Sound judgment

We are most definitely into the realm of 'lasts' now. Today was my last ever Wednesday in Kangiqsujuaq, and this time next week I shall be, weather permitting, well and truly back in the south. Just how much of me will remain in the North? Only time will tell on that one; as I've said before, the North has very much become 'my Canada' over the past four years, and I guess we will have to wait until we get to the end of August and I haven't crammed myself into a Dash-8 or a Twin Otter before we can start to make a judgment.

For the moment I'm still here though, and today we marked International Noise Awareness Day with a number of highly interesting (honestly) in-class activities. Hearing loss is a big issue in these parts, with iPod-induced deafness exacerbated by the roar of skidoos and ATVs (or Hondas, as they're universally referred to here), and I suppose the occasional use of hunting rifles and carving tools doesn't help either.

I was somewhat shocked to witness my students' genuine amazement when they learned that listening to music through headphones at full volume will undoubtedly damage your hearing, but at least their eyes (and ears) have now been opened, and maybe they will now take steps to rectify the situation. Or maybe they'll pay no heed whatsoever; you can take a horse to water...

On a semi-related note, my research for Noise Awareness Day led me to the discovery of a rather fascinating series of recordings. They were made by a man named Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville around 150 years ago, and are now regarded as the earliest known recordings of the human voice. Now, it would seem that Scott was only interested in studying the visual properties of sound waves and never intended for these recordings to be played back, which is a bit like studying ice cream by looking at it rather than eating it, but thanks to modern scientific advances we can now finally hear the results of Scott's experiments whilst at the same time enjoying over a thousand flavours of ice cream. You can hear the recordings here.

Oh, and lest I forget, I must report that my students unanimously rejected the lone gunman theory after their investigation into the assassination of JFK. Instead, they believe that there was a conspiracy involving the FBI and Secret Service that possibly went up as high as Vice-President Lyndon Johnson; Oliver Stone and Kevin Costner would be proud. Maybe we'll discuss the Moon landings tomorrow...

The Persistence of Memory

It's now the time of year when everything is starting to melt. The landscape is still covered with a snowy white shroud, but rocks, roads and patches of soil are now starting to poke through, much like the way in which the hairs on the legs of an East German women's shot-putter from the 1980s would have poked through her stockings should (s)he have tried to wear any.

Time is also melting away, like the clocks in Dali's famous painting, and it's melting just as slowly, if not slower, than the snow and ice. For both myself and my students we are now at the stage where nobody wants to be here any more and, if truth be told, nobody really needs to be either. For the students, their exams are now long over, and consequently their academic fate is effectively already sealed. Quite why they have to sit their exam a full two months before the end of the course I never managed to fathom out but, just like the Light Brigade, mine is not to reason why.

From my point of view it's just a matter of keeping my class occupied for one more week and trying to maintain the mutual motivation of both students and teacher. To that end I always fill this time of year with projects which at the very least interest me and hopefully manage to pique the interest of my students as well. Last week I taught my class some German - they can now count to ten, ask for directions to the railway station and order two large beers, please - and tomorrow we're going to examine the conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination of President Kennedy. I'll let you know whether my students subscribe to the theory of the lone gunman in the next post.

In the meantime I shall continue to stare out of the window, wishing myself away as I watch the snow melt, and as I do it's rather opportune that the Dave Matthews Band's Dive In should come up on my iPod:

Wake up sleepy head,

I think the sun's a little brighter today.

Smile and watch the icicles melt away and see the water rising.

Summer's here to stay and all those summer games will last forever.

Go down to the shore, kick off your shoes, dive in the empty ocean.

Nine more days...

Eleven days

Eleven days to go now, and my thoughts are most certainly starting to turn to the summer and all the changes that are on what is an ever-nearing horizon. Now that my imminent departure is official I've been able to talk more openly about my plans with friends and colleagues here, and the more I talk the more excited I'm actually becoming about the future.

Those of you that know me well will know that I'm normally a very phlegmatic person, perhaps too phlegmatic, but for once I really am feeling genuinely excited and I don't think that the next eleven days are going to pass anywhere near quickly enough. My students are on a trip to the Pingualuit Crater this weekend and don't return until Monday afternoon, so consequently I will be starting my week with a personal ped day, which means that just six of those eleven days will be spent teaching before my flight on Wednesday week. Whether this will make the time pass more quickly or not remains to be seen.

The only blot on the landscape is the need to pack which, thankfully, is not too pressing at the moment. However, by this time next week I think I will be in full-on packing mode, and whilst this shouldn't prove to be an overly arduous task it's never one that I look forward to. I arrived in Kangiqsujuaq with only 18 boxes, and as I haven't really accumulated any extra possessions in my time here there shouldn't be any more than 18 boxes coming back down with me. Quite when they'll make it back is anyone's guess - as I've said before, things tend to happen very slowly in the North - but as long as they actually do, that's all that matters.

Eleven days...

Nothing to crow about

I read a news report today headlined 'Clever New Caledonian crows can use three tools.' It was all about the way in which crows have been studied for their apparent intelligence and how scientists in New Zealand have observed crows using three tools in succession to reach some food.

Well, I don't find that especially clever at all. I can use four, sometimes five tools in succession to reach food, and on occasions I can actually use two tools - namely a knife and fork - simultaneously. Beat that, Mr Crow.

The article then goes on to describe how one of the birds, named Casper - quite how the scientists knew his name was not explained - completed a task involving food on a string on his first try, although he was 'initially puzzled by the string.' Well excuse me scientists, but I've seen a lot of string in my time and not once have I ever been puzzled or even remotely perplexed. And do you hear me bragging about it? No you do not.

In all honesty, I don't think these crows sound particularly clever at all.

Simpleton birds.

Two weeks notice

It's official; I'm leaving the North.

I have my ticket, and in two weeks' time I will be back home in the south.

Permanently.

As I mentioned a few posts ago, this moment has been coming for a while now, but yesterday I finally confirmed my intentions with the powers that be and today I received my travel itinerary. Most things happen very slowly in the North, but in my life events are now moving on apace. The number of teaching days that remain are in single digits - so even I can count them on my fingers - and just two weekends sit between me and my final flight.

I know I'm going to be feeling some mixed emotions over the coming days - in fact I'm already feeling them - but I'm glad to have finally made an irrevocable decision and I know in my heart that it's the right one. I've said before in these pages that my time in the North has changed my outlook on life, and whilst I really do believe that my experience has been largely positive, I also feel that the misanthrope inside me is edging ever nearer the surface, especially this year, and that can't be a good thing.

Consequently, my repatriation to the south, and to Melanie in particular, is coming just at the right time I think, and as much as I'm going to be looking back over the next few weeks, now is really a time to be looking forward. There will be many changes ahead and all the routines I've established will need to be broken, but it's all for the greater good.

The countdown has begun...

Don't try this at home

Ben, who teaches math and science to my class, took his lesson outdoors today - it was a balmy -1 degrees outside - and aside from the temperature I was impressed by two things in particular. Firstly, his audience swelled dramatically as a result, which says something about the ratio of students who are actually in the school building when they are meant to be compared with those whose aren't, and secondly...well, there can't be many science lessons that take place with a backdrop like this one!

Oh, and in case you were wondering, in light of the fact that we don't have a cloud of volcanic ash lingering over our part of the world at the moment, Ben was trying to create our own alternative version by dropping increasingly large chunks of sodium into a bowl of water. The end result was pretty impressive and one was left with the thought: just how many outdoor science lessons take place in Iceland?

Juno who that is?

As I write I've just finished watching the Juno Awards - for those of you outside Canada, the Junos are the Canadian equivalent of the Grammies or the Brit Awards - and I've come to a conclusion. Either: a) I'm getting old, b) my finger is not on the pulse of Canadian music culture or c) Canadian music culture has no pulse. I say this because I've spent most of the last couple of hours repeating the same word: who?

In reality the situation is most probably a combination of (a) and (b), and this is most certainly the case if anyone from Immigration Canada is reading. I guess gradually losing touch with youth culture is all a natural part of the ageing process and is consequently nothing to really worry about, and to be honest I'm more than happy with my generational orientation in terms of music, given what I saw and heard on stage tonight.

I think that the process of being out of touch works in both directions though. Young whippersnapper Alexandre Bilodeau, who won Canada's first gold medal at the recent Winter Olympics, presented the final award of the evening, and whilst the eventual winner was not that old, the generation gap was evident when Bilodeau opened the envelope and proclaimed, "and the winner is...Michael Bubble."

To his credit, Michael Bublé graciously collected his award without so much as a flicker of indignation although maybe, given his role in the closing ceremony of Bilodeau's Olympics, that was only right and proper...

A clash of cultures?

Warning: this post may contain images that might cause distress amongst animal lovers and devotees of Fox's Glacier Mints

It is not without a sense of irony that as I write a post about the school's culture day, Jacob and I are currently watching 'Family Jewels with Gene Simmons' on TV, having earlier sat through 'Sober House with Dr Drew.' There's more culture on the mouldy piece of cheese in my fridge than in either of those programmes. They're not shows that either of us would normally watch, but neither of us could be bothered to reach for the remote so, consequently, we were sucked into the sad , lonely and sometimes grotesque lives of others for the best part of two hours. Come to think of it, that pretty much sums up your experience when reading this blog...

But I digest.

As I was saying before I interrupted myself, it was culture day at the school today, the one day in the year that's set aside to celebrate the traditional ways of life in a Northern town. I always enjoy days like this, but I'm not sure how I view the fact that just one day is devoted to celebrating and promoting a culture that is being swamped and overrun by southern mores...I'll leave you to decide your own opinion on that one. I think that's a debate for another time.

Culture day here was very different to the one I experienced in Inukjuak. Here, all the action took place outside, and after two or three hours of milling around everyone had gone their separate ways. In that time though we were able to examine an igloo that had been built by Mark Tertiluk, the centre director at the school, and a second igloo was constructed during the course of the morning. Many of the children - and some of the staff - went sliding, either on plastic sleds, their bottoms or even on sealskins (or any combination of the three), there was some impromptu throat singing and, of course, there was the requisite smörgåsbord of country food, Arctic Char and walrus on this occasion.

If indeed these are to be my final couple of weeks in the North then I guess this will be the last time I get to experience Inuit culture in such a way, and I feel privileged to have the chance to be involved in such an intimate way. I only hope that the incessant march of western 'culture', Gene Simmons, Dr Drew and all, doesn't mean that future generations, both Inuit and quallunaat alike, are denied that chance.

Taking the plunge

Compared to some, I've not fared too badly in the water stakes during my time in the North. Yes, there were my recent water truck woes, and back in Inukjuak I suffered at the hands of some vindictive sewage trucks, but by and large I haven't done too badly; remind me one day to tell you about my brown water shower though...

In the house where I am now the bathroom sink never has drained too quickly, but until last night at least it has always drained eventually; however, maybe through the strain of accommodating both Jacob and I, it finally stopped trying last night. Jacob managed to procure a plunger at school today, and this evening the Super Mario Brothers tried to unblock the blockage.

A good amount of tag team plunging ensued, and although we didn't totally cure the problem, we certainly revealed the cause; our sink was blocked by copious amounts of sand. No, we had no idea why either - maybe it was some of the ash from the volcano in Iceland. Whatever the reason though, our puny plunger wasn't up to the task, so we had to call in the professionals. Papigatuk, the school's maintenance man, came round with a dalek-worthy, industrial strength plunger, and in a short while our sink was draining merrily once again.

What a fascinating life I lead.

A close call

My students were back in class today, and this morning I asked if they had been up to anything exciting or had had any interesting experiences during their break. There was the usual collective shrugging of shoulders and shaking of heads so we moved on, but at break time I found out, from a student in another class, that one of my students had been involved in a car accident yesterday evening; in my book that's interesting!

The road from the airport here is long and winding, but unlike Lennon and McCartney's it's also very narrow. When you add into that mix the icy conditions and the fact that the snowbanks piled up on each side make seeing round corners almost impossible, negotiating it successfully is a tricky business. Annie-Claude, who runs the residence with Roland, picked up some of the returning students from the airport yesterday, and on the way back there was a slight altercation with a van coming in the opposite direction.

Air bags deployed, crumple zones crumpled and everyone was OK in the end, but it was a bit of a shocking return for both the students and Annie-Claude, who had only just returned from holiday herself. Never had this kind of trouble when it was all dog teams up here you know.