BRB

Hello Everyone,
Well, This is the last post for awhile, we'll talk to you on the other side.
Take Care
CG

Blizzard

Hello everyone,
Well we had a bit of a suprise blizzard today, at least it was a surprise to me. The Daycare closed at noon and Melissa had to go get Christopher. On the way back she kinda lost her way and slipped off the road 20 feet from the house (Thanks God). Here are some photo's of me triing to get the truck out. Remember this is literally 20 feet away. The storm winds are about 40-60 km at the time of these photo's, when I came home it was about 80 km, tonight they're calling for 120km. Its pretty darn cold and windy, thats all I know. The other two are of the rescued truck taken from about 10 feet away.
Take Care
CG
PS. We're leaving Repulse on Nov 28, arriving in Toronto Nov 29, Leaving Toronto and arriving in Kangiqsujuaq Dec 4.

A semi-natural Northern Barometer

Hello Everyone,
Tonight, we are experiencing out first real Blizzard of the season. The wind gusts are supposedly reaching 120 km. Which lead me to a suprising discovery, early in the season before your stink pipe freezes, your toilet acts as a excellent baromter (of sorts). You see as the wind whips past your stink pipe it creates a vaccuum, which causes your toilet level to drop, when the air is released in the toilet the level returns to normal. Which means at this moment I am having rapidly ebbing tides in my toilet bowl. So the moral of the story is, If your locked in a room in the north, with no windows and doors but just a toilet, you can still tell when you don't want to go outside.
Take Care,
CG

Sunday Musings

Hello Everyone,
Well, Its been a hectic and confusing week ended with a bit a snowfall (as seen above, taken at 2:30pm). On Wenesday this roof was clean, Thursday and Friday it snowed a wee bit. Not bad weather but pretty constant. On Friday we all got to go out on a sji-doo ride, which was Melissa and Christophers first, they both seemed to enjoy it. Ok, they LOVED it, I still can't get used to ski-doo's being working machine's, they are just too much fun. They just make you want to yell Yea-haw after every little bump. Also snow machines aren't what they were when I was a kid, the machine I borrowed can easily travel 160 kph for extended periods of time ( I think at one point we may have even hit 40 kph, but thats us). I didn't believe this till I saw one do a wheely for about a 100 feet. The RCMP up here don't chase ski-doo's, they just try to identify the machine or ridera nd let them go, cause they ain't going to catch them (so I am told). \ We're still waiting to finalize plans for our move, we have lots of people coming and going from this store so we're just waiting for the iteneraries to work together then we'll have actual dates.
Thats it for now,
Take Care
CG

On the Road Again,

Hello Everyone,
Well, Its official. Our family has accepted a position in the community of Kangiqsujuaq, on the northern reaches of Quebec. It is a Inuit community of a small size (500 people) and the store volume is comparable to that of Repulse Bay. I have heard great things about this community which is one of the reasons we jumped at this opportunity. This also means Melissa will not be a Casual employee anymore. I am going to train Melissa to be my grocery manager and she will become a salaried manager. This is not what we had in mind when we came here, but we'll just keep rollin with the punches. We will be leaving here around the 26th of this month and taking the 8 hour plane ride to Winnipeg, then onto the 3 hour plane ride to Toronto (where we hope to have a layover of a couple of days. From there we will take another 2.5 hour flight and overnight in Montreal then onto Air Inuit for the 9.5 hour flight to Kangiqsujuaq stopping at apparently every settlement from James Bay onward, looks like about 8 stops before we finally arrive. It will be a very long journey with a 4 year energy bomb like Christopher. It is rumored we will be able to spend a couple of years in this community.
Take Care
CG

Our First

Hello everyone,
This was our first carving. It was made by Nate in Baker Lake, Its not particularly good but we like it. As you can see Nate is triing to make the carving more appealing to southerner's by polishing it, this takes ALOT of time and adds nothing to the value so is usually only done by lesser known carvers, this bear is about 5 inches high and 7 inches long. You never forget your first, This would have been wednesday (definately a Wednesday, Bingo night in Baker) when his wife brought this around, It was like the home shopping network had gone local. Anyways, Good night,
Take Care
CG

Melissa's Favorite

Hello everyone,
This is a carving by a elder in Baker by the name of Toona. His work is in the national Art Gallery in Ottawa and has been given as gifts to foreign heads of state. As you can see Baker artist have a much rougher and more primative style than Repulse. Toona is very old school and very simple in his carvings, he just emphasis's the rock shape. I had Toona make several pieces for us but this is the largest. It is a traditional dancer carved in black soapstone and stands about 8 inches high and weighs in at a hefty 5 pounds. Melissa loves this piece (his name is Mr Tippy)
Take Care
CG

I don't know if its Art, but I know what I like.

Hello Everyone,
This is a interesting carving we got while in Baker Lake. It was a strange one, when it was first brought to ou door I turned it down. I just didn't get it, I showed it to Melissa and she had the same reaction. I told the carver I just didn't get it and wasn't interested. Its the same carver as the Polar bear pictured above. Over the next couple of days, it was strange Melissa and I discussed this carving over and over, till I saw the carver in the store and I asked him to bring it back, we wanted it. Its grown on us and is one of our favorites, but I still don't get it. Its a Inuk face atop a flexible leg with a human ankle and a animals foot. The quality of the stone is better than any of our others though. Go figure. This is about 6 inches high.
Take care
CG

A interesting Repulse Carving

Hello Everyone,
This is a very interesting piece we got here in Repulse. The hunter and the Beluga whale are carved from Narwhal tusk, and have very interesting lines as they were carved from poor pieces of tusk, making it more interesting in our opinion. They are pegged to a piece of green soapstone using caribou bone pegs, the harpoon is also made from caribou bone.The tie line is made from dental floss, wintergreen I believe.
This is our favorite of the pieces we have gained on this leg of our journey. The carving stands about 4.5 inches tall
Take Care
CG

Our first two Repulse Carvings

Hello Everyone,
These are our first two Repulse carvings. Repulse is well known for the quality of its carvings (these are not good carvings, they are known as bingo carvings, because they are usually made on bingo days to make enough to buy cards). The quality of the soapstone is poor as you can see lots of white specks and streaks in the stone, good stone should be pitch black without lines. Unlike popular opinion very few carvings are as highly polished as the one's seen down south, this is usually done in a attempt to increase value by southern opinion. Both the Narwhale and the Walrus's tusk are made of Caribou bone. Both of these carvings are about 3 inches long.
Take Care
CG

Our latest carving

Hello Everyone,
we've never shown any of of carvings that we've aquired since we got here so we wanted to share some of them with you now. This carving shows eight birds in various forms of action, the uppermost 3 are supposed to be perched above the water. The next four are diving into the water and the last bird is swimming under the water (for fish). They are carved of walrus ivory, the branch carved from caribou antler and the based carved from green soapstone. This is a Repulse Bay carving. It measure about 6 inches high.
Take Care
CG

Hello Everyone,
Well, Its been a wonderful day off and I thought I'd share todays sunset with you all. We're getting about 5 hours of light a day which is still plenty. You still get to see alot of light, the only drawback is by the time you get off work, Its dark, Not twilight, not dusk, its dark. the whole bay appears to have frozen over last night. at least you can't see anymore open water anywhere. This means soon the bears will head out onto the ice for the year, and we'll see them again in May.
Take Care
CG

3 days till Inventory

Hello everyone,
Well, We're three days till inventory and we've been counting for three days. My new helper is really taking alot of the pressure off, So that's a great relief. Hopefully next week, I'll be able to get some time off. Melissa has been off work all week caring for Christopher, who's recovered from his Chicken Pox, but has come down with a case of the sniffles. With the holiday we're hoping (as he is) that he'll be well enough to attend on Tuesday. Tommorrow, I'll be taking a few hours off to go target shooting with my new relief manger Neil. Then back to the grind to clear up some remaining paperwork.
BTW, that's tonights sunset, Pretty nice.
Take Care
CG

From the front of the Store

Hello Everyone,
I took these photo's at lunch from the porch of the store. This bearded seal is about 120 yards away.
Take Care
CG

Do you really want to go fishing?

Hello Everyone,
These two industrious guys wanted to go fishing the day after freeze up. So they broke a 4 foot wide path a quarter of a mile long to get thier boat out to open water. The really sad part was when they came back they has to do it all again. These boats, are like very large stable canoe's and weigh more than 800 lbs. They are anywhere from 4 to 6 feet wide and start at 18 feet long.
Take care
CG

The Bay has Frozen

Hello Everyone,
The good news is the bay froze last night, so in a couple of days it'll be thick enough for machines. The bad news is yesterdays loss of a local man (24 years old) has left me without cashiers, as all my cashiers are related to him and need time off to grieve. A loss in a community this size is felt by everyone and the repurcussions resound thoughtout town. The north has a higher loss rate than anywhere else in the community with the largest killer of children being suicide. Everyone has had someone in their family take the easy way out. Its a shame as the community takes these events much harder than their southern counterparts. The town will shut down for the funeral, all stores, government offices and private bussiness's will close for the event. I believe the suicide rate up here is something like 350% higher than the rest of the country. amazing considering the size of the communities we are dealing with here.
Take Care
CG

Out of the Blue (and into the Fire)

Hello Everyone,
Well today was a very interesting day. For years I've been looking for a old friend I wanted to make ammends with and hopefully rejuvinate a old friendship, however due to the nature of his name and the time involved I was always unable to find him. Well today he sent me a email, he's found my Blog and followed that to me. Its amazing how small the world has become now the World Wide Web has allowed us to communicate with others of like minds across thousands of miles. Thats why I like the map to the side of this blog, I find it amazing how people from across the world end up here, Different worlds meet in the internet and hopefully make us all a little bit larger in our small part of the world.
On other note's, I found out we have to do a inventory next week. This came as a fairly unpopular surprise, as I was hoping to get some time off once the new guy arrived to unwind and relax, now I just have to wind it up a little tighter. I have three trained office people, 2 locals and Melissa, One of the locals is off to Iqaluit for student parliment next week, the other local suffered a loss of a family member today so she'll need some time off, and Melissa is nursing Christopher back to health so I'm basicly screwed. Now I have to sit in the office all day and wait for customers to serve as the gret Northern Bank. Well, thats what I came to the north for, to live a ordinary life in a extrordinary way.
Take Care,
CG
PS. Temps are finally getting down to seasonal norms and the water in the bay seems to be "thickening up"

Chicken Pox

Hello Everyone,
Well, as usual life gets in the way of the best laid plans. Yesterday we got the call from daycare to pick up Christopher, because he has spots all over. A quick trip to the health centre confirmed, Christopher has chicken pox. So now Mommy and Christopher are going to get some time at home.
So far, Christopher is doing well, with a pretty mild case. And so far no real side effects, no scatching, fever or any of the unpleasentness. Hopefully it'll continue to be a mild case.
Take Care
CG

Polar Bear season

Hello Everyone,
November 1st mark the opening day of Polar Bear season. Now I know many southern's are saying, "hey Wait, you can't hunt Polar Bear's, They are endangered". Well, you can hunt Polar Bears. They are not endangered, they are on a watch list. The reason they are on a watch list is not alot is known about them and thier numbers, there has been recent concern about the bears in Churchill as they seem to be heading north, but there isn't alot of long term data on thier numbers or what recent enviromental changes are doing to the population. Now, even southern's can hunt Polar Bear's, for a hefty price (that americans are very happy to pay). As a non-resident you can buy a Polar bear tag for around $15,000, they you must hire a local certified guide to go with you (another $15,000 to $20,000) and finally if you'd like to take your catch with you out of territory I'll cost you approx $20,000.
The majority of bears harvested are done locally by Inuit hunters. Each community get's a number of tags based on its population and economic circumstances. Removed from this number is any bears that were killed in the off season for personal protection reasons, and killing a mother with cubs takes three tags from the communities number. This is why whenever possible locals will chase bears away instead of shooting them. Many local hunters need Polar bear skins for econimic reasons. for example a wolf skin will bring the hunter about $250, and hunting wolves is very challenging as they must be chased for miles before the hunter can get a good shot. Polar bears skins pay about $100 a foot but the bigger the skin the larger the payout, a 12 foot bear will get about $2,000 and above 12 foot is aprox $700 a foot. so one bear can feed a extended family for a month. Bear meat is also eaten so there isn't alot of waste. This community recieved 15 tags this year. Other communities may be unable to collect thier tags unless they can afford to visit another community to do so. For example Baker lake gets its allotment of tags, however there are no Polar bears in Baker, so the hunter must fly out of the community to use thier tags, and this is done rarely.
Should everything go well with my new helper arriving Sunday I hope to go out Polar bear hunting next Thursday, provided my buddy doesn't get one before then, If he does we'll have to go after some caribou or wolf (wolverine if we're lucky).

Still no sign of ice on the Bay, so the bears will still be pretty far inland, hopefully.
Take Care
CG
PS. Check out that sunset tonight, Wow