Dog Island 8 - My Homework

Darkness has descended upon Yellowknife, as it does in the fall. In some parts of the country – where it actually gets dark in the summer – people can occasionally enjoy a drive-in movie. Not an option in a place where the sun glares through your window at two o’clock in the morning.

But the midnight sun of our summer evenings is quickly fading as the inexorable march towards winter continues. Sometimes during this in-between period, if we are very, very lucky, a group of our local film buffs – members of that esoteric organization known as the Dog Island Floating Film Society – will stage Yellowknife’s answer to the drive-in movie.

A week ago Friday, a flotilla of boats – cabin cruisers, utility boats, canoes, kayaks, and – strangely enough – a floating dock, all gathered in the vicinity of Dog Island, out on Yellowknife Bay, to enjoy this year’s offering of films. A huge screen was set up in front of the houseboat anchored in front of Dog Island, while the organizers projected films from a tiny island (basically, a point of rock sticking up from Great Slave Lake) just in front.

There were a number of National Film Board shorts – carefully chosen by the society’s selection jury – along with local offerings about fish camps and the Aboriginal lifestyle. The crowd was enthusiastic, popcorn was distributed to the movie-goers’ boats from one of the local houseboats, people and dogs wanting to go from Point A to Point B to visit friends casually cut through the boats strung together. We had to ask a canoeist to paddle us over to the boat selling T-shirts. It’s a community thing.

It was all good. Until the rain started. Sadly, “Dog Island 8 – My Homework” was cut short by a deluge. The organizers, fearing damage to the rented AV equipment – not to mention electrocution – called it a night a little earlier than we had all hoped.

Many thanks to Terry, Aggie, Andrew and all the other folks who made it happen.

Join me at NorthWords!

The NorthWords Writers Festival starts this week. There's a great line up of writers presenting workshops, participating on panel discussions and reading from their work. I'll be participating in the following events.

Flash! Open Mike

Thursday, May 31, 2012

8:00 to 10:00 p.m.

Atrium, Greenstone Building

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Fiction with Flare (readings)

Friday, June 1, 2012

Noon to 1:00 p.m.

Atrium, Greenstone Building

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Signings with Sizzle

Saturday, June 2, 2012

Noon to 1:30 p.m.

Yellowknife Book Cellar

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Why Fiction? Panel

Saturday, June 2, 2012

1:30 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.

Explorer Hotel, Katimavik B

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Check out the NorthWords schedule for a listing of all the events. It's going to be great!

The last ice bridge?

The snow has melted in Yellowknife, and the ice is starting to pull away from the shores of the big lake (Great Slave) and all the little lakes that dot the area.

Over the years, the accumulation of semi-trailers in the parking lots of local stores was a sure sign that winter was about to start . . . and later, that it was about to end. Highway 3, which travels up from Alberta and curves around the west shore of Great Slave Lake to Yellowknife, crosses the Mackenzie River at Fort Providence. In the summer, the mighty Merv Hardie Ferry brings vehicles across the river; in the winter, vehicles make the crossing on an ice bridge. But twice a year, during freeze up and break up, the communities on the far side of the river (Fort Providence, Behchoko and Yellowknife) are cut off. This is problematic for people who want to drive in or out - if you don't make it across the ice bridge/ferry in time, you ain't going nowhere for a while. A northern phenomenon, the race for the ice bridge is featured in "Leaving Yellowknife," the final story in my book. (You'll have to pick up a copy if you want to know if my heroine makes it out in time.)

Hence the accumulation of semi-trailers in parking lots across Yellowknife, which house extra stock as store owners try to ensure they have enough stuff to carry us through until the traffic flows once again. The trucks also bring perishables up the highway from the Mackenzie River crossing, where the goods are flown over from the other side. Even so, there are a lot of gaps on store shelves at this point in the proceedings. By next fall, however, the Deh Cho Bridge could be finished, meaning that this could be the last ice crossing at the Mackenzie River. Stockpiling, empty store shelves, and racing for the last ferry of the season will all become a thing of the past. More convenient, for sure, but Yellowknife will feel a little less northern to me.

I'm on the slate for NorthWords 2012

I'm happy to say that I'll be participating in the NorthWords Writers Festival this year. Linden MacIntyre, a Giller Prize winning novelist and co-host of CBC’s Fifth Estate, will be headlining. Guests for the 2012 event include Haida artist Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, along with authors Dawn Dumont and Margaret Macpherson. Northern writers Richard Van Camp, Jamie Bastedo, Annelies Pool - and more - will also be participating. Stay tuned for details!

Farewell to the ptarmigan

To all things there is a season, and one of the sad parts of the spring season in Yellowknife is bidding farewell to the ptarmigan.

It's been a great winter for ptarmis in these parts - thirty or forty have been making the rounds of the neighbourhood, going from bird feeder to bird feeder. In our backyard they've been grazing cheek by jowl with the LBBs (little brown birds), who are a fraction of their size. Sometimes they swoop in on the wing (a rare occurrence, given their preference for walking); more often they scurry across the street for a quick nosh at our place (see photo below of ptarmi in mid-scurry) before scuttling up the hill in our backyard, heading for their next port of call. They can really pound down the snow - it's like there's a ptarmigan superhighway along the side of our house.

I've spent hours watching them in the backyard, listening to their honks and squawks, tsk-tsking when the mean ones chase their compatriots away from patches of prime bird seed. I've hit the brakes while whipping around the corner in the vehicle, to find a flock of them nonchalantly gravelling in the middle of the road. Last Tuesday I walked out of the house for my morning hike to the office, and there was a row of them on the little hill across the street. One of them honked at me. I smiled and continued on my way. It was the last I saw of them.

Official photographer to the northern lights?

After years of believing I needed a high-end camera to capture the northern lights, it turns out that my little Panasonic will do the job with some patience and (preferably) a tripod.

We were out at Blachford Lake Lodge a few days ago, and it was not until the last night that the Director of Photography (Pierre) showed me the essential settings. I got the photo above by propping my camera on one of the deck railings at the lodge. Next time I'll be porting along a tripod. The quintessential aurora photo will be my next photographic Holy Grail - I'm still working on the perfect dog sled photo.

During daylight hours, I went on some of my favourite tromps - hiked the four-kilometre trail, and climbed the hill on the island across from the lodge. Here's a shot of the trail up to the top of the hill. A bit of a slog: some serious trail-breaking was required and the final push to the summit just about finished me. The reward was a great view of the lake and the lodge across the way.

Yay for the Long John Jamboree!

Good times at the inaugural Long John Jamboree, held in Yellowknife this weekend.

The festival was a combination of classic Yellowknife events, like the Ugly Truck and Dog contest (photo below), along with some soon-to-be classics like the Flaunt Your Skivvies Contest, which I sadly had to miss due to pressures of work.

The festival – like its predecessor, Caribou Carnival – suffered from some less-than-stellar weather. Yellowknifers are a stalwart bunch, however, and overcast skies and wind chill did not stop an impressive-sized crowd from lining up for the ever-popular Cabane à sucre (aka taffy on a stick) or snapping photos of thermal-clad can-can dancers, or the Terriers and Tiaras talent show for pooches.

Looking forward to next year.