TRANSPORTATION II

     In my last post I mentioned that we got 90% or more of our freight by ship. That usually meant that two ships per year called. But sometimes we had 3 or 4 ships call in one summer. 

    One summer an icebreaker , the D'Iberville, showed up to sound the end of the  bay.

        Wakeham Bay was 24 miles deep. A mining company was working on a mining project 60 miles inland. Their proposal was to build a dock at the end of the bay and haul the ore out over the year and have ships pick the ore up and take it to refineries 

    I'm not sure that this project ever happened.

    But what did happen is that we were invited out to the ship to have dinner with the captain. Horror of horrors! I was on the same level as the captain.  It didn't matter that I was a village administrator and he was a ship captain we were supposedly equals. That has hard to get through a prairie boy's head where everybody was equal. I had never experienced status before. 

    They sent a helicopter to pick us up. As we flew out to the ship we saw five belugas swimming in the bay. 

     I still remember looking at the ship from  distance and how small it looked. when we got closer I saw the circles on deck where we were to land. the circles looked smaller than ever. 

     We had a fine dinner with the very formal old captain and then they took us back home by helicopter. 

      Approaching the settlement by helicopter. It really was a very small place.

     And don't worry I did not let my dinner with the captain go to my head. I still look as people as people rather than what title they are given. 

TRANSPORTATION

      I was scanning some slides today that reminded me of transportation or lack of it in the north. 

      As you know I spent two years in a very isolated northern settlement called Wakeham Bay  which is now known as Kangiqsujuaq. The population was approximately 200 people 

      At the time I was there from 1967 to 69 transportation was almost nil. The nearest road was more than 500 miles away. There was no airstrip and there was no dock for ships to unload.

      All freight was  brought in by ship. The Hudson Bay Co would charter a ship to bring in all their trading supplies. The ship would anchor in the bay about a mile off shore. Freight was loaded into small powered barges . These little barges could move up to the beach. Then all freight was taken off by hand. Most trading posts were built on the beach so their warehouse was not far from the beach where the freight was dropped, 

All people in the settlement pitched in to unload the supplies. You can see two women carrying a 100 lb bag of flour.

    Now this system was not as simple as it looks.

    The commerce was all trade. These trading posts used very little cash. It was all trade. 

     I think there was roughly $200.00 in cash in the community. It was used to play poker. 

    So If a hunter or trapper wanted to go out he would go to the store to get supplies . He may want gun shells, flour, baking powder, lard and tea. He would be given the supplies on credit. When he came back he would trade his skins and pay off his debt.

    The people knew what they were doing when the volunteered to unload the ship. They knew that this labor might make it easier at times to get credit.

 

   

WHAT'S THE MESSAGE

         

       I used this photo in my last post. I haven't forgotten that I used it. 

      Today I have another reason for showing this photo.

       This photo illustrates one of the negative aspects of society What does this photo tell us?

       So take a look at what this photo may say. Let's hear some opinions . Maybe we could get an argument going here!

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.

A DRAPERY CORD NEEDS REPAIR.

       It was discovered a few days ago that one of the drapery cords was almost worn out. So simple. Get some drapery cord and replace it. 

       First, you have to get some new cord so we started phoning. We were amazed that we had to phone for about 2 hours to find one place with drapery cord. We looked at that cord and decided that it wasn't suitable. Off to Canadian Tire where they sell rope and cord by the foot. We'd phoned them before and they didn't have drapery cord . We found cord that was the right size and looked suitable. So the guys who said they didn't have cord had cord. 

     Okay, today was a nice day  to change the cord. We'd done this before but maybe long ago. So we first looked at how the cord is strung so that we know how to string the new one through. Then we pull the old one out. So far so good. 

Then we start feeding the new cord through. It was tricky and hard to string the cord through some parts. We got to the last loop and said we'll never get this . Then the oops moment hit. Get a small piece of wire and pull the cord through. We could have done this before on all the hard spots.

     So we had the two lines of cord inside the rail. We had to attach the cord on the anchors in the right place . Okay that's done. Then we measured.  Oops! We thought the rail was longer. We checked with the wall. Yes, the rod had to be longer. The rod had been accidentally pushed together while we were working with the cord.

     Well, you know all the things that could go wrong did go wrong.

     We finally got everything adjusted. We put the railing back up and then hung the drapes. 

       There went one whole afternoon!

PROMISES

     In 2011 I bumbled into a blog called Out of My Multiple Minds. The title caught my attention. It sounded like a topic I'd be interested in. It was not about multiple minds  but it was a fascinating blog to follow. It was also a blog that influenced my life.

     I think I found Out of My Multiple Minds  on DJan's blog and the blogger Pete turned out to be DJan's brother in law. 

     I found that Pete had a well written and lively blog. 

     Soon I found out that Pete was very ill but he was full of energy and intensely curious. 

     Shortly after I was saddened to find out that Pete was dying. 

     I followed Pete for about 3 months as he courageously journaled the end of his life. Pete blogged until a few days before his death. He dictated the last couple of posts as he was too ill to do the typing. His wife or daughter wrote a couple of final posts. The blog has been since taken down. 

      So on my own blog I wrote a post entitled Polar Bears in My House. This caught Pete's attention and he wanted to know all about the polar bears.  Most of all he wanted to see a photo. I had said that I would try to get photos. However, you know the story...the slides were not scanned and at that time I didn't know how to scan slides. If you read the post you will see Pete's comment...one of two comments I got. 

     Well, I'm scanning slides and the first ones I scanned were of the little polar bears that had been in my house. So because I'd promised Pete the photos , here they  are. 

     

        I do not have photos of the bears in my house . These were taken in the hunter's house. 

    The Inuit hunters shot the mother bear and then found out that she had cubs. They brought the cubs into me as they wanted money for the cubs. I was the local administrator for the federal govt. I couldn't give them money but did alert authorities that the bears were here. 

HEALTHY PLAY

      Somehow or other my kids loved to play outdoors in the winter. They could make up their own activities all based around snow. They had sleds. They also went to a nearby playground and played with other kids. They started this a preschoolers. 

      On a cold day I could recognize my kids from a distance. One had a round red puffy face in the cold. The other ones dark features showed up against the snow. 

     One of my favorite photos of the kids is one day when they had been outside playing. Their great smiles showed that they were enjoying themselves.