A Tour of Tuk - Part One

A Tour of Tuktoyaktuk, Northwest Territories

by James Wilson  (photographer),

Patrick and Charlotte Wilson (van passengers),

and Jen Wilson (driver of the van)

Hello Dear Friends and Family!

Welcome to Tuktoyaktuk, Northwest Territories!  Today it is snowing and it's a balmy 1C.  It is a grey day, as the fall days tend to be up here, and since we are out of school for the week, I thought we should take a drive and introduce you to our community.  We took pics of several buildings and landmarks but we decided to portion them out over a few blog postings.  James became very interested in taking the pics and getting  'just the right' shot, and Patrick and Charlotte sure did enjoy driving around and listening to Weird Al Yankovic while James and I worked on our project.  James also learned how to download pics from the camera to the Apple Desktop, so that's cool too.  It's always good to learn!

So...here is our house.

Nah.  Just kidding.  This ramshackle old thing is the pretty little eyesore at the corner to our street, though. We don't think anybody lives in it, or at least we hope not!

THIS is our house...and some people you may recognize. Patrick insisted on standing right behind Charlotte, but all three of the Wilson Kidlets are there, along with our box of groceries placed on the railing of the deck. Can you see the yellow box?  A giant box of  48 Eggo waffles was on sale for $12.99!!  That is an incredible price for up here and since we FINALLY have a deep freezer for the first time ever in the history of our family, we bought a box.

All the buildings are built on pilings, as you can see, due to the permafrost.  This means that everybody has a deck or front porch at the front of their house to accommodate the stairs to get to your front door!  We have a lovely front deck, but we can't figure out why because it just means that we have to shovel it in the winter and nobody wants to sit outside in the spring or summer because the mosquitoes are the size of small birds.  Oh well.  We have a generous front deck.

The house was built by the current owner's brother about 7 years ago. Shortly after they moved in, his wife wanted to go back to school so they moved to Inuvik and they've been there ever since.  They sold the house to the current owner, his sister, who lived here happily with her boyfriend and two kids until she decided she wanted to go back to school.  She was an Educational Assistant at the school and is going to school to be a Teacher, so she decided she wanted to rent the house to somebody in the education field.  All that was available in Tuk were one bedroom apartments suitable for the typical person who comes to Tuk to teach, a young single at the beginning of his/her career, or an older, experienced professional who wants to try something different at the end of his/her career.  This second type of person may bring a spouse with them but all their kids are typically grown.  It was quite unusual for a teacher with a family to be headed up here and so townsfolk were most impressed and curious about us.  It also worked to both our advantage because we needed a three-bedroom house, and our Land Lady needed to rent one in order to attend school.

The red box in the front....in case you missed it....is our garbage box.  Every house that is occupied in Tuk has a red box placed near its stairs.  When your garbage is collected the lid is left open and you leave it open until you have something to put in it, and then you close the lid.  Garbage is collected every couple of days. We think the white boxes are for dirt so you can use it for your own driveway, but we are unsure.  We will ask soon, in case there is something we should have in there to prepare us for the snow, which, as you can see from the first picture, has begun to arrive.

That is all you are going to see of our house for the moment.  We will devote another blog to our house and give you the grand tour.  I want to hang up all our pictures and finish unpacking our last few boxes before you get to see the inside...unless you Face Time us....then I'll give you a personalized grand tour, and I'll just steer you around the remaining moving boxes.

Moving onward.  Here are some pics of the centre of our universe, Mangilaluk School. The picture to the left here shows the ramp leading to the main entrance of the school.  The big yellow part off to the right of the door is the gymnasium. When you turn to the left there is the rest of the school. The school forms a rectangle, and where you walk in is one of the short sides, with the office and bathrooms.  Down the one long hallway as seen below, is the primary wing.  This houses Junior Kindergarten (a new addition this year...up until this year children started school in Senior Kindergarten) all the way to Grade 4.  The other long hallway houses Grades 5 to 8. 

The final side, the second short side along the back of the school houses the high school.  Up here high school doesn't actually start until Grade 10, but the Grade 9 classes are in the high school wing because there's no room for them elsewhere.  The library is in the middle part of the school toward the back.  It is small, but well stocked and is open to the community from 4-7 four nights a week.  I don't think it is open on the weekends.  There are bathrooms in the high school wing for just the high school students, along with Shop and Family Studies rooms.  The school is full to bursting and they badly need more space.  I have heard that there is talk of building a new wing for the school but I'm not sure when or how it is going to occur.

The playground is outside the front of the school and it is a pretty cool one as playgrounds go.  The primary kids have a separate recess from the junior kids so everybody has ample time to play on the equipment.

 This red building is called Stanton's.  It is a grocery store owned by the Hamlet of Tuk.  The Manager of the store's name is Marius, and he is one of our Go To people for all things Tuk.  His wife works as an EA at the school and they are from Newfoundland.  They are wonderful and some of the warmest and most welcoming people I have ever met.  This store has your typical groceries, but some of their goods are sold at a lower price than the Northern Store, the other grocery store in town.  This is to help supplement the cost of living in the north.  If you are going to do a proper grocery run, you would typically visit both stores because there are items sold at one store that aren't available at others, and one store will sell something that is less expensive at the other store and vice versa.  We have learned this lesson ourselves, and when we mentioned it to other staff members, they laughed and said, "Oh you've figured that out already? Good for you!".  I will take you on a tour of Stanton's and the Northern Store the next time we go grocery shopping so you can see what prices are like.
 The Northern Store has the post office in it, and so we also took a picture of the Canada Post sign.  We figured you'd get a kick out of seeing the syllabics for Tuk written underneath the name.  There is also something whimsical about seeing the actual name of Tuktoyaktuk on a Canada Post sign.  Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.  Yes, Friends and Family, there is a Tuktoyaktuk!  A few other things about the Northern Store worth mentioning...they sell more than just groceries.  They have a small clothing section, a baby section, housewares, hardware, toys, furniture and more.  The building isn't very big, so it's all crammed in there. I also think they have a catalogue from which you can order all kinds of stuff.  I'm going to ask about that.  When you are on medication, the Northern Store in Inuvik fills your prescription and flies it to Tuk.  You can pick up your prescriptions at the Northern Store here.  I am quite happy about that, considering I am on a few different regular medications.  You will notice the ramps coming from both stores.  I thought it was for grocery carts, but that is not the case.  Grocery carts do not leave the store, and they do not use bags up here.  You get cardboard boxes a la No Frills and use the cardboard to burn in your wood burning stove. How convenient!

As this is running a little long, we will save the rest of our pics for another blog in a few days.  However, James said to me, "You HAVE to show them a picture of the Arctic Ocean, Mom!" so, here you go....some pics of the Arctic Ocean, which we can see from our house.  James took this picture as we were driving by it on our way back home.  Notice all the driftwood?  This gets pushed up the McKenzie River and winds up being deposited all along the shore line of the ocean.  Pretty soon the locals who supply firewood for a living will be hauling the wood off the shore and storing it on their yards under tarps to cut for next year's firewood.  It's pretty saturated, so it needs to sit for a year to dry out.

Since it is so cloudy and snowy out in the fall and the snow clouds are so dense and dark, our daily life occurs in shades of grey, as you can see from these two pics of the ocean.  The clouds are heavy, although lightening.  We are hoping the sky will clear and we can enjoy some sunshine before the sun sets.  This morning the clouds were so dark, the streetlights were on until about 9:00.  Currently the sun rises around 8:30 am and is setting around 9:30 p.m.  Over the weekend the sky was clear and the Northern Lights were dancing in the sky! One night the Lights were green, yellow, pink and purple!   I will experiment with the settings on my fancy camera and see if I can get some decent pics of the Northern Lights.

 Some things, however, just have to be seen in person to appreciate.