Postcards from the Edge Episode IX Part IV

Ireland is very green. Apparently it's known as the land of "60 shades of green". No kidding. You can easily get green fatigue out here... :P Too much nature... Too beautiful all of the time... too much blue sky and green grass and trees... too much Irish dancing and Guiness and whiskey...
Now, of course, the most obvious thing I would do once I personally got to Ireland is do my little U2 pilgrimage... did my homage to the various studios that they've recorded in, visited sites that they've recorded videos in, seen old places that they've played in, signed various walls and locales to prove that I was there... even visited a pub that Bono hangs out in when he gets the chance... Of course, no one else was even remotely interested in coming along with me (what??? Why not??)... :P Didn't meet any of the men themselves (yet! Can you possibly imagine???? That would be superfragilistically wonderful!), but we still have several days to go... I even went to visit Larry Mullen Jr's childhood home!!! Whoo hoo!!! OK, I know for absolutely every one of you, this is totally not interesting, but, as you well know, this is a BIG DEAL for me :) Big like discovering the cure of cancer... no, OK, more like Big like... uh... actually, I can't really think of any parallel... Big like winning the lottery? Becoming PM? (Can someone please tell me who won the election?)
I've been landscaping the grounds of a castle in the Irish countryside for the past few days, earning my keep for my accomodation... now that is neat-o stuff... mainly raking and weeding so far, but hopefully will get into some trimming and pruning.... actually it's been quite exciting to look at the potential of these grounds for true beautification... I'm proposing returning next year to do some more gardening work... does anyone else want to come on a working holiday to Ireland next year? I think it's a great opportunity to travel and see Ireland with free accomodation... if you think you'd be interested, let me know! We'll talk! It's this lovely castle an hour out of Dublin in the country with grounds that could really use some grunt work... I'll take pics to show people who're interested in coming to garden for a bit, and then travel for the rest... :)
julia

Postcards from the Edge Episode IX Part III

Greetings from bonny Scotland! Lemme tell you something: Sleeping on marble ain't all it's cracked up to be. For various reasons, we ended up having to sleep at the airport last night... I thought it would be fool-proof; who in their right mind (besides myself) would sleep in an airport? At any rate, for some of those various reasons, we ended up pulling up into the airport at 1am, believing that it should be deserted by that point, curling up on some lounge chairs and waiting till morning... do you remember that Simpsons episode where Maggie gets sent to the Ayn Rand Nursery and saves all those pacifiers and then when the Simpsons come to get Maggie, all the babies are in the gymnasium sucking on their soothers, and then they back away out the door because of the weirdness?... well, it was exactly the same way when we got to the airport, only it was adults, not babies, and no one was using pacifiers... however, the whole freaking airport was full (!) of people lying on the chairs, on the floors, under the cafe tables... it was weird! People were pushing each other around go-karting with the luggage trolleys! At any rate, because we were so 'late' we ended up sleeping between some Americans and some Brits on the marble overlooking the control tower... weirdness... I've also learned something else: Marble doesn't retain heat. 'Nuff said.
Some stereotypes preserved, others not: We passed about FIVE golf courses on the train from the airport into Glasgow, and we actually saw some men (OK, well, one guy) dressed in a kilt playing golf (aye indeed, my laddies!) on a Monday morning... Men do not walk around normally in kilts... I haven't seen anyone that looks like Willie the Groundskeepers... The wedding shoppes actually have bridal gown models besides models with full Scottish regalia, kilt and all... There was a busker playing the bagpipes (do they pay him to stop?)... I actually haven't seen any restaurants deliberately trying to sell haggis, nor do they sell 'instant haggis stuffing' in the supermarkets... I know it's a Robbie Burns day kind of thing, but still...
julia

Postcards from the Edge Episode IX Part II

So here we are in the south of England (alas, not the south of France...) visiting our good friends Pastor Dave and Linda (for those CGYGers who know who they are). We are having a jolly good time wandering the English channel coast and looking at carnivals and castles. They are doing quite well and have a lovely home near the seaside... did you know that most of the English can reach a coastline within two hours and get to beachfront? Niiiiiice... except for the English beaches are made up of rocks, not sand. Mind you, they are small, round stones (and yes, Dave and Denis, I got you rocks), but it's still rocks... Yet the English will sit and lie upon them like they're the sands of California... weird... personally, I like feeling like I'm lying upon cushions, not in a Shiatsu session or on a bed of nails...
Furthermore, being coastline, there are a lot of seagulls. Except unlike being 'pigs with wings' as I so affectionately call them in Toronto ('mine, mine, mine')... these guys are actually CLEAN. They're actually quite beautiful birds, relatively speaking. They're actually quite white and have clean beaks, and don't have that kind of disease, 'I-have-the-equivalent-of-bird-rabies' look about them. They're also HUGE! They're the size of toddlers, kind of like around the size of the Arctic ravens... honestly, they look like if they teamed up, they could do a lot better than leftover bagels and popcorn and actually go for a small child... yummmm.... Atkins for birds...
For those of you who know that I decided to go to the UK this time around because I figured "They speak English, just like me... how hard could it be to get around?".... uhhh, I'm realizing English isn't all it's cracked up to be... We've actually had a hard time a)reading b)understanding and c)being understood by other people. Hunh? What the?? I've had to repeat myself several times to a police officer the other day as I was looking for a PARK to eat my lunch in. He thought I was looking for SHOPS and was trying to explain how to get to the nearest shopping area. Then he got really confused when I was explaining, "You know, a park, that has trees and grass and stuff"... "Oh, I'm sure that there are trees over in [said shopping area], see, there's one over there..." "no, no a PARK, PAR-KE" "OOOOOHHHHH, you're looking for a PARK with trees and grass in it... oh well, in that case..." (oh dear Lord, please help me...)
On the other hand, some of the words I've learned, vaguely:
Yob, or yobbo: Jerk, hooligan, much like drunken English thugs who beat up people with blue shirts
Slapper: Refers to women who sleep around
Wanker: jerk
Bangers and mash: The British delusion of high cuisine :P
Uhhhh, so basically, I've learned some insulting slang... I guess that's not really helpful... oh well...
julia

Postcards from the Edge Episode IX Part I

Hello all! Welcome again (already?!?!) to another set of PFTEs. For those of you new to the series, I just send out periodic updates from places I've travelled with bizarre, strange or interesting observations that I note. If you'd like to be taken off this list, please let me know!
This time around, I'm in the UK for the next few weeks, cruising through England, Scotland and Ireland. As you know, of course, I've already met Bono, so most of my motivation for going to Ireland's already dealt with (har har har).
Airport security post 9-11 has taken great heights... on our way in through Pearson, they stopped a NUN. A nun... come now, what is this world coming to if you're going to stop a little 80-something year old nun??? They emptied out her bag with the jellies and jams that she was taking home... right, weapons of mass destruction via blueberries and rhubarb...
Otherwise, the Brits are stereotypically staid and formal. So much so that we have never encountered such bad service. I don't remember it being this bad last time I was through, however, it is stunning the lack of desire to actually be helpful. We've noticed that most of the people we ask directions to, who bother to stop and answer, don't have British accents. We've had our food practically thrown at us in restaurants, have had to beg for napkins, and use puppydog eyes to get some water. I think in North America, despite it's many faults, we've at least gotten the customer service thing down pretty good.
Not surprisingly, as the Euro Cup 2004 is on in Portugal right now, the British are rabidly following the proceedings. Actually, on Tuesday night, they were beaten by the French, mainly b/c Beckham missed a goal. And, of course, drunken British hooligans started beating up police officers and people on the streets that night. It's funny that the country that gives us Keats, Shakespeare, Cromwell, Wilde, Dickens, etc etc etc etc, is also famous for beating up random people in a drunken fury...
julia

Nunavut IX

Signs that I've probably been up North for a while:
1. It's 'only' -20 outside, and I think, "Gosh, it's awful warm today! I won't even need the hood on my parka!"
2. I can tell, looking out my window in the morning, whether it's blizzarding. Well, mainly that means I can't distinguish the white in the sky from the white on the ground from the white of the sea, and it all just looks white, with the occasional house popping out for flourish.
3. I hang out at NorthMart, just to chat with the neighbours. D'you understand? I'm hanging out in a SUPERMARKET!!! :P (Produce aisle:" Hey Pete! How's it going? Taking your truck out tonight?" Crackers section: "Hey Anita! What time do I need to meet up with you this week?" Pasta: "Elizabeth! How was school this week?" etc etc... sadness... :P
4. I'm used to being told that I look like someone's sister or their aunt or their mother (their MOTHER???) now...
5. I'm used to people saying "Hi Doc!" (Doc? Doc?? What kind of nickname is that???) to me on the streets...
6. I eat meat, whether originally walking, swimming or flying, at every single freaking meal...
7. My boots have been utterly destroyed by the snow out here. Snow 2 Boots 0. We've been trying to hold them together with crazy glue and industrial staples long enough for me to get home and chuck them...
8. I actually want to go out and kill animals and wear their fur (FYI Fur is beautiful and it is warm, much better than any poly-ethyl-vinyl-chlorphyll-ite material despite what the politically correct may say)... although I suspect I would be a pretty pathetic hunter (Oh dear... I think I killed it... do you think I hurt it badly? or, even worse... Oh dear... I think I accidentally pointed the rifle in the wrong direction... do you think they'll be able to salvage that limb?)
9. (A medical one) I wonder, "What the heck is taking so long???" when a woman's in labour for more than 30 minutes. (I've been doing a lot of obstetrics up here, which is great, cause I love it, but it's been less than challenging/educational. The women here are INCREDIBLE! Most women would probably envy them. Obviously, we only have one anaesthetist up here, so it's rare that someone gets an epidural (I actually haven't seen anyone get one, but who needs one when you're in labour for such a short time?). These ladies are able to push their babies out in less than ten minutes! (I know some of you moms are green with envy :P) One woman made one short grunt, looked up at me and asked, "Is the baby out yet?", which it wasn't, but it only took one more short grunt and the baby was out...
The only non-Inuit lady I delivered up here pushed for 1 1/2 hrs (which actually wasn't too bad for a first baby), but I -forgot- that labour usually takes that long, but I remember thinking at about the fifteen minute mark, "What's the hold up, man?" :P I think I'm going to have difficulty getting used to waiting the length of labour with my patients again... :P
And sadly: 10. I am no longer surprised or truly horrified at ghastly stories of domestic violence, incest or assault (actually, just plain old brokenness) within the homes of families up here anymore. I find I am more surprised when I find a functional family, which is truly a sad and lamentable situation. I think that may be one of the parts of my heart that will stay here...
julia

Nunavut VIII

So, I've attemped going caribou hunting. I went for a whole day out onto the tundra, looking for the elusive animal, searching over wind-swept plains seeking the furry-deer-with-antlers, all for... nothing.... sigh....
People were so generous! Feeling, I guess, that I was a pretty wimpy city girl, various guys lent me all this gear... and I thought I was the Pillbury boy with my parka... I had a caribou skin face mask, balaklava, goggles, skidoo helmet, seal skin mitts up to my elbows, goosedown ski pants, wool soocks, vests, and boots... I could barely fit on the skidoo after all that, but I must say... I was totally toasty the whole afternoon, though I suppose I was just -that- much more additional deadweight...
I was probably the most useless person on the expedition. I couldn't talk, cause I had too much stuff over my face. They wanted me to have some tea at the halfway point since they were worried that I was getting too cold (how could they tell? I couldn't tell them anything!), but realized the huge effort it would be to get all my stuff off my face to actually have some would not really be worth it... I couldn't hear anything. I could barely hoist my leg over the skidoo b/c of the great weight of my legs in their boots... it was pretty much sadness :) :) :) And, most importantly, if a polar bear did show up, since I couldn't shoot a gun, I'd just waste get-away weight on the skidoo.... sigh... :) :) :)
At any rate, it was fun! It was kind of like riding those zhemi-jahns in Benin, but even more scary... I just had to keep repeating to myself, "It's just like riding a horse, it's just like riding a hose..." ... except for I had no reins, the horse could go 60km/hr over rocky tundra, and it wouldn't stop if you thought it was going too fast! However, I've been having the post-horse-ride gait since then, walking kind of bow-legged since my thighs are killing me! :)
It was gorgeous. The Arctic is terrifyingly beautiful. I can see how easy it would be to die out here alone, not only b/c of the cold, but the disorientation, and the vast distances... no caribou were found, but as I was told, it's been getting harder to find them as they've been heading norther with the encroachment of global warming... oh well. I was kind of looking forward to help hack off caribou head and skin the animal... they figured my surgical skills might've come in handy...
So for the whole expedition, I ended up catching a bit of frostbite on the end of my nose... it just figures; cover my face with a caribou in order to hunt caribou, so the guardian angel of the caribou afflicts me with frostbite for such war-mongering thought....
Love you!
julia

Nunavut VII

Since it's Easter, and a time for renewal and resurrection... it's feeling kind of like spring time here in Iqaluit, if you can believe it! The temperature now is hovering around -18 to -20, and for some incredible reason, some of the snow is starting to melt (I dunno, I always learned in school that the freezing point of water is 0 degrees, but hey, what do I know?)... It's very strange, seeing icicles dripping, and mud puddles, and, for crying out loud, actual dirt pathways for the first time since I've been here, but being bundled up, hood and all, b/c it is still cold out... it's a bit confusing... (however, don't get me wrong: there is still A LOT of snow out here; I've only seen two small mud puddles)
Someone was actually surprised to know that there are taxicabs up here. They thought I was riding around in a sled (:P not to name any names :) )... Well, the very fact that there is enough business to keep two taxicab companies going is probably something, however, there are cabs. Obviously, vehicles are pretty expensive (especially when you figure the transportation costs up here: there are no dealerships up here, per se... people buy their cars down south and then work to transport them up here. The cheapest way is by sealift in the summer time; apparently fleets of cars that people have ordered during the past year finally make it through the bay. If people really really need a car or a skidoo quickly, they either buy it used in town, or, if they've got the cash flow, they fly in the vehicle... that's nutty! Sometimes it costs more than the actually vehicle to fly it in!)... lots of people drive around in skidoos, carrying around their babies in amautis and slinging a few kids in the back. Mostly, people drive trucks and SUVs (probably one of the few places I can imagine it's justifiable to be driving massive vehicles... Tim, you'd have a field day :P ) However, I have seen a Penny lookalike on the streets! I cannot believe that a poor little Toyota Echo survives up here! :)
Anyways, about the taxis. Fares are a flat rate of $5. It doesn't matter where you go in town: $5. One night when it was -70 outside, I took a cab the distance of a block rather than freezing and dying half way. It can get pretty expensive for people who depend on the cabs to help them get their kids to schoo, then to work, then to grocery shopping and home again... that's one reason why people have a hard time to finally get the money together to get their own car, especially if they're spending $40 a day just to get two parents and two kids back and forth from work and school.
On another note, as I was earlier complaining about the incredibly poor oral hygiene in children b/c of pop consumption, alcohol consumption actually is not as big of a problem up here. Most of the Nunavut communities have chosen to be completely dry. Here in Iqaluit, there are several bars and restos that sell alcohol (and that's only b/c it's the capital), but no LCBO-type stores at all. This, I think, has helped the communities by at least reducing the number of alcohol-related injuried and problems. I guess it's kind of hard to gauge. On the other hand, I have seen a lot more binge drinkers that totally go on a HUGE bender when someone imports a whole lot to share with their friends. Also, it makes me that much more angry at all the spousal abuse that I see, since there's a LOT of it out here, and the stupid louts don't even have the 'excuse' of alcohol for their behaviour... grrr... grrrr... OK that's another heartache that I've been having to deal with out here that I'm just not going to start on today.... getting off soapbox now...
I've been very confused as to how timing kind of works out here. There's an Arctic Bible Conference that I'm supposed to be volunteering at this coming week, with people coming from all over, from Siberia to Greenland. However, no one can really tell me when things are really starting, or when I need to be anywhere, or what the final date of the conference is. They've told me to just 'show up'... now, seeing as I don't even have a good idea as to what time, let alone what day, I should be showing up, this is a bit confusing... sigh... I suppose it's just my western worldview of time-centredness that's getting in the way... well, at least I know (I think... uh, I hope...) -where- it's taking place... uh, maybe... uh, I guess we'll see if I end up at this conference or not...
Love you!
julia

Nunavut VI

Thanks again to all who've sent pictures (thanks for newborn Susanna's pics from the proud Beck grandparents! :) )! Thanks to those who've sent mail; if you're planning on sending anything, I would send it, uh, yesterday, to make sure it gets to me before I leave (or so they tell me)...
A few observations: The only wildlife I've seen so far have been the ravens. There are many Inuit legends of them, none of which I know, except that they are characterized as greedy creatures. They are jet black, in stark contrast to the snow, and are biiig birds. They are sometimes the size of a small toddler! Well, OK, I've seen fish too, but I don't think that really counts...
Due to the fact that the doctors in eastern Nunavut are based out of Iqaluit, they get sent out periodically to the other communities in order to have a physician presence there, at least (ideally) once every 4-6 weeks or so. I've made it out to Pangnirtung (place of the bull caribou) and to Qikiqtarjuaq (I dunno), but, unfortunately, have found out today that I likely won't make it out to any other communities before I leave, either b/c they are too small and don't need two physicians to go, or b/c the doc is going too close to my departure date, and they don't want to risk me missing my flight home. Which is always entirely possible. I was snowed in Pang for an extra 1 1/2 days due to semi-white out conditions. I must say though, coming back to Iqaluit, I was struck at HOW BIG and cosmopolitan (seriously) Iqaluit is... It kinda feels too 'big city' now...
It's amazing at how quickly the sun moves across the horizon. Every day, the sun moves further across the skyline, and sets in a different place, further west, every day. I suppose if I was up early enough, I'd also notice how the sun would rise further east every morning, but I haven't yet :P
I have seen Northern lights! Apparently they are even more beautiful the further north you go, but, unfortunately, I won't be making it out to Arctic Bay or Grise Fjord ... sigh... :( :( :( Just more encouragement to come back up here! :) But they are beautiful; just like you see in cartoons on Sesame Street...
My kids' choir is doing well; I missed the last practice as I was snowed in Pang, but we have one more practice before Easter :)
Love you!
julia

Nunavut V

There is, to my great disappointment, no indication that I'm going to see a polar bear while I'm up here at all. I've seen a bunch of them as rugs with their heads still on them in various bars and stuff in town, but that's about it. I'm told they are quite big and quite dangerous, and they are, without a doubt, one of the few animals left on earth that considers humans to be fair game as prey. In January, there were apparently a mom bear and two cubs that were hanging around the outskirts of Iqaluit that wouldn't go away, so the city had to shoot them, b/c they would've started hunting humans. Also, I've heard many stories of polar bears: easily reaching 10 to 12 feet in height on their hind legs (holy crap!!!), able to look into second story windows... guys having to stay underneath their trucks for six or seven hours until the polar bear got tired of them and went away... the sheer stupidity to go travelling outside of towns without very strong and big guns, b/c then you're just asking for trouble from polar bears... pretty scary! There was another story that I was told about one guy who saw a polar bear coming towards him, started shooting at him from 20 feet away, but the bear finally didn't die until 2 feet in front of him! Scary!
On the other hand, in my never-ending saga of getting a huge kick out of visiting Chinese restaurants in the most unlikely places... there are about 30 Chinese people living up here. However, most of the time they pass for Inuk, so it kinda doesn't matter, but they do sell bok choy, oyster sauce, a whole range of Lee Kum Kee sauces (ha ha ha, Hary...) and even dried straw mushrooms in the supermarket (!). I'm supposed to be going out for Chinese food in the next few days at the only Chinese resto in town, so we'll see how that goes... :P
Hope all is well!!!
WARNING: The rest of this postcard will only really be applicable to the medicine people in the crowd... sorry... so potentially boring stuff ahead... You can skip the rest if you'd like :)
I must say, sometimes it's quite discouraging to be working in these environments, even though the locales themselves might be quite exotic. However, to see active TB, SIDS, ++++ ODs, STDs++++, tons of bilat. perf'd TMs, bottle caries etc etc etc in CANADA, of all places... it kind of wears down on you after a while... I think also it doesn't help a lot that I feel like a bit of a walk-in doc, so I only see them come in, but I don't necessarily see how they turn out.. part of it has to do with the fact that preventative care doesn't really register with this culture, and secondly, since the consultants only come up once or twice a year, the consult note doesn't come back for a year or so... like on little girl I just saw who's got bilat perf'd TMs with chronic d/c: there's no audiology up here, we're not going to fly her down for audiology, ENT's not coming for another five months, and there are hundreds of little kids with hearing loss/perf TMs/ chronic OM to be seen as well... what the heck to do with that? Do the tympanoplasties myself???
On the plus side, I suppose, I haven't really seen that much in the way of acute internal stuff. No AMIs, CVAs, well, at least not a lot (we've got one CHFer on the floor, but that's about it). Actually, there haven't been that many MVAs either, but with the speed limit being 30, I guess it's kinda hard to do, though there are lots of skidoo trauma... I dunno, it's just kinda frustrating with the lack of continuity of care and the lack of resources here... Actually, I think it's the lack of continuity that's the big problem... like the one woman I had to cut off her codeine cause I was the only one who bothered to look back in her chart and realized that she'd been getting about 800-900 codeine tabs a year for the past three years! (Well, besides the fact that I'm not big on prescription narcotics for non-CA pain...)... I dunno, gripe gripe gripe... :P ... thanks for the ASCM-like debriefing, guys... :P
Love you!
julia

Nunavut IV

OK, so really, to be completely honest, the main reason why I wanted to come up here is because the babies are soooooo freaking cute!!! Also, there are tons and tons of them; I'm delivering one every two days or so, although this hospital averages about 1.5 per day or so. They are sooo round and soft (I mean, I've been told that I'm pretty soft myself, but these kids feel like goose down or something :) )! I'm trying to remember to take some pics of the kids, cause frankly they're funny in their fur hats and their kamiks :)...
Some of you have been asking what the heck I've been eating out here: caribou? Polar bear? walrus?? etc etc... good question! :P Actually, they are incredibly gracious to me here and provide my meals in the hospital caf, which is actually totally not as bad as it sounds. A lot of town comes here to eat for their meals actually; today I had striploin steak for lunch... I think that's nutty! :) It's quite nice as you get to meet a bunch of folks from town over lunch... However, I have had arctic char a lot (which is apparently a cousin of the salmon, and they do taste quite similar), I've tried caribou too (I dunno; tastes like chicken?? Maybe a musky beef? I dunno... everything tastes like chicken, doesn't it?). Muktuk is another story... (that's seal blubber)... apparently I will get a chance to try it (so the guys in the caf promise me), as long as I'm prepared to chew for a couple of hours... apparently it's like licorice, but you can't really chew through it, you just kind gotta let it slide down.... uhhh, that doesn't sound terribly appetizing nor nutritious, for that matter...
At any rate, the guys in the kitchen are great here, and incredible gentlemen, which is just as well, since food prices here are extravagant at best... part of it is b/c there's really only one store to buy your food at, so being a monopoly helps at jacking up prices, as well as transportation costs to bring fresh produce etc up here. Most food costs about 2-3 times more than it would down south. I went for a tour of the store (it's the biggest store in Iqaluit, possibly all of Nunavut... I can't believe I was a tourist in a supermarket in Canada, now that's sad and pathetic, possibly comparable to visiting IKEA, right??? ... :P ) the other day: Bananas cost about $1 each, my precioussss Vector cereal costs $15 a box, a loaf of Wonder bread costs $7, a ten piece bucket of KFC is $30... crazy crazy... one of my friends up here says that buying $600-700 worth of groceries a week for a small family is not surprising...
Pop and chips, however, are only marginally more expensive than they are down south, which makes me think conspiracy theory all over the place. The Inuit have notoriously high rates of obesity, diabetes and realllllly bad dental problems (Nathan, Steve... they could use you up here!), which I KNOW the pop and chips are not helping to prevent... sadly, for some reason, babies start getting pop in their bottles when they hit about 5 or six months, which I totally don't understand... So they're still really really really cute... just that their teeth start rotting before they've even come up... ewwwww....
Hope you're all well! Love you!
julia

Nunavut III

The snow here isn't as 'snowy' as all that, really. I wouldn't really describe it as 'snowy'. "Snowy" is kind of like how it was last winter in Ottawa, or how it was during the TO storm of '99. Yes, there's a lot of snow here, but it just kind of is brushed onto the rocks. So you kinda see the rocks jutting out here and there in the snow, or, at least, the snowbanks look kind of jaggedy, but there's not really a lot of snow, per se. The locals have told me that there's actually not that much snow up here at all (?What??? But everything's white!). This is problematic for me, as it hurts just that much more when you slip and fall. It's a good thing I'm not a little old lady, otherwise, I'm pretty sure I might've broken something by now...
A few facts about Iqaluit and Nunavut, as I've noticed sommmmme people (not to mention any names... :) ) thought I was going to the Yukon, or Yellowknife or close to Alaska... I thought most of us took Gr. 9 geography, right? though someone here reminded me that Nunavut didn't exactly exist when most of us went through Gr. 9...
The territory of Nunavut was created on April 1, 1999, after years of negotiation with the feds. With the creation of this territory, the Inuit have forever relinquished the right for any further land claims with the Canadian gov't. Which is not too bad, really, as the Inuit had negotiated land development claims, etc, giving them the lion's share of diamond, gold and silver development in the north. (Which, as a side note, d/t some gov't funding changes, etc etc, the price of Canadian diamonds mayyyyy shoot wayyyy up in 2005 (maybe, maybe), so if you were thinking about getting one, 2004 might be a better idea to purchase one... just FYI...) Nunavut takes up a grand total of 20% of Canada's land mass, but only has about 28,000 people in the territory, approximately 85% of which are Inuit (or Inuk), the rest, I'm presuming, being gov't workers.. :P Although really, most of the jobs requiring an education do belong to those from outside of the territory, as there aren't that many Inuit who have enough education to hold the higher-ranking jobs (there are a lot of social and political issues here wrt how they're planning on being able to deal with that now and in the future, but that's not primary to this discussion today). There is a total of 20km of highway in the entire territory, which is not even in Iqaluit... it's actually up north from a small community that leads up to an abandoned mine... (Don't ask me why. I betcha nobody really knows why either... it's not a terribly useful highway). And, I've also learned, very few to no Inuit actually lives on the land 100% of the time at all; mostly everyone lives in one of the housing communities built and stretched out over Nunavut. So no iglus, unless someone's got a hankering to go hunting far far out... Iqaluit itself has about 6000 people in it, of which only about 60% are Inuit. There are two gas stations, three banks, one post office, one KFC and one Pizza Hut. There's other things too, but I just thought I would give you the general idea :P So there you go, a bit of Canadiana for y'all...
On a 'cool!' kind of note: I'm going to be helping lead a children's choir for an Easter service out here, which I find terribly exciting! (So see, guys, kind of in a REALLY oblique way, I AM kind of doing the Messiah, kind of, uhh, yeah.... :P )
Hope you are well!
julia

Nunavut II

As some of you know, it went down to -60/-70 with the windchill yesterday. I had no idea people would even live in those kinds of temperatures. I must say, that's either great ingenuity or great stupidity on the part of the Inuit to have traversed the Russian/Alaskan divide to come north... I would've just stayed in nice, warm (though, admittedly humid) China/Korea... I cannot believe that humanity was able to live, and survive, for thousands of years up here in this barren, cold desert! It's an absolutely incredible feat, I must say.
It's also uncanny the resemblance between the Inuit and the Koreans (if I do say so myself... :P )... some of the elders have called me 'granddaughter' since I remind them so much of their own, which is kind of nice. On the other hand, if I really was once of their own, I probably would've had five or six children, two or three abortions and about ten bouts of STDs by now... I also went on a couple of home visits, and I could've sworn I was looking at my own grandmother in one of the houses (Gloria, it was uncanny)... I should've taken a picture...
At any rate, I am now capable of doing all this b/c I finally got my lent parka! Those things are amazing! I can't see or hear anything once I've got it on properly, so if someone's gonna run me down with an ATV, at least I'd be puffy, fluffy and warm doing it :) My first two days without it though, I must say were quite, uh, chilly, to say the least... so I'm quite thankful that it was finally found for me... which is also a good thing, not just for the warmth but for another (embarassing) reason, but that's for another time...
Thanks to those of you who've sent pictures, they are GREATLY appreciated! and I would always be glad for more!
Also, for those of you asking for a mailing address so you can mail me fun stuff (please don't send anything after mid-April, cause I may not get it in time), just send it to the hospital, addressed to me, Dr. Julia.
Baffin Regional Hospital
Box 1000
Stn 1036
Iqaluit, NU
X0A 0H0
Later!! Love you!
julia

Nunavut I

Welcome to yet another bunch of Postcards from the Edge. To those of you new to the series, every time Julia goes on a little adventure, I send out mass e-postcards just letting ppl know how things are going...
Someone correct me here, but I think I'm on Part XIII, but I'm totally not sure... does anyone know what Benin was?? XII? XI?
At any rate, for those of you who remember my first reaction when I stepped off the plane in Niger... this was totally the opposite reaction... when we landed, the snow was blowing all over the place, but I ASSUMED it was b/c the plan was landing and making lots of air and blowing the snow all over the place... well, stepping out of the plane, I nearly got blown off the staircase b/c of the wind!!! :) So I crouched down real low and crawled down the stairs and then semi-ran to the terminal... although, it's cold!!!! Despite my valiant efforts of dressing warmly, I walked about half a block and then couldn't feel my nose...
Admittedly, I didn't land until 7pm (yes Hary, 7pm!!! Twelve hours after you dropped me off!!!!).... I'm not quite sure what happened, but this confirms my adage of: Never get to the airport more than an hour before a domestic flight. For some reason, my flight was delayed by about four hours, and then, instead of directly flying to Iqaluit, we went through Montreal (?!?!) and Kuujjuaq before finally heading to Iqaluit... the sad thing is, (which is what I was thinking as I was being blown off the stairs) I realized I could've been in Paris in the time that I was on a Canadian plane... or at least to Vancouver and back.... and it would be a good 20 or 30 degrees warmer...
On the plus side, watching the sunset from the airplane was gor-ge-ous! It was all blue and green and red and yellow and purple-y and all rainbow-y and beautiful... however, b/c of my point and click, and the airplane windows were dirty, I didn't take a pic.
Which brings me to another point (boy, I'm being particularly wordy!!!): I would really love having some photos of ppl up here with me... if anyone's got some handy dig photos and wants to forward them to me, so at least I can have a photo album on my computer up here, I'd appreciate it :)
That's all for now!!! Love you all!!!
julia