

It was just the band. We took off our shoes and added them to the huge pile of sneakers and boots that accompanies any function at the Qaggiq. Everyone who enters must take off their shoes and leave them in a very small, not very well-lit entrance. It makes for some interesting chaos at the end of every event.

The band who played, named Samati (I don't know what that means) is comprised of some of the Secondary V students who are raising money for the trip. It was their first show, they have no drummer, and the whole ensemble doesn't yet know all of the songs, but they had the courage to get up in front of basically everyone they know, and play Rage Against the Machine and Metallica songs in their second or third language.

The secondary five kids have been surprisingly motivated about this trip. I was originally very hesitant about helping them with their project. Sayard, one of the other secondary teachers at the school, approached me in late-August or early-September and asked me if I wanted to be part of the project. I was skeptical. In the South, such a trip would involve a lot of organisation by the teachers (right mom?), some fundraising, and a large payment offered up by the parents.

Here, the parents are not expected to pay for their kids' travel (although we did get one fifteen hundred dollar donation). There are government organisations and companies who often come to the aid of the students. I wanted to make sure that she and I would not be the ones doing all of the work organising and fundraising while the students did nothing.

We tested them with a bake sale. After one minor slip, the kids pulled it off. Then they pulled off another. Next, the residence director offered to do a couple of take-out meals, at which the students worked very hard. The two nights pulled in about $1400 (there is no restaurant here, so people jump at the chance to eat someone else's cooking). Finally, the kids organised and executed the concert which involved the music, games, an iPod raffle, and a snack bar. It was impressive. All told, the concert brought in another $1400. They were all on fire, and they are full of other ideas. I've decided that it's time I hold up my end of the bargain and write some letters asking the government agencies and companies to kick in some coin.

As Sophie, Noah and I were leaving, one of the students was confronting her drunk ex-boyfriend at the door. She wants to be a cop. She showed her skills in dealing with a drunken idiot. I stood there and supported her while she took whatever he was dishing out in Inuttitut. It did not sound pleasant.

He then looked over at me and asked, "What the fuck are you staring at?"
"Excuse me?"
"What's your fucking problem?"
"Well, you're drunk and you should leave."
" I was just talking to her."
"Yeah, but this is her fundraiser and she wants you to leave."
"Okay, why don't you fucking come outside then?!"

Yeah, right, just let me look for my shoes.
He left without further incident.

James.

Noah's Video Picks

2008-11-02T10:00:00.000-05:00

Quartaq for the weekend

2008-10-25T22:21:00.008-04:00

On Thanksgiving weekend, Sophie and I went to Quartaq to visit some friends who used to live here. J-F was a teacher in Wakeham Bay last year and has become the principal in Quartaq. I had won the Arsaniq School hockey pool last year, and, along with $300, I received a free flight anywhere in Nunavik. Quaqtaq is the village closest to Wakeham, some 200km away. The flight takes about 20 minutes; and costs $470.00. We thought it would be a steep price to pay, but I had told J-F that we were going to come if I won the free ticket; and I had. I like to be a man of my word. And besides, whenever would we get another chance to travel to another village for the weekend?

I had been having a really rough week. Something unspeakable happened at the school, and I was having such a hard time with it that I was thinking about leaving. For good. Thus, the chance to get away for the weekend was just what we needed to reflect on our future up here.

We arrived at the airport one hour before our flight, as we were supposed to, to check in. Of course, we were the only ones there. The Air Inuit agent had not yet arrived. Shortly after, she did arrive, and we took our place at the front of the line.

"James, where are you going?"
"Quartaq."
"Are you going to the men's Bible conference?"
"No. You remember J-F? We're going to visit him." (I am not a religious man.)
"There's a thirty percent discount if you go to the conference."
"I am going to the men's conference." (I am Dutch.)
So, Sophie's ticket cost $270. Excellent, I thought. Just then, the mayor of our village came up to me.

"Are you going to Quartaq too?"
"Yes."
"Is it for personal travel?"
"Yes."
"Well the KRG (Kativik Regional Government) has a program to reimburse any residents for their personal travel around Nunavik. 50 % off any flight. You can get the forms from my office next week."

Already, this weekend was shaping up to be fantastic. A $470 flight had turned into a potential $135 dollar getaway weekend. "Thanks," I replied.

So, we boarded the plane and flew to Quartaq. Quartaq is, even compared to Kangirsujuaq, a wild place. They routinely have polar bears wander through the village (this year there were nine near the airport at once!). The village has a bear horn to warn people to stay inside. It's just Southeast of Cape Hopes Advance (an aptly named place) which is the corner of the Hudson Strait and the Ungava Bay (click here for a map). Icebergs dot the shoreline.
It is a village of 330 people; and even the view from the dump is beautiful.
J-F and Josianne were excellent hosts. They fed us excellent food, even though the local Co-op store has less than zero to offer. There had been no eggs for two months, no milk, and no cheese, unless you include Velveeta. It sure made the P'tit Quebec crap that I routinely ingest sound mighty appetizing. I can't believe that I should have actually brought them food from here!
Their house sits right on the Hudson Strait. Looking out the window, you can see the marina, and an island in the distance which is home to muskoxen.
As you step out their front door, you can hear the bubbling of a small waterfall.

They took us out on the land. First, we went to Cape Hopes Advance, where the remnants of a Cold War outpost mixed in with people's hunting cabins. I saw an iceberg and began running towards it like a fool. I didn't really take stock of the situation, I just felt compelled to go as close to the iceberg as I could, without thinking.
J-F and Josianne's two boys were getting hungry, and they politely told me that they wanted to go up to the cabins and feed them. "Excellent idea!" I replied," I'll be there in a few minutes." I turned and ran towards the iceberg. Only after Sophie and I had descended about a hundred metres did I realise that I was the one carrying the food. I stopped.
We fed the kids. I thought I had calmed down; until this happened.

I felt like a ten year old boy.

Shortly after, when my energy level had come down to that of an adult, something J-F had said to me began to sink in. He had suggested that some droppings next to us were those of a polar bear. I replied that I thought they were from a caribou. However, as I started to walk back up to the cabins, I saw some droppings that were far too big to be those of a caribou. We quickly ate, packed up, and headed for home.

Anyway, the Cape was amazing. The next day, we went to Inuksalik.

Although the landscape itself was less impressive, it too had its charms, including a city of camps and walrus fermenting houses.
The most impressive thing was a strange cave.

I remember in my first year of teaching up here; I had several extremely difficult students in my class, very little patience, and exactly zero savoir-faire which I could employ to deal with the problems. Two things saved me at the time. Sophie, and the outdoors. Sophie taught me how to teach, and supported me all the time, even when she had an equally difficult position. I suppose it didn't hurt that we also fell in love with each other and had a baby.

Going outside a lot also helped. Whether it was going for a hike or run to blow off some steam, walking the dog in the dark and cold, or just taking a few minutes to enjoy the view out of my class, it gave me a chance to think and reflect on what I was doing right, wrong, or not doing at all. This weekend, the outdoors gave me a chance to reflect on not only what I am doing, but what I am doing here. I don't know how long we'll stay, but I'll tell you this. Before Thanksgiving weekend, this year was most certainly our last. Now we're talking about going to other villages, or replacing so and so.

So it goes.

I'll leave you with Noah playing in the tub with his friend Benédict. He clearly says "encore!" (again).

Taima.

Just when you think you are getting to know a place

2008-10-25T14:03:00.007-04:00

For the past few weeks, I had been thinking that Kangirsujuaq was losing its northern edge. After all, there's a lot of money here (although horribly unevenly distributed), and a great deal of "progress" and developing infrastructure. Because of the profit-sharing program that Raglan mine has with the village, there is a great deal of construction going on. The pipeline linking our water source to the treatment plant has finally been repaired, the marina is being expanded so it will be accessible at both high and low tide, and the airport runway is being redone to accommodate more traffic. Next year the village may even get paved for crying out loud!

These projects, and all of the added activity that goes along with them: the gravel pits, the extra equipment on the road, the road updates to deal with the equipment, has got this sleepy village buzzing; and losing its romantic charm. It seems that I can't walk down any road without running into a construction project.

Sophie and I mentioned these phenomena to our new neighbour, a man who had lived here twenty-odd years ago and has returned this year. He began to recount what Kangirsujuaq was like when he first arrived. He told us that the airstrip was in different places in the summer and the winter. In the winter, the people in the village would get on their snowmobiles and head up to the lake just above the village to meet the plane. They would drive back and forth to create somewhere for the plane to land, and then park their skidoos perpendicular to the runway to illuminate it.

In the summer, the planes would land at the end of the bay (called Wakeham Beach), some eight kilometres away by boat. He recalled that a new teacher had been dropped at Wakeham Beach by the Air Inuit (or its equivalent) pilot and no one was there to pick her up. "Don't worry," the pilot assured her. "Someone will come and get you." She spent three hours waiting. Bienvenue à Nouveau-Quebec!

It occurred to me that the man recounting this history and I are not cut from the same cloth. I then began to think about the people who had come up here, let's say, before, or just when TV arrived, and the difference between them and the people who come up North today, in the age of the internet.

Today, people who come up here are largely urbanites (myself included I guess, it's been a long time since I live in High Prairie). We are modern and sometimes even stylish. Even a couple of the Inuit kids sport labels like Chanel. We order things online from JCrew and American Apparel and then complain when they don't arrive within two weeks. Twenty years ago, the qallunaat in town wore wool and local parkas. The smart ones brought their Canada Goose with them. The unprepared ones either adapted or froze.

We are appalled at the lack of available produce. Just today, I called the airport to see if my cargo was coming in because I wanted that real parmesan cheese to make risotto. Twenty years ago, the plane came once a week to deliver the mail. You either ate country food, out of a can, o not at all.

Last year, the water and sewage trucks started delivering seven days a week. Before that, they didn't move on Sunday. Now, if the low water light goes on in our house, I go outside, find the driver, and ask him to come to our house. I did it yesterday. Twenty-two years ago, there was no sewage truck. People shat in bags.

So, after our conversation, I began to feel that living up here was not so different than living in the South. As I was running yesterday, I was listening to a Big Ideas podcast lecture given by Salman Aktar. He argued that being an immigrant was inherently traumatic. He had moved to the United States 34 years ago. Before that, he lived in India, but he didn't feel like he was "living in India"; he was just living. After moving, he became immediately aware that he was living in the United States, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The cultural differences were too great not to notice. With time, his consciousness of these differences began to fade. Now, it is only once in a while when he is reminded that he is living in the United States.

I think I had begun to forget too. Then, a couple of days ago, I experienced a couple of those moments when you realise that you aren't chez vous. I was out in the early morning, before the sun came up, walking Iggaak. I had Noah in the stroller.

There are a couple of loose dogs who often join us on our daily promenade. We've endearlingly named one "Black Head" (he's white with a black head) and, the long-haired nuisance with whom he rolls we call "Shitlock" (think dreadlock). They chose to tag along.

Just as we rounded a corner, I heard what I thought was a dog screaming. We walk Iggaak without a leash, so I immediately turned towards the shriek, expecting to see Iggaak caught in a trap (it has happened before). That's not what I saw. I saw a red fox in a trap, facing Shitlock and Black Head. All three of them had their teeth bared. Then it was a as if the fox had realised that it was no match for the dogs which are at least twice its size. It submitted and laid down on its back, whimpering for mercy. There would be no mercy. The carnage began.

I called Iggaak, who had been hanging around a few metres away, and to my surprise she came. As I saw the fox squeal and jump to its feet, trying to get away and tugging on the chain, I realised that Noah, who was in the stroller, was probably watching this too. I turned back to the road and walked away, leaving the fox to his fate. After I reached my destination, I turned around and walked back. The dogs had finished their business, and the fox lay there in a heap. As we approached it, Black Head went back overto the fox and bit it again. Its legs twitched. I realised that this is still a pretty different place.

Later that day, I spoke to the culture teacher about the fox, and how its fur had probably been ruined. He himself was skinning a fox so he could dry the fur. He was teaching the Secondary 2/3 students. He complained that trappers should use a box instead of a leg trap, not out of sympathy for the foxes who have their legs broken by traps, but because nothing can get to it, and destroy the fur.

I went upstairs, somewhat reassured that there were responsible trappers out there. I sat down and planned until the next bell rang. My next class was Secondary 2/3 Math. One of the students came up the stairs and walked into my class wearing a bloody glove and holding a skinned fox leg (He wouldn't tell me what he was going to do with it. As far as I know, Inuit do not eat fox). He deliberately looked around for somewhere to put it. He did not want to sully his desk. So, laughing out loud, I walked over to the counter, took off a few sheets of paper towel, folded it up, set it on the windowsill, and simply said, "Here."

And to think, a few hours before I was thinking that things were not that different here. Excuse me, I have to go clean a goose.

Taima.

Mussels

2008-10-19T10:12:00.001-04:00

We picked a couple hundred mussels on Friday. It took about 15 minutes.

Noah loves them, and so do we.

Picking Berries

2008-10-19T10:09:00.001-04:00

I'm just making up for not having put up videos for the first two months.

Marcela, if you're reading this, get a Mac and use iMovie to publish your videos.

Noah in the Tundra

2008-10-18T15:55:00.001-04:00

This was a couple of months ago, but since I've found a new way to upload videos, I can put up longer ones.

Yogurt and Berries

2008-10-18T15:31:00.000-04:00

The OSM in Nunavik

2008-10-17T18:55:00.002-04:00

A few weeks ago, Kent Nagano and the world-renowned Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal (OSM) came to Kangirsujuaq. It was excellent.

Avataq (named after the sealskin balloon Inuit used to attach to harpoons so as not to lose them), the cultural arm of the Kativik Regional Government, had invited Nagano to come up North this spring. In fact, when I was leaving in May last year, the head of Avataq who is from Wakeham flew down to Montreal on the same flight as me. He was very excited at the prospect of meeting with Nagano and having him come to Kangirsujuaq. Nagano, for his part, expressed his wish to end the OSM's cross-Canada tour with a tour of three Nunavik villages.

In preparation for the tour, the OSM engaged Alexina Louie, a first nations composer who had spent a great deal of time in the North West Territories, and was familiar with the sights and the sounds of the North. She wrote music that reflected her knowledge and connection to the land. Each piece was drawn from one aspect or another about the land. One was named "Snowy Owl," another "The Dog Sled Race," and so on. Louie had written parts for each of the seven musicians who took part in the chamber ensemble, as well as two throat singers from Pouvugnituk, a villae on the Hudson Coast. It was fantastic. Between each piece, the audience held silent, until my colleauge Forbes, who was standing next to me, was moved enough by the
"Snowy Owl" piece, that he remarked softly "that was marvelous" when the room fell silent. The audience agreed, and continued to applaud each short piece of music. A highlight of Louie's part of the music was "The Mosquito" when the musicians indeed made annoying sounds and Nagano clapped his hands to finish the piece.

Also on the programme was Mozart's "Eine Kleine Nacht Musik" and an adaptation of Stravinsky's A Soldier's Tale, in which all of the spoken parts had been translated into Inuttitut. The best part however, for many of my students, and probably myself, was when the students who had been practicing drumming performed for the OSM musicians. "I've been all over the world and played many many concerts, and that was the first time anyone has welcomed us with a concert," said Nagano when the students finished.

It seems to me that it's probably one of the only places on the planet where that could be possible. I can't imagine 12-14 year-old adolescents putting on a show for a world-famous orchestra conductor in Montreal. The people here sometimes surprise me. I don't know whether to call it innocence or whether just to say that sometimes people here find themselves unencumbered by the bullshit fear that their boldness might be interpreted as childish or insignificant by someone as "important" as Nagano. Well, they had nothing to fear. They performed better than I had ever heard them play, and I think he truly appreciated the welcome.

Mixing

2008-10-05T23:22:00.001-04:00

He was so cute this week, I had to put up two videos.

Dance

2008-10-05T19:07:00.000-04:00

A New Job

2008-10-04T20:20:00.003-04:00

This year, I have a new job. I now teach Secondary Math and English. I have followed the six best of my students from last year and have become their secondary 1 homeroom teacher. I no longer have to go outside with my students to supervise them throwing snowballs at each other. I no longer have to line them up and struggle to keep them form bothering other students when they go from class to class. Lining students up just to get them to and from class drained me. It easily soaked up more than half of my energy. I've learned over the past two years that primary teachers work way too hard.

Secondary teachers work plenty hard too. But we can also get interesting intellectual stimulation from interacting with the students. Sometimes, adolescent minds can surprise you with their insight and/or imagination. Take for example a short writing project I just completed with my students. We studied the effects of a local mine's profit-sharing program with the villagers.

This summer, the people in Kangirsujuaq and in Salluit received their share of the profits from Xstrata's Raglan nickel mine that is raping the land between the villages. The landholding corporations of each respective village decide what to do with the money. In Wakeham, it decided to pay off the new ice-making plant at the arena, the new gym ($4 million), fix the pool, extend the marina and runway, and build a fancy new hotel. The beneficiaries of the JBNQA (James Bay and Northern Quebec Hydroelectric Agreement) who live in Kangirsujuaq divided up the rest of the money amongst themselves. Each Kangiqsujuaq beneficiary, man woman, and child, received a cheque for a $4 700.

In Salluit, the landholding corporation decided to ask the people what to do with the money. A majority of the beneficiaries said "Screw infrastructure! Show me the money!" Thus, each adult in Salluit received $15 000, and each child a cool $3 500.

In both villages, it was as if everyone had won the lottery at the same time. Pandemonium.

In Wakeham, people went without water and sewage delivery for six days (our duplex, in which four adults and a toddler live, would run out of water and have a full sewage tank sometime on the third day. Some houses have up to twelve people living in them). Both the Co-op and Northern stores had empty shelves, and no one to restock them. Who wants to work after winning the lottery? At once, I'm sorry I missed the frenzy, but I'm also glad I wasn't here to experience it.

In Salluit, things were/are even crazier. The rehabilitation centre closed due to a lack of employees at the very time it was needed most. Problems with drugs and alcohol were rampant. After speaking with a member of the school team there, it appears that the day care was closed at the start of the school year, and many of the Inuktitut teachers were not going to work. The school was a mess because teachers couldn't bring their kids to day care.

The effects of the profit-sharing payout will only fully be realised after the next sealift ship arrives. In Salluit, 50+ new vehicles will arrive on the boat. Imagine what a kind of a difference
50 vehicles will make in a village of 1,100 people which has roads that lead nowhere. Already in Wakeham Bay, there are more Hondas, scooters and two-wheelers than ever before, and we await many more which will arrive in October. I could go on and on about this. If you want to read a really shitty article about the payouts, you can access it here. The Nunatsiaq News is a rag at its best, but it's the only news you can get coming out of Nunavik.

In my Secondary 4/5 class, we read this article and a letter to the editor responding to it (scroll down to "Free money doesn't build better society" . It's worth reading.). I had been teaching my students about the different "angles" one finds in a newspaper, and after reading and discussing these things, asked them to write an opinion piece about the profit-sharing payouts.

I got some interesting arguments. Some were happy that the landholding corporation used some of the money for infrastructure in Wakeham. Some wished that they got to spend the money like the people in Salluit. One young lady from another village, whose family received very little money compared to either Kangirsujuaq or Salluit was thankful because they "got to spend the money on clothes and food. [They] were poor."

The most interesting of the opinion pieces was little more than a list of questions, including: "What kind of a question is that? Why should we tell you if we liked the money or not? Did Raglan told (sic) you to ask us these questions?"

My comments: "I can't believe someone actually figured it out. I work for Raglan. Just kidding. I like how you are trying to get to the root of my thinking. It shows that you are being critical. Good job. "

I don't why she's so skeptical about my intentions. However, I find her skepticism to be a healthy refresher. It shows a high level of critical thinking. And dealing with critical thought is much more stimulating than lining up.

James.

A Hallowe'en costume?

2008-09-28T12:07:00.000-04:00

I swear, he does this to himself.

Lantic Sugar

2008-09-27T14:25:00.002-04:00

This summer, speaking to Sophie, I said, "you know, I'm tired of telling people I meet casually about my job. I think I may start telling them I'm a janitor or something just to avoid having the same conversation in which they ask probing questions and expect me to have all of the answers to the ills in Inuit society."

Sophie responded, "yeah, why don't I just start saying 'You know Lantic Sugar? Yeah, well, I push a broom there.'?"

Upon further review, we thought that that might be condescending to janitors to say that we did their shitty job. I've had a job or two which I was somewhat ashamed to do, but I worked alongside guys who did it for their primary income, and reasonably happily too. So, we opted for accountant instead. It's a reasonably respected position, and, more importantly, nobody talks to accountants about their jobs, right? We would be free from the typical Northern depressing discussion that revolves around social problems and isolation.

Of course, I never actually worked up the courage to tell someone that I was an an accountant or a janitor. Sophie, for her part, was offered a gig cleaning toilets and chalkboards at the school, but couldn't bring herself to do it. It's really a tough job.

However, I have found it very difficult to write about my experience this year thus far. I will try not to be pessimistic and discouraged like I became last year. I want to write about the good and exciting things happening up here. Of course, painting an idyllic village picture would not be fair either. However, so far, there have been some notably pleasant things happening.

I hope I will overcome my writer's funk and be able to... well, write. Even that was hard.

James.

Brushes

2008-09-20T20:48:00.002-04:00

Sorry I haven't been posting. Things are going well. Noah is, well, doing this:

Noah Walks

2008-09-02T19:46:00.002-04:00

I wanted to make a bunch of videos this summer showing Noah's progression to his first birthday, but I left my camera in the pocket of my Parka. Sorry, no Nicaragua, Alberta, or Montreal. We do, however, have this:

I'll write something soon.

South

2008-05-26T22:29:00.003-04:00

I arrived in Montreal on Saturday.

Since moving to the North, I have considered going South to be one of the hardest parts. After a few months in the same village, I get accustomed to seeing the same 572 people everyday. It's not often that I see someone I haven't seen before, and when I do he/she is easily recognizable as such.

When I arrived at Trudeau airport, I stood around with the Inuit from Wakeham with whom I had traveled, and waited for my luggage. After saying goodbye to them, I began the long, awkward walk to to cab stand. The stimulation was more than a little overwhelming. I saw many nameless faces, and began to look for people whom I recognized.

I thought to myself, "Montreal has three million people, idiot. You don't know anyone here." Nevertheless, I searched and searched for something familiar, and began to realise that all of us, the thousands of us there, were basically alone in a crowd.

The cab ride to Pointe Ste. Charles was equally unsettling. My taxi driver spoke not to me, but to someone on his cell, only pausing to ask me for directions and to inquire whether I wanted the flat rate or to go with the meter. I am usually loathe to have the conversation that everyone has with him, the one about his business, and about how many crazy drivers there are in this city. Nevertheless, not having this interaction alienated me further, forcing me to stare out the window at all of the passing advertisements.

It's the consumerism that really gets me. Last year, when we came down for the union congress (which was a waste of my time, but more on that another day) Sophie and I walked up and down Boulevard St. Laurent and wondered at the plethora of stores selling stuff that people don't really need. How is it possible that these places stay open. Can we really buy that much stuff? I can only imagine how overwhelming coming South would be for an Inuk.

When I arrived at our friends' house (we're subletting our apartment) I had been thoroughly shell-shocked. I was supposed to go to Parc Mont Royal to a good-bye barbeque for a friend who is moving to New Delhi on Wednesday. I called his cell. He didn't answer. I left a message, saying that we wouldn't be coming because Noah had not napped and would probably not be in good spirits by the time we got there. This was true; it would certainly have been a difficult outing. But it wasn't all. After arriving somewhere familiar, where friends were waiting to catch up, I couldn't bring myself to leave the cozy environment. It just takes some time to adjust.

Today, The adjustment period abruptly ended. We went shopping and I spent a thousand dollars.

Final Exams

2008-05-22T23:09:00.002-04:00

I'm leaving to take my paternity leave on Saturday. Sophie and Noah left today on the first plane which has left here for Kuujjuaq, from where we can fly down South, in six days.

Last Friday, a blanket of fog rolled into Wakeham bay and has sat there, stagnant, for almost a week. Through rising and falling barometric pressure, through 40 km/h winds, it has sat there.
Once or twice, it has opened up enough for the plane to land en route to Salluit, which has hardly helped everyone who is wishing to go to Montreal. Anyway, this post is supposed to be about my students' final exams. You will be able to read enough about the fog some other time.

Last week, I made my students' final exams. It was a humbling experience. I was going through our review materials, and I couldn't help but think to myself, "is that really it? Is that all we accomplished?" This year, I had a critical mass of students advanced enough to make me feel that we progressed. Indeed, we plowed through a lot more Math and Lanuage than I did with my students last year. Howver, we still completed surprisingly little. Disparagingly little.

Last year, a couple of French teachers who had been teaching many years in the South spent a year in Wakeham. These two ladies never assimilated into the limited social scene offered by the teachers, but I had one or two close moments with them. At the end of the first term, I was making my report cards when Josée, to whom I had barely said two words, walked in. She could see disappointed look of humility (or humiliation) on my face and comforted me.

"I've been teaching a long time," she said, "and the end of the term feels the same every time. I get sick to my stomach wondering what I'm doing right and wrong, and if I'm choosing to teach the right things. Just relax."

She was right. Every time it comes to summative assessments, I feel as if I'm much harder on myself than on my students. This time, as I was being humbled once again by my own examinations, I guess I subconsciously made it my mission to push the students harder during the exams.

Yesterday, during the Math examination, they pushed back. They were less than receptive. One student in particular refused to do anything, even things that she and I both knew she was capable of doing. I tried to encourage her. It didn't work. I tried just letting her do her thing. That didn't work either. At one point, she began making some noise, and she wouldn't stop. I had to ask her to leave. On the way out, I tried to get her to work on the test outside the class. No dice. Infuriated, but trying to hold some sense of calm, I said, "You're doing this to yourself." She looked down, turned, and walked away.

When I went home for lunch, Sophie knew something was wrong as I walked in the door. I explained how I had been more furious with my students than I had been all year, especially with the one who refused to do her exam at all.

"It's her only power," Sophie responded. "She wasn't going to pass it anyway, right? It's the only thing she can choose to do in that situation. Maybe you just can't make her do something she doesn't want to do. And why do you care so much? You have to try to encourage them, but it's not worth getting stressed out."

I hadn't really thought about it like that before. Why did I care so much? I know that this girl is not going to pass the year, even if she passed the test. I realised that it wasn't her who I was caring about at all (although I do care a great deal for her) but rather I was too preoccupied with how the students' performance on the exams reflected on my abilities as a teacher to really care about her. Once again, my frustrations were stirring, just the same as every time my students (and thus I) are assessed.

I went back to school in the afternoon and calmly administered the second part of the test. The girl didn't do that part either, but at least I didn't inadvertently make her feel worse by telling her it was her choice not to pass. Or maybe it made her feel better. Agency is a weird thing.

If I don't write for a while, it's because I'm in Costa Rica.

A new member

2008-05-21T22:35:00.002-04:00

I would like to congratulate a couple of my closest friends, Philip and Renée Giammarioli. Renée gave birth to 6 lb. 12 oz. Dante yesterday at 2:30 p.m.

I have a few friends with whom I can say things like "that's a nice way to bond with him" and "don't you just love the way he smells?" without sounding completely gay.

Welcome to the club Phil. We actually get to raise these little things.

James.

Noah's Video Pick of the Week

2008-05-18T20:38:00.001-04:00

I am 30

2008-05-18T15:07:00.002-04:00

A couple weeks ago, I turned thirty. We had a party at my house. Sophie really outdid herself. She made me two cakes: one in the shape of a 3, the other a 0. We ate sushi, drank some beer, and had a wonderful time.

The day before my birthday, my students and I went fishing. It was the perfect May day.
+5, sunny, and no wind. We headed out from the village at around 10:00, and arrived at our destination by 11:15. Almost immediately, we all began to remark how warm it was. The day before, I had promised my students that if they did not come fully prepared, with winter boots, parka, hat, and mitts, they would not get to go. These kids know I'm a man of my word, so even though it was ridiculously warm, they were ready to go to Antarctica.

The sky was beautiful. The sun was strong. It had been so warm for the past week that when we arrived at our destination, called ippikutaaq (I have no idea what that means), we did not need to drill holes through the eight-foot-thick ice (thank God). All we needed to do was to shovel the snow off of the surface of holes that our guide had drilled the week before.

It only took me a few minutes to realise how strong the sun was, and only a few minutes more to remember that I had forgotten something extremely important: sunblock. "I'm fucked," I thought to myself. "Oh well," I reasoned, "I've been to tropical countries and gone without sunblock. I don't really burn other than my nose anyway."

So, after we shoveled off a few holes, the kids began to fish. Some of my students were very successful.

Others just stood around and smoked.

After a little while, my lips began to burn a little, and the Inuit guides began to remark about how warm it was for May 1st.

"Oockoo! (hot)"
"Illai. (a few words in Inuttitut)... global warming... (more Inuttitut)."

After the initial wonder about the weather, we began to make the most of it. One of our guides even used the unusual combination of snow, meltwater, and ice, to make an aquarium/swimming pool.

It was an amazingly beautiful day, and other than the intermittent tingling of my dried-out lips, I completely forgot about the power of the sun. I began to ride my ski-doo with no hat, no gloves, and for a time, in just a t-shirt.

After fishing all morning, the guides took my students hunting for ptarmigan. I spotted a few, wishing I had a gun, or that I was Inuk, so I could shoot a couple and provide for my family (I didn't catch any fish). One of the guides, Papikatuk, even showed a couple of the kids how to shoot, and they shot their first birds.
One of them was his daughter. He was so proud of her, who shot and killed her first ptarmigan with one shot.
I love hunting birds. I haven't done it in years and years, but on May 1st, I was a little jealous of the kids and guides who were providing for their families. But what the guides were doing for these kids was worth my infinitesimal sacrifice, so I didn't ask to kill one. Besides, it was a beautiful day, and I was out on the land, somewhere I hadn't been before.

Then, I got home. As soon as I walked in the door, I knew. The cool air was no longer blowing on my face. My skin became tight and hot. I had a nasty burn. I went to school the next day, expecting to be ridiculed. It was embarrassing. However, the Inuit, who wear a tan (which means they were out on the land) like a badge of honour, were more than sympathetic. Indeed, the sun was so strong that day that even some of my students, who don't even know what sunscreen is, had their first sunburns.

Although my pride was saved, my face really hurt. I was in constant pain for a couple of days. I couldn't sleep. The only relief I could find came out of a tube of lanolin, which Sophie used for the few weeks of breastfeeding. I awoke at night with the thought, "there's nothing more sensitive than a cracked nipple."

A couple of days later, I peeled. It was disgusting.