Northern Adventure

Allan's Retirement Party

2010-04-02T12:35:00.000-07:00

As some of you may know, our store manager, Allan Hart, has decided to retire after 34 years of working for the North West Company. Of those 34 years, he spent the last 28 of them as store manager in Baker Lake.

This is an amazing fact in itself when you consider two things about the way people go about their careers these days. Personally, I don’t see anyone working for one company for 34 years ever again as people do not have the same loyalty as they did years ago. Also what is amazing about this is that for those 28 years that Allan was manager here is that the customers and the people of Baker Lake respected him, and still do respect him.

With that said, the Hamlet threw a community feast and square dance in his honour on March 27^th.

It was a surprise to Allan that the party was being thrown. Everyone sat in the community hall and waited for Allan to arrive, and when he did, everyone in the room gave him a long standing ovation. It was a great thing to see – something that you think you would only see in a movie.

After that, the food began to pour out.

The feast consisted of a big chunk of caribou, rice with raisins in it, and macaroni salad. The meal was delicious!

After the meal, there were some speeches and Allan was presented with some gifts from families and organizations in the community. Allan then gave his little speech, which was somewhat unprepared as you could expect, and was translated into inuk by his wife Nancy.

And then, in Inuit tradition, LET THE SQUARE DANCE BEGIN!

Grace and I had never seen the Inuit square dance before, and it was pretty cool to watch! However, they had some other plans, and the next thing we knew, we were square dancing!

Now, this isn’t square dancing in the AM 920 CKNX kind of square dancing that we would know in the south. And quite frankly, you are never in the shape of a square for that matter. We expected a dance to last around five minutes, you know, the average length of a song…

Nope.

The dance was about 15 minutes long, and was one song in length. There was eight people total in our square (four groups of two) and since there was three white people in our square who had never danced before, Grace got dragged around by Mellow (who used to work at the store and is an overall awesome guy) and I got dragged around by Pam (who works at the store). We did spins, circles, jigs, and a bunch of other things that we can’t seem to remember at this point in time, but it was a lot of fun and was very tiring!

The really cool part about the square dance though is that in the hall there were elders, teenagers, adults, and kids… and they all knew how to square dance and they all enjoyed doing it! Down south you would not see that at all!

It was a great experience for us to have, and we won’t forget it!

Below are some pictures for your enjoyment!

As Promised, Here's Pics

2010-03-06T15:45:00.000-08:00

As promised in the last post, here are some pictures from the summer in Baker Lake. It isn't much, but it is what we have. The store renovation blog will be up tomorrow.

Mike

This is out at the Bridge to Nowhere overlooking the river. It's quite peaceful out there. And isn't the view something else?

This is the Bridge in the background. There is a little eating/rest area there, which is where this was taken from.

That is a sik sik (I believe that is the proper spelling). It is essentially a ground squirrel that if you get too close, has some serious anger issues. As you can see, he isn't too happy at the moment.

An arctic hare. Poor guy didn't know that winter was over. Usually they turn brown in the summer.

A ptarmigan. This has to be the stupidest bird known to man (or a close runner up to the dodo). They are hunted with rocks and sticks. You chase them, and instead of flying away (which they can do) they decide to run. Like I said, not too bright. Makes me wonder how Steve couldn't catch one... (Sorry Steve, had to do it!)

Lovely Baker Lake as viewed from the VOR near the airport.

Summer Update.. In Winter

2010-03-03T19:03:00.000-08:00

Okay, so it’s March 2010.

If you look closely, the last time we wrote in this thing was May 2009.

Okay, we suck. We have a lot of things to cover from the last nine months or so. Here is the order of events (and this may end up turning into a Band of Brothers type mini series based on how long it has been since we updated this thing) that we are going to cover everything in:

Summer
Store Renovation
Christmas
New Year’s
Winnipeg
Today

With that said, we are not going to make you wait any longer. Here is the first chapter…

Summer

We’ll skip the part about going home for vacation as everyone knows about that. What we will do is talk about coming back from vacation.

We got back from vacation and we had to go live at the Four Plex (coming full circle) for two or three weeks because our landlords at the house decided that they wanted to come and live at home for a few weeks. Did that suck? Why yes, yes it did. When you go from living in a house for seven or eight months and then have to move to an apartment, it sucks. So while we were at the apartment, not much happened…

Except sea lift.

The dreaded sea lift. As you may recall (or probably not since it has been so damn long since we wrote in this thing), sea lift is the twice a year barge shipment of goods and supplies in to town. This is done to save money on freight costs (which compared to flying everything in by air, it is a lot of money). However, this has it’s downside as well – such as handling 300,000 pounds of freight in three days.

I made the comparison last year of saying that it was like doing 20 trailers at Speare Seeds back to back – without a forklift. I still stand by that comparison. It is a long three days, but it is worth it when you see how much money is saved not only for the store, but for the customers as well. We also bring in furniture and appliances on this barge for our big arena sale.

After we got through sea lift, it was time to move back to the house. Yes, I do mean move. We had to move all of our stuff out of the house to the apartment, and then back again. All this so our landlord’s could have a vacation. Still ticks me off to this day. Anyway, we got back into the house and settled in.

The rest of the summer was not that adventurous with all things considered. We went out on the Honda a few times and did some exploring on the land. We had a baseball game with the stock boys from the store on Labour Day, as well as a BBQ afterwards.

Everyone had fun during the summer. However, as we all know by now, the summer is not that long up here.

With that, his brings us to the second sea lift. To save time, see the description of the first sea lift as it is very much the same.

I will add some photos of the summer time when the internet connection allows me to add some. The bandwidth and such can be so crappy at times that it is impossible to do anything uploading or downloading.

Tune in next time (the day after tomorrow) for part two… Store Renovation.

Blackout!!!

2009-05-02T13:14:00.000-07:00

Ok, so we lied (or more so, Mike lied a little) when we said that we would have a new blog up on the 30th. However, it is only the 2nd and there is a new one up, so we aren’t that far behind!!!

Now, when we last talked, we mentioned that there were promotions and upcoming vacations and such. However, today we are going to talk about our version of the Blackout that we had in Ontario a few years ago.

From April 21st in the AM until the 23rd in the AM, we had limited power in town.

Our power plant broke down is basically what happened. From what we understand, there are three generators in town that power everything in town. There is one generator big enough that it can power the entire town by itself, and then there are two generators that, combined, can power the entire town.

Apparently what had happened is that the big generator kicked out, so they went to the two little generators.
Then one of them kicked out.

Meanwhile, while all this was happening, down at the Northern, we were running things as usual until the power went out. Then it came back on, then it went of again. This happened until the afternoon when Allan (our store manager) finally called the power corporation and found out what was happening.

So, for the next two days we operated under a “last minute of play in this period” type mentality. We would announce over the speaker system that the power was going out in 15 minutes (because by this point the power corp was nice enough to let us know when our power at the store was going out) and it seemed like all hell would break loose in the store. The lines would get really long, people would start rushing around the store, and we would have to have a staff member at the door to make sure nobody else would come in.

And for the next two days, any time the phone would ring, the question would be “is it open?”

Yes, “is it open?” The store is not referred to by most locals as the store when they ask you if the store is open. Nope. The Northern, for the most part, is referred to as “it” like the store is some sort of all knowing entity or something.

Occasionally, the store will be referred to as The Bay, which it was back in the mid 80’s before HBC sold off the northern Canadian stores they owned. Mostly the elders call it the Bay. I guess you could compare it to how most of us in Ontario still refer to Rogers Centre as the SkyDome.

So the power outage, getting back to the topic, would work on one hour cycles. For example, if you had power from 7 to 8 PM, you would be without from 8 to 9 PM, and so on. This made for interesting eating choices. The first day of the power outage, we helped clean up the Quickstop with the power out, and as a thank you, we were given left over KFC food for lunch. Not the healthiest of choices, but considering we couldn’t cook anything, it did the job. That night for dinner was sandwiches.

The second day of the power outages was once again sandwiches for lunch, and for dinner that night we made a deal that we would eat something hot. So, when the power kicked on, Mike made sure that he turned the oven on and within minutes there was a frozen pizza in the oven.

The power outage lasted until the Thursday morning and since then everything has been back to normal. Well, as normal as things can be anyway.

With the power outage though, we realized that we rely heavily on technology up here for entertainment and for work. We couldn’t do much in the way of television or movies or video games because we had no power, and at work we couldn’t even do the simplest of paper work by daylight because everything is kept on the computer. We couldn’t stock shelves because our warehouse has no windows whatsoever, and we couldn’t even have the store open because all of our cash registers are done through a computer point of sale system. At least in the south we would be able to sit outside and have a camp fire or something because up here we don’t have any trees!

Now, with that said, here are a couple of pictures that we promised.

Yes, it is May 2nd and look at all this damn snow! GAHH!

So, don’t be looking to us for sympathy if you have a day where it is a “chilly” 5 degrees! :P
Another update will follow in a few days, and this time there will be pictures of the store. We have promised this before, but this time we mean it. Hey, we’ve done pretty good as of late with our promises, have we not? :P

-Mike and Grace

The April 23rd Post Finally Posted on April 29

2009-04-29T16:52:00.000-07:00

Finally after a much awaited return to the blogosphere, we have come back for another try at this thing.

I know, we suck at keeping it updated. We readily admit that. Much like Mike is willing to admit that after 7 months of winter, he is extremely tired of it. Much like how we are both willing to admit that we miss BBQ food.
Or like how much we are willing to admit that VACATION CAN’T COME SOON ENOUGH!

Yeah we are starting to get anxious. Mike was lucky enough that he got to go out to Winnipeg in March for a week for the Wintering Partner’s Conference, but still, we both need to get out of the North for a bit.

Now, with that said, we will try to do a quick recap of things that have gone on since we last spoke on this thing.
1) Holy crap, has it really been four months since we updated this blog?

2) When we last talked, we said how things weren’t so busy at the store. Well, that has changed since tax season kicked in. Like we had mentioned in a previous entry, saving money is not exactly done up here (or maybe it isn’t approved of, that much we are not sure of yet), so there was lots of spending done. Grocery is doing well, as it most likely always will due to the fact that people need to eat food. Retail is doing alright, not as good as last year, but last year also saw the IRSSA cheques (something to do with the schooling that they had as kids) so there was more money around.

3) Mike predicted last times that there would still be lots of jobs in town this year. So far, he has been right. The store is always hiring people, and to date there have only been two mining camps not returning this year, and both of those are relatively small (under 10 people), so they really don’t affect the job situation much here.

4) On February 1st, Mike was officially promoted to Grocery Manager (how the position opened up is quite a story, and will be told when we are home) here in Baker Lake! Of course, a promotion like this came with a raise in pay (which is ALWAYS good) but it also comes with better benefits, so WOOHOO!

5) On March 9th, Grace was promoted to General Merchandise Department Manager – Soft Lines and was named Post Mistress of the Post Office! Also, a raise in pay was included. So, WOOHOO!! Basically, she takes care of the fashion side of retail and is in charge of the post office. And believe it or not, that post office is, as Bill MacKay would say, “CRAZY BUSY!”.

6) We are still living in the house that we moved in to in November, and we potentially may be living here for a while longer as the store wants to keep the house if the owner’s are willing to rent it our another year. So, WOOHOO!

7) Since Christmas time, Grace has been on Weight Watchers and has done INCREDIBLY WELL! I (Mike) will not dive into numbers here because it isn’t my place to tell, but she is happy with it so far (which is all that matters)

8) Since Christmas time, Mike has NOT been on Weight Watchers, which at times drives Grace crazy since he will eat some junk food that she likes. Mike has since learned to not eat that junk food around here. :P

Now, there is the Coles Notes version of how the last four months have gone. Some of the faces of our management team have changed, but it all seems to be for the better at this point.

Now, here is the quick rundown of what happens in June as June means VACATION!

On June 18th we fly out of Baker Lake on the evening flight and arrive in Winnipeg at 10 PM. We are staying two nights in Winnipeg because we are going to spend the day with Britt and Chris on the 19th and take in the sights and sounds of Winnipeg. On June 20th we fly out of Winnipeg and arrive in Toronto around noon.

So, with that said…

WE ARE HOME JUNE 20TH!!!! WOOHOO!!

Our schedule is, so far, a little busy, but we will make sure that we are available to see each and every one of you!

Now, with that said, there will be another update tomorrow night (Thursday the 30th) with some more stories of the north.

-Mike and Grace

PS: We will have more pictures posted soon!

Holiday Wishes

2009-01-10T20:11:00.000-08:00

Hopefully the Christmas season was as good to everyone else as it was to us this year. We were lucky enough to have Grace’s parents come up and visit us for a week. On top of that, we all got some great gifts and had some good laughs.

Christmas away from home for the first time was somewhat different. For me, it was strange to be away from family and friends at this time of year. For example, on Christmas Eve there wasn’t the Wilson Family Christmas, it was a Baker Lake Perogie Feast.

It was nice in some ways though, as we got to do some things that you wouldn’t be able to experience down south. At midnight, we went down ONTO the lake (as it is VERY frozen at this time of year) and watched the Northern Lights dance around as an Arctic Hare hopped out in front of us. That was quite a sight that you can’t get just anywhere!

Christmas Day was also an adventure! Who would have thunk it that I would be the last person out of bed on Christmas Morning? Not I!

Everyone here at the house was spoiled one way or another with the gifts they got, which was good. But most importantly, the people that were here on Christmas morning were people that care about each other. Once we finished opening presents, which was around 2 PM, we finally started to get ready for Christmas dinner.

Now, for me, Christmas dinner was quite small this year as we had a grand total of six people for dinner, as opposed to the usual 20 or so at the Snell house.

However, Christmas was enjoyed by all, and other than Grace having a bout of the flu on Christmas Day, everyone was healthy and happy.

New Years Eve in Baker Lake was something else! It may not have been the biggest party that we have ever had, or ever been too, but it is definitely one for the ages! We had Steve, John, Karen, and their two kids over for a total of seven people in the house. But, with those seven people we had a party for the ages.

We had our fair share of drinks, we saw New Years come in a total of four times thanks to the wonders of TV (Newfoundland, Halifax, Ontario and Nunavut) and therefore, we had four New Years toasts.

To make a long story short, the party ended sometime around 4 AM and resulted in a few head aches the next day. Everyone had a great time, and that is the main thing.

So far the New Year has been not so busy at the store. Apparently there is a bit of a lull at this time of year as most people have done a lot of shopping at Christmas time and are waiting to accumulate some more disposable income. Grocery, for the most part, has been just as busy as before. Where we see the most decline is in retail, as like I said, the money just isn’t there at this time of year.

For us, it is hard to say whether or not the economy has anything to do with the lull as this happens every year. Also, it is hard to tell how the economy will affect things up here because there aren’t a whole lot of jobs tied to southern companies. I mean, there are companies that are owned by southern companies (such as ours), however, there is money to be made here. The gold mine has some ridiculous amount of gold deposits at their site that there is no way they would shut down. Also, the other mines here have minerals that are still in high demand. Therefore, the jobs are still here.

We’ll just have to see how 2009 plays out for us compared to 2008.

In other news, we have done a little bit of wedding planning, however nothing is set in stone as of yet. All we know for sure is that the year will be 2010. Speaking of which, 2010 is turning out to be a big year for weddings for us as Steph and Steve are getting married on July 10 and Britt and Chris are getting married on July 24. Congrats to both couples!!

I know I write this in every blog, but we will definitely try our best to do more blogs in the future!

Thanks again to everyone who sent cards, gifts, and e-mails to us this holiday season. Every little bit helped make our first Christmas away from home a little bit easier to cope with given the fact that we couldn’t see any of you.

Only five months until we are back in Ontario for a visit!

Mike and Grace

FINALLY AN UPDATE!

2008-12-09T19:12:00.001-08:00

So since our last blog a lot has happened. Mike and I have moved into a house! Woo hoo. The store was currently leasing a house for our grocery manager and, well, some things happened and our grocery manager left town suddenly. Since my parents are coming up for christmas our store manager asked Mike and I to move into the house till the lease was up because he didn’t want to leave the house unattended and it has 3 bedrooms so we’ll have a lot more room for christmas. The house is pretty nice. It has 3 bedrooms and 4 TVs, all with satellite! We also have 2 full bathrooms, one being in our master bedroom. We also have a nice big kitchen and a garage with a fancy car which we can’t use because its owned by the store and its just being stored here for the winter part of the year. Which leads me into my next topic, which is the weather.

Well we waited for snow and it finally came, at first it was nice and we didn’t find it to be to cold at all now however that is changing. We are definitely thankful that our new digs are located right across the street from the store because WOW is it ever a frosty morning walk. Our front door has a deck infront of it and last week we had a blizzard and all the snow blew right infront of our steps so for a week we were going through the garage to get into the house. Finally today, even though we are having another blustery day, Mike was able to shovel the steps. The postive side of having all his snow and cold weather is that it makes a great freezer on your door step. Anytime we need a bottle or can cooled we through it on the porch for 10 minutes and it’s nice and frosty. All in all, the weather isn’t so bad, however, we have learned that when going anywhere outside after it hits -25 and its windy that it’s a must to wear snow pants. I just can’t wait till it hits -70 :S lol

So I’ve updated you on our house and our blustery weather now on to something slightly more interesting and amusing lol. Now that it’s Christmas our store holds different event nights such as Moonlight Madness, Customer Appreciation, Kids Day, Ladies Night, Teen Night , Mens Night and Elders Night. During these nights we open the store from 8-10 and have big sales, depending on the night. For example, on teen night we play games, and on busier nights such as ladies night we just try to get everyone through the till as fast as we can. So anyway, last Saturday we had Kids Day which means the big red guy comes and visits the store. Traditionally, its always the new guy that plays Santa, however we recently got another member to our management team (the name is Steve) which should mean Mike is off the hook. This year however they decided to also order a Rudolph costume which meant Mike played dear old Santa and Steve played Rudolph lol best day of my life. No worries folks I’ll be posting pictures at the bottom of Mike in his outfit… oh and of Rudolph.

Well other than that not much else is new just the odd thing. I had a great birthday! Mike got a Barbie cake made for me and had everyone sing happy birthday to me during coffee it was really nice. Also thanks everyone for the wishes, gifts and cards it made the day special. We still miss everyone lots and can’t believe we’ve been living in the North for 6 months now. Wedding plans really have not progressed. Hopefully once my parents come up we will celebrate and plan a little more. All we really know right now is that we want to get married and not get married in the summer or spring. Well I’m signing off now and promise I’ll write a blog on how the rest of the Christmas season goes.s

Love Grace!
XOXO

Long Needed and Awaited Update

2008-10-14T20:59:00.000-07:00

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! Sorry that it has been so long since our last blog post, but in the future we will try to update more often.

When we last wrote a blog, we had just bought a new TV and a treadmill. We have made some new purchases since then.

Grace bought an electric fireplace from Costco (which, by the way, is the best way to shop as there is no shipping) to help make the apartment feel a tad more cozy as it isn’t the warmest feeling place. It is a grey/silver colour. Below is a picture.

In the last month, we haven’t really had a whole lot of adventures as the store is busy and the weather is starting to resemble winter more and more every single day.

We "inherited" a really good portion of caribou that one of the locals shot down one day. We ended up with the butt of the caribou, which turned out to be a good chunk of meat. Below are some picture of me being a butcher. :P

We had the first snow fall of the year on September 15^th, and what a snow fall it was.

And yes, for those of you who know me too well, I did make a snow man that night.

Since then we have had a few get togethers with the people we work with. One was for Paul’s (the butcher) 40^th birthday, and we certainly had a great time. We had some drinks, had some cake, and of course, had fun.

We then got together next for the 2008 Northern Hockey Pool Draft. For the sports buffs... no, Gary Bettman did not host it. Both Grace and I have teams in it, and periodically we will update you on our standings in the pool. Grace picked her team based on names she liked and recognized. I picked mine based on stats and theories. Here are the teams for those of you who care to keep track/are interested.

Grace

Evgeni Malkin

Eric Staal

Alexander Kopitar

Cory Stillman

Shane Doan

Jonathan Cheecho

Jason Arnott

Nik Antropov

Viktor Kozlov

Thomas Kaberle

W. Wolski

Mike Fisher

Mike

Vincent LeCavalier

Patrick Kane

Derek Roy

Rick Nash

Johan Franzen

A. A. Kostitsyn

Dion Phaneuf

Nikoli Zherdev

Ryan Malone

Dustin Penner

Dennis Wideman (dubbed the “who the hell?” pick of the night”)

Joffrey Lupul

Now, I know that last time I promised to post some pictures of our store, however, when I went to take the pictures that morning, the batteries in the camera died and I haven’t had a chance to take pictures again. I do promise that one of these days I will get the pictures taken and posted.

On our way home from work the one night, we happened to see this little fella pictured below sitting under our neighbour's truck. Just to put things into perspective, that is probably a 20" tire on this truck...

Pretty cute little bugger isn't he? The arctic hare turns white in the winter to blend in to the surroundings to protect itself from predators. In the summer months, they are brown.

Like I said before, there should be more updates in the future as we stop being so lazy and actually write these things. LOL.

Hopefully everyone is well and healthy and safe down south.

Take care,

Mike and Grace

Update

2008-09-11T19:06:00.001-07:00

Hello everyone!

Since it has been a few weeks since the last blog post, I thought I would give everyone a quick update on what is going on here in Baker Lake.

We have made a few major purchases in our home since the last blog, which were as follows:

- a 19" LCD TV

- a printer for the computer

- a treadmill

We got the TV for the bedroom because, as we have discovered, we don't like to watch the same TV shows all the time, or the same movies sometimes, so for us to have the second option is a nice change.

The printer for the computer was a different story. It was brought back to the store because the person who bought it said that the scanner "didn't scan the whole page". Ken, the GM manager at the store, was going to write it off without testing it. Grace suggested buying it at a discount instead of writing it off because a) the store would get some money for it, and b) if it prints, it isn't totally useless. So Ken sold it to us for $20, and it usually retails at $149. So we got it home, Grace hooked it up and tested it out. Turns out that the thing works just fine. The theory is that the person didn't realize that it only scans the stuff you put in, not the outlines of pages and such. Either way, we got a pretty nice printer for $20. For the tech geeks that are out there, it is a Lexmark X1270.

Grace bought a treadmill from Paul, the Meat manager, for $200, which we both thought was a hell of a deal considering the freight on an item like that is going to be pretty high. The treadmill itself can be somewhat tempermental, but other than that it is a very good deal for the price we paid.

Other than that, our lives have revolved a lot around work and sleep and work again. The store has been super busy, with August being the biggest month in our store's history for sales. I would state the numbers here, but I am not sure on the policies and appropriateness of all that.

Grace has spent a bit of time making the house feel a little more like home as pictures have been hung up. It is starting to feel like home to us now, as we have put our own little touches on the place. We have bought covers for the couch and chair in the house to make them feel better. We have got the TV and such now that gives us the added luxuries. If only the store would pay for a touch up of paint on the house, it would look brand new. Haha!

Other than that, not much news from here. I am going to take some pictures of the store on Sunday so that everyone can get an idea of exactly what we have to work with up here.

Take care,

Mike

Canoes and Hondas

2008-08-19T18:05:00.000-07:00

Canoes

I know that it has been a while since the last update, but we have been fairly adventurous since our last entry.

A couple of Saturdays ago, there was a group of canoeists in town returning from their trip up one of the rivers that runs into the lake. They were leaving town on Sunday morning, and had some stuff they wanted to sell. They had originally come to the store to see if Allan, our boss, would help them out. We told them that the store would not sell their stuff – canoes, paddles, life jackets – but out of curiousity, JP (our grocery manager) asked how much they were selling the canoes for.

The answer: $100

JP didn’t hesitate to say “I’ll take one!”

Neither did John (who is our Quickstop manager), and the same with Jim (the convenience store manager).

Then Grace and I found out about this great deal (or bargoooooooooooon as Kyle would say).

Here is the series of events that led us to the canoe.

Grace: “Mike, we are buying a canoe.”
Mike: “Ok. How much.”
Grace: “$100!”
Mike: “Where?!”

And after MUCH debate as you can tell from the dialogue above, we had bought a canoe. And two paddles, and two life jackets.

Total cost for the entire lot was $170. A great steal buy any means, considering that John looked up how much the same canoe would be brand new down south. John came back the next day and said that those canoes sell for $1,300 retail. So we definitely got a deal!

Since then, we have been out on the canoe twice on Baker Lake, and they were quite the times. The first time we were out it was kinda windy and wavy, but we managed to get back to shore without any trouble (and after a little unplanned dip by Mike in the water!).

The second time the water was perfectly still, and we had a blast!

Hondas

On Wednesday night, we decided to take a little trip out on the land to a location that we like to call “The Bridge to Nowhere”.

Why is it called the Bridge to Nowhere? It is literally a Bridge to Nowhere. No road on the other side, just land. No path on the other side, just land. Nothing.

A bridge to nowhere. But what a bridge it is!

We borrowed Paul’s (the meat manager) and JP’s Hondas and went out to the Mine Road (which is the road to the mine, and likely one of only two roads with a name in town, the other being Airport Road, which ironically enough goes to the airport.). We drove the half an hour drive down this windy path to get to the bridge to nowhere. Along the way we stopped to take some pictures, and we even stopped in to one of the cabins along the road (there are tonnes of cabins) to take a look.

When we got to the cabin we stopped at, we noticed a great big inuksuk at the top of the hill beside it. We asked the owner of the cabin what it was, and he said, “that is the official geographical centre of Canada.”

But we thought Baker Lake was? Not at all, Baker Lake is just the closest town, and in all reality is probably 15-20 km southeast of the official centre.

Apparently the government decided one day that they should determine the centre of Canada, and in doing so they found that this spot was the geographic centre. To commemorate this occasion, they built a great big inuksuk on top of this hill, and people stop by it all of the time. Of course, being the “tourists” we are, we had to go take a look and touch it.

Once we got the Hondas up the hill, with some excitement of course, we took the pictures and kept on our way. Once we got to the bridge, we were in awe of the sights.

It was a bridge, over a rushing river that led to nowhere. The river, known as The Prince, was the cleanest river that we had ever seen. It is so clean that we were told that you just have to take a drink out of it. So, with that said, we took out our glasses and filled them up with the water from the river. And I must say, it was much better water than any tap water (or any bottled water for that matter) that you could get down south.

So we took in the sights, had a drink, and headed back into town as the sun started to go down.

Overall, it was a fantastic trip out to the land, and it is one that we will have to make again.

As per usual, pictures are included below with captions.

Don’t hesitate to e-mail us, we love hearing from the people back home!

Mike and Grace

Grace walking across the Bridge...
The Prince River
Grace and The Prince
Mike and The Prince
Grace and James drinking water from the Prince
"Bottoms up!"

James and Mike at the Geographical Centre of Canada!
Grace at the Geographical Centre of Canada!
View from the land to the Bridge

An Inksuk on the land.
James and Mike taking in the view at the centre of the country.

James on the Honda in front of the fourplex.

Mike driving down the road on a Honda.
Grace and Mike on the Honda
View back into town.

Sealift

2008-08-04T20:36:00.000-07:00

At the Northern in Baker Lake, twice a year we have this thing called “Sealift”. Now, most of you are likely sitting there going, “What in the heck is a sealift?” Well, that is the reason for this blog entry.

Sealift is an “event” where the barge comes in from the south with non-perishable foods and retail goods for the store stock. The barge is brought in to the pier in town by a tug boat, and is then docked. The barge is loaded with storage containers called “Sea Cans”. Each sea can is packed full with goods, and measures out to a size of about 9 feet wide and 20 feet long. Now, just to set the scene, our store is the second biggest store in the company in terms of sales and revenue.

With that being said, we get a whole lot of stuff in sea lift.

22 sea cans to be exact (and that is only the first barge of the year).

Starting last Wednesday morning, we started unloading our sea cans, which were dropped off behind the store for us by the shipping company. For this process, we hire some of the young local guys to help out since it is a long, hard process. We hand bomb EVERYTHING from each sea can into the warehouse at the store, and then pile it in a certain spot depending on the item. For example, if it is an item that can’t be frozen, it stays in the “Old Store”, which is our biggest warehouse and has heat in it. For paper products, pasta noodles, garbage bags, etc., they go in either the “First”, “Second” or “Third” warehouse, which are not heated.

We started unloading the sea cans at 10 am on Wednesday morning. We stopped for an hour for lunch, an hour for dinner, and the odd “smoke” break during the day. We didn’t leave the store until midnight.

Thursday morning at 10 am, we started once again. However, because we are management, we started at 8 am like usual. We repeated the same system as the day before, with one exception. We tried using a “roller” system. Now, rollers are exactly as they sound. It is a table like structure with rollers on it that allow you to slide objects across it. This was set up in order to make the distance between people shorter, hence less throwing of boxes and less injuries. As Grace will attest to, this was good in theory.

During the unloading of cases of Carnation Milk (48 cans to a case), the rollers fell over, and hit Grace in the leg. Thankfully she only walked away with a couple of bruises, but they are quite the bruises, as the picture before shows.

Because of this, Grace went home to rest. I got home at 10 pm that night.

On Friday, the worst of sea lift was over. The last six or seven sea cans were full of furniture, which are big items and are a lot quicker to empty out. We pulled everything out of the sea cans, and then Allan, who is our store manager, organized everything into certain sea cans to be kept as storage until our Arena Sale (which will be a totally different article at the end of the month).
So, by closing on Friday night, WE WERE DONE!!!

Overall, sea lift is quite the thing. Now, I know that we have explained in the past that we get freight by plane probably five times a week, so why do we do sea lift?

It’s very simple: money.

It is much cheaper to bring in product by sea lift, therefore we sell the items at a lower price.
What does that mean? The customer saves money.

For instance, a 12 pack of pop costs $19.99 after sea lift, compared to $27.99 when brought in by plane.

Sea lift also allows us to bring in massive quantities of pop, which also allows us to have better stock on items.

So, there you have it folks. That is what sea lift is all about.

-Mike

The Land

2008-07-27T21:27:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone, so a lot has happened in the last 2 weeks that we should have wrote 2 blogs about but it’s all in one giant big one. First off I’m going to educate you all on some Inuktitut which is the language spoken by the elders of the town. Inuktitut is not a language that can be easily translated because it’s not based on words its based on feelings and I honestly don’t know how to spell them correctly so I’m going to type them the way I say them ok.. here goes.

Huvan- what’s up!

Daimah- that’s all

Mutna- thank you

Goenook – means eskimo kiss which is rubbing your nose with someone

Huna- what/pardon

Ookalook – telephone

Gookgook- candy

Mine Trip

Last week Mike went out to the Agnico Eagle Gold Mine (called Meadowbank Camp) for a tour of the kitchen facilities and such. The Meadowbank Camp is located about 110 kilometres northwest-ish of Baker Lake, which doesn’t seem like such a far drive, but when you consider that the roads are all gravel and not very smooth, it ends up being around a three hour drive each way.

Mike and James, who works with Mike in the Camps department, hitched a ride out to the camp with Peter’s Expediting, who are the company who delivers all of the groceries to the camp, for what they thought would be a quick trip.

They left the store at 12:30, and didn’t make it back home until 9:30 that night. So much for having a short trip.

The scenery was unbelievable! It seemed as though that every ten kilometers the scenery changed. There were a bunch of random little lakes and ponds all over the place, which they were told by their driver Solomon that when the snow and ice melts, it all goes to the low points, which is how all of the water bodies are formed on the land.

After finally making it to the camp in a “record breaking” 3.5 hours, they helped to unload the truck and then got the tour from Keith Mackey, who is the Kitchen Manager at the camp. After seeing some of the rooms and the kitchen facilities, which pictures will be posted of sometime this week as James has them on his camera, they were able to eat a meal prepared with the food that they sell.

Now, for those of you that thought that the people who work at the mines are “roughing” it, you couldn’t be any more wrong! On the night that they were there, the dinner menu consisted of:

- Spaghetti with meat sauce

- Ham

- Mashed Potatoes

- Homemade mac and cheese

- Mixed vegetables

- Full salad bar

- A Cheese bar (at least four kinds of cheese)

- Eight different kinds of deserts

- Eight different kinds of juice on tap

And according to Keith, this was a mediocre night for the people at the camp. Once a week they have a steak night, which they could only imagine what that is like.

Below there will be some pictures posted of the scenery of the land between town and the camp. Camp pictures will be posted later this week.

The Honda trip!

Last Thursday Mike and I took a walk down by the water to see the new barge that arrived. This barge was full of construction equipment. These large barges all come in around the end of July and continue to come in until the end of September. That’s the ONLY time they come because if they come in after that they get stuck here for the winter, like the one that has been in previous blog pictures. Anyway, they call this sealift and our company uses it to get mass amounts of product up here. We will be receiving sealift 3 times before the end of the summer and once we get it I will explain in more detail how it works and what it looks like because right now I have no idea other than large barges come in and we pull 12 hour days unloading the stuff.

So anyway the Honda part of the blog… after walking down to the water to check the barge out we quickly retreated because OH MY GOD bugs! Yes we have bug jackets but wow! We have some pictures at the bottom of Mike being swarmed. So once we got back to the four-plex Jim came back on his Honda and we talked about wanting to go out on the Honda so he offered up his. Now we are supposed to have helmets to go out but Jim told us to take the back road out and we would be ok. So… we jumped on the Honda and took a little trip to the land.

I didn’t get to go out to see the camp so this was my first experience of scenery outside of town and wow it’s just gorgeous and so peaceful. On our little drive we were driving up hill so once we got to a certain point we actually got a great view of the sun setting as well as Baker Lake from a distance. On our drive we came across a small grave yard.

Now up here, since the ground is all tundra and rock, you can’t bury people in the ground so they bury them above ground and cover the simple plywood casket with big chunks of rock. We also came across the dump, which is just a fenced in area with smoke and chunks of metal because they have to burn the garbage as soon as they get it or people will actually try and go through it. The way the garbage is done up here is very simple, you have big metal cans placed outside your house and whenever you have garbage you put it in the can and they usually pick it up in the same day.. It’s pretty simple, except that the only down side it that there is no recycling. Anyway it was a great experience and I’ve posted pictures at the bottom of the scenery.

Well that’s all we have for this post but if anyone has any random questions let me know and I’d be glad to answer them.

Ciaoz Grace!

PS: Last Tuesday we saw the moon for the first time since we’ve moved up here!

me and mike on the honda!
the sun setting..so beautiful

that is a small family graveyard.

thats the green monster barge thats in a bunch of pictures from previous posts, they had to move it to the middle of the lake so new barges come in, so it's stuck there until a big enough tug boat can come in and push it home.

The 1st barge of the season

mike being swarmed.. if the picture was bigger you would actually be able to see more...
the big jacket keeps them off your skin but they swarm the top of your head like crazy so you have to wear a hat.

mike on his way out to the camp.

the camp... more pictures to come!!

caribou that he was able to get a picture of, he also so an arctic rabbit and a fox.

one of the small lakes made by melted snow.

another picture of the camp.

Mike and Grace are Engaged!!

2008-07-19T19:17:00.000-07:00

Helloooooooooooo everyone!

I know its been a while but I’ve finally got a free moment to write. So as many of you know, Mike and I are engaged!!!!! Woooooo!!!! And now I’m sure you’re wondering how Mike proposed? Well he did it on July 6^th, which holds no significance other than it was his first day off without me because his days off got switched around. Anyway, on Saturday I had been joking with the guys that I work with that since Mike had the day off tomorrow that he was going to cook me a big dinner. So Sunday morning I got up, went to work (had a short day because my Sunday shift is only 6 hours long) and when I came home I opened the door to a table lit with candles, dinner in the oven, nice music and a pretty looking Mike.

In my mind I thought he was just making me a nice dinner because I had said he would on Saturday. So we sit down for dinner and have a nice long talk about random things, finally I decided that I’ve been in my work clothes too long and need to change, and since Mike is dressed all nice I ask him if he doesn’t mind if I change, thinking he will be totally fine with it and probably join me since he’s not one for anything but comfy pants and jeans. However, instead of getting the answer I thought I would get, he tells me I have to wait a minute and takes off into the bedroom. Not really thinking about it at all, I wait and he comes back like 30 seconds later and says I can go now, so I walk into the room and see a Peoples box sitting on the bed. I ask what I did to deserve this and he said you’ll see, in my head I’m thinking it’s an anniversary gift or him just feeling thoughtful. I opened the box and inside it was a velvet jewelry box, which at that moment I thought was earrings, so when I started to open it and he went down on one knee. I totally freaked out when I saw the ring and said “Are you serious” and finally after I said nothing he looked at me and said, “are you gonna answer me?” I laughed and said, “oh yeah! YES!”

I’m pretty sure I’ve never been so surprised in my life, which is what made it so amazing. I think it was such a shock to me because we had talked about it before moving up here but I didn’t think he was even thinking about it anymore, let alone had a way to get a ring. Apparently he’s had the ring since a week before we left! Crazy! Anyway, that’s how it happened and yes he asked my dad for permission. We are going to wait a couple years because we want to get at least our 2 years with the company done. Some of the people at our store know and by some I mean all the girls because they noticed the ring and none of the guys because well they are guys and oblivious to that kind of thing. I have added pictures of the ring at the bottom and in closing I must say we will have to have a party to celebrate when Mike and I come home next summer!

Canada Day in Nunavut

2008-07-02T20:20:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone!

I hope all you proud Canadians enjoyed Canada day because I know I sure did.

For our first Canada Day in the north, Mike and I started our day by watching the festivities on Parliament Hill on the CBC. Once we had our fill of that, we ventured out for our first big exploration walk of Baker Lake, and we also wanted to check out what the happenings were in town.

So as we began our exploration we passed by the town's community center and arena to see all the kids in town gathered to take part in Canada Day events, such as bicycle decorating. As we continued our walk, we came across several proud Canadians dressed in red and white and carrying Canadian flags on their Hondas. Once we hit the end of town and headed out to the airport we were able to take some pictures of the tundra, the lake and a small animal called a "tusk tusk", which looks like a prairie dog with a deflated squirrel tale that wiggles out of control (this is also known as the "groundhog of the north"). As we headed back into town, we passed the local indoor pool, which was just filled up that day, so we decided to get a picture of all the kids waiting patiently outside for the first swim of the season.

Once we returned back to four plex, which we have gotten an outside picture of for everyone to see, we enjoyed a cold beer on the deck and enjoyed the hot sun (yes it was 20 and beautiful that day). While sitting on the porch we talked to our neighbour, Jim, who reminded us that our management team was having a BBQ and a game of horse shoes, so we decided we would have to wander over and take part. Unfortunately we didn't take our camera to horse shoes, which thank God is a good thing because out of the five teams, Mike and I came dead last! LOL! But I must admit, it was my first time playing. Anyway, we enjoyed drinking and the horse shoe tournament, which was way too fun to watch, and also enjoyed lots of yummy BBQ.

I think out of all the BBQs I've been to though, this one had the most amazing view because we sat on top of a hill over looking the lake as the ice began to melt on the lake with a perfectly painted sky above. I find it so weird coming from down south where I'm used to looking across a bare lake seeing nothing, but knowing that Buffalo is there, and then being in Baker Lake where I look across the Lake see nothing and know there really isn't anything there except maybe a caribou.. LOL! Anyway, that's all I have to say in regards to our day, below are pictures of the town.

Grace
flowers growing on the tundra

Kids gatherd for events

The kids waiting to get into the pool

peace

the 4 plex formally known as home (we are the bottom right window)

Thats our store!

Welcome to Baker!

Mike

A view of the town from the land

Look at all those rocks!

The clear beach water!

The barge that was stuck in the lake when it started to freeze in September

Just another day in Baker Lake

2008-06-23T22:21:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone! So usually I let Mike write the blog because I have crappy grammar, which I’m sure you will realize once you get to the end of the blog. Anyway, the big thing going on in the town of Baker Lake today is a house fire. One of the girls that works at the Quick Stop in our store has had a house fire because someone let a kid play with a lighter unattended…. Yep, only in Baker Lake do the kids smoke at 5 and run around the streets at 1 am. Anyway the fire started at around 430 and continued burning till 930… the house really isn’t that big… However the roof is metal so the fire was contained inside.

This weekend we went over to our meat manager’s house for a surprise birthday party for one of the single guys that lives in our 4plex. Our meat manager and his wife are both from Newfoundland so automatically you know its going to be a good time and boy was it ever. Mike and I are both the youngest management in the store the next closest in our age is a 28 year old so the party was mostly people in their 30’s and 40’s but that doesn’t mean they don’t party hard. We went over at 9 and were the 1^st to leave at 1:30… I guess the party didn’t end till 3:30-4ish. Anyway the party was full of drinking and sing alongs to Maritimes music, which was very entertaining to watch, as well as some dancing. Jim (the guy the party was for) knew we were having a get together, but didn’t know why, so we just surprise attacked him with a cake and it wasn’t just any kind of cake - it was a boob cake (i.e. shaped like a set of boobs). This made me feel at home! LOL! This was followed by a gift of a t-shirt that said “come to the dark side we have cookies”. Anyway it was a good night and allowed us to get to know the people we work with better. I’m definitely looking forward to the Canada Day party where we will be playing horse shoes.

And just to end off the blog on a light but humourous note on Saturday night our neighbor in our 4plex, which is also the guy we had the party for, knocked on our door and told us there was a big rainbow outside. So Mike went out on the porch to look and the guy proceed to tell him in such an excited voice, “I love this shit man, I love living up here!” LOL!!! He used to live in Toronto, so I supposed this stuff would be new to him. Later that night we came up with several leprechaun jokes because our neighbor is so short. Two pictures are posted below!

Later gators!
Grace

Picture of the house fire. You can faintly see smoke coming out of the roof where they had to knock a hole in it to get to the fire.

Picture of the rainbow over the lake. Kind of hard to see, but it is there. Rainbows are very rare up here as it doesn't rain too much.

Enjoying a cold beer... what a process!

2008-06-18T18:32:00.000-07:00

GOOOOOOOOOOOOD MORNING, VIETNAM!!!!!

Okay, the line is funny, but not relevant other than that we watched that movie the other night. As promised in the last post, we said we would talk about how to obtain booze in Baker Lake.

Here is the process we went through it on Monday afternoon.

Jim, our neighbour and manager of the convenience store in town, came over around 1 PM and took us down to the arena, which is about a five minute walk from the four-plex (which is the appropriate term for our house at work). When we got to the arena, Jim introduced us to Johnny, who is the by law officer in town, and the man who holds our alcohol intake future. Johnny had us fill in a form with our name, address, and date of birth.

The rest of the form may remind some of the older people reading this blog of how they used to get booze at the LCBO. We had to look at a list of available liquor and beer, and then fill in what we wanted...

And here is the catch.

There is a maximum of what you can purchase on your order. For stuff like rye, it is two 40 oz bottles. For beer, it is 54 cans. For wine, it is five bottles.

So, after looking at the list, Grace and I decided to make it worth our while and we ordered the maximum. So Grace got her wine, and I got my beer.

However, this is not a given that we will GET our booze.

By Law Johnny has to approve your application, because in the past some people have gotten a little (or a lot) rowdy and have caused trouble in town. So, on Tuesday morning, you take a look at the list posted in the Northern that states which permit numbers have been approved (no names are mentioned, which is good I suppose) for their order.

We assumed our names were on there.

Then today, the phone call came.

Calm Air with freight for us.

Freight = Booze!!!

So, here we are at 8:43 PM Wednesday night having a glass of wine and a beer.

And it never tasted so good!!!

Cheers!

Grace and Mike

PS: I know everyone is wondering, so here it is. A can of beer is approximately $2, therefore it is about $48 for a case of beer before freight charges. Wine is about $12 a bottle before freight. Now you know!

It's been one week

2008-06-16T12:48:00.000-07:00

We have been in Baker Lake for almost one entire week now, and needless to say, we have learned quite a bit. Here is a list of things that we have learned thus far:

No matter what the make or model of your four wheeler or ATV is, it is called a Honda. Likewise, no matter what the make or model of your snow mobile is, it is called a machine.
The most common answer to any question posed to a local here is “I don’t know”. Example: “Where is the bathroom?” “I don’t know."
If you have a fur, and there is the slightest of tears in it, the entire fur is deemed worthless and it is thrown out (or in most cases, under the house).
Even though the ice on the lake is starting to melt, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t park your machine (skidoo) on it. Well, according to the locals that is.
DO NOT SEND US BOOZE IN THE MAIL! Apparently it is illegal to send alcohol by mail. In order to obtain booze in Baker Lake, you must go to the arena and apply for a permit. Once you are issued a permit, you are then allowed to order alcohol that will be shipped in by plane. More about this issue will be talked about in the next blog.
If you catch a fish in the lake that is seven or eight pounds in weight, you throw it back because it isn’t big enough!
It is common to keep it in the family! (Yes, that is the sound of banjos in the background.)
We wear our sunglasses at night. Maybe Corey Hart wrote that song about living in the north. We have yet to see darkness.
Watermelon can only be bought in the store pre-sliced because to buy a full water melon would cost $85!!
No matter how good of a job you do dusting the shelves, you’ll just have to do it again 20 minutes later during the summer.
Grace now knows how to cut a key!
When a local comes into the store to buy a propane blow torch, odds are it isn’t for handy work, but that it is for “hot knifing”... in order to smoke marijuana... oh boy...
Unfortunately, we are too far inland to see polar bears. However, grizzly bears have been known to wander in at times. However, when the caribou show up, THEY SHOW UP!
If you get lost, forget all you learned in boy scouts about using a compass. They are useless up here because we are too close to the magnetic north pole.
Forget everything you were taught about being at work 5-10 minutes prior to the start of your shift. If you are 10 minutes late, great! You’re doing great just to get your employees to show up on time. (This, of course, is in reference to the locals here.)
If you ask an Inuit person a yes or no question the answer will either be raising their eyebrows (yes) or a scrunched up face (no).
At any given time, if there is a big event in town, everyone will be there.
When killing your first animal, it is custom for the Inuit people to take it to the elders in town instead of keeping any of it for themselves.
It is common that there would be 30 people in a kindergarten class. It is also common that that same class would only be four people when they graduate grade 12.

As you can see, we have learned quite a bit so far and there is definitely a lot more to learn. Today we plan on taking a walk around the town to see some things and figure out where other things are since we have a day off from work. The other night, Mike took some pictures of the “night” sky around midnight. They are posted below.

So long for now!

View out of the front window towards the lake.
View out of the front window away from the lake.
View out of the back window towards the barge that got iced in last winter. Yes, that is ice on the lake.

First 24 Hours in Nunavut

2008-06-10T15:58:00.000-07:00

Greetings to y'all down south!

To answer any immediate questions:
- No, there are NOT any polar bears in my front yard.
- Yes, it is cold. Not too cold though.
- No, we don't live in an igloo!

However, we'll recap the day that was on the way from Toronto to Baker Lake.

At 7:45 AM Eastern Time, we caught the shuttle service from our hotel to Pearson. When we got to Pearson, we had to do the usual checking in. Since we were moving, and since we had "too much stuff", we paid our overage on our luggage and then found our gate. We then got some Tim Hortons, because it was the only reasonably priced food at the airport, and waited for the 10 AM flight to Winnipeg.

The flight to Winnipeg lasted about 2.5 hours, and we were able to pass the time by watching a movie. We both chose Horton Hears a Who. Not a bad movie, not a great movie. Worth watching though. This flight would be the worst one of the day for us, and it was very bumpy.

We got to Winnipeg and the weather proved why it is a world class city - cold and rainy. :P

We grabbed lunch at a restaurant and waited once again for our flight, this time to Churchill, Manitoba.

Of course, as we are waiting at the gate, something somewhere went wrong with a Calm Air plane and we had to wait nearly an extra hour to board the plan to Churchill. Once we got going, we went to Arviat, Nunavut for about five minutes, and headed out to Rankin Inlet. We landed there and we waited for about 25 minutes for a refuel and such, and we finally got on the plane to head for Baker Lake - one hour behind schedule.

We landed at the Baker Lake Airport at 10 PM Central Time. Once we got our luggage - and it was all there to our surprise - we waited to get picked up.

And waited...

Nobody to pick us up.

So Mike asked the lady at the front desk about it while Grace guarded the luggage. The lady at the counter told Mike that there was a little mix up at the store about when we were coming in.

The assistant manager, Ken, was told that we weren't going to be in until Tuesday night at 9, and we were told Monday night at 9. Anywho, after one phone call and about 5 minutes, a big cloud of dust came up the road - Ken in a Northern truck.

Ken took us to the store to pick up some food for breakfast - at this point it's 11 PM - and we were a little surprised by the prices of some things.

Here's an example:
- Large jar of Cheese Whiz: $17.99
- 10lb Bag of Red Potatoes: $18.89
- Small bag of flour: $10.45
- 2L Bottle of Coke: $12.99

All we could say is thank God for a food allowance!

We got to the apartment around 11:30, got comfortable and fell asleep.

We ended up having today off, so we gave the apartment a good cleaning and got unpacked and did some more shopping. Pretty uneventful day.

Below are some pictures of the apartment. Enjoy!

-Grace and Mike

Kitchen
Living Room
Bathroom (sorry for sideways picture)
Dining Area

Bedroom
Other side of bedroom
Dining area and front door (door on left)