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!