May 24-27

Hiya

Tuesday we started workshops in Hay River. With just under 4000 people and sitting at an intersection of the major road and water transportation lines of NWT, Hay River is practically a city by Northern standards. This means there is a K-3 school, a 4-7 school and a high school (it's bright purple. Really) plus a French elementary school (we didn't present there). It also means that when I asked a grade five class what was cool in town that we should check out while here, every hand shot up. After naming pretty much every restaurant in town, (plus the beach, rec centre, and nature trails) one kid mentioned that his favourite part of town was the 'Welcome to Hay River' sign, because it said 'Please come again' on the back and he thought that was a nice thing to say. (Unrelated but cool: below is a crane I saw while checking out the nature trails the kids told me about)

On Thursday we drove the 200km to Fort Resolution for a full day at the school. We'd been warned by a couple of Hay River kids to watch out for ourselves in 'Res' but found it to be very welcoming (the cooking class gave us lunch and we had time to play with the kids at recess). It's one of the worst parts about camp that by the time you get really used to a workshop and can get into the swing of things to play around with it, camp is over. Fort Res was my last day of workshops until we start up for the summer, and was one of our best deliveries.

Fort Res was also interesting because we'd moved into a new language area. So far the traditional language had been Slavey (South Slavey specifically), the High School in Hay River offered it as an alternative to French class, and many buildings were labelled in both English and Slavey. In Fort Res the students were learning Chipweyan and a couple of elders who were working in the school the day we were there would speak it to the local teachers. The difference is subtle and in writing is mostly that Chipweyan uses fewer accents.

Friday was travel day. We flew to Yellowknife on Buffalo Air which anyone who watches 'Ice Pilots NWT' on the History Channel will recognize (seriously, why is it on the History Channel?). There was a sign in the airport that "Those flying on Buffalo Air may be filmed" but there was no one there. One woman commented that she flys to Yellowknife at least once a month and has never seen the film crew. Maybe it's just not an interesting run.

With four hours to kill in Yellowknife we wandered around and ended up at a park between a couple of federal buildings and the heritage centre. On either side of the walkway were flags, one for each of the 33 communities in NWT. This is significant because assuming that number is accurate, and assuming tiny places such as Kakisa count, we have delivered science workshops to 24% of communities in NWT! Considering that this is the first year in a long time that Actua has been in the territory and given the positive reaction we were greated with, I'd call that super significant!

Victoria Day Weekend (May 20-23)

Hello All. Apologies to those of you with slow Internet connections, this one is fairly picture-heavy.

For the long weekend and upcoming week in Hay River, Danielle and I have something new and exciting: a vehicle! Nicknamed “Jetboat car” (for obvious reasons), our rental has led us on a couple of adventures already.

Saturday morning we shipped out early to Twin Falls Gorge Territorial Park. A trail runs along the Hay River from Alexandra Falls to Louise Falls. At the falls themselves we could get right up to the water, close enough to dip a foot in. Most of the rest of the way, the river had cut a fairly sizeable gorge. The trail alternated look-out points with sections labeled “Danger stay back from edge” (which I did. I occasionally follow instructions). Alexandra Falls is the tallest, while Louise is a more odd shape. The park was mostly empty, which made for a nice hike, although we did meet a couple of people at the edge of Louise Falls. It seems somehow appropriate that, just like half of the teachers we’ve met, they were also from Nova Scotia.

Saturday night I stayed up to try and see the Aurora Borealis. When the sky didn’t get any darker between 12 and 2:30, and the sun was rising by 3am, I figured it wasn’t going to happen. Gives me hope for August, but kind of put a damper on Sunday.

Monday we headed out to Wood Buffalo National Park, which apparently is bigger than Switzerland. The main park entrance, including most of the info and walking trails, are actually near Fort Smith, which would have added an extra hour’s drive to the commute. We did see a couple of neat sights in the park though, including the Karstland sinkhole. The hiking trail we found took us through an area that had been burned out probably not more than five-ten years ago, and made for an interesting contrast as the young growth was vibrantly green, but all the larger trees were dead.

AND, we saw some buffalo. Lots of buffalo. The babies were out, skipping around. We obeyed the sign at the park entrance and stayed in our car, but they didn’t seem particularly interested in us anyway

Last but not least, Hay River is right near the shores of the Great Slave Lake, so of course there had to be time for a walk on the beach. :)

Week 2 (May 16-20)

Yes I realize that's not a full week. :)

Week 2 started up with more travel. Moday we flew to Trout Lake for a full day of science with a school of 11 students in grades K-9. Rather than splitting them up and trying to run an activity with three primary students, we put them all together. It was great to see how the older students helped out the younger ones. The students were thrilled to see us and kept asking when we would come back. Unlike every other town we visited, Trout Lake isn't on a major river or roadway. The only road access is during the winter so it's a lot more isolated than other towns. Trapping and fishing season is starting up, so the teacher reminded students at the end of the day that unless they were sitting in a boat, they should be at school the next day. Attitudes on attendance (from parents, teachers, and sutdents) area a lot more relaxed. We ask the teacher before class how many students to expect and always get two numbers. The number enrolled, and a number 1/2 to 3/4 the size which is how many will usually show up.

Tuesday was our last morning in Fort Simpson. We had a charter plane for the day: just Danielle, myself, our lugage, and Taylor the pilot, which meant one of us got to sit in the front with a headset. We flew to Wrigley, split up to deliver two presentations to 15 kids, flew to Nahanni Butte, repeat presentations, and were dropped off in Fort Providence by 4:30pm. Taylor was pretty cool, he pointed out landmarks, explained what controls did what on the plane, and just for fun sat in one the first half of my workshop in Nahanni Butte (then he had to go refuel the plane). The flight from Wrigley to Nahanni Butte took us through an area between the Nahanni Mountains and the rest of the Rockies. It was absolutely gorgeous but my camera battery was dead :(. I'm gong to be bugging Danielle for photos. Taylor was thrilled as both towns are pretty tiny so it's not a run he gets to do very often.

Wednesday we started up in Fort Providence. A town of about 800 people, Providence is much closer to Yellowknife and the major roade of NWT, so is more prosperous and well serviced than anywhere else we'd been so far. The school is elementary, high school, and a satellite campus of Aurora college all in one buillding. We moved through from youngest to older starting in Kindergarten. This school was particularly fun becuase it's immersion up to grade 3 so classes are taught in Slavey. We got the kids to teach us a couple of workds, and apparently were REALLY bad at it. Having grade ones laugh at how you pronounce things is a clear sign that you need more practice. It was awesome to see how the local culture influenced the school. A lot of teachers up here are from southern Canada (I don't think there's anyone left in Nova Scotia, I've met so many of them up here), and they were all calling our instructions (get to class, etc) to the students in Slavey. The only phrase I have memorized is 'Mahsi Cho" which means "Thank you".

One thing we always try to do is ask the kids to tell us something cool about their town, or tell us where we should go/what we should do while we're there. In Providence the grade 5s told us that the coolest thing about their town was the Big Rock. It's a big rock.

Friday morning we left Providence for Hay River with a brief stop at Kakisa for a make-up presentation. The Kakisa students were supposed to join the Jean Marie River students at the presentations we missed due to snow. All of the students had piled into vans and drove three hours to Jean Marie, then had to drive back. By all the students, I mean all 8 of them. On the drive we took a ferry by the largest bridge in NWT, currently under construction. The bridge needs to be built super tough to withstand the freezing of the Mackenzie, but it'll help connect Fort Providence and the towns beyond to Yellowknife and Hay River. Looking forward to long weekend in the Hub!

Week 1 (May 10-16)

After a day of training on the workshops and meeting up with the other workshop instructors at Actua head office in Toronto, it was off to the North West Territories. Danielle and I must have drawn the short straw as we had the earliest flight and the latest final arrival time. We arrived at the Ottawa airport at 4am for a 6am flight to Toronto, then to Calgary, Yellowknife, and finally Fort Simpson by 8pm local time. My first view of Northern Canada was of the frozen Great Slave Lake, which, after taking plane window pictures of the Rocky Mountains, only made me nervous for workshops the next day.

Our plane to Fort Simpson was the smallest plane I’d ever been on (although I’ve been on smaller since!). The pilot was pretty much my age and we shared the remaining ten seats with a couple of mining consultants scoping the area for Enbridge (either nickel or zinc), and some Fort Simpson locals coming back from two week on two week off shifts at a different mine site. We arrived in the rain and were promptly told how happy everyone was that it was rain not snow. Fort Simpson sits on island right at the point where the Liard and Mackenzie rivers meet. Apparently the ice had broken just the night before which is the generally recognized sign of summer. (According to our hotel manager, there is no spring. It’s winter until the ice breaks, then it’s summer). We missed seeing the ice break, but got to watch the massive chunks float by in the current.

Fort Simpson is the largest town in the district with just over 1200 people. As such it has the

district school board office (where our community contact, the self proclaimed district Science Guy works) and the largest of the districts two high schools, students who go to the high school from other towns either board with someone in the community, or stay at the school residence (kind of like a dorm, but with a live in “house parent” to keep an eye on everything). One of the residences is currently empty, so Danielle and I were put up there for the week. It was pretty sweet.

We were scheduled to head out to Jean Marie River on Friday, but were surprised in the morning by freezing rain, which no sensible pilot of a 5 seater plane will fly in (pffft, safety). The back-up plan was to drive, but as the ice had just broken that week, the ferry over the river wasn’t in yet. Well, it was in, they just needed the federal inspector to sign off on it (pffft, safety). We’d already done our scheduled workshops to the schools in Fort Simpson (7 workshops, 10 grades, 2 days. Champions of science!!!) but since we were apparently stuck, we asked if maybe there was something else we could help out with. The answer: Kindergarten!!! Bad weather is no match for these kids!

The snow was winter’s last hurrah. By Saturday morning it was blue skies and the snow had melted. Things picked up so much, that by Sunday the kids in town for high school orientation were in shorts and bare feet when we dropped by for a rocket activity. We did mentos and diet coke, then helped out with a water balloon fight.

First Post

Welcome to the blog!

I’ve started a bit late so there’ll be some catch-up, but basically this is where I’ll be sharing stories and pictures from my work this summer. I’m working for the Actua Outreach program delivering science workshops and camps to remote access communities in Northern Canada. Actua is a national organization which promotes science, engineering and technology to youth across the country through interactive school workshops, summer camps, and community outreach. I’ll be three weeks in the North West Territories, three weeks off in Ontario, a week of training in Ottawa, then 6-7 weeks of camp.

Some notes:

1) 1) If you have any questions, or anything in particular you’d like me to talk about or post a picture of, please ask! It’s easier for me to write posts if I know what you want to read

2) 2) I will be working with kids over the summer, BUT, there will be no pictures of kids, and I won’t be answering questions or talking about specific campers/students.

Cheers!