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!
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
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
As you know I'm on a project to scan my old slides.
So far it's going well. It's a learning process. Many of the slides were of poor quality but anything that was a decent slide is worth having.
So in doing the slides we often say, "I don't remember that!" Sometimes we just burst out laughing at what we see.
I will use two slides to bring an event together. I've written about the adoption of our son.
We had to go a hundred miles away . Somehow things got late and we were leaving the city about 5 in the winter evening darkness. The Micro Manger soon found out that Babe needed some food. What would we do? Most things were closed by that time.
We found a recreational dealer ship that was open and popped in to see if we could heat some milk. Yes, we were more than welcome and they were happy to hear our story
By the time Babe was fed we'd made a deal to by a travel trailer. So we always joke about getting a new son and travel trailer on the same day.
So to show you some slides here's the trailer and the young camper.
