DAYS 16 & 17, July 24 & 25, 2007

Our flight last night was scheduled to depart from Igloolik at 5 pm. The weather was fairly good all day until just before we were set to depart. The fog rolled in quite thick. We then received word that our flight had been delayed, due to mechanical problems with the plane. It hadn't even taken off from Iqaluit yet.

At one point in the afternoon, we were informed by First Air that we would not be able to get all eleven team members on the flight. They stated that they had only eight seats remaining on the flight to Iqualuit and that three team members would need to stay behind until the morning. Donna immediately telephoned First Air's headquarters in Ottawa and stressed the importance of the team staying together and all eleven of us getting on the same flight, as we all had jobs to get back home to and we had already been delayed for nearly two days. She asked if there was anything they could do, such as rerouting a plane, so we could get out tonight. They said they would see what they could work out for us.

We received a phone call at 7 pm saying we should all head to the airport and that a flight for all of us was available, departing at 8 pm. After checking in at the Igloolik airport, the probability of our taking off in the thick fog which was now surrounding Igloolik being poor, we boarded the plane and with some trepidation,took off at about 9 pm. The plane was soon above the fog and the clouds and we flew the remaining two hours to Iqaluit in beautiful sunlight.

We arrived in Iqaluit at 9 pm and started to settle in for the night in the airport lobby. Francis, our security guard, introduced himself to us and said he'd be looking after us and the locked up airport for the night. Liz, Donna, Caitlin, Annette and Chris claimed the conveyor belt for their bed, spreading their sleeping bags out on the semi-soft/semi-hard surface. First Air was wonderful to us as they provided us with use of their lunch room fridge for the night to store our vaccines in. They also brought us a bag of pillows and blankets for us to use. The rest of the team claimed spots on the floor for their sleeping bags, except for Allison who somehow arranged herself on two chairs for the night. We had a hard time to settle down and sleep but finally managed to rest for a couple of hours, after a pillow fight between Isabelle and Donna, and some hilarious moments taking photos of Caitlin and Donna with Barb's retro glasses on.

The lights came on at 5:30 am and we packed up our gear, changed our clothes, washed up, and began to check in at the First Air Ticket booth for our 1 pm flight to Ottawa.

We had 7 1/2 hours to use up before our flight, so we made our way on foot down the road to the nearest restaurant for a delicious breakfast of scrambled eggs,bacon, potatoes and toast. After breakfast, we continued to walk and ended up in Iqaluit, visiting the Tourist Info Centre and several craft shops along the way. We returned to the airport on time to check in for our flight to Ottawa.

The flight departed on time and after a very pleasant flight (a small lunch and a warm chocolate chip cookie was served) we landed in hot and humid Ottawa. After a team photo, three of our team members collected their luggage and raced to the Air Canada ticket booth to try to book tickets on the next flight out to Vancouver that evening. They successfully managed to get on a 6 pm flight and we said goodbye to them. Two team members managed to get on a flight to Toronto this evening, and Isabelle, after much frustration, was successful at booking her flight back to Calgary this evening.

And then there were four! Liz, Uschi, Barb and Donna were the last of Team Nunavut and spent the night in Ottawa in a hotel. Their flight was scheduled to fly home to Vancouver Thursday morning, arriving at 8:30 am. After ordering pizza and watching the Tour de France in their hotel room, they slept fitfully until 4:30 am. and then raced off to board their 6:30 am. flight to Vancouver.

It was such a relief to finally arrive at our respective homes, two days later than planned, but safe and sound.

DAY 15, Monday July 23, 2007

The team was up early, were all packed and ready to go when we received word that all flights into and out of Igloolik had been cancelled for the day due to inclement weather. Since Saturday, two days ago, it has been very cold here (about 2-3 degrees Celsius) with strong winds, rain and a low cloud cover making visibility for flying very difficult.

Initial response from the eleven team members was one of disappointment. Several members are expected back at work tomorrow so phone calls and e-mails started to go out. Donna spent the morning going in circles trying to communicate with First Air, Air Canada, and Aeroplan, and getting the run around by all.

The remainder of the day was spent reading, solving Sudoku puzzles, watching movies, sleeping, baking brownies and fudge, and housework.

It is now 8 p.m. and the weather appears to have cleared considerably. The winds have died down, the rain has ceased, and the skies are not so socked in with cloud. It is very hopeful that we will be able to fly out tomorrow. The only First Air flight out of Igloolik on Tuesdays is not until 5 pm, arriving in Ottawa at 8 pm. We telephoned several hotels in Iqaluit this morning to book rooms for the eleven of us for tomorrow evening, but we are looking at approximately $800 for the one night.

Caitlin had the idea to call the Iqaluit Airport terminal building to try and save us $800. She spoke with the manager who readily agreed to allow the eleven of us women to sleep on the floor of the terminal building for the night in our sleeping bags. There is a Security Guard there for the night while the airport is closed, so we are locked in to the building for the night. Almost like being in prison. A women's prison! Good thing we all like each other still, after 14 days of being together almost 24/7. It will be an experience and something we will long remember. Something to write about here on the blog and perhaps we can put a few photos on of our pyjama party on the cement floors of the Iqaluit International Airport.

Stay tuned!

DAY 14, Sunday July 22, 2007

We spent the morning cleaning up the clinic and repacking all of our left over medical supplies into their suitcases. We were told a spay was going to be brought down in the morning for us to do but it didn’t show up.

Today was very windy, rainy and cold and even looked like it was trying to snow. We didn’t spend much time outdoors today. We hope we can fly out of here tomorrow morning and that the weather will cooperate.

Chris, Annette and Uschi took the puppy to its home. It turns out the puppy belongs to the mayor, and the puppy’s name is “Rainbow”. The children in the home were so happy to see her again, and the puppy ran up to them so excitedly. It was a very happy reunion. We explained to them that she may have some permanent damage to her head but without more diagnostic tools we really don’t know for sure. She has improved greatly from when she was brought in to us, and we explained how she needs to stay on antibiotics. It was very comforting to realize that the Mayor and his family were the owners of this wonderful little puppy and that it has a great home and will live indoors.

We received a phone call this afternoon that the team was invited to come to one of the resident’s homes, Marie and Lukie, to have a taste of Arctic Char, similar to salmon. Marie is the lady who came to Igloolik Point with us the other day to be our interpreter, as well as the lady whose dog had the terrible neck wound. She wanted to thank us for saving her dog’s life (her husband would have shot the dog if we had not been here, we were told). The team arrived at her home to a very warm welcome from her family, Cynthia, Linda and two smaller grandchildren. She had baked us fresh bread, rice and Char which her husband had caught earlier in the day. She had the team play games and there were prizes to be won. The prizes were some of her personal possessions which I’m sure had much sentimental value to her. The team sat in a circle and played several games. Marie also shared stories about hunting and how hard it is to hunt walrus. She said the walrus are very scary and smell very bad. Her favourite hunt is a Narwhal whale but they are only allowed four a year. After a very enjoyable, fun and educational two hours, the team headed back home to finish packing for their departure tomorrow morning.

Barb cooked a delicious turkey dinner, complete with mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, homemade cranberry sauce, turnip, mixed vegetables. Isabelle cooked her first pumpkin pies ever and they were very tasty.

We will call First Air in the morning to see if our flight will be departing or not. Hopefully the weather clears and we are able to go. Mark explained to us all at dinner that sometimes planes cannot come in or go out of Iqaluit for days and even weeks, let alone in Igloolik, due to adverse weather conditions. The sophisticated technical instruments are not available in the North at the airports or on the planes as they are in the south. We’re keeping our fingers crossed for better weather tomorrow.

DAY 13, Saturday, July 21, 2007

Isabelle and Chris did shift work all night with the puppy. She was much brighter this morning and starting to eat, drink, and walk around. Her face is still swollen and sore but her eye is beginning to open up. We gave her an injection of long-acting antibiotic and also an anti-inflammatory injection this morning. We will keep her for another day before returning her to her owner.

The day was spent with the team dividing up into two’s once again, and going back to their assigned areas throughout town re-vaccinating the dogs with their booster Distemper/Parvo vaccine. This took up a large part of the day. We also began housecleaning duties in the three homes we were assigned to stay in. Donna, Chris and Annette spent a few hours in the afternoon discussing the Ontario chapter, protocols and the future of possible projects in Northern Ontario and Nunavut.

We were invited to a “picnic” at the recreation centre/community hall in the evening which the Hamlet office put on for our team to thank us. There was a fairly good turn-out of about one hundred people. We had all brought many gifts to give the children, as well as a few things for the adults. We filled two tables with all of the gifts and the children (and a few eager adults) filed by and chose something from off the table. Everyone seemed very happy with their gifts. On the menu were egg sandwiches, tuna sandwiches, soup, coffee, and hotdogs. Two women got up and did what is called “throat singing” for us. It was like something we have never heard before! You have to hear it to believe it. The harmony between the two women was incredible. They held onto each others arms and rocked back and forth as they sang. A young Inuit man brought in a traditional drum and two girls danced while he played. We thanked everyone and headed back to Barb’s for more food.

The team gathered at Uschi’s, Brigitte’s and Barb A’s place for a couple of hours to visit and talk before heading off to bed.

DAY 12, Friday July 20, 2007

Today was full of surprises!

We headed to the clinic in the morning to spay (finally) the little, short-legged dog that lived next to the clinic and had barked incessantly at us daily. She’s quite a nasty, temperamental dog, but we were able to sedate her and begin the spay. Her surgery went very well and we returned her to her chain in her back yard before she was up and trying to bite us once again. Another female came in which was very thin and we had been told had had litter after litter of puppies for years. We were a little hesitant to operate on her but after much discussion and examining of her, we went ahead with her spay. She was hooked up to IV fluids throughout her surgery and monitored extremely close. Being a mature dog made the spay even more complicated and time-consuming, but she came through it fine. During recovery she started to bleed very slightly through her suture line, and we were a little concerned she was starting to hemorrhage. We observed her for another couple of hours before we returned her to her home. The owners promised to keep her indoors for a few days until she was fully recovered.

A small puppy was also brought in this afternoon that had been mauled by a larger dog, especially around her head area. Her right eye area and face were quite swollen. She had puncture wounds on either side of her neck and had a broken nasal passage and possible fracture to the top right side of her skull. Having no access to an x-ray machine to confirm our suspicions, we went ahead and treated her. She was nearly in shock, so we placed an IV catheter and hooked her up to fluids. Pain medication was given IV also. Isabelle volunteered to keep her with her for the rest of the night so she took her home with her. We were very skeptical that she would make it through the night.

We arranged a meeting with the Elders of the community at 7 pm. We brought them a very large container of freshly baked oatmeal cookies which they made disappear in no time at all. In attendance were three male elders and two females, as well as a couple of younger adults and a few teenagers. We also had an interpreter present. Donna thanked them for welcoming us into their community and allowing us to help with their dogs. They asked us several questions such as “what are boosters?”, if spays and neuters were reversible, what other types of animals we worked on, and what we are doing when we leave here, where we are going next, and if diseases which dogs get can be spread to humans. We answered their questions as best we could and also asked them if they had any concerns. They mentioned about the RCMP coming into Igloolik in the 60’s and killing all of their dogs. The dogs at that time, they mentioned, were bigger and stronger and healthier than the dogs here at this time. We mentioned how we respect their desire to preserve the pure Inuit breed. They thanked us for coming to the community and helping to protect their dogs from more distemper deaths.

We left the meeting and headed down to the clinic where Uschi and Annette had remained behind with the older female spay to watch her during her recovery.

We ordered pizza from the local Inn for dinner. The Vegetarian pizza was a unique one – it had carrots and cauliflower on it. It tasted pretty good though.

DAY 11, Thursday July 19, 2007

Today is Barb’s birthday! The team sang “Happy Birthday” to her at breakfast. At noon we headed out for the day’s work. Half of the team headed out to try to find Mosha’s dog (our carver friend) to neuter him, and the other half headed out to vaccinate a dog team owned by a gentleman, Samueli. This was the first team we were going to have to deal with without the owner actually present and able to hold the dogs for us to vaccinate. After searching for the dog team’s location, we finally spotted them. As we approached, we noticed one dog was lying on the ground and not moving. Further investigation told us the dog had died. We also found a skeleton of a dog still tied up to a chain and tangled in a fishnet. A couple of other dogs were tangled with their chains and one could not reach the small pond that was their drinking water source. The pond water was fairly dirty and slimy looking. Barb waded into the nearby water in the ocean and retrieved a small ice floe which we then broke up and laid in front of the dogs. They lick it and do get some water that way. Many of the dog team owners do this. The dogs were generally friendly but we were very cautious with them. We spent some time just quietly sitting nearby and trying to win them over. Then the catch pole was used to immobilize them enough to give them their two vaccines, as well as in injection of dewormer.

As we headed back to town, we made sure we spoke with a couple of people along the way, as well as stopped in at the Hamlet office to speak with someone there about the fact that we found a dog dead with the team, before we started to vaccinate. We realized it was important to cover our bases so we wouldn’t be accused of killing one of the dogs with our vaccines.

A few of the team baked a cake in the shape of an Inukshuk for Barb today, and a birthday card was passed around for the team to sign. Marie, our interpreter, gave Barb a gift also, something Barb will treasure always.

We worked the rest of the day at the clinic on several dogs. We even had an hour or so to sit and listen to some of Marie’s stories of how life used to be in the North. She was answering many of our questions. She said that things have changed in Igloolik over the years, in her opinion, not for the better. When the telephone arrived in the 1970’s, people stopped visiting each other in their homes. Television arrived in the 1980’s and it made it even worse. She said the teenagers are too involved in drugs and they get mean and angry. We asked her about her wedding to Luki (a very famous dog sled team owner and renowned carver). She was nineteen years of age and in love with a “white” boy whom she worked with. Her brother didn’t like this so he and the mother arranged for Marie to marry Luki, an Inuit man from another community. She argued with her mother and said she would not marry Luki. The family insisted and the next morning they dragged her to the church and placed her in front of the Priest and by Luki’s waiting side. When the priest asked her if she took Luki to be her husband, she said, “No”. The Priest kept telling her she had to say “yes”, but she refused to say “yes” until her brother pinched her arm so hard that she said “yes…. but no”. As they were walking out of the church, she took off the wedding ring from her finger, spit on it, and threw it at Luki. She and Luki have now been married for 46 years, have eleven children and six adopted children (grandchildren).

After several other fascinating stories about residential school life, Marie left to go home and the team closed up the clinic for the day and walked up the hill to the Research Station for a tour. Markus Dyck (the polar bear biologist/technician) met us and spent the next one and a half hours speaking to us about his role and his work with the polar bear research. He explained some of the frustrations he has had with some of the financial and personnel constraints for the amount of work they need to do. This is the last year of a three year population study to determine the “harvest” (how many bears each community is allowed to kill). We had a tour of the lab, learned at how they age a bear by its teeth, saw a p.bear fetus in a jar, skulls, hair, a dart gun, tracking collars, etc.

After dinner several team members (Aliesha, Allison, Barb, Isabelle and Chris) put on their toques and headed down to the water’s edge for a polar bear swim. The water is still covered in ice floes so it is very very cold. After some initial photographs were taken by the rest of the team (the wimpy ones), the five ran into the water, some up to their necks. The muddy bottom tried to swallow up some of their sandals. Many photos were taken, and the local people were watching from their homes, surely shaking their heads thinking how crazy those white women are. Hot showers and hot chocolate warmed everyone up as we gathered at Chris, Annette and Isabelle’s place of residence for a short visit before bed.

DAY 10, Wednesday July 18, 2007

After a day working at the clinic we loaded two hamlet vehicles at 5 p.m. to begin our drive out to Igloolik Point, approximately 30 km. away. The roads here are all covered with rock so the drive can be quite slow. We had Marie, our interpreter, with us, as well as her daughter and small son. Caitlin, Isabelle, Chris, Allison and Steve (the photographer we met yesterday) rode in the open box of the pick-up, while Liz, Donna, Marie our interpreter, and her daughter and son rode up front. Raymond was our driver. The other small vehicle with Barb, Brigitte, Uschi and Annette led the way. We made several stops along the way before actually reaching our destination at “the Point”. We stopped at different areas where hunters had set up camp near the water. The first area we stopped at was to vaccinate and deworm Eskimo Joe’s father’s dog team of approximately fifteen dogs, including several puppies. We also had the opportunity to meet a family who had just arrived on shore from a day of hunting walrus. They explained how they use all of the parts of the walrus. We watched them carry large piles of walrus that they had packed inside the hide to be buried in a deep hole until November when it will be dug up. It ferments during this time and is apparently quite a delicacy here. It is called “Igunuk”.
We also saw a very thin mother dog with a litter of five to six week old puppies who were taking everything out of her. She was so covered in mosquitoes that you could barely see her face. The mosquitoes were the worst that we had seen since our arrival in Igloolik. There was also a very heavily pregnant female dog hanging around us. The people in this camp mentioned that they had seen Narwhal and Beluga whales that day but we had missed seeing them.
After many other stops at various camps along the way and taking in the beauty of this area (the big, close sky, the ice floes covering the water, and the silence), we headed back to town. Along the way we stopped to look at a grave from 1832, as well as a few sod homes. We also helped our driver Raymond and our translator, Marie pick flowers growing along the side of the road, flowers that the people eat here.
After a late dinner, we slept fitfully.