Lucky there's a family guy (unless you live in Venezuela)

With my back still very sore I bit the bullet today and made my way - gingerly - to the nursing station after school, in order to see if they could prescribe me any ointment or cream to relieve the pain. I was given some anti-inflammatory tablets and I've tried rubbing some on my back but they don't seem to be doing any good so far. Maybe I'm doing something wrong...

On a lighter note, yesterday saw the first show in the new season of Family Guy, and I must say that it was one of the funniest episodes I've seen in a long while, although I'm not sure if the Disney Corporation would agree! It's at times like these that I'm glad I don't live in Venezuela (not that there actually are any other times when such a thought crosses my mind), because Family Guy has actually been banned there due to the fact that it 'promotes the use of marijuana.' In the past, The Simpsons was also banned as it 'sent messages that go against the education of girls, boys and adolescents.' Guess which morally righteous and uplifting show they put on instead...?

Baywatch.

Venezuelan boys will now have something uplifted, but I doubt it will be their morals...

Weekend musings

Well, the snow from earlier in the week has all but gone now thanks to a couple of rainy days, but at least I have had a taste of what the landscape will look like here once winter is here to stay. What qualifies as our 'autumn' is still exceedingly cold though; it's a balmy 6° today, but in the week ahead it's forecast to stay around the 1° or 2° mark.

My much talked about expedition into the foothills will have to wait for another day as I woke up with a bad back this morning - better than waking up with a horse's head I guess - and I've spent most of the morning hobbling around the house bent almost double, although this has enabled me to get a close up view of all the spots on the floor that I missed when I went on my cleaning blitz last weekend.

Housebound as I am I've had a go at baking my own version of Tim Hortons' raisin tea biscuits (scones to those of you in the UK), and I must say that they've actually come out pretty well. Combine these with the Timbits that I still have in the freezer and my jar of Tim Hortons ground coffee and I have quite a home away from home going on up here; all I need are the cops sitting at the next table and it'll be just like being there.

Always fresh...

That's snow business

It may have come about a week later than it did last year, but on the day of the vernal equinox we had our first snow of the season today, moving us directly from summer into winter without passing 'Go' and without collecting $200.

I've been wanting to climb one of the hills that surround the village ever since I've got here, but aside from the weekend when I was ill (typical!), all our weekends have been terrible weather-wise so I haven't had the chance. Those hills look more like mountains now that they have their cover of snow, but if I'm feeling brave I might still try to mount an expedition this weekend.

Weather permitting, of course.

Not so rotten swines

As is often the case in situations such as these, a little extra time has thrown new light on the whole pregnant-staff-must-leave scenario. It seems that the Quebec government is in fact only strongly recommending that pregnant teachers take themselves out of the workplace, and it is up to the individual to make their own decision. As a result we are not now going to (immediately) lose all the staff in question at our school, but we are still going to lose our principal. The school board already has a number of potential replacements lined up though, so it does not look like yours truly will have to take over in the hot seat.

Shame, because once the winter sets in a hot seat would be a really nice thing to have.

Rotten swines

As of yesterday, the provincial government in Quebec has thrown our school, and many others in the North, into turmoil. In light of the extinction event that is H1N1, a snap decision has been made to remove all pregnant staff from the workplace in Northern communities, with immediate effect. We have three pregnant staff at our school, coincidentally all female, all of whom were due to go on their respective maternity leaves after Christmas, but following yesterday's decree from Quebec City, all of them are now persona non grata within the school building. When you consider that one of the 'swine flu three' is our principal, this plunges the school into even greater chaos, especially because, due to the school's small size, we have no vice-principal to pick up the reins.

At the time of writing it even looks as though the staff in question are to be forcefully repatriated to the south on Monday, although this isn't yet certain. Our principal and her husband rent out their home in the south whilst they're working here, so goodness knows what they're going to do if they have to return home at such short notice. Mangers and inns, anyone?

This whole situation seems to have been brought about by events in Manitoba earlier this week, when a number of aboriginal reserves were sent flu-readiness medical packs that contained a number of body bags. There was outrage in these communities, with claims that the government were not treating the flu properly there and were expecting numerous fatalities as a result, and this outrage was exacerbated by accusations of cultural insensitivity, as preparing for death in such a way goes against the beliefs of the First Nations in question.

Despite governmental apologies and explanations that these medical packs contain body bags as standard, whether they are delivered to Toronto, Ottawa or Wasagamack, the controversy remains, and Quebec's proclamation on Friday seemed to come as a knee-jerk reaction to all the fuss. The (mis) treatment of aboriginal communities in Canada is a hugely sensitive issue, both politically and morally, but the irony here is that the forcible removal of teachers who are willing to stay is not only going to impact on the lives of the teachers themselves but also on the lives of the populations of the aboriginal communities in which they work.

We shall no doubt learn more about the whole situation on Monday so until then, watch this space; who knows, in a few days maybe Melanie won't be the only Principal in the family!

If you want to get a head...

WARNING: Disturbing image alert!

There was a note in the staffroom today informing us that there was more caribou meat in the community freezer along with a number of geese; whether any of these geese were carrying memory sticks was not made clear, so I took it upon myself to find out.

After school I visited the freezer, and to my disappointment there were no geese to be seen - perhaps the information they had been carrying was of too sensitive a nature to be left out in public for any length of time. There was indeed plenty of fresh caribou though, and whilst I was surveying the carnage I noticed a second door in the freezer room; perhaps the geese were to be found in here?

No.....just heads.

Dozens of caribou heads.

At least that's my Halloween costume sorted out now.

Pigeon post

On more than one occasion I have bemoaned the (lack of) speed of the internet connection that we get up here, but a story from South Africa this week made me think that perhaps things aren't actually too bad after all. A company in Durban, disgruntled with its ISP's download speeds, attached a 4GB memory stick to a carrier pigeon and got the bird to fly 60 miles to its other office building; whilst Winston (for that was the pigeon's name) was flying, the same 4GB of data was uploaded to the other office via the internet.

Winston took just over an hour to fly the 60 miles, and it then took a further hour to download the data from the memory stick, giving a total time of around two hours to deliver the data. During that two hours, guess how much of the data had been sent via the internet?

Just 4%.

So, maybe I shouldn't be so critical of Tamaani after all. I guess on the days that things get really slow we could follow the South African example, but as there are no pigeons up here I suppose we'd have to use geese instead. However, they'd probably get shot and eaten before they could deliver the goods, so maybe it's not such a good idea after all.

Brings a whole new meaning to the term 'mega-bite.'

A life less ordinary

Gertrude Baines, the world's oldest person, has died at the age of 115.

Some time before her passing (obviously not after), she said that her long life was due to the fact that she "never did drink, never did smoke and never did fool around."

Maybe it just felt like 115 years.

One year on

It's actually a year now since I started this blog, and lo and behold we're still going strong, or at least still going. This time last year I had no idea how much longer I was going to be working in the North, and when you fast forward to the present day I am still none the wiser. Yesterday Melanie started her new job as principal at King's Town School in Kingston, so you never know, I might be able to work for her next year! Until then though I am committed to the North, and although I really enjoy the teaching job I have here, it would be rather wonderful to be able to work alongside Melanie again, or at the very least live in the same house on a regular basis.

This is now my fifth year of living and working in Canada, and for four of those five years Melanie and I have had to live and work apart, sometimes on different continents. At least we are now back in the same time zone though and who knows, perhaps next year we will be in the same postal code. For now though we will continue to rely on the wonders of modern telephony to keep in touch, and the blog will continue to serve as a window into my world up here.

Here's to the next year!

Mussel man, part 2

Well, even if I say so myself (which is exactly what I'm doing), the mussels were a resounding success. Every single one of them opened, and I ended up making - and eating - two bowlfuls.

Some 24 hours later I'm feeling no ill effects, which is always a good sign, and tonight I'm being treated to caribou steak, courtesy of James and Sophie next door. What with Labour Day still to come tomorrow, it's turning out to be a good weekend!

Mussel man

At the end of our ped day yesterday a few of us went mussel picking, another activity I can now add to my list of firsts; I went picking for cockles in Dorset when I was young but never, I think, for mussels. I returned with a modest haul, which I'll attempt to cook today, but in the winter the harvest is likely to be more plentiful, although the activity then becomes far more interesting.

Once the bay is entirely frozen, it is possible to venture below the ice when the tide is out and retrieve a veritable bounty of mussels before the waters come back in once more. Such a method of mussel picking is unique to Kangiqsujuaq, and you can read more about it here. I have a few months to ponder whether I will take up the opportunity to join the winter mussel harvest, and if I've been able to take out some appropriate life insurance by then I think I'll have a go. For now though, I shall confine my adventures to the kitchen, and I'll let you know how I get on tomorrow!

Christmas in September

It felt like Christmas today.

Firstly, the container ship that was carrying our cargo of school supplies finally arrived, and now we have paper and binders for our classes. Earlier today my students actually used up the last piece of writing paper that we had in the classroom, so the ship's appearance couldn't have come at a better time; quite what we would have used to write on next week I hadn't figured out yet.

Then, having returned home at the end of the school day, I received a knock on the door from our centre director, Mark Tertiluk, who was kindly delivering four boxes of food that had just arrived at the airport for me! Melanie flew back to the UK yesterday for a very brief visit - she flies back to Canada on Monday - and on her way to Montreal she dropped off said boxes at Air Inuit HQ. Apparently they were originally going to take a couple of weeks to come up, but Melanie smiled at the right people and, lo and behold, here they are. Talk about service!

I now have just about the fullest larder that I've ever had in my time in the North - Melanie had even managed to slip in a box of Timbits for me, a rare pleasure in these parts - and after a week of illness, I suddenly feel much better!

A sight for saw eyes

Whilst nowhere near 100% I'm still here, so you can call off the search parties. I stayed at home yesterday, but a few hours of daytime TV convinced me of the need to return to work today. In actual fact, the cable service went down for a few hours during the day, maybe due to the high winds that gave us a weather warning for a brief period; winds like that in the winter are going to give us some spectacular blizzard days!

As I said, I still don't feel too well, but being a typical guy I haven't yet paid a visit to the nursing station. Whether I have H1N1 I'm not sure - it could be R2D2 or C3P0 for all I know - but I guess I ought to get checked out if I don't feel better soon. We have a ped day on Friday and this, coupled with the Labour Day holiday on Monday, at least gives me a long weekend in which to recover; a story I heard today also made me realise that perhaps I should show a little more resolution.

The council are laying new water pipes in the street where our friends, the Beatties, live, and as they were leaving the house yesterday morning one of the workmen was attempting to cut a pipe with a circular saw. I say 'attempting,' because the saw proceeded to bounce off the pipe and cut into the poor man's face and neck, narrowly missing his jugular but leaving a huge gash from the nose down. A bag of frozen peas quickly appeared to act as a cold compress - I think this was actually the reason for their invention - and once the ambulance arrived the Beatties made their various ways to work. When the first of the Beatties got home at the end of the day there were still workmen attending to the pipes, and guess what? One of them was sporting an impressive display of stitches from his nose down to his neck.

They breed them tough in Canada.