Saturday In the Park ..........

Yesterday afternoon and evening (August 25, 2012) we went to a friends campsite in Sylvia Grinell Park to visit with friends and have dinner.  We had a great time!!
We got there about 3:45 and our first chore was to find the camp site.   We saw some of the other people heading out from the site and they gave us directions. 
Prior to leaving the house, we had packed drinks, food, mix, extra clothing, dishes, travel mugs, utensils and other stuff in a backpack.  So, when we met our friends heading out from the site, I took the pack, dogs and 2 lawn chairs and headed for the campsite.  Jacquie, went to move the car to a closer parking area.  She ended up helping bring in firewood and had to make 2 or 3 trips from the parking area to the site, perhaps a 1/4 mile. 
I wandered up to the site with the dogs, took off the pack, set up the lawn chair and sat down for a rest taking in the view.  I'm not sure how long I was there, however I heard Jacquie calling my name.  I was at the wrong site. 

I didn't miss out on all of the carrying of stuff up to the site, however I got in on the tail end of it.  Well with all of the wood, food, and drink at the site, it was time for a drink.  So, we had a beer and settled in for a great night of fellowship, singing, eating and drinking.

There were small hibatchi type barbaque's for cooking and Daniel took on the job of cooking all of the steaks.  He did a marvelous job to the point that I ate the majority of 2 steaks as Jacquie only wanted a couple of bites of hers.

The one little bit of anxiety that we were all having was that there were unconfirmed reports of polar bear sitings the day before.  Although we made a few jokes about it, everyone knew that if anything was going to bring the bears around it was the cooking of steaks on the barbeque and the presence of all of the other food.  The only comfort was that we had 4 dogs at the campsite that we thought would give us adequate warning should the bears venture too close. 

And of course, no camp dinner would be right without a campfire.  Luckily we had a couple of boy scouts with us, Scott being the one that must have received an "A" on fire starting because he lit a great fire; in what I would call adverse conditions.  The wind had to be blowing at 30 KM per hour.  Anyway, we had a great fire, thanks Scott! 

And we gathered around the camp fire to keep warm!



Some of us decided to take a little knap!  And as you can in this picture Holly was having fun getting attention from Suzie.

The food was great and after dinner we all sat around the camp fire and sang songs.  We must have sang songs and told stories for 3 or 4 hours. 

At about 10:30, it was overcast and very dark and Jacquie and I decided it was time to go home.  What we discovered is that it is a lot more difficult walking over the tundra when its dark at night then during the day.  We held each other hands and headed in what we thought was the direction of the vehicle.  It was treacherous and we kept coming to the edge of drops that were much too high to jump down and had to back track.  The dogs were good and stayed fairly close, probably because they couldn't see any better than us.  Eventually after a number of trial and errors, we managed to get out to the road.  It was perhaps 100 yards or so from the parking lot where we parked the vehicle, which was a lot closer than it could have been. 

All in all a great time was had by all!!  :-)





IQ Day

Each department in the Government of Nunavut is allowed to have up to 4 IQ days per year.  My first experience with an IQ day came on Friday July 17th. 

IQ stands for Inuit Quajimajatuqangit, which means "Inuit values".  The goal of IQ days is to learn about the traditional Inuit lifestyle by experiencing some of traditional Inuit activities.

There were about 15 people from our office that participated in IQ day.  Although participation is voluntary, it is encouraged as seen below by the President of The Nunavut Housing Corporation cleaning Arctic Char that he contributed for lunch.   He also provided some caribou steaks that were cooked for lunch.

The IQ day was held out at Sylvia Grinnell Park.  We started by gathering at the park pavillion and had some coffee and snacks.  One of the most popular snacks was bannock, which is traditional Inuit bread.

One of the staff members from the Department of the Environment, Parks division came out and took many of the participants on a tour of the park. 

Here are two of our friends (Rob being a colleague from work) on their way back from the Park Tour



While the tour was going on I was preparing lunch being the designated burger, char and caribou steak flipper.

Lunch was great and during lunch we were all regaled with stories of Iqaluit and area.  One such story took place back to the late 1990's.  The president of NHC talked about a time when he went out to the other side of Apex, (which is about 5 KM from Iqaluit) Caribou hunting and saw a large herd of caribou in the area.  In the late 1990's, there were many caribou harvested from that area.  We were told about Caribou that would come into Iqaluit and graze right up to the back door of many residents. 

We also heard of many times when polar bears had come into Iqaluit over the years.  One being shot by the RCMP in the middle of town. 

As you can see below, some of the girls from the office were listening intently to the stories and having a great time at IQ day! 

After lunch we all went down to the river to fish.  The first fish was caught by our IT guy David.  Rob seen with his dear wife (Rachel, 4 pictures above) caught a nice fish too.  The biggest fish was caught by our Manager of Staff Housing, Mike.  He caught a 10 pound arctic char.  The interesting thing is that Mike is allergic to fish and goes fishing wearing surgical gloves.  Further he cannot eat anything that he catches.  Jacquie and I have been the glad recipient of some of his char. 

Here are some of our fishing photo's:

All in all IQ day was a fantastic experience on a wonderful day, in a beautiful location.  At the end of the day, the person below was admiring the lovely view on the shores of the Sylvia Grinnell River.  A picture that sums up the whole day for me!  :-)



Our Ship Has Come In

In May, when we were back in Ontario getting married, we purchased a Jeep Liberty with the goal of bringing it up to Iqaluit.  We purchased the Jeep in Ottawa from a very nice couple off of Kijiji.  We insured it through Nunavut Insurance and registered it prior to actually completing the purchase, although we had emailed a substantial down payment and received all of the pertinent information for registration prior to leaving Iqaluit.  We completed the purchase and drove the new jeep to London and got married on May 12th, an amazing day!

Our new wheels

After our wedding we drove the jeep to Valley Field, near Montreal to catch the sealift to Iqaluit.  For reasons that we don't quite understand, the jeep missed the first boat, however was put on the second boat,  with an estimated time of arrival of July 18th. 



Qamutik (The ship with our Jeep on it)

Apparently our ship and the others hit heavy ice in the Davis Straight which delayed the arrival a week or so.  The ship arrived at the bay in Iqaluit on July 24th.  Almost immediately the ship started the unloading process.  A barge is taken out to the ship by two tug boats.  The barge is filled with containers from the ship and taken into shore.  This process takes place at high tide.  The barge comes in very close to shore and when the tide starts to go out, large front end loaders take the containers off the barge.



They were able to get about two days of unloading completed  prior to the ice invading the bay. It takes about 5 or 6 days to unload a ship that has a full load destined for Iqaluit. The ice came in with a vengeance and virtually shut down the unloading process from the boats.  As was mentioned in a previous post, the elders in town have said they haven't seen that much ice in the bay in July and August for over 50 years. 

Barge with containers waiting for unloading

The ice that invaded the bay in the forground

The Qamutik in the background, Jacquie in the forground - The date of this picture is Aug 3, 2012

(note how Jacquie is dressed)

Jacquie and I went down to the beach where the containers are unloaded from the barges daily and sometimes two or three times a day.  We waited, waited and waited some more.  The ship with our vehicle arrived a week before the long weekend.  The long weekend came and still no jeep.  Most days they were not making any trips to the boat, however a few days the barge did manage to manoever itself through all of the ice and brought in a small load off the ship.  On the Saturday of the long weekend (August 4th) the ice seemed to ease up a little.  The barges were able to bring in a few loads and we thought for sure our vehicle would be brought in.  We talked to the manager where the containers were unloaded and he said he felt sure that our car would be in Sunday.

We got up bright and early on Sunday morning and headed down to the beach.  Unfortunately and almost unbelievably it was pea soup fog and not possible for any unloading to take place that day.  Its a good thing that Jacquie and I are two of the most patient people in the word.  For anyone else this situation would be frustrating (OK, we were getting a little frustrated)  We were back on Monday of the long weekend and although the weather was better and there was some unloading taking place, a little more ice had blown into the inner bay and the going was slow. 

Finally, on Tuesday morning August 7th, 14 days after the ship with our jeep on it arrived in Iqaluit, our jeep was unloaded.  We picked it up before work and we were two of the most exited people in Iqaluit!  Not only were we able to drive around in our new jeep, there was a lot of other stuff in the Jeep.  It had been so long since we packed it all, we couldn't even remember what all was there.  At lunch we unload our barbaque, 4 - 18 KG bags of dog food, some pop, laundry detergent, booze, clothing, toliot paper (an important commodity) and a bunch of other stuff.  We were just like two kids at Christmas!

Our new wheels were here and we were so pleased.  The next step was to sell our jeep wrangler.  I had been trying to sell the jeep to no avail since June.  Jacquie decided to take the matter into her hands and had it sold in a day to someone at work. 

The Jeep wrangler had been a very reliable vehicle for us.  It started every morning last winter in sometimes colder than -50C temperatures with the windchill and in some ways we were sad to see it go.  However we really didn't need 2 vehicles.  Thanks for getting us to work all winter!

Goodbye Jeep Wrangler

All in all our sealift experience was an interesting one and one we will probably do again next year.  Although we will probably not be brining up a vehicle next year, we want to go south in May or June and purchase a bunch of stuff that's expensive to get up here and ship it up on the sealift.

Driving Amongst the Icebergs

Today, Monday August 6, 2012, Jacquie and I were taking the dogs out for a little drive.  We usually go to Sylvia Grinnell Park on weekends and give the dogs a long walk.  On the way there, we noticed a couple of vehicles out driving on the bay amongst the iceburgs.  That looked like a lot of fun to us.............. so off we went and took a drive out on the bay floor amongst all of the ice.  There were more icebergs than we could count. 



When the tide goes out which today was over 30 feet there is a huge amount of the bay that drains out.  So we followed the lead of a couple of other vehicles and went for a drive among the icebergs.  The ice itself has been blown in from Davis Strait.  How it got to Davis Strait is anyones guess, however a theory that we heard the other night is that a huge chunk of ice touted to be over 700 square miles broke off from Greenland and then broke up into the smaller chucks that made itself into Iqaluit harbour of Frobisher Bay.

It was an eerie feeling driving on the sea floor where there had been 20-30 feet of water just a few hours earlier.  Admittedly, we were a little nevous about getting stuck, since the next high tide is around 10:40 tonight and getting stuck would mean the jeep would get a little wet.     On the other hand, it was an experiece that is hard to descibe. Many of the icebergs were much bigger than the jeep and there were just hundreds of them.  We went out a few hundred yards and drove around and through many huge chunks of ice.   When we got back in towards shore we stopped and took a few pictures. 

It is hard to describe the size of these ice chunks.  There were many that were larger than the one below:

So I'm sure Jacquie and I are two of the few that can boast the experience of driving on the sea floor around a number of icebergs.  That being said, it is an experience that we enjoyed and are glad we had the chance to experience it.

Invasion

It is the invasion of the giant ice cubes to Iqaluit.  In Frobisher Bay, at the shore line, there has been a phenomena that hasn't been seen for 50 years.  Ice from Davis Strait has been blown into Frobisher Bay and has ended up at the shore here in Iqaluit. 

The ice is causing havoc.  There is a research vessel called the Nuliajuk that has been sitting just beyond the ice with a full crew who cannot get into Iqaluit.  The vessel has been out in the bay since the beginning of the week.  The Students on ice program which takes students on an arctic expedition to parts of Nunavut and Greenland is delayed because they can't get the students from Iqaluit to the vessel. 

In the picture above, there is a boat in the top of the picture.  This boat has our Jeep Liberty on it and has been out in the bay since last Thursday (July 26th).  This is Thursday August 2nd and the sealifts including the boat with our vehicle cannot get the vehicles and seacan's off to bring into town.  In fact many of the ships are waiting at the mouth of the bay waiting for the ice to disperse. 

An elder was talking on the radio the other day and said that he hasn't seen this much ice in the bay for over 50 years.  It is spectacular and these pieces of ice aren't something you can put in your average beverage.  Some of them are iceburg size. 

We have been told that the ice is what is called "multi-year" ice, meaning that it has been around for many years.  Aparently you can tell by the colour.  The more blue there is in the ice the older that the ice is touted to be.  Many of the large chunks of ice we have in the bay have blue ice within them.


 As we have explained before, Frobisher Bay has 30 foot tides.  So when the tide goes out these large chunks of ice get deposited on dry land.  Jacquie and I decided to go out today at lunch (August 2, 2012) and take some close-ups of the deposited ice.  Some of the chucks were huge.  We felt comfortable going to the ones that were fairly close to shore.   However when the tide goes out the water recedes 300-400 metres and there was a sea full of deposited ice on dry land.

Although the ice is spectacular, we are hoping for a north wind that will drive the ice back into the bay so our jeep can be brought into shore.  Not only is it the vehicle, however there is a barbeque and many other goodies in the vehichle that we could really use. 

Notwithstanding, in the last week we have seen a polar bear family, seals, whales and this ice anomoly that people that have lived in Iqaluit for years have not had the oportunity to see.  We feel priviledged and appreciative that we have been able to have these awesome experiences over the past week.  This weekend (the August long weekend) we are looking foward to going fishing out in the river with friends who have rented a boat, having friends over for dinner a couple of evenings and next weekend there is a good posibility that we will be travelling to Pang to take in the sights in that hamlet.  That is the hamlet that is close to Mount Thor, the highest verticle mount face in the world at 4500 feet. 

We'll keep you posted!!!  :-)