Shortages in Yellowknife

After arriving back in Yellowknife this afternoon, the first thing I did was go grocery shopping.  At the grocery store near our place the shelves were looking empty.  No milk.  No produce.  No bread.  That leaves frozen foods and things in cans.

Why??

The ferry at the Mackenzie River crossing is currently out of service.  This is the only way that Yellowknife, and many other northern communities, has road access to the South.  Low water levels are making it impossible to load and unload cars (and trucks carrying supplies) onto the ferry.  When we first drove up to Yellowknife, we saw a bridge over the Mackenzie slowly being built.  But it's taken a long time, and a real bridge is not happening anytime soon.

Once it gets too cold (and too treacherous because of ice) for the ferry to cross the river, an ice road is built on top of the river for cars and trucks.  Usually I think this happens sometime in January.  In the spring, when the river starts to melt again, there is a period when the same thing happens - it's not safe to use the ice road but it's still too icy for the ferry to run.  So supplies aren't delivered as regularly.

I think some places, and some restaurants in particular, ship supplies up by airplane when this happens.  This what they're doing right now with gas, although the price of gas in town is around $1.99/litre.

The good news?  According to CBC, the ferry should be starting up again soon.

First Trip to Inuvik

Our Lady of Victory Roman Catholic "Igloo Church", Inuvik

This week I traveled to the community of Inuvik, which is located 6 degrees above the Arctic Circle at the Mackenzie Delta.  You can drive to Inuvik from the Yukon if you take the Dempster Highway, but the only way from Yellowkife is to fly.

It's much warmer here in Inuvik right now than in Yellowknife.  Today it was around -13C here, as I was walking around town doing interviews for work.  Last week in Yellowknife the temperature got down to -31C, which felt like -40C with the wind chill.  We had to buy thermal underwear to keep warm, and I'm learning to knit.  When it's that cold, your eyelashes start to freeze and then stick together after awhile, if you don't wear goggles.

I'm not sure if you'd call this a sunrise or a sunset...I took this picture at around 2:30pm.  I noticed it stayed pitch dark today until around 10am, when the sun slowly started to rise.  This was the first time I experienced that, since Inuvik is much further North than Yellowknife.

Polar Bed & Breakfast

Cafes and galleries, downtown Inuvik

Inuvik's greenhouse!!

Brightly colored houses

Chinese food!

It was a little surprising to see a Chinese food place in Inuvik, although after talking to some locals it seems that Inuvik is quite diverse, considering it's size of around 3000 people and it's remote location.  There is a large Filipino population, and a new mosque was just recently built in town for the Muslim community.  Of course there are the indigenous Gwich'in and Inuvialuit people, as well as the rest of the mainly white population who come from all over Canada.

The last picture I took today was of the above-ground sewage system!  The pipes can't be buried in the ground because of the permafrost.  This is also why all of the houses and building are built up off of the ground.

We fly back to Yellowknife tomorrow afternoon, which is too bad, I wish I could stay here longer!

Yellowknife in October

Dettah

This past week I went to a conference in Dettah, a small community about a 40-minute drive away from Yellowknife on dirt roads.  In the winter, there is an ice road that connects Yellowknife and Dettah over the Great Slave Lake, and it takes the travel time down to 10-15 minutes.  These are some pictures I took during my time in Dettah.

Since I took these pictures last week, we've had a bit of a warm snap in Yellowknife.  It got up to 5C this weekend, and the snow turned to slush.  The chains we put on our car don't do so well when the ice melts.

Images from Yellowknife in October

Mural on a building

Houseboats in Great Slave Lake

A shot of downtown Yellowknife

Float-planes and houseboats

Mural from a building

Radio Star

Today I had an interview with Radio Taiga, a French radio station serving Yellowknife.  It wasn't exactly an interview, but more of a promotion for our Small Business Week workshops which is coming up next week.

Small Business Week is one of the many projects I'm currently working on.  I've been busy organizing presenters, arranging food, confirming locations, and creating publications for the local newspapers.

One event which recently happened which I also helped out in was a job fair (journée carrière) for francophone students in Yellowknife and Hay River.  We arranged for 9 students to fly in from Hay River, which is on the South Side of the Great Slave Lake.  The day went by great; in the afternoon I took a group of 12 to 17-year-olds around town to visit different employers.  We went to visit the GeoScience Office of the NWT, Diavik (a mining company specializing in diamonds and operated by Rio Tinto), and an Engineering firm downtown.

Winter in Yellowknife has begun!  It is October 15, and last night we got about 10cm of snow.  People keep warning us that this is just the beginning, and to not be surprised at -20 weather in November.  We've been hearing stories about how kids at Halloween still go trick-or-treating, just with full snowsuits underneath their costumes!  We don't have any plans yet for Halloween, but are open to ideas...   

New Apartment

Exciting news this week: we found a place!  It's in a great location downtown, and about a 2-minute walk from where I work.  We will be moving in today and tomorrow, and bringing all our boxes.

We saw the Northern Lights for the first time since we were here last Saturday, and they were amazing!  It lit up the whole sky in green and blue.  We didn't take the picture to the left, but it was taken in Yellowknife, and that's pretty much what it looked like.

I still have to figure out what setting to put my camera on to catch the Northern Lights.  All my photos turned out black!