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.