It's Cold in the Dark!!

It would seem that time has gotten away from me again, and here I am bewildered that's it been ages since I blogged about our adventures.  To be truthful, my creative juices have been flowing as I became Tuk's resident poet for several monumental staff member's birthdays, including Greg's, so I have been busy writing....just not here.

The last time I left off, we had just celebrated Hallowe'en.  Well, now we are past Remembrance Day and on our way to Christmas....soon.  This weekend will mark the first Sunday in Advent, so as of then my own personal Christmas season begins.

The side of the school on our way inside from recess last week
at 10:35 a.m.  The moon is still out!

Since Hallowe'en, it's been getting darker and colder - MUCH darker and MUCH colder! Each day we are losing 10 minutes of daylight.  We are at the point where morning recess is spent completely in the dark and we go home for lunch during dawn.  By shortly before 1:00 p.m. the sun is rising on our way back to school for the afternoon.  Even though I say the sun is rising, however, I mean that it makes an appearance over the horizon.  It is absolutely stunning because it is a 2 hour sunrise/sunset combination, because by the end of the school day at 3:45 p.m. the sun is on its way down, and by 4:15 we are in total darkness.  Yup....this is life in the North!  I'm not sure which is worse, total darkness or total daylight.  At least with the total darkness you can go to sleep and not be bothered.  Extra daylight would make you think you had to stay awake, which explains why the Inuvaluit are generally a nocturnal bunch.  What difference does it make whether you sleep during the day or night?  There's logic in there somewhere.

We knew that this was coming, and although I miss the feel of the sun on my face, I have to say that as a family we are more amused by this than we are bothered by it.  We know that eventually one day the sun just won't rise at all!  No dawn.  No twilight. Not even a peep of daylight for three whole weeks! The good news is that we will be in Ontario for most of that time, and by then I am sure that we will be happy to see the daylight.

We are extra glad that Gramma Wilson/Greg's Mom bought us a thoughtful anniversary gift called a Happy Light, which is plugged in by the computer here.  We turn it around so that everybody can bathe within its glow.  It is supposed to mimic the sunlight without the UV rays and help combat seasonal depression, which is something a lot of people who are not from here begin to enjoy about now through to March, when the sun is staying up for a respectable amount of time.  We have been taking our Vitamin D pills and everybody takes their turn in front of the Happy Light.

While all this darkness is descending upon us, so have the colder temperatures.  We have not had a lot of snow, unlike our friends and family in Ontario, but we are 'enjoying' (in the most sarcastic tone EVER) some polar temperatures that have us shivering in our temperature rated boots!  The average temperature these days is somewhere in the -20C range, and with the windchill it takes it down to somewhere between -30C and -40C.  The coldest it's been so far was -45C.  The rule is, once the temperature hits -40, the kids stay in for recess.  There are days when Patrick and Charlotte go sit in Greg's room quietly during their respective morning recesses so they don't have to go outside, and since their teachers are Tuk born and raised, they chuckle because they were so cold when it was -20C outside with windchill.  My kids gave up their recess privileges ages ago!

Another interesting fact I have noticed about the children up here is that the majority of them are very quick and independent when it comes to dressing in their outdoor clothes, even the kindergarten aged kids! They can jump into snowpants, boots, sweater and parka, hat, scarves (one for the neck and one for the face) and mittens/gloves in about a minute flat.  I have never seen it go so fast!  Some of the kids dawdle on purpose so they don't have to go outside, but the majority of the kids up here love the outdoors no matter what the temperature!  They'll tell you one of their favourite things to do is to "play out", which means go outside. My poor kids hurry into their clothing, but they're just pulling the snow guards from their snowpants over their boots by the time most kids are getting in line!  They don't get in trouble for it.  The teachers understand.  Poor Patrick, though, has never been the fastest at getting dressed in either indoor or outdoor clothes.  Until recently, I used to either help him get dressed or hand him his clothes, and when he was young I used to say, "I bet you can't put your shirt on in 5 seconds!" and of course he'd beat the challenge.  It's just that left to his own devices, he'd take 5 minutes to put his shirt on!  Well, now that he's 11 years old and puberty is well upon him, I just encourage him to move along when it comes to his indoor clothes at least.  Outdoor clothes, however, find me holding open his parka and handing him what he needs to put on next otherwise we'd all be in the van waiting for him until noon.

Some kids actually wear their snowpants as pants.  I asked about that, and was told by a staff member that they actually just wear a pair of long underwear so they don't overheat inside and just wear their snowpants all day.  Hmmmmmm.....maybe that's what we should be doing for Patrick!  When we come home for lunch I have told him not to worry about taking them off, but then there is the question of his bathroom break before heading back to school.  "I can't pee with my snow pants on, Mom!".

Right.  The kid has a point.

A Matter of Water Part II OR Noah's Arc of the North

Did you know that almost every major religion in the world has a story or record of a major flood which wiped out the evil in the world?  It's true.  I learned about this in my World Religions class while I was working on my undergrad degree back in the pre-child era.  Well, did you know that us Wilsons now have record of a major flood?  Oh yeah!  Read on.....


Some of you who follow me on Facebook will know about this MISadventure that befell our family a few days ago, but I would not be a faithful Blogger if I did not dutifully record the Wilson Family version of The Flood.  My Mom the Scrapbooker follows a saying, "If it isn't in the scrapbook, it didn't happen!".  Well, I guess I am following the mantra "If it isn't in the Blog, it either didn't happen or I didn't want to put it in."  Just kidding.  Here is the Wilson Family version of the Great Flood......


Once upon a time Jen was at home cleaning up the kitchen after the troglodytes left to go back to school.  She had put the dishes in the dishwasher and was at the kitchen sink washing the pots and pans, which do not go in the dishwasher.  As she washed the pot that had contained the chicken noodle soup, she felt the floor begin to vibrate, which is the telltale sign that the water truck is backing up beside the house to begin its daily delivery.


(A Quick Note: For those of you who have been following the blog for a while now, you will remember the Labour Day weekend we spent without water because our water tank ran dry.  For those of you who haven't been following as long or who need a kick in the head to remember such a scarring occurrence in our family history, please refer to the Blog entitled 'A Matter of Water'.)


Ever since that fateful day when the Wilsons ran out of water and had to spend part of the Labour Day weekend without water, the sound of the water delivery truck backing onto the property and the subsequent sound of rushing water into the tank had been music to her ears.  On the weekends when other members of the Wilsons are home, everybody went running to Jen to ensure she enjoyed the sound of the daily water delivery.  Indeed, a rotten day could be brightened by the sound of that water truck!

On the day in question, Jen was happily employed in the kitchen listening to the water gushing into the water tank, when, all of a sudden, there was a loud and startling, "BOOM!".  Jen jumped and before she could even react by finding where the noise had come from her socks were soaked with water!  She looked down and saw a flood of water coming from underneath the kitchen counter and pooling on the floor.  She ran around to the living room because she could still hear the sound of rushing water, and saw from across the living room that the door to the laundry room, which houses the heat pump, hot water heater and enormous water tank, had waves of water streaming out from underneath the door onto the living room floor!  The water truck had overfilled the water tank to the point where even the overflow unit which was supposed to protect the house from disasters such as this, was overflowing!  The ungodly noise Jen had heard before the water started to fill the living room was the lid of the water tank blowing off!

Jen freaked out!!  She tried to wave through the water to get to the front porch to yell at the delivery guys to stop, but the truck had packed up and was leaving before she could get outside.  What to do?  The only possible thing she could think to do was to get out the mop and the bucket used for the biweekly floor cleaning, but realized quickly it was a losing battle.  After a few phone calls to the landlord, who was not in Tuk at the time, and to the Hamlet of Tuk Offices, Jen realized she had to get Greg home.  She called the school and spoke to the school secretary, Audrey, who is the Authority of All Things Tuk.  She would know what to do.  Audrey sprung into action and called her husband, who promptly delivered a wet vac, and she sent Greg home on a 'Household Emergency' day.

Greg arrived home just as the wet vac was arriving, and between Jen and Greg, the half inch of standing water that was filling the living room and kitchen was sucked and/or dried up within a few hours.  Whew!  It was at this point that Jen updated her Facebook status stating that Greg, her Knight in Shining Armour, rescued his damp Damsel in Distress from her damp castle.

The story goes on from there.

A little while later, Greg noticed that the floors were still pretty cold, which was chalked up to the fact that some pretty cold water had pooled on it for a while so of course they would be cold.  Then the air started get colder, so the thermostat was turned up, only there was no heat.  Oh oh.  According to Jen's brother, who happened to call at the time, the Wilson family's rental home operated on radiant heat, which explains the baseboard heaters lining the walls and the sound of the trickling water running through them.  The heat pump in the laundry room, was not a furnace, but a heat pump which warms the water and pumps it through the pipes which run along the baseboard.  Or at least this is what Jen understood from Darren.

It began to get pretty darn cold.  After an emergency texting session with Audrey, a name was procured and said gentleman called to come look at the heat pump.  Sure enough, it had met with disaster during the flood, and was luckily a quick enough fix.  At this point, the gentleman, who also works for the Wilson Family's landlord, began to notice the laminate hardwood floors buckling.  The Wilsons were dry and warm, but sitting on a pile of water it seemed.

Upon his return, the Landlord paid the Wilson Family a visit to inspect their (well, his) floor, and to view the buckling, which was even more prominent and showing in several areas.  It would appear that the Wilsons will be living in a construction zone because the entire living room floor has to come up, the soaked padding has to be removed, and the floor underneath has to be examined for damage.  Yippeee!!

Today Jen was in the kitchen cleaning up after the troglodytes, who had just left for school again, when the floor began to vibrate.  Rather than smile and welcome the sound of the water delivery, Jen tensed, and a nervous knot formed in the pit of her stomach.  Gone are the days of a happy water sound.  From now on there will be nerves involved in the daily water delivery.

Here ends the story of the Wilson Family Flood. Thanks be to God....(and all involved who helped to get us dry and warm!).

Hallowe'en

HALLOWE'EN

BOO!!  (Did I scare you??)

The month of October is filled with anticipation in Tuk...for October 31st! Of course, kids all over the United States and Canada get excited about Hallowe'en.  There is something fun about dressing up in a costume or a disguise or being somebody different for a day or a night.  Up here, though, Hallowe'en is HUGE.  Since the Northern store only carries limited costumes, make-up and other seasonal merchandise, most families make homemade costumes that are simply out of this world.

Charlotte the Wonderful Witch

There is something about a homemade costume, don't you think?  Growing up, I was always lucky that I had a parent who sewed.  Over the years, my mom sewed me a gypsy costume, a wonderful polkadot clown costume complete with patches on the knees and a ruffle for my neck, a pilgrim costume including the little hat that turned back, and a wonderful ghost costume with a tie in my school colours that made me the 'school spirit' - lol.  I wore these costumes for several years in a row over the years and when they were outgrown or no longer used, they were passed on to other kids in the neighbourhood.  Up here, though, the costumes have a northern flair to them, which is only fitting.

The celebration of Hallowe'en would have begun on Friday, October 24th with an all ages Hallowe'en costume dance, but it was cancelled this year due to the fact that somebody broke into the Community Centre where the dance was being held.  I don't know how much damage was done or if it was a punishment, or whether things had to be replaced and they used the budget allocated for the Hallowe'en dance to pay for it....I'm not sure, but there was a lot of disappointment in the community about it.  How sad that the actions of a few idiots ruined it for everybody else.

Patrick the Tacky Guy...on the left

On October 30th there was a costume parade at the Community Centre, and people of all ages, especially kids, dressed up and went to be judged by members of the community.  Prizes were given out by age, and the kids had a ball. James, Patrick and Charlotte were not interested in going, and by the time we found out about it, it was almost too late anyway.  I am told that a lot of the kids who dress up and attend this event wear a different costume the next day at school, and then perhaps even something different again to go out trick-or-treating!  That's like a bride changing from a ceremony dress to a reception dress, which is becoming a popular thing.

James, the Ghost of Christmas
Future!

Anyway, the next day at school was Friday, October 31st - Hallowe'en.  That morning you could feel the excitement throughout the school...there was a buzz of energy that was almost palpable.  During the morning, kids came in their regular clothes.  There was a door decorating contest sponsored by the Grade 5 class, and they came around and judged the doors, which were adorned with all manner of spooky decorations.  My favourite door was Charlotte's Grade 3 class.  They made the neatest haunted houses for their door.  Each class had also been designated an amount of wall space in the gymnasium to use for decorating for the costume contest in the afternoon.  Some classes went all out, others....not so much, but it sure was fun to see what they came up with to decorate their space.  The Junior and Senior Kindergarten classes were definitely the ones who put the most effort into their wall space and they were creative and fun to view.


One thing lacking up here in Tuk at Hallowe'en are pumpkins turned jack'o'lanterns.  They do not travel well past the Arctic Circle, and they are so heavy that the cost is prohibitive.  This is why this year one of the stipulations of the gym decorations was that there had to be pumpkins somewhere in the design.  It was a little strange not seeing a jack'o'lantern glowing on front porches or in windows, and I admit I was a little sad not to have carved a pumpkin with the crew - but such is life.

Patrick's class before the judges post-parade.

The costume parade at school was amazing!!  Each class had their spot in the gymnasium and after lunch, they were brought to the gym in their costumes for the judging.  There were all kinds of community members in the gym watching and cheering for the kids.  I was in the audience too, and I had so much fun!!  They were playing great music and I was so enthusiastic, bopping there in my seat, that I actually got some of ladies sitting around me dancing too!

Some of the costume highlights were: a homemade Queen Elsa coronation costume that was even better than the Disney deluxe version; another Elsa whose hair was braided the way Elsa's was and then sprayed silver; an old Nanuk (which means grandmother in Inuvialuctin) with a cane and a hunched back; a two person (i.e. two-headed) werewolf; the most authentic vampire I have ever seen with make up that looked like a Hollywood make-up artist had travelled to Tuk; several cute and beautiful homemade princess dresses, pumpkins, clowns and witches and the cutest jellybean machine I have ever seen.  There was also a toddler running around in a homemade Jake and the Neverland Pirates costume whose real name is Jake.  I took a lot of pictures!

James' class.  His teacher dressed up as Snow White because
she is the GRADE 7 teacher......get it?

 At our house, we had a Wonderful Witch (who did not want to be a scary witch), a dancer from Weird Al's video about the song "Tacky", and the Ghost of Christmas Future.  Nobody really understood the boys' costumes...which was sad, but they just aren't into Weird Al Yankovic or classic Christmas movies up here.  You know when someone comes up to you and gives you a weird look and says, "What ARE you?"  Well, James heard that far too often in the span of a few minutes, and took the Santa hat off his death costume after that.  Patrick just ignored peoples' comments about his Tacky costume.  WE all thought he looked wonderful!  I dressed in long white gloves, some Hawaiian leis, and wore a headband with colourful streamers hanging from it, took a teddy bear, and smeared lipstick all around and on my lips and went as a kid who played dress up.

Then there was Greg.  Greg's students were teasing him throughout October and said to him that with his round belly, he should be a pumpkin for Hallowe'en.  Well, Greg decided to go for it, and he dressed as a jack'o'lantern.  I painted classic triangles for his eyes, an upside down triangle for a nose, and a goofy grin around his goofy mouth, and he added a green wig to be the leaves and stem of the pumpkin.  The kids loved it, and teased him about the hair, which he tossed around and joked about how great it was to HAVE hair!  The best thing about Greg is that he takes whatever  ammunition the kids could potentially have against him, and he uses it himself before they even have a chance.  The fact that he's fat and bald makes him a perfect pumpkin, and they loved that he went with their suggestion.  He sure did get a lot of laughs from the community members too!  On a side note, last year Greg shaved his head and wore a checked long sleeved dress shirt and a black fedora and went to work as a plumper version of Walter White from Breaking Bad.  It was great!

Charlotte's class in front of the judges after their parade.

Oh yeah.  There is one thing I forgot to mention.  On Hallowe'en night, it was -20C before windchill, and there was blowing snow and crazy wind with reduced visibility.  It was downright miserable outside!  James and Patrick opted out of trick-or-treating, preferring to stay in and hand out candy in their woolies.  They said no amount of candy was worth being out in that weather!  Charlotte, on the other hand, wanted to brave the cold.  We realized that she was going to have to wear her snowsuit if she was going out in the weather so she hopped into that, we took one of Greg's black windbreakers and put it on her backwards, added a black toque and gloves and a red cape, and I did her face up as a vampire.  She was the coziest vampire out there! She was out for half an hour and then she called it a night.  Greg followed her in the van, not really wanting to be out in the weather, and he discovered that all the parents were doing the same thing with their vehicles and snowmobiles.  Like I said, the weather was terrible!

On Hallow'en night the RCMP detachment does up their garage as a haunted house, and this year it was excellent.  Charlotte got part way through and chickened out.  All chickens get to sit in a warm room and drink hot chocolate plus they get a small bag of candy (which is big by Southern Ontario standards).  The ones who survive the haunted house get a cup of hot chocolate and a big bag of candy.  The Fire Station gets out their two trucks and they put on the lights and let the kids climb on them.  You can trick-or-treat at the two grocery stores and all the kids know which houses give out full size chocolate bars and which ones give out cans of pop and which ones give out home made fresh candy apples.

Now that Hallowe'en has come and gone, we have settled into November at school, and before we know it, it will be December and time to come back to Ontario for a visit!  Now that we are seeing the Christmas commercials on TV, we sure are getting excited!  We have heard that Southern Ontario didn't exactly have the greatest weather for trick-or-treating either, so we don't feel like we missed out on much.  I have to say that it sure felt weird to be dressing the kids in their costumes for school.  Although I groused at first about Hallowe'en being Black and Orange Day at school, there is definitely something to it.

From the Crazy, Frozen Wilson Family to yours

we hope you all had a safe and enjoyableAll Hallow's Eve.

Happy Hallowe'en everybody!!

It's only November!!

The fall weather in Tuktoyaktuk is, in a word, schitzophrenic.  It can be cloudy and dull for days on end.  By cloudy, I mean the deepest and thickest clouds I have ever seen!  The light hardly gets through because the clouds are so dense!  Every now and then a hole forms in the clouds and you can see how far the clouds extend up into the sky, and there is a patch of blue poking through.  I look at the sky longingly, and wish for brighter days.

Then there is the wind.  I wrote about this before.  When the wind picks up and blows in off the Arctic Ocean it can be windy for days, and when it is that windy, the wind chill makes temperatures dip.  A few days ago it was -22C with the windchill.  What month is it again?  Only November?  Sigh.  When the wind blows like this, it shakes the house and makes the lights flicker.  It gets so damp and cold that all you can do is shiver.  I wear two sweaters, one on top of the other, and my hand-knit wool socks over top of my regular socks, and we all enjoy a snuggle underneath our Gramma afghans when we are sitting at home.

Charlotte running to check out the ice on the ocean.

Down at what they call 'the point' you can see the ice shaped waves, as the ice formed over the wavy water.  The lakes and the ocean are beginning to freeze up and it's a daredevil kid thing to go walking or snowmobiling over the thin ice on the lake.  Last year a younger community member broke through the ice on his snowmobile and drowned. It was very tragic. Already this year, two snowmobiles have cracked through the ice and into the harbour! Luckily, both people survived. The locals don't think that it's very cold outside right now, but that water temperature is low enough for hypothermia to set in pretty quickly!

And the snow and cold temperatures!  Did I mention the snow and cold?  It began snowing on and off by the first week of October, and now the snow is permanent.  There is actually an Inuvialuctin word for 'the first layer of crispy snow that falls in autumn".  Great!  Nobody has any idea how many more layers of snow we can expect, but after a while when it gets so deep and cold, who cares?  Did I mention the cold?  Currently, every day we are observing temperatures of -10C, unless the wind picks up, and then it gets colder.

Then there are days like today.  The schitzophrenic weather provided a spectacular day today filled with sunshine and blue skies that made the snow sparkle on the ground and put a spark in our eyes!  Oh, to see the sun shining and lighting up the darkness!  It was wonderful!

We are wearing all our winter outdoor clothing now, and one of the things about the lake freezing over is the anticipation of skating!  Charlotte is very excited about this prospect!  We have ordered our winter parkas which are rated for extreme weather conditions, and our boots are all temperature rated to -70C, so we are ready to take on the winter.

The locals are very happy to be able to use their snowmobiles, and caribou hunting season is about to start, which has a lot of boys in Greg's class very excited.  Another thing the locals are excited to be doing is fishing because the whitefish are what they catch right now, and they are supposedly really delicious.  We were speaking with one gentleman and he said he was going out on the land to go fishing this week and hopes to catch about 300 fish to get his family through the winter.  Amazing, huh?  The reason the locals are excited about fishing right now is that this is the time of year for roe, which apparently is a delicacy.  See below for the definition of roe, for those of you who don't know it.

1. Roe (/roʊ/) or hard roe is the fully ripe internal egg masses in the ovaries, or the released external egg masses of fish and certain marine animals, such as shrimp, scallop and sea urchins. As a seafood, roe is used both as a cooked ingredient in many dishes and as a raw ingredient.

Yeah.  Well, I guess every person to their taste.  My idea of a delicacy is a perfectly cooked lasagna...with the correct balance of ground meat to cheese ratio.  Now I am craving my sister-in-law's lasagna.  

The other day while it was super windy out, Greg and the other intermediate teacher were taking the Grade 7s and Grade 8s on a walk to the local dump, which is about 3.5 km out of town.  There was someone there to talk to the students about how they are going about picking a location for a new dump and what considerations one takes in choosing such a thing.  That day it was -22C out including the windchill.  Greg dressed in his winter coat, a sweater, a hat, and some gloves plus his super warm boots and he was toasty warm.  The students teased him for dressing as he was.  They were wearing coats that were in no way warm enough by Southern Ontario standards, and some of them had light gloves and hats; however, they were toasty warm by Tuk standards.  Maybe we'll feel that way once we're on the other side of winter when early spring comes around and we rise out of the polar temperatures and back to the temperatures we are experiencing now?  It will be interesting to see how we feel once we're on the flipside.....in April.  Or May.  You never know.

Another interesting thing that has been happening here is the tardy sunrise, or at least daybreak on a cloudy day.  Here is a picture I took just as I was taking the Senior Kindergarten kids out for morning recess at 10:00 a.m. last Wednesday.  Notice how the lights are still on inside the buildings and the streetlights are still on?

The playground at Mangilaluk School at 10:00 a.m. just before sunrise.
The sun actually rose around 10:30 that morning.

  When we wake up now in the  morning, it is pitch dark and remains so until almost 11:00 a.m.  The sun set this evening at 6:24.  We know this because today it was sunny outside the whole day! The skies were blue and the snow was sparkling on the ground like diamonds! It was definitely a day for sunglasses outside, and the sunset at 6:24 p.m. was extraordinary! As Greg was walking into school this evening for an hour of planning in his classroom, he realized that when he left for school 12 hours later it would still be dark outside.  Pretty soon we will be experiencing a small amount of daylight in the mid-afternoon without an actual sunrise or sunset, and then total darkness for three weeks.  Luckily, we are going to be in Ontario with all of our friends and family during two of those three weeks.  

Here are some beautiful pics of the sunrise and the lights shining off the Arctic Ocean this evening.  It was such a boost to see the sun today!  I can't begin to tell you how lovely it was to breathe in the crisp cool air and look up and see that gorgeous blue sky!  I guess we had better enjoy it while it lasts!

While we have settled in to life in what we consider right now to be winter cold temperatures, we are looking forward to our time in Ontario over Christmas.  We are still waiting for some backpay that is owed to both of us before we can book the final leg of our trip home, but we will be doing so soon, and then we will let you know when to expect us at your doorstep!!  Now isn't that a frightening thought?  Good thing it's Hallowe'en coming up soon!  Hallowe'en is another subject altogether up here, and I will be blogging more about that later this week, once the finishing touches have been made to our costumes.

In the meantime, as you enjoy the last that the fall colours have to offer, and go to the pumpkin patches for your Hallowe'en needs, think of us in the North and smile.  We are with you in spirit!