Yukon Rambles

Christchurch Earthquake - Rebuilding a Fallen City

2012-01-12T20:40:00.000-08:00

City Gaps, empty spaces where buildings have disappeared, have been taken over by a variety of temporary shops and services.

Christchurch is a fallen city. There are large numbers of unlivable houses, the downtown core remains a closed zone and city water supply and sewage systems are fragile and running at a limited capacity. Repairs and new projects are proceeding but these are complicated by the need to first remove dangerous ruins, deferred engineering evaluations and the increasingly complicated waters of insurance settlements. The level of uncertainty about the future raises concerns of disorder. After almost a year of waiting however, people mostly remain calm and carry on.

The Canterbury museum has mounted a display of the spontaneous collection of “hearts” of support sent to the city from around the world. These signs of caring are comfort for a damaged city.

Sam Johnson, a student at Canterbury University, organized the Student Volunteer Army, to help clean up after the quakes.

For many in Christchurch it has been a hard year. People speak of losing a year of work, but the time has been well filled. One University of Canterbury professor I spoke with acknowledged that her research had been set back as she spent more time supporting and mentoring her graduate students. Stephen was astonished when he returned to his school after the quake to find a bunch of his students with shovels and wheelbarrows beginning the clean-up. The Student Volunteer Army (SVA), a web-based crowd sourcing organization, grew out of this spirit and has been an important element in both the clean-up and the construction of new community relationships. Despite the challenges of addressing their dislocation and material loss, the people of the city are addressing their uncertain future through the strengthening and expansion of social networks.

Erin and Stephen have responded to this vibrance. They've purchased a house, acquired chickens, planted vegetables, taken in cats and strengthened their commitment to their home place because of the relationships to place they've found themselves in.

Lyttleton, Christchurch's port, was also heavily damaged in the quakes. The town, built on the steeply sloped interior of an ancient volcano, suffered from both the quake and the subsequent fall of rock from above. Nevertheless people have worked together to mend their community.

A town planner in Lyttleton who cheerfully continues her work in making the Christchurch region a more liveable space. Geological devestation is simply another issue highlighting needs and a new frame for making a better community.

The Lyttleton weekend market, Anna Moorehead of Gruff Junction sells her local goat cheese “from teat to table”. Others offer fish caught this morning, fresh baking, chocolate delights and heaps of just harvested vegetables and fruit. The market is back. Though some stalls are still to return, spirits are high.

In Lyttleton I get to experience a GapFiller. Like the SVA, another group of earthquake “activists”, the gap fillers, moved to take back their city. Making arrangements with owners of lots cleared of wrecked buildings - gaps - they have organized a series of events including a historic photo exhibit of bombed European cities (now rebuilt and vibrant) and a community activity site (where Erin and Stephen set up the “Hammer Time” stall where kids could bang nails and be builders). In Lyttleton they met with community groups who bemoaned the loss of all their public meeting spaces. In reponse they organized a community event to clean up a downtown lot and created “The Petanque Court”, a new community meeting space. We subsequently attended follow-up event there to “rebuild Lyttleton.”

A professor of art at the University of Victoria, Wellington, unpacks his portable town reconstruction kit, tent, work table, blocks of clay and working tools.

We all built model houses for the new Lyttlelton. Stephen worked on a fairy tale theme for his street of houses.

We all built model houses for the new Lyttlelton.

Cashel Re-Start, the temporary downtown of Christchurch, blossoms amongst the city ruins.

In downtown Christchurch the municipal government and business community have similarly moved to engage the people with their city. The Cashel Mall, largely destroyed in the quakes, has been artfully redone as “Cashel Re-Start” with colourful shipping containers fabricated into store fronts. The main shops have established a foothold in their downtown. The lively pedestrian mall brings people together in new spaces.

Buskers help create a shared experience of fun and community in Re-Start.

The hard work of re-making a city includes bricks and mortar. In Christchurch it is also clear that cities are re-made through the strengthening of social networks and the acknowledgement of different interests and the celebration of shared experiences and challenges.

Christchurch Earthquake - near a year on

2012-01-03T00:48:00.000-08:00


Erin's artistic response to the loss of her house in the February, 2011 earthquake.

Taking apart Christchurch one stone at a time.

Earlier in December Erin and I walked into Cathedral Square, closed since the earthquake last February. The municipal government is working hard to have people reconnect with their city. For three weekends only, a two block long fenced-in walkway was opened to the Square. People, hanging on the fences looking down the familiar but now empty streets, watched giant cranes taking apart the tall office buildings and hotels too dangerous to enter. At the square people gawp at the shattered cathedral. There is a debate about both the secular and religious heritage values associated with this city icon but the expense of reconstructing the whole city appears to have doomed this stone pile.

Odd to see modern office buildings tilted so far from mathematical perfection.

Pedestal without a statue. The founder lost.

Most churches in town have heavy steel beams leaning into the walls, one had the two ends of the transcept punched out, only after seeing this dark void did I notice that the complete church steeple was neatly set on a wooden stand in the parking lot out in front. The churches especially are unnerving, they portray a post-rapture landscape. Still, it is summer and the cherries are ripe so even post-rapture has its charms.

City supplied outhouses on the street mark the homes of determined residents.

I took a five hour hour bike ride through the earthquake damaged parts of Christchurch where Erin and Stephen used to live. Built on reclaimed land (swamp with dirt on it) the eastern part of the city was the worst hit. As I entered the neighbourhood you could see the roads change from pavement to gravel. Still occupied neighbourhoods are marked with portable toilets parked along the street. A heavy blue hose snakes along the sidewalk delivering fresh water to houses via attached garden hoses. As I move further along however the number of toilets along the curb dwindles. Then the blue hose stops and you enter the empty blocks.

A wilding garden

Yards are deep in a year's unkempt growth, vegetation flourishes in the damp and mild Canterbury summer. Unclipped rose bushes stretch above their supporting bowers and fushia and other flowers branch out wildly. The grass grows tall in most yards, but it seems at least a few people drop by to mow the lawn and look in on their house - home now somewhere else, possibly one of the always “no-vacancy” motels along the main entries to the city awaiting insurance and engineering decisions about their future.

The Yellow card that makes you leave home.

Too dangerous to enter, a Red card.

The town is full of construction and de-construction workers. Heritage advocates are making the case for the preservation of at least some of the Gothic-Victorian architectural face of colonial Christchurch.

At the same time the city heritage park has developed a collection of earthquake debris. The earthquake is on its way into history.

Few of the houses look damaged. Some have lost portions of their brick veneer, most are without chimneys, often just a ragged blue tarp is tied around a stump of bricks. But looking along the street there is a lot of “out of the corner of your eye” abnormalities - roof lines have a bend, several houses on the river bank look like they've nose-dived into the earth and a footbridge is almost tied in a knot. Regardless, almost all are scheduled for demolition.

Foot bridge over the Avon River in Linwood, a few blocks from Erin and Stephen's old place.

A rememberance of the fishmonger who died when her shop collapsed. We shopped there during our stay in 2009. Both sides of this street corner were devastated, fish shop, bakery, diary and news agent are now just weedy brick-strewn lots.

I ride along one of these broken streets, the road surface covered in fine silt, large holes swallowing orange warning cones and empty windows staring mindlessly at the street. There are no people, no barking dogs, no cars, a few have fading handwritten signs warning off trespassers. Whole blocks of houses, some 6,000 in all, home for 20,000+ people, will be levelled and cleared. Many places will never be built on again.

I watch one of the first of these houses being turned into a pile of iron roofing, a stack of bricks and a large midden of smashed doors, clumps of gypsum and wall paper amid shards of timber that once rang with the sounds of shared meals, family celebrations and lives lived. It is wrenching. The city is collecting people's experiences of the earthquakes, they are available at Kete Christchurch.

Over the past week there have been more earthquakes, Christmas shopping interrupted, more liquifaction covering streets, gardens and filling houses with fine silt. The seismologists assure Canterburians that these are the final settling of the previously unknown fault under Pegasus Bay but... there's nothing quite like being literally shaken out of bed early in the morning with your first thought being "get into an interior wall corner and pray."

Napier - An Earthquake City

2012-01-01T18:32:00.000-08:00

Napier, New Zealand, was heavily damaged by an earthquake in February, 1931. Much of the town was rebuilt in the then popular Art Deco style. Remarkable today is the free internet access for the whole of the downtown area, only one example of the city's business community in making Napier a "go to" place.

The main part of Napier was built on reclaimed lagoons. The earthquake raised the level of the ground significantly and the present city of Napier has taken advantage of this higher ground in its modern expansion.

The coherence and continuity of the 1930s reconstruction of Napier moves the city beyond a collection of individual architectural treasures to be an Art Deco urban landscape. A real, and rare, treat to walk through.

Louis Hay was New Zealand's leading exponent of Chicago School architecture in the thirties. In this building, Hay derived the proportions from the work of Frank Lloyd Wright's, Unity Temple, Oak Park, Chicago (1905-6).

Hildebrands was a German-New Zealand training company. The building includes the attractive decoration highlighting the oceanic connection between the Germany of the Weimar Republic and the New Zealand Dominion.

Sadly Adolf Hitler was elected as head of state in March, 1933 and the old flag on this decoration was consigned to the dustbin in Germany.

For a fun description of Napier's present character see the Doctor's Review.


The city plays up its built heritage with an annual period celebration of its architecture. Each year has its own nostalgic theme inviting New Zealanders to join them for a late summer festival.

In 2007 New Zealand added Napier's Art Deco architectural legacy to its list of tentative nominations as a World Heritage Site.

Scenic Hotel Te Panea is a striking modernist building in Napier. So they are up to date too.

Parihaka - Maori Passive Resistance

2011-12-23T17:35:00.000-08:00

The trace of the sap leading up to the Pukerangiora Pā.

There are distinctly different contact histories between Indigneous and Newcomers in western Canada and New Zealand. The Riel Resistance of the 1880s is a brief counter point to the long drawn out blood lettings of the New Zealand wars. Dave Rogers took me to the site of one of the first encounters, where a group of Maori fighters dug in on an old Pā site to stop the advance of British troops and local militia. “A loss, one of many that followed,” says Dave. He then takes me to the Pukerangiora Pā, where a British force was soundly trounced by the Maori early in the war. A subsequent attack by a new commander, one not completely convinced of the colonial government's policies, ordered a laborious siege. His troops dug a two kilometre long sap, with eight sizeable earth and timber redoubts regularly spaced along it. This kept his troops busy for months and those on both sides relatively safe. Once the sap approached the walls of the Pa, a truce was agreed and the battle ended, this time a Maori defeat. We ended the visit with a brief discussion of a Maori community tourism venture to introduce this history to cruise ship tourists.

The New Plymouth museum exhibit of the Pakeha settlement of Taranaki opens with a cannon and survey instruments, the colonial takeover tools. Further in, we get the domestic and farm stories along with the rugby sweaters. There is no denying the violence that allowed this story to start and flourish. With outstanding claims against the Crown, the Taranaki Maori Iwi still harbor some hard feelings about this history. Dave, although a Maori in a community leadership position, is upbeat and positive about situations that look much more difficult than those I see in the Yukon. Always good to have the chance to look over the fence.

After a sunny drive between Mount Taranaki and the coast I visit Parihaka - an iconic place of Maori resistence and adaptation. The leadership there in the 1860s started a passive resistance campaign and forwent the guns and fighting that carried on around them. Nevertheless the New Zealand colonial government through aggressive road building projects disrupting Maori farms and the erection of the Point Egmont lighthouse closed in on the community. Men, then elders, and finally boys, built fences across the roads and plowed surveyed settlers' lands as a protest. Mass arrests followed and the seized men were removed from the area. The government eventually gathered together some 1600 armed troops and in November, 1881, they invaded the town, brutalizing women and children, trashing gardens and burning down the houses. All of which looked pretty much the same as the Pakeha farms that the soldiers were supposedly defending. It is a tragic story. Now it is being used by Taranaki Maori as a beacon of hope for a better future of peaceful living together, with some justice to be gained.

The centre of Parihaka

I visit Parihaka, a small and quiet rural community and sit on the steps of the now gone guest house looking at the monument. Reflecting upon my own Mennonite pacifism I wonder how it compares to this Maori display of passive resistance. My Grandmother's told me stories of our peoples' suffering during and after the Russian Revolution. Armed groups of anarchists and bandits roamed the Ukranian countryside for two or three years pillaging villages, killing, raping and stealing the horses and food of my ancestors. Some of the communities armed themselves and fought back, briefly, but were soon overrun and ransacked. Most however kept their faith, accepted the visitors, fed them, freely gave them what they had and took the abuse without revenge.

I grew up in a community where I had lots of older aunties, many of the uncles murdered during the revolution. Most of the survivors, my grandparents among them, abandoned their land and left for Canada. My parents went back during Perestroika in early 1990s. Everything was taken over by others, there was no thought of regaining lost places. But that was only 70 years after the events. Perhaps after 130 years it is possible to regain a place, to be a part of the land again. My ancestors left and made new homes on the other side of the world. I've no appetite for reconnecting to that place, though my Grandmother surely would have, if it were possible. I know her home as a young woman almost as a fairy tale, a place once in history and now seemingly gone for ever. I am deeply impressed with the fortitude and determination of the Maori Iwi who have toughed out this hard time, who have kept their heart and land bound together and who are bringing the Pakeha to the table to make things right.

It was great honour to have Dave Rogers share his stories and places with me. While I still have my language and the culture of my faith, my brothers and I have lost all track of the intimacy of spiritual and physical connection to the place where our ancestors are buried. For reminding me that there are people who have not lost this and who are working hard to retain it, I am grateful to Dave.

The rural landscape of the Parihaka lands today.

Te Kōru Pā - Taranaki's complicated history

2011-12-18T19:54:00.000-08:00

Dave Rogers included a visit to his hapu's Owae Marae - Manukorihi Pā at Waitata, Taranaki.

I met Dave Rogers, the Taranaki Area program manager for the New Zealand Department of Conservation (DoC) visitor services/historic sites, for a two day tour of his responsibilities. Dave also contributes personal time to assisting in the governance of his Te Atiawa Iwi. In our conversations Dave was passionate about the value of DoC's work. Especially important for him was the opportunity to have a Maori voice present in both DoC's strategic planning and the guidance of the front line face of parks in meeting community people.

The Marae buildings date back to the early 20th century and remain important elements of Dave's community.

Dave has worked for DoC for more than three decades, starting as labourer, but working his way upwards taking on more responsibility in order to help shape the organization with his Maori perspective. He also took on voluntary work for other iwi,who he is also affiliated with, contributing to the preparation of their claim for redress against the Crown through the Waitangi Tribunal. These parallel duties demanded much from him, and his family, not unlike the sacrifices made by many Yukon First Nation individuals and families engaged in the negotiation of their Umbrella Final Agreement with Canada at the same time. My time with Dave was enriched by his overlapping work histories.

Myself and Dave at the top of Te Kōru Pā overlooking the river which bends around the pā.

The history of Taranaki is difficult. The region was the main area of Maori-Pakeha (white settlers) conflict through the 19^th century. Dave is troubled by the historical amnesia exhibited about these colonial wars by many New Zealanders. He is annoyed by the lack of remembrance of the confiscation of Maori lands in Taranaki and Waikato and especially insensed when these conflicts are referred to as the Maori Wars. “Maori Wars! They're not our wars, they attacked us.” The general ignorance of the fighting and land confiscations in Taranaki and Whanganui, and the consequent destruction of Maori communities in the region through the resulting scattering of their people by political exile to and incarceration in the South Island and as economic refugees following the seizure of their lands have been hard on his community. “We have more of our Iwi in Australia than in Taranaki.” This dispersion also led to their loss of both the Maori language and the knowledge of land skills. Dave makes an explicit connection between language retention and the continuing practice of the traditional arts of weaving and carving.

Te Kōru Pā is unique in the extraordinary stone work building up the natural character of the site. Vegetation threatens to gradually pull it apart and DoC staff work strategically to control the damage.

Our first visit was to the Te Kōru Pā where a DoC work crew was cutting back vegetation, ensuring the site was accessible and visible for visitors. Dave finds the site a challenge. In spite of the interesting history and character of the site, it has few visitors. He has been working with the Taranaki Iwi connected to the Pā but they have been careful, a little wary, of engaging with DoC. Dave understands this may be connected to the preparation of their submission of claims against the Crown through the Waitangi Tribunal. The pā was a fascinating place. It spirals up a steep hill with different levels devoted to gardens, a fortified entry and supporting bastions, the Marae - the social and sacred centre of the community, food storage caves and access to the river. Dave walks me through the site describing each area's function through the history of the site from the mid-14^th century to its abandonment after being stormed by elements of the Te Atiawa Iwi in the early 1800s. Dave has questions about what to show visitors, how to preserve the important features from vegetation growth and possible increased visitor use. He encourages, and waits, for a time when the Taranaki Iwi is interested in taking the lead on answering these questions, perhaps even owning the site.

Mahsi cho for the great visit Dave.

In the evening I return to the coast to revisit the site of a Pakeha (white settler) redoubt built in 1880 to guard their coast road and the iron lighthouse, both constructed as symbols of their expanding control over Maori lands. It is an unhappy history beautifully detailed in Rebecca Buchanan's recent book, The Parihaka Album: Lest We Forget

Mount Taranaki overlooks the cast iron light house at Cape Egmont.

Kiwi Rhetoric

2011-12-06T19:32:00.000-08:00

Railway crossing on the highway to Taranaki

Public signs and personal conversations in New Zealand are peppered with colloquilisms, adding colour, sharpening definition and confusing visitors. One of the most common is the use of the word “as” to denote a decapitated superlative. “It's hot as.” Fill in the declarative of your choice, another evocation of the modesty and accommodation of the Kiwi for their neighbour. Many phrases also reflect the gently self-deprecating nature of the New Zealander. This was especially apparent two years ago when I watched the sub-tropical Auckland-based television sportscasters enthusiastically reporting on the Vancouver Olympics. They gleefully described and reported on winter sports that neither they nor the vast majority of their viewers had ever heard of, never mind seen. Colourfully decked out in Olympic toques and the red mitts they randomly applied their familiar cricket and field hockey terminology to different events, always humoursly acknowledging that they didn't really have a clue what was going on. The important point was that New Zealand was there.

In the same line I was browsing through a real estate brochure for Plimmerton, an ocean front bedroom community of the capital, Wellington. Amongst the pages of small photos and descriptions the agency highlighted some of the premuim properties with half page ads. One hilltop estate overlooking the beaches was described “As rare as rocking horse droppings.” I interpreted this to mean “wooden shit as” and straight 'way reached for the phone.

And not all of this is in English. At one of the history conference sessions I attended earlier in November, one young Maori academic spoke of the social and cultural difficulties of researching and writing a thesis based upon her own community. The research had gone well enough but the defence and presentation of the final paper had put her in the position of being an authority, an awkward situation as she represented her work to the Elders who had guided and sustained the work. She rattled off a Maori phrase, translated as “Kumera (a kind of potatoe) doesn't speak of its own sweetness”, recognizing the importance of community relationships over the personal thus reframing her work as contribution rather than achievement.

Finally, the railway crossing sign had me trying to remember the biblical story of Jonah and the whale. Was he driving the whale? Was he in the whale king with 15,000 followers? I was stumped, not actually certain that the sign had anything to do with trains at all. Maybe it was an Old Testament “Jesus saves?” Later I asked Stacey, my knowledgeable New Zealand friend, for details. He reported that Jonah Lomu, a left winger with the All Blacks, 115 kg and 6' tall, was the archetype of rugby players. Playing in the 1995 test match with England Jonah was running for a try. Mike Catt, a defending English player attempting a tackle, was simply swallowed by Jonah's stride and size and bulldozed out of the way. So the sign was a wet dream for Kiwi rugby coaches.

Now I'm sorted as.

The Rangitaiki River and Ruatahuna

2011-12-02T00:27:00.000-08:00

Bus travel is inexpensive, reasonably comfortable and relaxing, if you don't try to go far in a day. However from Whakatane eastwards, bus service loses these advantages. A car offers flexibility in route choice, some responsibility (alas, nothing is free) and I pick the forestry roads up the Rangitiaki River valley. The bottom of the valley is now made into rich pasture and new crops divided by the river with hill ranges not far away in either side. However, the valley bottom climbs steeply, the ridges close in and many slopes are rough scarred with timber cutting, others show the precise lines of commercial reforestation, while still others are now recovered with thick pines ready to be harvested. These hills stand in stark contrast to those few still covered with the diverse and uneven native vegetation. Above the local school at Te Mahoe the course blasted rock surface of the large earth filled dam fill the sky and hold back the river. Immediately adjacent a rock quarry reverbrates to blasting and loading of stone trucks. The diversity of the natural is matched by the varieties of economic exploitation in only a short distance.

A big rock fill dam. A sign on the other bank notes the past presence of a Maori cemetary.

Half way up the river my planned route is closed off by regulations and a piece of missing road, washed out by the recent spring storms. I stop at the Dept. of Conservation (parks) visitor centre where staff turn me south east towards Te Urewera National Park and the Oputau Marae home of Richard and Meriann White in Ruatahuna.

I meet Roger, Richard's brother sitting on the back deck, “Merianns working at the school and Richards gone off to drop some hunters in the park. Do you want some tea?” We sit and chat about why I'm there, interested in hearing more about Maori and land ownership, and Roger's sheep shearing days, “I could shear a sheep in 45 seconds, mind, some were much faster than that. Australian sheep, they take longer, they're different shapes.” Richard returns home and talk turns to the national park, resource management, community initiatives and the family's cultural tourism venture.

Ruotahuna in morning mist

The Maori Iwi living in the region of the park wish to have ownership of the land returned to them. There are a range of opinions amongst the people about what this might look like, a few radicals wish to close off the land to outsiders altogther but most are perfectly happy to share the park area with all New Zealanders. Te Urewera has attacted visitors to its wild lands, the shores of Lake Waikaremoana especially popular, since the 1920s with both tourists and the regional hydro electric development promotions board which successfully convinced the government to harness its potential roughly a century ago.

The lake was formed about 2200 years ago and Maori villages were scattered along the shores. Colonial authorities removed the people from the lake during the New Zealand wars of the mid 19^th century. Neverthelessthe area retains its reputation for stubborn resistance to outside authority. Richard tells me, “We were the last to be reached. Other Maori say, Oh, you don't want to go in there.”

The area has been a tourism centre for most of the past century. The national park, a Great Walk, and the associated boat service on Lake Waikaremoana, have brought people to the area. There area number of recent tourism ventures, providing transport, guided hiking and hunting, accommodation and trail biking. Some, like Richard and Meriann's Ahurei Adventures, are local Maori owned, while others are run by non-local Pakeha, a source of some local annoyance. Ahurei has struggled to develop its tourism market niche in one of the most difficult to access communities in New Zealand. The road to Ruatahuna is so spectaculary steep, narrow and winding that I found myself looking out the side window of my car more often than the front windshield in my efforts to stay on the road.

A local tourism venture faces challenges. In the nearby tourism centre of Rotorua, aka RotorVegas, there are quite a few Maori cultural offerings. Although sometimes dismissed as “plastic Maori”, most appear to deliver an authentic product. Two tourism offerings by local Maori families out of Rotorua to Whirinaki Forest Park, an original native forest reserve, do day trips and some limited overnights. Richard and Merrian offer hunting and back country hiking. But the place is isolated and people ether want it cheap or complain about the level of service. The conundrum of remote place tourism.

Ruatahuna is at the far edge of the district council's responsibility. The community felt they were not being well served and have independently worked to obtain services. They are especially proud of the locally developed, built and maintained drinking water system. Roger had pointed it out to me when I arrived and Richard has a schematic of the system tacked on the wall of his lounge.

I am invited to stay for dinner. We're making boil pot, “My favorite” pips up the grandaughter...” This is bones with meat on, watercress gathered from the river with flour dumplings and boiled potatoes on the side. Although the ingredients vary, it comes together much the same way we make borscht. With a salad of eggs, local avocado, cucumber and sprouts we join Rachel in her favorite.

I stay in the modest breeeze block motel alongside the general store in the village. There is a swimming pool, long abandoned as a frivoulous luxury, and a classic kiwi bbq in the back. Overnight the strong wind blows weather into the valley. Through the morning mist I watch the Iwi bus pass by with the children going to school.

Bulletin board at the Ruatahuna store.

Walking Ohope Beach

2011-11-26T16:03:00.000-08:00

Ohope Beach stretchs east for about 10 km beyond Te Rangi Point, before folding back on itself to reveal one of the largest harbour bays in New Zealand. I ride the Beach Hopper bus from Whakatane to the end of the line, the last houses on Ohope peninsula, and walk through the long grasses, native trees and wild flowers of a Maori holding to the bay shore. Mid-morning - the sun is hot and in the lee of the peninsula, the water is calm, there is no wind. The beach, with the tide just returning, is a wide, empty space of fine hard sand.

James casts into deep waters, next cast is into the police force.

Around the first bend I meet James. A recent undergraduate from Otago University, James stands by his bucket and two long fishing poles, the lures expertly cast far out into the channel before us. He claims it is an excellent spot for fishing, regaling me with stories of long days and beach fires for an evening fry-up. Once he caught a big skate, “Ehh, now what! The barbed tail was whipping 'round, piece of wood on the tail and another to flip him back in the water.” James is on a break to “get fit.” He wants to make some money and his cousin told him if he could pass the recruitment tests for the national police, he would make $30,000 just for attending the 13 week training course, and if that went well he'd start at $65,000. His future looks sweet, especially through the lens of another couple of weeks on the beach fishing and getting fit.

I head back into the dunes, a native bird preserve. The vegetation is thick. There is a high profile campaign to protect vegetation to ensure the stability of the dunes and permanence of the splendid beach. I stir up some pheasants but it is otherwise still while I patrol through the shrubs. Gradually the sound of waves floats over the dunes and I return to the beach.

The bay channel reaches the ocean, wind, sand and spray.

The bay channel ends and the roll of the Pacific Ocean against the shores of this small island reminds me how far I am away from home. The wind is powerful and runs straight down the beach into my face. There is a constantly shifting flow of sand blowing past my ankles. To the west I see Motuhora which marks the beach at Whakatane. But there is not much to see beyond the details immediately before me; broken shells, beautifully wind-polished bits of wood and one set of bare foot prints proceeding me. I take off my shoes and head for the water. The shallow water is warm, it swirls cross the rippled sand, blown by the wind and crazing my view of the sand and shells just covered by its sheen. It is very relaxing and I move slowly through this liquid vision.

66 mediates the batt;le between Mother Nature and local access.

Eventually the beach front sprouts houses and I wander up the dunes to see the neighbourhood. I approach a bare chested, white-haired man weilding a hammer. We acknowledge each other and he asks, “How old are you? I'm 66 and still out here working in the sun and wind.” And he was hard at it, replacing posts and boards marking out one of the infrequent paths through the protected dunes to the beach. He tells me its important to help out Mother Nature and make sure we don't lose the dunes, but he he says its always a balance, you also have to please the people who want ready access to the beach. “Too far either way and its ugly.” Barely are the words out of his mouth when a spry, elderly woman approaches us.

W: “So what are you working at here?”

66: “Oh, I'm replacing the posts, wire and board on the walkway.”

W: “Doing this on your own are you?”

66: “No, no. Working for the district council. District council owns the walkway. Where do you live then?”

W: “#26 over there” nodding down the street.

66: “So do you know Jim Mason then?”

W: “He lives right in behind.”

66: “Ahh, he's my mate.”

W: “Well, it's not like I've had drinks with him, you know.”

66: “Yeahh, he's my good mate.”

W: “Well, I'm off then.”

66 turns and grins at me.

The modernist curved architecture of the 1920s and 30s is a prominent part of the North Island's housing stock.

Hiking the Kapu Te Rangi Trail, New Zealand

2011-11-24T00:49:00.000-08:00

Kapu Te Rangi Ridge and Whakatane.

Whakatane (pronounced fuck a tonie, like tonic) has a dramatic sea front location behind a long timber-strewn sand beach with the river running between town and the dunes out of a lush interior of farms and paddocks. The Whakatane land and sea scape, dotted with arrested volcanic eruptions, reflects the igneous origins of this land and the fiery conflicts between peoples that still simmer today.

The trail is currently being upgraded by a class from the local Trident High School. Their accompanying signs, modelled on a NZ beer brand's popular adverts, adds a bit of humour to the trail.

No dogs allowed, this is a kiwi reserve. No exceptions for dogs with certified kiwi aversion training. There are even contests for canine kiwi aversion. Not sure how they work, how far away does your dog run when it sees a kiwi? Besides, poison and killing traps for stoats are also scattered through the reserve. I later learn that a bite of bait kills an animal within 4 metres.

There is a hiking trail that follows the great rocky ridge that separates Whakatane from the Ohope beach to the east. A steep climb to the top of the ridge back of town, the refuge place in case of a tsunami, and then one heads to the higher ground of the ridge's central spine where I visit the first of the three pa (fort/settlement) that dominated this regional landscape for almost a thousand years. The first humans to the islands of Aotearoa were Maori, the name applied by newcomers to all indigenous peoples, who arrived in their waka (canoe) in 1100 according to the logo of the Whakatane District Council. The waka are one of the key identifiers of the diverse groups represented by the present day term Maori, each iwi (tribe) being a descendent from one of the waka that settled the islands over a period of some 400 years. Waka papa means geneaology or lineage. At the conference I attended last week most presenters, Maori and Pakeha (newcomer) alike, opened their papers with a brief waka papa in Maori. I did the same, but in English, when I gave a lecture on the Yukon treaty to the grad students at Te Whare Wānangao Awanuiārangi (indigenous university) yesterday. Nobody will bother to listen to you if you don't know who you are or where you come from.

The Whakatane River enters the Pacific Ocean from behind the beach.

For almost a century there was armed conflicted either amongst Maori or between Maori and Pakeha. This history of killing, rape, relocation, and exile still lingers in Maori memory. There was time when children were named after the suffering of their parents and grandparents, the mark of these hard times built into the waka never to be forgotten. In Whakatane today however there are signs of coming together. A set of display panels, in both English and Maori, around town speak to the long presence of the Maori and their distinct relationships with the landscape that Pakeha have moved into. The benches in parks and along the river walk are shaped like the waka that brought the first humans to this place.

Capt. Cook, killed by Maori, and Te Tahi O Te Rangi from the first waka in 1100, ride their inter-sectioned canoes at The Bean coffee shop in downtown Whakatane.

Trans-national Auckland

2011-11-19T16:39:00.000-08:00

The Ferry Building, Auckland

Meeting people speaks to the trans-national character of Auckland, the Pakeha - Polynesian metropolis of the south Pacific. On the way into town I share a shuttle with Jonathan, a wine merchant who represents New Zealand with the country's finely fermented grapes. Jonathan lives in a small city in the South Island's wine district but he travels widely in the Pacific world marketing New Zealand wines. Alberta, Canada is just beyond the bounds of his success in the western world, while Singapore and China in the east are his main markets. The Chinese have become keen wine buyers, though Jonathan noted their preference for wine's investment value. “They'll buy a complete shipment of really expensive stuff and sell on half of it to pay for the lot.” His work gives him insights into the world of the 1%.

On the Half Moon Ferry into downtown I meet Llangand, a young commerce student going to Auckland University, “its one of the world's top 50”, to write the last exam for his degree. He's lived in Auckland for the three years of his studies and complains that its “a boring town, there's nothing for young people to do, no festivals, no nothing.” When I ask Llangand where's he's from, he pauses. He finally says he grew up in South Africa but notes that means nothing. He then goes on to speak of his identity as a Portugeuse/Sri Lankan. His mother raised him in Singhalese and, in addition to English, he is fluent in Portuguese. But none of this seems to matter, he has relatives in the United States, in New Jersey. “That's the best country in the world. I will to go there.” As we leave the boat he attempts to slip by without paying his fare, but he falters at the exit and joins the line-up. Even global citizens have to pay the piper. I wonder if he will be banker.

On my return trip I chat with Ruby, a ruddy cheeked woman who grew up on the shores of a then rural Half Moon Bay in the early 1950s. As we pass down the developed shoreline of the estuary she provides an affectionate reminiscence of her youthful adventures, “it was all farms and wild lands then.” She points out the site of her house on top of a ridge now covered with bayview mini-mansions spreading like an invasive species. “And over there (pointing to the quays of the yacht club), we played on the beach, and that little knob, right there, that's Pigeon Mountain. It was completely bush in those days. I climbed it with my brothers once.” And we continued so until the ferry docked and Ruby went off to take photos of the old spots for her mother in Nelson.

My hosts in Farm Cove are relatively recent immigrants from northern England. Charlie and Candy arrived in Christchurch in the 1980s, an eager young couple. Charlie was the last of his family to abandon Britain for this new world, parents and siblings already well settled by the time he and his wife arrived. But when they came they worked hard at fitting in. Both attended Maori lessons for several years, gaining language skills, but more importantly developing a sense of the different cultures of New Zealand and the challenges of living in a place with multiple myths of origin and purpose. Their sensitivity to this has led them along living paths that weave between Maori and Pakeha ways of being.

Waiting for my last ferry trip, I stop at the shipping container coffee shop to get my latte. Waiting by the window are four Maori women; mother, grown daughter, auntie and friend. They've just ordered 14 expresso coffees and chocolate milk and are giggling with anxiety, hoping the drinks will be ready before the Waiheke Island ferry leaves. They have three cars packed with kids and Elders at the landing, everyone wants a treat before heading over to the island for a funeral. They're worried too that their order will cause me to miss the ferry. Did I have a ferry reservation? Was I coming to the funeral? I am swept into their world and as the expressos come through the window we all run to the dock in turn, each returning to our own world of myth and meaning. I smile with the pleasure of having touched, and been touched by, this other world.

Some worlds are large,

and some worlds are small.

Freeze Up

2011-11-12T13:56:00.000-08:00

The Takhini River confluence with the Yukon River, early November sunrise.

The first signs of Yukon winter show in late August. The tops of the mountains across the valley whiten with what we call "termination dust." Coincident with the dropping of the last blossoms from the top of the fireweed stalks, this first high altitude snow, and its gradual descent down the sides of the mountains through September, signals the coming end of camping trips and marks the time to start some serious thinking about the wood pile. Other signs appear in the woods around the house. The leaves drop from the bushes and we find the squirrels have placed the dried caps of this summer's plentiful mushroom crop in the branches. We also find them elsewhere. When I took my truck in for winterizing, the mechanic forecast "pissed off squirrels at your house." When checking the air filter he found that the connected air channels were packed with dried mushrooms, "a whole box full." The air filter was fine.

We used to have picnics on these beaches in the spring before the water rises.

As precipitation turns from rain into snow through the fall the rivers start to dry up. Water flows on the Yukon River drop to less than a fifth of their summer highs. On the Takhini River behind the house we watch the thin strand of fine summer sand expand into huge beaches, now rimed with ice.

A major fall activity around here is hunting. And with hunting there is always the question of what you do with your moose guts. One woman wrote a letter to the newspaper complaining that hunters were just dumping them in the woods that surround most of Whitehorse's subdivisions. She railed against this practice describing how her dogs had come across them and returned home covered in offal and suffering digestive issues (making them unpopular in the house). Within a few days a hunter had replied railing against dog owners who let their dogs run free to cause trouble. This is how Cabin Fever starts in the Yukon.

Ice pans floating down the Takhini behind our place.

This week the river has been throwing ice. There are wide shelves of clear and suprisingly thick ice reaching out from both banks. But the river current still runs shallow and fast in the centre carrying with it large circular pans of ice. Ocassionally they jam on the shore ice and gradually build it up.

The nights are long now. Early one morning I noticed the window glowing green and went outside to see the first of this winter's Northern Lights.

Amost frozen.

Trio Bembe rocks the house

2011-11-10T14:41:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago, the Western Canada Music Industry conference was held in Whitehorse. While focused on discussions of marketing, recording and venue management, you can't have a music industry conference without music. Some 50 different bands and musicians came up to the Yukon to show their stuff. Every club, bar, public space in town had scheduled performances through most of the days and all of the evening of the conference. If you weren't at a PVL (industry talk for "performance venue location" or club, bar and public space, see I talked to these people) within a few minutes of 7 pm, you weren't getting in at all.

Rodrigo Munuz

Scott Senior

Amber Epp, of Winnipeg, got in touch with us and we offered to billet her Trio Bembe during their stay in the North. She, Rody Munoz and Scott Senior, all also members of the larger Papa Mambo, deliver Latin music with power, enthusiasm and a catholic sense of what Latin includes. They're looking at working up a Romanian folk tune to add to the repertoire. During the day they took in workshops and meetings and through the evenings they wowed Whitehorse audiences with their energetic performances. But in the morning through relaxed breakfasts they turned the house into a PVL, singing, strumming and using the pots and pans as the percussion section.

Amber Epp

The highlight of the conference was the Sunday night awards ceremony. Joy and I attended and sat through the opening jokes and reminiscences of the industry seniors, and then, YAHOOO, Trio Bembe took the award for best World Music for their album Oh my soul. A great finale for an exciting weekend of terrific music. Next time we're in Winnipeg we'll be looking for Trio Membe and Papa Mambo.

Walking the Southwest Coast - Mines and Computers

2011-11-05T21:48:00.000-07:00

Sennon Beach - one of the surfing destinations, cold water through.

The following days were sunny and we walked through one of the most intensively developed mining districts of Britain. From Roman times there have been tin mines in Cornwall. The invention of steam-powered engines allowed deeper mines and greater production. By the early 19th century the country side was littered with stone boiler houses, smelting furnaces, pit heads and the crowded hovels of the tens of thousands of miners, and their families, who lived life under permanently coal-darkened skies. Now, the mines are long closed, some are museums, the rest romantic ruins sheltered in World Heritage Sites and paddocks. The population of Cornwall is a small fraction of its mining hay day. However computer and business management firms remove here from London offering their employees lifestyle and affordable housing.

Little is left to chance on the trail. Signs warn of all sorts of dangers. My favorites were the 200 kg chunks of polished granite lying beside the trail near Lands End. Precisely chiseled into each block was a single word, highlighted with red paint, CLIFF. Beach front houses, too polite to say no trespassing,instead mounted well illustrated placards warning of "Poison Snakes."

But most locals are friendly. When Chris bought a shirt in Penzance the young clerk advised us to drop down into a small secluded beach some distance beyond Land's End. He explained that it was the site of his successful courtship of his now wife. Nanjizil Beach was indeed stunning and if the marriage is as spectacular as the cove it will be both passionate and prolific.

Nanjizil Beach

The Minic Theatre at Port Curno is a fine example of the eccentric possibilities of the English. It is an 800 seat theatre carved out of the sea cliffs providing open air drama through a 17 week summer season. And it is always packed. The result of the ceaseless labour of Rowena Cade who first arranged a gorse strewn cliff gully into a stage for "The Tempest" in 1932. Now managed by a charitable trust the theatre offers a dramatic venue for performances. Audience arrives early jostling for the open seating. Each group packs in wine and glasses, smoked salmon, fresh bread and cheese and fruit for a fine supper in the evening dusk waiting for the sun to go down and the curtain to come up.


"The Pirates of Penzance" played the night we were in Port Curno.Performed by the same Cambridge University theatre group we watched during our time in Cambridge five years ago.

The Celtic remains of a long ago Cornwall still adorn many fields. Standing stones and tumuli are widely dispersed. On our way from the Minic Theatre we stop at the "Merry Maidens" a circle of upright stones in the middle of a pasture. Our grandfatherly taxi driver tells us the dour church parsons of the past remonstrated that the foolish girls must have been dancing on the Sabbath and were turned to stone by the devil. A curious devil doing the Lord's anger. I suspect it was shepherds putting up dancing decoys hoping to lure maidens to their lonely stations.

Walking the Southwest Coast Trail - Art and Mermaids

2011-10-15T16:50:00.000-07:00

St. Michael's Mount near Penzance. Despite seeing it on the horizon for three days we never made it there.

Our holiday this year was a walk with friends along the rugged Cornish coast at the southwestern corner of Britain. Six year ago I'd done a volunteer week with the National Trust in Cornwall and I looked forward to another piece of this dramatic landscape. Our hike started in St. Ives, an important artist colony from the early 20th century, a retreat from the big cities and the world wars. Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse (1927) drew from her youthful memories of summers in St. Ives. Unfortunately my attempt to read the book bogged down in the mental maelstroms that seemed to keep everyone too busy to actually live a life. Regardless there were also visual artists and their legacy is carried on by the Tate St. Ives, a wonderful gallery overlooking the beach. In the gallery I was taken by the constructivist models of Naum Gabo who lived in St. Ives during World War II. Gabo attempted to model conceptions of space and time, creating complex models of shaped nylon thread and molded plexi and bronze sheets. All stunning stuff.

http://82.114.195.35:90/ProjektModerniUmeni/1.pol.20.stol/Abstraktn%C3%AD%20um%C4%9Bn%C3%AD%20-%20obr%C3%A1zky/

After tea at the gallery we pull on our packs and start off on the first 12 km leg of our trip. The weather was grey and the hillsides shrouded with mist, drizzle and occasionally rain. But there was no wind and the fog isolated us into our little patch of the coast giving us a landscape intimacy which the sunny days to follow didn't offer. It was a demanding hike with several steep hills. While much of the trail was well maintained there were several boulder scrambles and in a few places wet muddy stretches sloping off cliffs called for some careful route selection.

Joy and Ann leave St. Ives behind. The Tate Gallery is on the left.

Chris ponders the trail and wishes there was another warm Cornish pastie to eat.

A nice stone bridge over a rapidly filling creek. Getting a little damp but staying warm.

Happy campers still, I didn't take any more photos until we were in a dry place though.

It was a great pleasure when we turned off the trail for the last 500 metres to The Tinner's Arms in Zennor. Thoroughly wet and hungry we fell into the pub and settled around the open fire to begin drying out. We met a trail friend who joined us for dinner and a rousing dice game with pints of the local Zennor Mermaid at hand. After a lovely evening of being toasted by the fire the bar keep phoned his mother-in-law where we spend the night. After a short trudge up the hill we're welcomed into luxuriously warm beds and a good night's sleep.

Chris and Joy still wet but things are looking better.

I've already finished one Mermaid and have a steak pie ready to go.

Ann has the fancy meal. Everything is local produce.

Placer Gold mining and Ancient Animals

2011-09-14T13:25:00.000-07:00

Stuart's son hydraulics the side of the creek, thawing and washing away the barren (no gold present) muck and exposing other buried treasure.

Late this summer I joined Joy and her boss, Elaine, the Yukon Minister for Tourism and Culture on a visit to Stuart Schmidt's placer gold mine on Quartz Creek in the Klondike gold fields. The Schmidt family has been mining gold for several generations and Stuart has come into my history class at the College to talk about his family's life as gold miners. Today however we are not looking for gold but for bones.

Grant (centre) with his graduate students, Tyler Kuhn and Elizabeth, and Joy pull on their rubber boots.

Grant Zazula is the Yukon Palaeontologist. He is responsible for the study of extinct and fossilized animals and plants in the territory. And the Yukon is rich in these remains since Beringia (check out http://www.beringia.com/ for the Whitehorse interpretive centre), the northern and central portions of the Yukon, was not recently glaciated. That is, the bones are still lying around, they haven't been scraped into dust under mile deep sheets of moving ice. They are however buried in the frozen soils and it is no easy matter to find them. Palaeontology research often does excavations, but they are expensive and offer limited access to the scatter of ancient bones.

Stuart and Elaine (L) head up the creek with Grant to look for bones.

Happily in the Yukon we have an industry that does massive excavation of soils and very carefully sifts through it looking for gold. And they also find the fossil bones and other traces of the Yukon landscape of ten thousand years and more ago. For decades there has been a beneficial partnership between government and museum palaeontologists and placer miners in the Klondike. A recent on-line publication tells the full story.

Elizabeth show me how easy it is to find the bones. This one comes from a bison or maybe it was a camel. Eventually I trip over a bone and also "find" it.

As we walk up the creek we are literally stumbling over the remains of a remarkable array of animals that used to live in the Yukon. Mammoth teeth, bison skulls with their horns, shin bones from camels and even parts of the little horses that used to run amongst the herds of other animals.

The cut banks of the creek are deep. It takes a lot of work to drop back 10,000 years for the bones and just a bit longer to reach bed rock marking the hundreds of thousands of years when the gold was eroded to its present location.

Stuart picks up the pieces he finds while he's working and sets them aside for the visits by Tyler and Elizabeth.

Tyler and Elizabeth have been hired for the summer mining season to visit co-operating placer miners and collect the bones for further research. Grant is certain that having friendly, young professionals working with the miners is the best way to grow the collections of these important items and expand our knowledge of the Beringian past. And he's happy to have a chance to showcase this to the Minister, who also comes from a placer mining family. Elaine is on familiar ground and is impressed with the team's work.

Perhaps the most interesting find is a 10,000 year old squirrel nest. Grant is especially please to find that the remains of the squirrel (must've been an especially cold winter that year) and the cache of seeds collected for food are still surrounding the nest. It seems remarkable to have them survive in the permafrost and then be washed out and presented for our visit.

Once we reach the upper end of the work on the creek we've amassed quite a collection of bones. Stuart and his son get back to their work of preparing the creek for mining operations and we pick up heavy bags full of fossilized bones and other treasures. Many palaeontology digs are happy to find a dozen bones in a season's work. In four hours of poking around we've collected over a hundred kilos of research material. Now we have to lug the bags and pails on the long hike back to the truck. Certainly the collaboration between palaeontology studies and placer mining is worthwhile and productive.

Sampling Grass - Environmental History on the Chilkoot #2

2011-08-30T00:11:00.000-07:00

Looking north from the pass in the morning we followed our trail along Crater Lake and saw, just below the sharp peak, thick clouds swirling through the Notch. We were glad that part of the trip was behind us. However, we had little time for dreaming and set to work. Christine, a long time patrol warden, was our guide and she sent us to places where we might find interesting grasses. We started in the remains of a small cabin, possibly the Northwest Mounted Police post established in the pass during the gold rush. Raf, our ecologist, eagerly and carefully entered the remains and began sampling the vegetation.

Grass is notorious difficult to accurately identify and it is important to catch it during its seed phase. Unfortunately, even in mid-August, it is still spring at the summit and while everything is flourishing the seeds have not yet formed on the grass. Nevertheless we find samples of the same grass later in the week at lower elevations where summer is advanced and they are seeding. It is one of the wonders of the trail that walking is not only about distance, you also move through the seasons as you cross the pass.

Although it is early for grass, much of the snow is gone and we can see some of the well preserved old tins from the gold rush.

At the end of each day Raf enters his samples into the plant press and carefully notes location, type and additional notes on the grasses. At the Chilkoot Pass we enjoy the comfort of the Warden shelter, but in other locations more rustic adaptions to field conditions are necessary. Even in more trying circumstances Raf retains his smile and good humour.

In addition to her duties as historian Karen also took on then logistic responsibilities, preparing our grocery list, making sure it was purchased and sent by helicopter to the Pass earlier in the summer. And at the summit she also takes on the mantle of chef. I like washing dishes on the trail myself, sometimes its the only chance to wash your hands in warm water.

Yumm!. Sausage stew with dumplings.

After two days at the Pass we begin moving down the trail to sample other sites. Near Crater Lake we visit the site of a transfer station where there was a blacksmith shop and what seems to be stables and accommodation for teamsters. Interestingly while the grasses appear to be local species, and not imported volunteer hay as I supposed, they are largely confined to sites that were disturbed during the gold rush. The association between vegetation and cultural activity seems strong and we are pleased to begin thinking about how this might work.

Christine and Rick, Karen's Dad and ecological scientist volunteer, probably talking about grass.

The Crater Lake transfer point site. The Chilkoot Pass visible as the dip in the horizon above.

Rick and Raf doing a grass count.

At Happy Camp we awake in fog again but the wild flowers continue to draw us back to the pleasures of our field work. We head north through the canyon where our party splits. Christine and Raf ford the river to visit the Long Lake encampment while Rick, Karen and I hike over the Long Lake ridge to do a preliminary survey of horse sites near Deep Lake. As the morning advances the clouds breakup and we have warm sunshine for the first time on the trip.

Leaving the clouds and damp cold of the Pass behind.

Raf, at first hesitant, expresses his happiness as he makes it across the river ford without getting his boots wet thanks to Christine's magic plastic bags and plenty of duct tape.

The trail north. Another day and we'll be in Lindeman. There is a shower at Lindeman.

Hiking the Notch - Environmental History on the Chilkoot Trail #1

2011-08-25T22:10:00.000-07:00

I've organized a research team to test a possible environmental history project on the Chilkoot Trail. We are interested to looking at how grasses might have responded to the shock of the gold rush stampede of a century ago. Can vegetation patterns tell us something different than the artifact scatter along the trail. Two members of the team are hiking the trail from Dyea and the ecologist and I will meet them at the Chilkoot Pass summit. We will take the shortcut through “the notch” from the highway in the next valley.

I'd done the notch about ten years earlier and vaguely remembered a sunny passage. This trip was different with low clouds and strong south winds blowing in mist, rain and snow. We started in the sheltered by spruce with both sides of the track thick with ripening blueberries. Clearly the berries are being enjoyed as we walk around the regular and closely distributed blue-tinted signs of bear digestion. Happily our morning passage includes only these, the bears must be off sleeping in the bushes.

At Fraser Lake, we stop to admire the rich patches of high alpine flowers – white grass of parnassus, deep blue gentian and monkshood, red dwarf fireweed, purple saxifrage and yellow arnica and higher up white stika burnet with its catkin like blossoms. Along the rushing water courses we cross as we traverse the steep slopes around the lake we also encounter the delicate purple blossoms of moss campion.

As we clamber over the loose rock scree we are surprised to see a tent on the far shore. On approach, heralded by the loud whistles of unseen marmots further up the mountain side, we meet some friends from Whitehorse. They are relaxing under a small tarp sheltering from the rain which has now started and will accompany us most of the way to the top of the notch. After a short visit we continue along the low wet meadow where we cross and recross the braided creek's meanderings. Our boots gradually fill with water. By the time we clear the meadow onto the higher stoney ground the rain has bulked up the stream and we can longer cross. We follow the windings which takes us below the hanging glacier chilling the valley. By now we've climbed a steep 300 metres in seven kilometres. As we round the last corner we see the saddle just ahead and still another 150 metres above us.

The author glissades Photo: R. Otfinowski

At the saddle there is snow driven by a 40 km/hr wind blasting us and stripping away our body heat. We scramble across the ice and weather shattered rock core of the mountain seeking the shelter of the lee slope. Through thick fog ahead, we catch glimpses of Crater Lake and the trail far below. We must drop almost 400 metres in less than a kilometre to reach the trail south to the pass. We do not linger but strike for the long finger of snow just below us. A quick glissade takes us 200 metres downhill, it is the fastest we've moved all day. At the end of the snow we laugh with exhilaration and stagger onto the rocks with jelly legs. From here though its loose rocks and sharp edges to the bottom. Finally at the bottom we hike the last hour up to the Summit cabin where we meet our colleagues and begin the process of drying out, warming up and enjoying a hot supper.

Chilkoot Pass patrol cabin

The Art of a River Journey - Nicole Bauberger Paints

2011-08-20T11:30:00.000-07:00

Early morning fog below Selwyn River confluence (2010) Nicole Bauberger

A satisfactory setup

Over the past fifteen years I've become increasingly interested in peoples' understanding of the Yukon River and how they express their connections to it. My own experiences of family canoe trip holidays and work trips researching old wood yards and the riparian ecology have resulted in many personal memories and a large number of photos. I've also worked with First Nation communities learning a bit about their oral tradition and the stories of the Traveler, the creator figure who paddled down the Yukon making the world sensible. And I've enjoyed the art of Yukon painters who've thought about the river. There doesn't seem to be that much river art done from the river so I was very pleased when Nicole Bauberger accepted my invitation for a five day painting trip on the upper Yukon River.

The intimacy of creation - Working up the last painting - Carmacks Bridge

Nicole has been working on an extensive highways series, painting a view every 50 km. The series emphasizes journeys - a starting point, the passage and a destination. To learn more see Nicole's website. On our trip we laugh with Wolfgang Schivelbusch's The Railway Journey where a 19th century French commentator describes Parisians posting themselves to the south of France for a holiday, the speed and isolation of the railway car erasing the journey from their experience. For our river trip we look to consider the journey and its travails and pleasures.

Often we think of a painting as a view of place. As a historian I am always interested in the context and action of the creative process. I am less interested in the mechanics of the creation - I find the actual writing of history a mundane, almost bureaucratic chore compared to research and thinking ideas - but fascinated by the context of the creation. What inspires the artist and what are they looking at. Consequently my photos from the trip largely ignore the painting process, except to note it as a private affair between artist, brush and board. I did take a couple of photos to highlight this sensual intimacy of creation. What I have a lot of photos of though are the artist in a geographical setting. What was Nicole looking at, what was happening around her? It is the context of creation, the forces of place that act upon the artist, that fascinate me. With that I can more deeply appreciate the art itself.

Left click to enlarge - Painting Carmacks

We left from Deep Creek on Lake Laberge in early morning ensuring an easy crossing. At Lower Laberge Nicole began her first painting. By the time we reached Carmacks at week's end she'd completed a series of ten paintings.

The paintings always looked downstream, into the future of our journey. The past was always present around us however. Last summer's forest fire half way through our trip was a stark reminder of the destructive creation that takes place in the boreal forest. There were no sounds or signs of animals or insects. Even so fresh growth was coming up everywhere.

Painting at Hootalinqua

Nicole painted, I read and made notes for a book chapter. Because of the showery weather I also got to play tarp meister and fabricated a number of fantastic rope and anchor architectural pieces.

Representations of place are the critical expressions of the Yukon River cultural landscape. These representations exist as told stories, games played, crafts and land skills exercised, place names, memories and histories written, photos taken and artistic forms created. It was a fascinating experience to watch Nicole's ten paintings form during her journey and I look forward to her showing of these works in the coming months.

For Nicole's view on this trip see her article.

An Arcadian Interlude - Hornby Island

2011-08-20T09:01:00.000-07:00

The Gulf Islands off Vancouver Island, the "Mainland" for the locals have been a haven for alternative lives for most of the twentieth century. The relative isolation, rugged beauty and benign climate (at least in the dry summer) have attracted people with dreams for a different life. And even with the large seasonal cottage population this remains true for the permanent residents.

In early July I was invited to a workshop on one of the more remote of these islands. In a sun-dappled maple grove overlooking the Heron Rock beach on Hornby Island a group of students, faculty and local “back to the landers” circled their chairs to discuss the Counterculture and the Environment. The workshop was organized by Colin Coates, an island cottage owner and Canada Research Chair in Cultural Landscapes at Glendon College, York University. The local Heron Rocks Friendship Centre Society, an island group dedicated to the social justice and environmental ideals of its founder Hilary Brown generously hosted us on their lovely property on the garden draped south end of the island. Coates is also acting as editor for a forthcoming edited volume on the topic.

Margaret Sinclair, the island archivist, prepared an exhibit on the Hornby Island counterculture movement and the visitors submitted thirteen draft papers for discussion. Two full days of conversation on the papers considered original counterculture issues such as the fear of co-option by government and an attempt to define when and how the counterculture evidenced concern about the environment. More contemporary issues of defining the bounds of the counter culture – back to the landers, urban activists, utopians – and the object of their countering – industrialism, modernism, social injustice and war – were also addressed. The attending Hornbyites contributed their queries and offered colourful examples of their own experiences which are written into the island landscape they shared with us.

Hornby Island - Central Business District

The workshop was an important and valuable interdisciplinary step in the production of what promises to be a most interesting book. And Hornby Island spun its magic around us all.

Summer View from our Bedroom

2011-08-10T09:16:00.000-07:00

The Sublime - August Thunderstorm

Last Snow - Early July

August Thunderstorm

Twisted Roots - Mather, Manitoba

2011-08-09T16:10:00.000-07:00

Southwestern Manitoba was for awhile the home of my mother's family. After escaping from the Soviet Union in 1923 they settled in Gnadenthal, near Winnipeg, where her father purchased a farm. My mother was born there in 1927. With the onset of the Depression however the bank seized the farm for non-payment and the family drifted as economic refugees to less expensive land around Mather.

Mather today is a village with a stark broad main street of metal clad sheds purchased from catalogues. The original typical prairie town of wooden buildings running off the ubiquitous railway line was destroyed in a catastrophic fire in the late 1940s. Only a few charming old houses on well treed lots away from Main street survive from these early days. However the pioneers, and the now long gone railway, are commemorated in the pleasant green downtown.

Dad and I visited Mather to find family traces. We've no idea where the farm was but my Grandfather's grave, with its modest tombstone added by my mother in the 1970s, lies in the cemetery on a low hill a half mile from town.

Heinrich Albrecht married my grandmother in the fall of 1922, just six months after his first wife's dying. The previous five years had been hard with war, revolution and anarchy leading to starvation and destitution for millions in southern Russia and the Ukraine. Heinrich's first wife Aganethe bore five children, only two daughters survived these hard days. Sarah and Heinrich struggled to keep their family together and they left the chaos of a changing Russia for Canada.

After several years as a farmer Heinrich trained as a lay minister for the Mennonite church. Subsequently he traveled widely doing visitations and my grandmother, at home, managed the farm and looked after the by now four children, the older stepdaughters, Gredel and Annie, and her own children Henry (who I'm named after) and Helen (Mum). Their different paths lead to some interesting changes for in the late 1920s the title for the farm and all their property was transferred from Heinrich to Sarah.

Henry and Helen standing by the family horses as they are auctioned off.

The Depression crushed their farm life and was no better in Mather. In 1933 Heinrich died and Sarah sold what they had using the resulting cash to move to Winkler where their family life revolved around the garden, music lessons and school. However, when the money ran out even harder times followed.

An abandoned farmstead near Clearwater, Manitoba

Working in Skagway

2011-08-07T16:07:00.000-07:00

This spring I was invited to Skagway, Alaska to work with the US National Parks Service interpreters of Klondike Gold Rush National Historic Park. The park includes the town of Skagway, a charming restoration of the late 19th century landing point for gold rush stampeders, elements of the White Pass Trail and the start of the Chilkoot Trail, both challenging routes over the coastal mountains to the headwaters of the Yukon River. Although well versed in their part of the gold rush story, the staff were interested in the story Parks Canada tells in Dawson City, the capital of the Klondike gold fields.

They had arranged accommodation for me in the restored Baptist Mission Residence. Located near Skagway Creek with spawning salmon just beginning to run, it was also adjacent to the site of the old Pullen Hotel. The hotel, once the most luxurious place in Skagway during the tourist heydays of the 1920s, is marked now only by the two story stack of cobbles that made up the magnificent fireplace and chimney of the lounge.

The Mission about 1902.

One of the current darlings of Skagway is Sarah Palin. Her family lived in Skagway during Sarah's primary school years and she is a frequent, and popular, visitor in town. One of the town's business men smelled opportunity and opened the Sarah Palin Store. It carries a remarkable array of "tasteful" Palinesque material from her Going Rogue to fridge magnets and coffee mugs.

On my way home I experience another of nature's forces at the summit of the pass. The avalanche happened earlier in the winter but as the snow melts back the devastation and power is obvious.

Sam Magee Trail - A Place of Deceptive Fantasies

2011-08-07T15:48:00.000-07:00

The Blue Moon hiking group overlooking Windy Arm. The miners working here in 1906 probably had few lovely days like this to enjoy, the mountain top is always windy and often wreathed in wet, cold fog.

The trail begins by following the line of tramway towers up the mountain, about half way up it joins the old horse trail that where the miners cut trees for mining timbers and fuel. The remains of their lumber camp are still there to explore.

Halfway up there is access to a small freshet in a shady niche where cold water is welcomed by everyone in our group.

Blue Moon hikers start young and just keep on climbing.

The string of tram towers up the mountain is impressive. The shareholders looking at photos of the operation in the early 20th century must've felt they'd made a sound investment with all the fancy gear. And while the system was manufactured and installed by reputable tram companies it is clear from a close look at how the mining company cut corners. All the towers are nailed together rather than bolted and none of the towers have foundations, they are simply built right on the ground. Sometimes loose rocks have been piled up to level out the tower. The other thing that is clear is that the system was little used, there is hardly any wear marks on the equipment. Looks good though.

Andrew planking towards Whitehorse.

Paula and her dog taking a last look before the descent to the lake.

Chilkoot Trail - Climbing on ice and relaxing

2011-07-08T15:30:00.000-07:00

The Chilkoot Summit from our lunch spot. Still a kilometre to the base with a daunting 40 metres of ice climbing on all fours to reach the top.

Andrew and Joy with the Chilkoot Pass. Warm sunshine and reflecting snow toasted us through the day.

Joy and I relaxing amongst the wild flowers we worked so hard to visit.

Filling water bottles at Happy Camp.

We meet Christine, the longest serving trail warden, on the trail and trade some stories.

Katie relaxes in the tent museum and library at Lindeman City.

Bare Loon Lake, our last night, scene of the Thomas family banquet and a serenade of loons.

Waiting for the train at Bennett.

Bennett Lake reflections.

Katie, Greg and Andrew, still smiling on the way to Carcross.

Chilkoot Trail: To the Summit

2011-07-02T23:13:00.000-07:00

Joy on Heartbreak Hill, first hour of a five day hike. Andrew racing to catch up.

Hiking the Chilkoot appears to have become an annual event once again. We headed out a week earlier than last spring hoping for more snow to make the hike a little easier. Sometimes you get what you wish for but wish you hadn't. Our party of ten included a grouping of several families from across Canada, some experienced hikers and others new to both the trail and the art of backpacking.

A break and a smile along the trail.

Hiking the board walk over the beaver pond.

The weather was cool entering the rainforest and we enjoyed the spring wild flowers and the magical noise of the running water in the rivelets dropping down to the roar of the Taiya River at the bottom of the valley. At Canyon City, our first night, the sound of the river drowned out all else.

Andrew starting supper preparations at Canyon City

Bill and Mike

Janna and her trainee rescue dog Howard saved my bacon, well my knee actually, later in the hike.

Fran our Maritime sister shared stories of her hikes from around ther world.

Beyond our second night at Sheep camp we broke out of the rain forest and looked up into the mountains.

Trevor and Doug, our South African hiking buddies, were the last out of Sheep camp. They had a close encounter with a grizzly bear and were quite excited when they caught up to us and told us their story.

From the scales we could see the others climbing the Golden Stairs ahead of us. But we stopped to make hot soup and eat a hearty lunch before tackling the final climb to the summit.

Voyage Home

2011-06-04T11:10:00.000-07:00

For our trip back home we followed the traditional route, passenger ferry from Bellingham, Washington in Puget Sound and up the Inside Passage to Skagway, Alaska. Bellingham's port has remade itself has a trendy little community with a great bookstore, a selection of fine restaurants and an extensive network of walking trails. Cherry blossoms were the icing on the cake.

In summer the ferries are packed with enthusiastic tourists coming and going on their Alaskan adventure. But in spring and fall the ferry runs about 2/3 capacity, locals returning from a winter Outside or traveling between the coastal communities. The pace on the ship is relaxed and conversations run to chain saw modifications, the merits of different types of commercial fishing boats, job prospects in the timber industry, the fervent explanation of entrepreneurial dreams/prospects and, without fail, strong opinions on Sarah Palin.

The Kennecott, typical of the Alaska Marine Highway fleet, cannot be mistaken for a cruise ship. The staterooms are modest and comfortable, the dining cafe home style, the bar folksy and recreational opportunities confined to a couple of pin ball machines and two second rate movies each day (at least the one I watched). The pleasure of the voyage rests within the comfortable lounges with their spectacular views of the coastal mountains, interesting conversations, relaxed reading and the chance to stand outside amid the sun, winds and spray of the Pacific Ocean's reach into the rugged coast of North America.

A few staffed lighthouses still operate along the Inside Passage. They look romantic on a nice day.

The fishing fleet at Ketchikan, Alaska. This was my first time in Ketchikan when it wasn't deluged with rain. The record annual rainfall is just over 5 metres. We actually had a sunny day. Everybody was in a good mood.

Early morning in Juneau. A view of the Mendenhall Glacier. We're only hours from home now.

Spring Travels - the big city

2011-06-04T10:27:00.000-07:00

In March we traveled to visit family in Toronto. We stopped in Vancouver's Chinatown to visit our favorite Chinese bakery and enjoy a wander through one of city's the many interesting neighbourhoods. On these occasions I wonder why we bother traveling further afield to see the world, a lot of it seems to have come to Vancouver.

While Vancouver's Chinatown also has its modern aspects, there is still a sense that it is a traditional Chinese place in Canada. Not a reflection of modern China but a representation of the place and time these people emigrated from. In Toronto the Oriental community, both new immigrants and Canadians from British Columbia, is newer and there are some adaptations to being Canadian.

There is a lot of traffic in Toronto, Couldn't really get used to it.

Southern Ontario however does have its charms, not the least are the lovely women who live there. And once one leaves the confines of the metropolis the rural landscape of the Caledon Hills and the charming small towns that manage to maintain some control over their existence, offer alternatives to the modernist frenzy of conspicuous consumption. Fancy coffees and pastries are inconspicuous consumption so they don't count.

Yukon Spring

2011-05-23T18:27:00.000-07:00

Lake LaBerge at Easter. Not sure where that guy in the middle of the lake is going.

Spring in the Yukon is perhaps the longest season. It starts in February when the days begin to noticeably lengthen and the bright sunshine associated with Arctic high pressure zones exhilarates the soul, somewhat dampened by three months of long, often cloudy nights. Spring becomes visible as the sun melts winter leaves down into the snowbanks and people use the hardened ice on the lake to haul goods to their island cabins.

I used the embers from the fire to thaw holes for the art fence around the wood pile.

Milder temperatures also lure us out of our houses and the social round of outdoor activities begins. In mid April, the fire pit is dug out and I share the first fire with a grouse who comes out to fill up on seed. Toys also appear out of the snow and when we celebrate Joy's birthday, we play Kubb, our Swedish lawn game signaling the cusp of summer. Later when I attempt to water the lawn however I soon realize that while winter has retreated up the mountains to about 1500 metres, it has only withdrawn to a few inches below the surface and the water runs furiously downhill and vanishes in the trees below.

Birthday dinner of Arctic char with Uncle Berwyn's Yukon Birch Syrup and Shelagh Mason's cranberry chutney created under the guiding hand of Miche Genest's Boreal Cookbook.


Sue came to the party and showed off her new bag, handsewn links of retired fire hose from the Whitehorse airport fire trucks.

And Joy blew out the birthday candle that Julian, one of God sons prepared for her.

Andrew and I have our first canoe trip a few days later. The river is open, we see three large beaver lodges, each with half a dozen adults and kits frolicking in the warming water.

The river banks hold onto their ice, each bank candling into the lovely tinkling shards that accompany spring paddling on the Yukon River.

Raven says its time for a campfire

2011-04-07T17:55:00.000-07:00

The longer days of spring make it easier to take the continuing cold weather. Despite the cool temperatures the sun is starting to melt the snowbanks and river ice. I have put away the skiies and spend more time day dreaming about my boat and pack. Chilkoot hikes and river trips are already planned. And backyard campfires and picnics can't be too far off.

Teslin Mini-Rendezvous and Community-based Research

2011-03-30T12:32:00.000-07:00

The women's nail hammering competition. Frozen logs stiffly resist nails.

Early this month friends and I drove to Teslin, a Tlingit community about two hours east of Whitehorse for their spring mini-rendezvous. This year it was especially mini since low temperatures and a stiff onshore lake breeze meant "spring" was bitterly cold. The carnival, with its seriously local competitions, traditionally takes place on the lake. But this year they moved all the events with the exception of the ice fishing which didn't translate well to the community centre parking lot where a large bonfire provided a cheery respite to the wintery environment.

The competitions had started and we pounded nails into logs, I wasn't the fastest but at least I got mine in straight, and later heard about the tea boiling and bannock making competition. The scene looked quite odd afterwards, all traces of activity being cleaned up by dogs and ravens leaving behind only seven or eight small burnt holes sunk through the white ice down to the charred remains of wood on the gravel. Looked like a series of meteorite strikes.

In the evening there was a feast, spagetti and meat sauce, baked salmon and moose stew. About half the town showed up for the dinner in the hall with small children and parents patiently lining up and chatting while we loaded plates with warm dinner. Later there was the annoucement of the winners of the Mr and Mrs Teslin contest (a couple in their thirties with five kids who run the hotel and restautrant and volunteer for everything) and a presentation by Alison, an MA student from an Alaskan University who spent the past 18 months working with the community on a cultural tourism plan. She had brought up a Chicken Dancer from the Siksika Reserve just outside of Calgary, her home town, and a storyteller from northern Saskatchewan. The feast and the entertainment were her thanks to the community for their support of her thesis research and a chance to present her findings. Things went reasonably well, the usual diversion form the "official" plan well within the norms of Yukon communities, but Alison remained somewhat tense throughout. It was her first "show" of this kind.

By the end of the dinner everything had gone well, the young chicken dancer performed a vigourous dance concluding with a breathless warning not to take up smoking, like he did, as it made it hard to dance. Alison's video couldn't be made to run on the computer so we skipped over that with a few words and then we all sang happy birthday to two of the Mr & Mrs Teslin children whose birthdays bracketed the feast day. Then everyone, except the dishwashers and table wipers, went next door to watch the hockey game in the just completed arena. We got a tour of the workout room with all its fancy equipment, heard about the challenges of scheduling things, some women don't like men to be in there while they're on the machines, and waded through a huge crowd of small children playing in the lounge. There was a 50-50 draw as a benefit for Rosss River, a nearby Dene community. Their arena and community centre burned down earlier in the week so there was some desolation up the CANOL Road. As people churned their pockets for coins and bills, half the money went into a large coffee can as the prize and the other half was meticulously taped onto a hockey stick that would be sent up to Ross River. It was a pretty amazing hockey stick by the end of the evening.

As we headed out to the car we ran into a concerned group standing around Alison and a group of locals in the lobby. Apparently while backing out her parking spot, Amanda tore the bumper off the front of the newly crowned Mrs Teslin's car. Amanda's experiences in community-based research was increasing expontentially. We headed outside, the wind had stopped, a cresent moon beamed through the mist and it started to snow.

The Anglican Church in old Teslin.

On Tuesday at the coffee shop back in Whitehorse I heard that Alison's Sunday morning consultation meeting had gone very well. People stayed an extra hour and congratulated her on doing such a good job. Yukon communities gain much by opening themselves to young people learning the ropes, and their generous sharing helps shape a better future.

Winter visit to the Chilkoot Trail

2011-03-28T14:10:00.000-07:00


Bennett Railway Station. A 3 metre high snow drift reminded us unnecessarily of the strong winds that battered us on the trip into the north end of the Chilkoot Trail.

Christine and the young university student doing the visitor survey for winter users.

Carcross with Keish's (Skookum Jim) house in the centre built from the profits of his gold discovery on Bonanza Creek.

Carcross, a beautiful spot on the north beaches of Bennett Lake.

The Hangi: A Maori Feast in your own kitchen

2011-03-22T19:38:00.000-07:00

Opening the hangi and lifting out the baskets of food.

Last February our family celebrated Waitangi Day in the small village of Okains Bay on the South Island of New Zealand. Waitangi Day is the national celebration of the treaty signed by Maori Iwi (clans) and the British in 1840. At Okains Bay the day's celebrations included a replication of the original arrival of the Maori in Aotearoa, a welcome to the Marai and a hangi. "Laying a hangi" describes the preparation of this traditional feast. A large hole is filled with stones aned heated with a fire. Then large baskets of kumara, potatoes, chicken, mutton and sausages are laid in and covered with cloth and a layer of sand. Left overnight to cook the hangi was opened in early afternoon and served out to the visiting crowds.

Cadets served out the meal to the hundreds who came to celebrate.

This year we were back home in the Yukon. And a cold February seemed a good time to celebrate Waitangi Day and remember the warm weather of a New Zealand summer. With help from my daughter in New Zealand I attempted a small scale northern Canadian version of the hangi. The following recipe turned out a credible hangi, at least according to my wife.

The backyard being both frozen and under a metre of snow I decided to use our slow cooker to lay the hangi. I started by marinating boneless chicken thighs overnight in a mix of tamari sauce, peppered olive oil, a generous splash of liquid smoke to try and replicate the hangi fire, smashed garlics and thin leaves of fresh ginger. In the morning I went outside and cut a number of clean willow stalks placing a layer on the bottom of the cooker to keep the meat out of the water. I figured these would also give it a Yukon flavor. I covered the willows with a layer of smoked side bacon and then I dumped in seared medallions of veal and reindeer / jalapeno sausages.

Then came the vegetables. Kumara not being a common item in Yukon gardens I substituted large chunks of squash - skin on, sweet potatoes, onions - peeled and quartered, and two hand fulls of garlic cloves, skin on. The whole is covered with a thick layer of finely chopped cabbage, salt and pepper and an abundance of smoked paprika. I added a cup of water laced with more liquid smoke and popped on the lid of the slow cooker. Set at 200'F I let it cook for eight hours, but six probably would have been fine, and ten wouldn't have hurt it either. Slow cooking is a forgiving art and makes a great hangi.

You may also want to check my 2011 November visit to Maori sites of importance in Taranaki.

Winter Views from our Bedroom

2011-03-05T12:47:00.000-08:00

Aurora March 1, 2011

Spring begins with the arrival of lengthening days. Arctic high pressure systems have pushed out the low cloud of the Pacific and we have cold temperatures but beautiful clear skies. We live on the east side of an eskar rising out of the Takhini River valley. Our second floor bedroom provides spectacular views. Recent sunspot activity has revived the Aurora which we haven't seen much of in recent years.

Late afternoon clouds blowing off the mountains across the nearby Yukon River valley provide a dramatic canvas for the setting sun. It is easy to slip into romantic notions of the "savage wilderness" that surrounds us.

However, the storied egg rock at the upper reaches of Lake Laberge reminds us of the long human presence here. It is on banks of the Yukon River just below the rock where Tachokaii, the hero figure of the Northern Athapaskan people, invented the birch bark canoe and began his journey through the world.

Total Eclipse of the Sun

2011-03-05T10:44:00.000-08:00

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In ancient days an eclipse of the sun was a dramatic, frightening experience. Many cultures worshiped the sun, others had stories of the hard days before the sun made its daily track across the sky. The sudden waning of the sun was thus not only terrifying during the two hour shadowing, the event also seemed an evil omen, the sun might fail and life would cease. The Greek word ékleipsis conveys this terror of “the abandonment.” These celestial portents were the earliest targets of intellectual endeavor. Not because they were easy questions, rather they were questions essential to human survival. Today we look forward to these solar phenomena with interest. However, there are still aspects of our world that cause the same trauma and lasting fear.

After a day in town I came home and clicked on the radio for the 4 o'clock news. The leader was the just occurring earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand, the home of our daughter Erin and her husband Stephen. Only last fall they went through the large earthquake that rattled Christchurch during the first notes of dawn. The 7.1 scale quake was deep and 40 km from the city. Water and sewer lines in Christchurch ruptured, electricity supplies were quickly reestablished and except for a number of the older brick buildings downtown most structures needed only relatively minor repairs.

I quickly went up stairs and put up our internet ears – skype, email and facebook – waiting for a note from the kids. Last fall Erin called within an hour, she'd had to ride her bike to some friends across town as their phone and power were out. In the following days there had been a solid community camaraderie as people shared their stories and helped each other. However as the time of limited water supplies and ongoing aftershocks continued, dozens every day, the excitement wore off and everyone just got crabby with the privations. However by Christmas everything was pretty much back to normal. Even the cat, Smoag, began to relax as the aftershocks diminished.

Last week was different. The internet ears heard nothing. I checked Erin's facebook page, not feeling well this morning so relaxing on the couch at home, maybe going to uni for lunch. Time: 2 hours before the quake. I sent a note to our son, then opened the New Zealand Herald. My throat choked and my eyes teared as I saw the first photos and started to read the minute by minute blogging by journalists. The quake, though only a half of last fall's was near the surface and right under Christchurch. It occurred just at the end of lunch, downtown was crowded, buses full of people had been crushed by falling debris, the steeple of the large stone cathedral downtown had collapsed, two large office buildings were utterly destroyed. There were people being killed.

Silence.

The phone rang! but only with solicitous calls from friends. Facebook started to buzz with queries. We watched the evening news, a TV screen of collapsing buildings, and wrecked cars and bloodied people was too much. I started to think of dead children.

After a restless night we decided to go to work. Anything out of the ordinary would have been an admission of the not possible. There were encouraging notes from Erin's friends in Christchurch, hadn't seen her but sure she's all right. At work Joy got a call, a friend's daughter in Christchurch had twittered home within an hour of the quake. Two hours later, twenty four hours in the shadow, another twitter, Erin and Stephen were okay. Relief, but no relaxation.

Like an eclipse, the sun shines again. What has not returned however are casual assumptions of life. The unthinkable abandonment remains uneasily present.

.For my daughter's thoughts on the earthquake.

Hockey Day in Canada hits Whitehorse

2011-02-17T21:55:00.000-08:00

The crowds head over to the shinny rink by the SS Klondike

This year Hockey Day in Canada came to the Yukon Territory. February is celebrate winter month in Whitehorse - the Yukon Quest, the Available Light film festival, Frostbite music festival, the Yukon Ultra (nearly naked people running hundreds of kilometers through the Yukon bush) and Rendezvous winter festival (chain saw chucking, flour packing, can can dancing in snowshoes, Yukon specific sort of skills) and this year Hockey day piled in. We're all exhausted and its only mid-month.

Hockey day is actually more like a week. Early on Kluane National Park staff set up their hockey rink on the lake about 15 km out of town. With the rink in place the team anxious awaited teams to trounce.

The Zamboni cometh, 15 kilometres from town. (Parks Canada)

Further north in Dawson the Klondike Nuggets once again challenged the Ottawa Senators to another round of games with the same lop-sided but otherwise honourable result as they've had since their first Stanley Cup challenge in 1905.

The Yukon River hockey rink in Dawson.3,500 kilometers of arena parking. (Parks Canada)


The Governor-General (the one with the Gold skates of of course) hangs with the Nuggets in front of the net. (Parks Canada)

Although these prelude events were important the real action happened on Saturday noon on the shinny rink by the SS Klondike in Whitehorse. There the powerhouse teams of Parks Canada faced off with the Museum Monsters. Play was fast and I was amazed at how breathless you could get on a rink only 30 feet long.

The Hockey Cards - clipped and save for your collection.

Yukon Quest

2011-02-05T20:44:00.000-08:00

The Yukon Quest, the sled dog race from Whitehorse to Fairbanks, Alaska, started today. For the next ten to fourteen days, twenty five mushers - 19 men and 6 women - will travel 1000 miles (over 1600 km) along frozen rivers and through the snow covered hills and forests of the Yukon River basin. The youngest is 21 and there are seven mushers over 50 years old. Each sled has 14 dogs.

With only one mandatory stop at Dawson City, about half way, they are otherwise camping out with their dogs every night. Today the temperature in Whitehorse was -15 C, almost too warm for the dogs, but as they head north they will feel better. Carmacks two days away is supposed to be -20 and Dawson five or six days out almost -30. They have to carry all their camp gear, dog feed, straw for dog bedding and replacement harnesses, dog booties and spare batteries for their headlamps, there's no lights on out there to set up camp.

This year the race starts in Whitehorse. We met with friends for an early breakfast in a downtown restaurant and exchanged stories. About 10:30 everyone in town heads down to the river bank to watch the mushers prepare their sleds and get their eager dogs hooked into harness. The parking lot is a squirming mass of barking dogs chained to their trucks, the sleds come off the roof of the box and are packed. Then, as race time approaches, each musher and his team of handlers and local volunteers lay out the harness rope and the dogs are brought out in one and twos and hooked onto the line. The dogs are wildly excited now, they've been training all winter for this run and they want to run!

Two nights previous we attended the Quest start banquet. Along with a slide show of past races, the first was in 1984, silent auction for everything from artwork to parkas to large quantities of dog food, a grand buffet dinner suitable for someone about to spend two weeks winter camping in the Yukon, the rest of us ate along in sympathy, and the recognition of the return of a injured veterinarian, the highlight of the evening was the draw for race starting positions. Each musher came up in turn, drew his tag from a fur hat and said a few words. Most acknowledged their sponsors, no one races sled dogs because there's money in it, a few wished their colleagues a good race, and all of them acknowledged their partners who were at home with the kids (and all the rest of the dogs - most have another 30 or 40 dogs and a couple have well over a 100) or out in the parking lot packing up groceries and supplies for the race.

The Quest relies on volunteers and the volunteers and the mushers rely on the Executive Director to keep everything on track. My old Parks colleague, Georgina, is the ED this year. Mahsi cho Georgina.

The first team heads for the start line. There's a quick count down and the dogs prance out of the gate. The sled and musher magically follow on behind, schuss quickly through the crowd stretched out for several hundred meters and then slide down onto the river ice and are gone... then the next, and the next, and the next until they've left us all behind. Before them the grandeur of the winter river and the quiet landscape of the Yukon.

The Blue Moon - Hiking with Friends

2011-01-19T16:44:00.000-08:00

We belong to a great group of people who organize hikes twice a week. We attend the weekend hikes, some of which I've featured earlier in the blog. Different people offer to lead a hike each week, planning out an itinerary and sometimes hosting a yummy pot luck afterward. This network of people are the social fabric that makes it so special to live here, these relationships are an important part of how we define home. In today's blog time I highlight some of the people who hold us together.

Fish Lake, 3 PM. Time to head back to the cabin.

Warm Gloves

2011-01-16T21:03:00.000-08:00

This pair of light acrylic navy blue gloves are the standard liner gloves for the New Zealand Antarctic Service. My daughter received them in November as part of her clothing and equipment kit for her three week work/research sojourn at Scott Base in New Zealand's claim in Antarctica, the Ross Dependency. You can read more about her time there at her blog. After Erin's Christmas visit home she left them behind for me.

I like wearing these gloves. My warm outer mitts are now good to -40 C. There is a certain exotic climate cachet attached to these simple objects as official wear of the New Zealand Antarctic Service. But more important to me is the less tangible connection: they were issued to my daughter. Probably all parents live vicariously through their children's activities and achievements. I suppose that's why I enjoy wearing these gloves so much, her hands were in them as she did her research, looked at seals and the other Antarctic things she tells us about.

Postage stamps of the Ross Dependency

Snowshoe Trek

2010-12-29T19:37:00.000-08:00

My daughter Erin took today's photos. The camera froze up halfway through the hike. Earlier today she started her return trip to summery New Zealand for school.

We got new snowshoes for Christmas. Yesterday we went to the Yukon Wildlife Preserve for a trek through the back hills of the preserve. It was a cold day (-30C) and while you get a little tired of the cold after two weeks that's no excuse to stay indoors. We felt the pinch on our cheeks when we arrived but within a few minutes of starting out we were warm and enjoying the bright sunshine.

The Preserve has lots of Yukon wildlife wandering the preserve. We saw caribou, mule deer and a cow moose and her two year old bull calf. But the most impressive sight were the great steaming hulks of the bison. Their breath hung like a fog before their face and the height of their shoulders and thickness of their coat was most impressive. When I was little kid in Winnipeg in the 1950s (when the winters were cold) all the policemen on the beat wore full length buffalo coats. They weighed a ton but we never lost a policeman to frostbite and I suspect the coats were also bullet proof.

We took a two hour walk up the hills at the back of the preserve and enjoyed a great view of the Takhini River Valley from the top. We then wound our back down the hill and around the Preserve making the hike back to the parking lot just as the sun was setting. We could feel the temperature beginning to drop and were happy to head back home and fire up the wood stove.

Christmas Morning

2010-12-26T23:38:00.000-08:00

On Christmas morning we open our gifts under the lights of the Christmas tree. As the sun rises we dress and head up the hill behind our house to greet the day.

It is -25'C, but the air is still. We are well dressed in parkas and double mitts so by the time we make it to the top of the ridge we are warm. A raven greets us with a caw.

Lake Laberge, frozen over now, lies off to the north at the foot of the hills.

The smoke from our chimney rises quietly in the air. In the kitchen Joy is starting dinner.

Within a hour the sun moves behind Haeckel Hill and the sun dogs become more prominent as the light starts to fade. Merry Christmas to you.

Christmas 2010 Rituals of Love

2010-12-24T15:58:00.000-08:00

Earlier this fall I went through old photos with Dad - his and Mum’s honeymoon, some of our family travels and their emptynester trips to music conferences around the world. We enjoyed the time together, but I suspect our thoughts were worlds’ apart. It seems impossible to put yourself in your parents’ place, that is, to think about being your own parent. We are so deeply caught in our roles - as children, adults, parents - those relationships we develop are so specific to us it is hard to imagine being someone else.

I thought of these bonds when I found this 1957 photo (I’m the one with the book of course) sitting on the lap of the Eaton’s store Santa. What was my mother thinking when this occurred, aren’t they cute? Thank goodness someone else has them for a minute? But as a child I recall the excitement of the annual Christmas visit, standing in line and then, the young elf helping us up, sitting with Santa for a few hurried words and a flash photo. This was an annual ritual, one of many which became the stuff of our family. My Dad shared hockey with us. Every Saturday we were at the rink early, watching the dads shovel the rink and then, with their encouragement, we played hard, shooting, skating, falling. Our Mum shared music. On our annual road trips, Nova Scotia, EXPO 67, the Rockies, the Grand Canyon, we were taught songs, “the grand old Duke of York, he had ten thousand men...,” and she read books to us. Tintin, then only in French, was a favorite. Only years later I figured out that Mum knew no French, but there was no doubting her ability as minstrel. Through our childhood our parents shepherded us through a shared exploration of the world. These rituals of love linked us together, taught us how to live and gave us the morals and meanings they considered essential to a good world.

I believe this photo carries some essence linking me to my parents, it is a symbol of our link between generations that I want to share with my children. Sharing love is primal. We love our parents as they loved and nurtured us. We love our children, partly because we were loved, but also because we were taught to make children safe, happy and to watch them engage with the world. Our out flowing love brings meaning to our existence. Each ritual of love is a talisman, both creating and memorializing our relationships with each other. Somehow photos, letters and emails, even whispered prayers and special memories, become valued tokens of the love tieing us together.

Our best wishes for a merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

David on a late fall river trip.

Andrew at the Mija Jima Shrine near Hiroshima, Japan.

Joy preparing the Thanksgiving turkey at Silver City, Yukon.


Erin and Stephen working together, Okain's Bay, New Zealand.


Family above Okain's Bay, New Zealand on Waitangi Day 2010. I think it's great when the national holiday celebrates the moment when Newcomers made a deal with the Indigenous people to build a country together.

The Perfect Christmas Tree

2010-12-22T02:06:00.000-08:00

Erin directs Stephen, across the valley, to check out a tree. Fish Lake just visible in right distance.

Every winter, in the week before Christmas, our daughter organizes the search for the perfect Christmas tree. Generally this means a major expedition, with axe, saw, lots of rope, a hearty breakfast and deep winter gear, snow paks, three layers of parka and double mitts even in the mild -26'C temperatures. We will be gone for several hours. This year we head for Fish Lake, an alpine lake not far from Whitehorse.

Andrew with the heavy equipment.

The road to the lake is steep and winding. Along the way we can see scattered pine and spruce boughs where others have found their tree and hoisted it to the roof of their car. We pass a father and son grinning as they load their tree for the ride home. At a likely spot we pull over and climb over the snow drifts alongside the track. We are quickly up to our hips in soft snow as we break trail into the woods. Andrew carries the equipment, while Stephen and Erin fan out to check out the trees. I follow along in the deep trench through the snow.

We stop and check out a tree, give it a good shake to release the snow and see if the perfect Christmas tree is hiding beneath it. No, too many broken branches, no, that one has an open space. Next time I say no, its way too big, it'd fill the whole living room, never mind not fit through the door. We trail on, winding through the woods, looking up at snow covered trees. As we come down to the lake we come across a group of mushers heading down the lake with their dog teams.We can hear the dogs barking and yelping with excitement as they speed across the snow covered ice.

We turn back into the bush and continue our search. Eventually we narrow the choice to two trees, both tall but not too broad. Erin finally decides and the saw quickly drops it. It is a big and thick spruce. Looking at the stump we see that the first ten to fifteen years were slow growth, very tight rings. But then the branches must've spread and for the next fifteen to twenty years the tree shot up with fat wide rings showing dry, warm summers and mild winters. At home the tree warms and drops its stiff branches. Decorations come out and we have our perfect Christmas tree. Our best wishes for a Merry Christmas and a happy holiday season .

Skiing Little Takhini Creek

2010-11-28T21:35:00.000-08:00

Headed out early this morning (sunrise is at a decent 10AM so lots of time for breakfast and coffee before departing) to ski Little Takhini Creek near our home. Lots of fresh snow and -11C, a perfect day. Low clouds and continuing snow kept Haeckel Hill in the mists during my trip. Frederick Schwatka, an American army officer who rafted down the Yukon River in the summer of 1883, named the hill after the German biologist Ernst Haeckel. Haeckel actively promoted Charles Darwin's work in Germany and developed the concept of ecology. Haeckel's fame has made him a geographical toponym in the United States where Mount Haeckel overlooks the Evolution Basin in the Sierra Nevada and in New Zealand where there is a shorter mountain apparently not overlooking much worth noting.. There is also an asteroid named after him. I do not think anyone has named a car or a rock and roll band after him so obviously he is no longer that important. All the Haeckels aside the local Southern Tutchone name for the hill, with its four wide spread ridges, is Eagle Claw mountain.

The trail has been a favorite with our family for twenty years. It winds along the edge of the deeply incised valley of the creek and gradually drops down to a lovely picnic spot on the Yukon River. Where the trail first hits the creek there is a large beaver pond with three of four dams and lodges. Now its frozen over and the beavers have a lethargic winter occasionally swimming under the ice to retrieve another of the juicy and nourishing popular branches they've stored underwater near their lodge. Further down the trail there is a blow out where, in summer, kids can hurl themselves over a cliff and tumble down the soft sand some 20 meters to the creek, sort of a near vertical beach. Always a pack of tired kids for the walk back home on those days.

Spruce tree seeds on the trail

In the distance I can see this Semenoff Hills, another of Schwatka's place names, this time the president of the Imperial Geographical Society of Russia. It's a good thing there are lots of hills, mountains and lakes in the Yukon because Schwatka seems to have had a lot of friends. But not everything went his way. He annoyed one of the Tlingit chiefs on the Pacific coast by failing to deliver a promised payment for some service. Subsequently the chief took his name stating that he wouldn't give it back until he was paid. A final irony for the man who named everything that already had a name was the naming of Schwatka Lake, a water body "made up" by the construction of the Whitehorse dam.

Little Takhini Creek with the open water of the Yukon River ahead.

Finally I slide down the last hill to the confluence of the Little Takhini and the Yukon. The Yukon River is still flowing. The water is low and wide bands of ice, a little bumpy but certainly possible to skate on make an icy rink road 10 meters wide and 15 kilometers long back into downtown Whitehorse. But I've gone far enough. I eat some chocolate and start my ski back home again.

Watching ice form on moving water - how does it do it?

In November it snows

2010-11-25T15:25:00.000-08:00

Generally Hallowe'en is the southern Yukon date for snow, sometimes a day or two before so kids are really packed into their snowsuits, or a few days afterwards. This year though snow held off for almost more three weeks. In mid-month it was still +7 C, close to a record. In the Northwest Territories they are talking about putting the ferry back into the river, the price of propane for home heating has gone up 10X since planes have started flying it in. Here though the rivers are full of ice pans and we've been skating on ponds and small lakes for a couple of weeks.

Noon, the sun will set in about 40 minutes

Now we have snow, lots of snow. It has buried our vehicles and submerged the driveway with wheel clogging depths. Twice in a week I've run the drag plow up and down the hill to keep it cleared. I went skiing this afternoon, great to be outside sucking in fresh air. I'd put it off a few days because I was scared I couldn't do it anymore. Everything fell into place, except me, the old skills are still there just waiting to be tapped.

The absence of a yard dog has made our place more open to wildlife. In addition to the horde of birds Joy attracts with her feeders - we saw a flock of about fifty or more Bohemian waxwings the other day - we have a house fox. The fox has a regular round, circling the house and checking out the woodpile for mice and occasionally frightening the cat when she sees it through the window. It is sleek and healthy looking. With the abundance of mice and rabbits we note in the woods (and our basement to the amusement of our cat) the fox shouldn't be going hungry. It regularly feasts, and defecates in, Joy's plate of bird seed.

For us it is a treat to see the vibrancy of the winter forest.

Raven, the one who stole the sun and brought it back to the world.

Bruxelles

2010-11-16T08:55:00.000-08:00

Bruxelles, Manitoba is another of the unique communities on the prairies. While most towns abut the railway tracks, or, if "mis-placed", moved themselves to the tracks when the train arrived, this group of Belgian Catholic immigrants settled on a small outlying knob of the Tiger Hills, centering the community on their church.

Bruxelles never grew large. A school, run by the church Sisters and erected in the 1950s, remains on the edge of town. The grocery / hardware / post office / gas station / bank holds down the west end of town where the road ends at the old stable.

On the edge of the churchyard is small shrine of thanks to the Blessed Virgin Mary. This solid brick shrine was built in 1931 by Remi and Therese Simoens. The shrine, moved to Bruxelles when the elderly Simoens retired from the farm, fulfilled their promise to the Virgin for her intercession in the recovery of their 26 year old daughter, Alice Hacault, from deathly illness.

Bruxelles remains a quiet, hospitable point, one of my favorite backwaters of rural Manitoba.

Migration

2010-11-10T07:48:00.000-08:00

Late September, the geese are rising out of the ponds in the subdivision next to my Dad's apartment in Winnipeg. At 7:30 they start and in minutes the sky is full of birds flying onwards, moving south, west, to the next open field of harvested grain (very few of those so far in this wet fall) to glean another day's energy for their move. Winnipeg is in the centre of one of the major migration flyways for geese. As a child I watched these annual visitors filling the sky.

I grew up in 1950s Winnipeg. It was then also a city of human migrants, the earliest as economic refugees from the harsh North Atlantic fringe - industrializing England, starving Iceland, Scotland and Scandinavia, later ones as refugees of the twentieth century European wars - Poles, Italians, Greeks and especially Germans in large number. My family arrived in southern Manitoba in the late 1920s, escapees from the chaos and violence of the Russian Revolution. And all of these groups hung together, retaining language, foods, faiths and social coherence.

Winnipeg was a melting pot at room temperature, chunky, indisolveable lumps bumping into each other, all aspiring to fit in, secretly wanting to become English speaking Canadians without losing themselves. And through the 1960s, my generation learned English, our faiths fit in, German was taught on Saturday mornings (and required for Christmas carols and wedding celebrations), food moved from Oma's kitchen to restaurants in the Northend (One on Pembina Highway is called Oma's Kitchen) and the tight bonds of social coherence loosened under the warm sun of multi-culturalism.When I left Winnipeg in the early 1970s I was a Canadian.

On this trip my Dad and I made a Sunday afternoon trip to City Park. We visited the English Garden, long a centre piece of the park, and sat down on one of the benches circling the garden fountain. It was a busy place.

My Dad was two when my Oma and Opa escaped the chaos of post-revolutionary Russia in 1926.

The garden was full of high school students on a photo shoot. Cree, second and third generation eastern European, they probably came form the Northend if the city's demographic geography remained unchanged from my youth. They scattered through the garden running, laughing, looking for the perfect shot, apparently only to be found through movement. One young woman shared her images of the chickadees feeding from the hands of two young children.

On the bench next to us a young and beaming Iranian couple proudly celebrated the obviously recent arrival of their infant son. An aged terrier sat stiffly alert beside them as its very English mistress cooed to the baby and smiled warm thoughts to the parents. The intimacy of this exchange was trumped by the arrival of the lively Japanese wedding party. The bride, wearing a tight fitting red Uchikake (the traditional bridal outfit donned for the post-ceremony reception) and impossibly high heeled shoes, giggled as her smiling husband trotted obediently alongside. A group of tiny aunties and large, jovial uncles boisterously ordered the couple, here, then there, for the perfect photo.Where were all the young photographers now? The bride charmed the little boy with her bouquet, a tight arrangement of small blossoms with Miss Kitty grinning benignly outwards.On our way out we met a family, Mother and Father in Sunday black with two teen daughters with long dark hair. They were earnestly engaged in conversation, speaking Serbo-Croatian, probably not wishing they were English but probably also understanding that they were Canadian.

We went to Dawnings for supper. It is the best Mennonite food restaurant in the Westend. As always I order the Verenki and Baurenwurst (perogies and farmer sausage), delicious with sauce just the way I remember my Oma making. The family who runs it is Phillipino.

The idea of the unitary nation state has migrated into the past, Canada is a pluralist country that seems to be working well this Sunday.

Christchurch, New Zealand Earthquake

2010-09-03T18:35:00.000-07:00

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/4095395/7-1-earthquake-photos

A photo of the street near Erin and Stephen's house after the 7.1 earthquake near Christchurch this morning. We had a couple of hours of worry until they walked to a friend's place that still had power, phone and water! Parents are happy and a little more relaxed, though NZ news saws many people will be evacuated out of the city.

Chilkoot Pass

2010-09-02T23:45:00.000-07:00

Last week I had the chance to work with the patrol wardens at the Chilkoot Pass Summit. After taking the train from Carcross we boated to Lindeman. The next morning we packed our gear and some extra material for cabin repairs along the way. It was the first sunshine in days and the hikers we met coming from the pass were all enthusiastic about their trail time and pleased to be past the steep climb and the rain on the coastal side.

My job is to prepare a backgrounder on the historic resources on the trail. Trail staff will gain more knowledge of the things they are protecting and learn stories they can pass on to hikers. Our focus on this trip is the Pass itself. During the day we revisit the sites, out of the snow for a few weeks this time of year. We do some repeat photography, reshooting gold rush photos to see what changes may have taken place. One striking element was the lack of vegetation in the old images compared to now. Perhaps the thousands of stampeders tracked in enough dirt, left behind enough organics and seeds to dramatically change the ecology of the Pass?

It is mid summer at this high altitude. The snow has only finally melted a few weeks past and the plants are frantically racing through their life cycle, sprouting blossoming and bearing seed in the very short time before the snow returns. The hillsides are a rich garden of pinks, whites, blues, and yellows. A hike along the shores of Crater Lake reveals old canoe landing spots and we can trace the old winter roads that dropped the tramway freight down to the lake. Further we find secret coves and delightful waterfalls. This is a lovely place on the rare days that the sun shines.

Evening is announced by the fog. A misty greyness settles on the pass and stays until well into the next day, the sun and wind eventually clearing the sky by early afternoon. We stay at the Summit Warden cabin, compact, efficient, warm and dry. It is a privilege to serve Canadians and visitors at a place such as the Chilkoot Pass.

Discovery Day on the Thirty Mile River

2010-08-28T09:51:00.000-07:00

Took a solo river trip this past long weekend. Across Lake Laberge and into the not so empty bush beyond. Had a good book to read, simple food and some crossword puzzles for the time it takes to make coffee in the morning. Weather was hot, but river was cool.

I stop in a familiar cove on the lake and climb the steep cliff behind the beach. The trees have grown. I am disappointed to not see my boat from the heights. From the rocky point down the beach I regain my composure.

My chair looks out over the river. I watch the reflection of river ripples on the curved sides of the boat, the mystery of their meeting at the prow blocked by a pine. I do not move my chair, today I prefer the philosophical wondering to the very slight satisfaction arising from observed fact.

I visit my favorite island in US Bend. I force myself to relax and read my newspaper 10 metres from a large and beautiful wasp nest. The prospect of being chased by angry wasps keeps me gentle and quiet. I read several articles and decide to leave while my luck holds.

The time is halfway between summer solstice and autumnal equinox, the shortening of daylight is beginning to accelerate. It is hot and sunny but I know the waterfowl before me are beginning their migration, the fireweed here are spent, the berries ripening and the number of yellow leaves in the forest are more numerous every morning.

The lanky spruce spiking the sky in the camp are stark against the morning sky. There is no wind, the buzz of a fly, the occassional chatter of a squirrel as it throws spruce cones down from the trees and the low quacking of ducks in the back water accompany the slow, almost imperceptable, oscillation of the tree tops. Perhaps it it is the rotation of the earth at work, a timeless natural opposite of Foucault`s pendulum.

A little hiking in the woods in the late afternoon and later I float out to the river garden in the back eddy beyond my camp. With the sun low in the sky I look down through the almost invisible water. Floating in the air above the plants is quite remarkable and I'm fascinated with plants breaching mediums and water bugs skittering around on the surface doing interesting things.

The return up the lake is fraught with a rising wind and stormy waves. It is though the lake is telling me to stay, to wait upon the forests and the river, to escape the town and wait for winter.

Project Management 101: #2 Site Preparation

2010-08-28T08:33:00.000-07:00

With the corrected front and back frames completed it is time to locate the shed. I pick a spot down the hill by the boat shed, adding another architectural treasure to my compound. The site, on gravel, is backed by trees to the south and west minimizing solar exposure. I drag the rear frame orienting it to face the shed to the north. I bring down a spade and post hole auger in the wheelbarrow and make a starting divot by kicking vegetation out of the way. I place the auger and make the first turn. Owww, my wrist. I look, a wasp stings me again. Oww. Lots of buzzing, I abandon the tools and run away.

I return in the coolness of early morning and search the trees, no nest. Must be on the ground. More tools, rake, weed eater and lots of clothes - neck warmer, jacket, tucked in pants, gloves and my new Canadian Tire bug hat. I considered buying wasp poison but the instructions on the tin were so scary I decided to leave it in the store. After skimming the site with the weed eater, I vigourously rake the vegetation in short, fast sweeps, looking for the nest in the ground litter. After clearing most of the site I see a group of wasps hovering about a foot away from my divot. I back off and return to dump two cups of gas on the nest. I look for matches, opps, go back up to the house, get matches and a big pail of water. I chuck a lit match and watch the flames consume the nest.

Project Management 101 #1 Planning

2010-08-13T22:22:00.001-07:00

Background

A couple of weeks ago friends lost their cabin in a fire due to spontaneous combustion from paint rags. They escaped without injury and without anything else. We sympathized but I start thinking about "tinder" around our place. I've cleared scrap wood from near the house and also fire smarted, removed the trees downhill of the house. But there's also paint, boat gas, grease, propane, bear spray and camp fuel around. I decided to build a safe storehouse. An opportunity to demonstrate my professional project management skills.

Planning

My plans started with the four 8' long treated garden ties lying under the porch. I had used the same posts for my extraordinarily successful boat shed so the architectural theme was set. I headed off to the lumber yard to pick up some 2X4s and at the counter they asked how long and how many? Quickly I decided the shed would be 5' X 7' (real planners do this sort of thing on the fly all the time) and ordered up a bunch of 12 footers. I also bought lag bolts to assemble the frame, the brilliance of this would only become obvious later. On my return home I cut my lumber into 7 and 5 foot pieces. Then I drew up my plan.

Two frames, a front and a rear, would be prepared and installed on site. I could then add the side framing and the shed would come together. I measured and drilled holes for the lag bolts and began the assembly. I completed one frame and was getting the second ready when I noticed I had built a right side and not a front. My shed was now going to 7' X 5'. I quickly removed all the lag bolts and built a front and a back.

During this process I wondered how big are my jerry cans and how many do I have to store? I pulled out one can from under the porch and discovered a 3' deep shed would be fine while my eight jerry cans would nicely fit the 7' width. My plan was complete. Well, at least for now.

Mooshide Gathering

2010-08-07T11:45:00.000-07:00

It's a long drive to Dawson. But with convivial conversations amongst witty friends punctuated by wildlife sightings along the way - a black bear sow and her cub, a grizzly bear, eagles, a fox with prey and two without, and grouse aplenty hopping into the bushes as we approached - there was plenty to keep us amused.

Moosehide dock below St. Barnabas Anglican Church

We were going to attend the bi-annual Moosehide Gathering. Since 1993 the Tr'ondek Hwech'in (a Yukon First Nation whose homeland is the Dawson area) have organized and hosted this huge public event to celebrate their return as full and active players in Yukon society. Although never absent their tough fight against Canadian colonialism kept them busy from the late 1940s to the mid-1990s. The settlement of their treaty with Canada was celebrated with a potlatch during the Moosehide Gathering in 1998. This year's Gathering is honouring those Elders, now passed on, who worked so hard to preserve and carry forward their traditions.

Isaac stays cool on the waterfront

Ronald, Art and ... stay cool at Moosehide

It is cool in the brief early morning, warm during the day, getting darn hot by mid afternoon and sunny all the time, though grumpy locals complain of a damp and rainy summer so far. Judging by all the vegetables available in the Saturday morning riverside Farmer's Market however it hasn't impaired the happiness of the brocolli, lettuce and cabbages.

Finnish student volunteer at Moosehide

Getting to Moosehide means a short trip down river from Dawson. There is almost always a wait. I stood in the boat line-up for an hour, never far from the front, but the Tr'ondek Hwech'in always honour Elders and they get priority, after a life time of work you get to take the short cut. I'm getting close to being an Elder I suppose but take photos, meet more friends and enjoy the companionship of the line. Besides, it's always a pleasure to spend time on the river bank.

Victor watches Sabastian head back to town

Madeline, Tr'ondek Hwech'in dancer

At Moosehide, the sunny southern slopes are crowded by a relaxed crowd. I spend a long afternoon visiting yet more friends, and enjoying the performers. The Han singers and drummers open the Gathering program. The Yu'pik Miracle drummers and singers, regular Alaskan visitors from the mouth of the Yukon River get the audience to their feet and Carcross's Art Johns, with his gravelly soulful voice, sings country western tunes of loneliness and longing. And Vuntut Gwitchin's Boyd Benjamin, once of the Fiddlehead group of youthful fiddlers and now an air charter pilot, is here to play northern jigs and reels. Eventually the hot sun cooks my brain and I return to my shady tent to read Robert Stead's prairie epic, Grain.

Dakhk'a Khwa'an Inland Tlingit Dancers

Kylie getting ready to make bannock

Watching the river flow, waiting for dad to get the boat ready

I volunteer on Saturday afternoon, driving an 18 foot rattling green tin river boat with a 50 hp outboard, back and forth between the beach at Dawson and Moosehide dock. There is a noticeable tide of people. In mid-afternoon there is always a long line-up on the beach as people head to Moosehide for the free dinner - one night its bbq salmon, the next its moosestew. We stockpile the life jackets on the Dawson dock and hustle people into the boats - mine, one of the mid-sized boats, takes seven passengers. Then turn downstream, look to see where the car ferry is, and throttle up to full speed, hit the ferry wake at an angle to reduce the bumps, skim along under the high cliffs of the Midnight Dome and turn into the line of boats waiting to drop off passengers. Keep the life jackets in the boat, pick up one or two people heading back into town, cross the river and run back upstream past the riverboat graveyard, the folks relaxing on the campground beach, check to see where the car ferry is and turn into the Dawson dock to pickup another load.

A couple of hours later this tide ebbs and reverses. There are no life jackets at Moosehide, a boat runs back to Dawson empty and returns piled high with bright yellow, red and blue life jackets of all sizes. Although many people are waiting, at 8:30 after its dinner cruise, the Klondike Spirit arrives to pick up almost a hundred passengers for the slow trip back to town. The rest of us small boats keep running, almost midnight before the last passengers are sleepily climbing the town dike and slowly walking home to bed.

Sacred fire