Now it took quite a while until I was involved in what I came for. But finally I did get to the school, classroom and most importantly the students.
Inuvik was a new town. They started building it in the early 50's and it was opened in 1957. So the school was a very new building. It was a large building and at the time we had about 1000 students. Now this wasn't a large brick structure but built completely with wood. The building was on pilings put into the permafrost. There would be lots of shifting with the building so it had to be flexible. The building was two story , had a large gym, shop , home ec. and typing for high school options. There was not a music or drama program. It was a divided into an A wing and B wing. The B wing was used for the separate or Catholic students. The A wing was for the public school. there was a a small high school of about 4o students. This was a first for housing the two school systems in the same building. It worked well and we thought of each other as being on the same staff.
Of the 1000 students a third were Eskimo, another third Indian and then other. 600 of the kids came from outside the town and lived in the hostels or dormitories. 400 kids were town residents.
I have mentioned the hostels before. The hostels were run by the churches as a development from the time when the churches were the only ones running a school. The Catholic hostel had 250 kids and the Anglican hostel had 350 kids.
So most of the students were in the gr 1 -8 category with a higher number in the primary grades.
Aboriginals in this area had a pretty good handle on the English language. They'd been exposed to traders, churches and there was some education. The Dew line was built in the early 50's and many of the men worked on construction so there was more exposure to English. I never heard any native language spoken when I was a there. Native languages were spoken but it was when they were together.
As a result most of the kids entering school had some English.
Now in 1963 the philosophy was still make the aboriginals into white guys. So in schools and hostels the aboriginal language was discouraged. We taught very much as we would in a southern school. As I look back on it we were more than naive. These kids did not have the background to process the material we presented. Dick and Jane didn't go over very well with kids who were nomadic and had different clothes and food. Similar things happened in the whole school program.
We had little kids in the hostel who were 1000 miles from home. Imagine letting go of your six year old for 10 months of the year. It was criminal. The kids went back to their parents and found it hard to live in tents and eat country food.(fish, caribou, seal). We now know what harm has been done to the aboriginal people. We should have known at that time that it was not a good plan.
We had a staff of about 50 teachers. They came from every province in Canada. There were also British , Australian and Americans. I was exposed to many different systems of teacher education. The learning curve was steep. I feel fortunate to have taught in a school with such a variation of teachers. I learned much from them.
For me there was all kinds of overload. I lived in a completely different environment. I was exposed to a different culture. There were always new things to learn.
The situation was challenging but I learned so much and I always say that it changed my life forever.
In my last post I got to Ft Smith NWT which is less than halfway to where I was going.
But first I have to go back to where I started to set up the next step.
As you could see from my last post I did not really have any solid goals and not a realistic view of what I was getting myself into. I'm a born optimist so thought that everything would work out.
I had been teaching in a 12 teacher school for three years. The kids were had workers and well behaved . The parents were very supportive. It was a very comfortable situation. However, things were just going to continue and after three years it was boring. There was a problem. there were no girls! High school girls were off limits. Half the girls left when they finished high school and half were already connect to a local guy.
In those days young men "boarded" In other words you stayed in a house where the landlady did everything: cook ,clean, wash your clothes. The landlady I had the last two years was a sweety. She spoiled me rotten. She had arthritis so it was difficult for her to get around. She would phone her grocery order to the store and I would pick it up. I had her post box key and got her mail everyday. I took her check to the town office to pay her taxes. It was a very comfortable arrangement.
However, in practical terms I was not ready to look after myself. I couldn't cook. I couldn't wash clothes. I had no idea of keeping a place clean.
So there I was with a great new job and an apartment to live in. The apartment was completely furnished with dishes bedding and linen. I was set up with everything but didn't know what to do with it. However, later they told me they were short of apartments but that I would be given a room in the student hostel. Well this would be super. I'd get meals and laundry again.
Okay, The purpose of stopping at Ft. Smith for a week was for orientation. About 30 new teachers were oriented to teaching in Canada's north. At the end of the week teachers were flown to their communities.
Well you know what's coming next. There wasn't room for me on the airplane! They would fly me in the next day. Now by this time I was okay with delays. Girls , couples and families needed to get to Inuvik before I did.
Well, the next evening there was a ride for me. It was on a freight aircraft. The airplane was loaded with freight and there were 4 canvas seats. Cruising speed was a little over 200 mph. There were four passengers. One of the passengers was a woman who had been in Inuvik for two years. She answered questions and gave me tips on how to live. She was helpful. Most of it went over my head but it cut down some of the stress for me.
Off we went for the four hour flight in the lumbering beast. For most of the flight I got to be in the cockpit. We left about 8:00 PM on Aug. 30 and flew northwest. Days were still quite long in August. What I looked at for the four hour flight was a constant twilight. It's a sight that I would love to see over and over again.
We touched down in Inuvik about midnight and as soon as you were on the ground it was dark.
The learning curve was steep for the previous ten days.
What could happen next?
Fifty years ago this month I left for a six year stint in the Arctic. It was an adventure that changed my life forever. It fits in with my last post as I was moving to an isolated harsh area with unpredictable transportation.
I had been teaching for four years. I was at a cross road. I knew that I was definitely leaving the position I had. After that I didn't know if I would quit teaching and go into another field , go back to university or find another teaching position.
One day I saw an ad in the paper entitled "Teach in Canada's North land." That caught my attention. I thought I would apply and see what happened. I got an interview and later they offered me a position. The position wasn't where I wanted to go but I accepted it anyway.
This was with the Federal Govt. and they gave many directions as to what we had to do to prepare ourselves. I had to get to Edmonton and from there they paid for my lodging and transportation. They sent me a ticket and told me that they would reserve a seat for me. All I had to do was phone ahead of time and confirm.
Now scheduled service had only begun the year before. It was almost an exaggeration to call it scheduled. It hardly ever flew on the day it was supposed to and sometimes didn't get in for two weeks.
I went out to the airport and presented my ticket. I was told, "There are no reservations for you. There were about 40 of us in the same boat. A few got on the flight. They told the rest of us to come back tomorrow. We came back the next day and there was a long line up. They cut the line up off just in front of me and said the plane was full. What a shock! I went back to the counter and asked what would happen next. They asked me if I was alone. They said wait, "There might be one seat left." Sure enough there was one seat. They hurried me out to the airplane.
Now I had never flown so this was a new experience for me. The aircraft was a dilapidated old DC 4 which was out of the thirties. Half way up we ran into violent thunder storms. Put on your seat belts. Then it started to leak right over my seat. I thought, "We're crashing. I'm a goner!"
We made it to the location where all the new teachers were to be on a week orientation. That was a blast! We stayed in a dorm with one room and about twenty guys. We learned a lot.
At the end of the week we were to be flown to Inuvik. Guess what? I didn't get on the flight. Tomorrow!
I left the next evening at nine PM on a freighter with five passengers. For much of the five hour flight I was in the cockpit. The four other passengers found the softest piece of freight and went to sleep. It was a beautiful clear evening. From 9:00 PM until 2 AM we flew mostly north and I enjoyed a sunset all the way. When we landed it was dark on the ground.
So this was my trip to the north. Nothing went as expected. I could roll with the punches and nothing bothered me. It was all an exciting adventure.
I was really ready to leave home and establish myself. I don't think Mom and Dad were too happy or confident about seeing me go away for a year.
I can hardly believe this happened fifty years ago. It seems like yesterday.
