LEAVING THE NORTH

      This photo is just before the airplane came in to take us south.  Our baggage was on the G - 5 . 

    This was July 22 and I'm wearing a light winter jacket. I'm also wearing rubber boots. Most of the ground was soggy and wet. You couldn't wear ordinary shoes. 

      We had been at Wakeham Bay for two very busy years. I was teacher, principal and Local administrator. The principal position was a joke as there was only one other teacher. The teaching load was challenging as these kids had only been in school for five years . The Local administrator position paid the handsome salary of $1000.00 per year. Sometimes I worked on administration as much as teaching. 

     I had to account to the government for every dime I spent. I could write checks for $2000.00 per month for soapstone carvings. I gave out social assistance . Did I  say  correspondence? Lots of it.

     We did not have a post office. A bag or bags of mail would come in on the odd

airplane if somebody remembered to put it on. I would have to go through correspondence. 

    The Inuit didn't send out letters or receive letters. But some of them did some work at the mine and as a result had to pay income tax. They would get T4 slips. They knew that the would get money from T4 slips and would come up to me. I would fill out their income tax forms. 

   So here I am just a few hours before leaving, still working. I was distributing the family allowance checks. Family allowance is a system where mothers are paid so much for each child. It was one of my jobs to give them their checks. 

   I also had to sort out some mysteries. For most of the two years I would get a letter asking about the whereabouts of a certain child. At first I had no idea who the parents might be. The Govt. was paying family allowance for this kid. Finally I was talking to a family one day about this issue and they talked amongst themselves. I could understand what they were saying. It was their child. Apparently the child's birth was registered but the child died shortly after.  This had happened on an island off the coast. 

     So because I enjoyed all this work it was a sad time to leave.

    It was July 22 and teachers could have been gone for three weeks. I enjoyed the work and wanted to help the people as much as I could.