The Wheels on the Bus, do not go ♫♪♫

On Friday afternoon, I and the Grade 8s had our cultural program. We went to check someone's fishing net. We started out driving to the beach and unloaded there. I found out that the beach is called Little Bears Beach. It is called that because some years ago, there were these cubs that lived there. To get to the nets, we walked for roughly 3 km,with all but 1 km on the frozen lake.

In my short life, I have been privy to a number of great views/experiences. Through Scouts, I have hiked the Pennsylvania Grand Canyon, New York's Fingerlakes and Ontario's Algonquin Park to name a few. The hike through the woods and on the lake, with fresh snow, has to be near the top of the list. The day was cool (-16) but not cold and there was not a cloud in the sky.

The process of checking fishing nets during winter is quite fascinating. The net is approx. 50 feet long and placed near the shore, stretching out over a deep part of the lake. As mentioned, we started by digging out one hole, and then the other. Vicky's husband, there to help, brought a long rope with him, which we tied to one end of the net. Then, we pulled up the net and took out the fish. After all 50 feet were out, we went back to the other hole and pulled the rope back, dragging the net back into place under the ice. This method was quick, efficient and required little work.

Over all, we only caught 7 fish, although a couple were massive. Dad you'll like this. One fish we caught was a Jackfish, or a Northern Pike. We didn't measure it, but it had to be at least 50 inches long (no word of a lie). The largest pike, or fish, I have ever seen come out of a lake.

Afterwards, we went back to the school and had Indian Tacos again.

After school, we had a bit of excitement. Ordinarily there are three busses that take home the students. Only one was operational, as the other two wouldn't turn on. To note, our busses are also only three-quarter length and hold roughly 30-40 students. One bus, had to drop off 200 students. Staff were loading students into their cars/trucks/vans and driving them home. I was given the key to the school vehicle and asked to drive six students home. Thinking back to it afterwards, we were amazed at how different things operate here. For example:

In the North, teachers were bringing students home. At home, the school would need permission forms/signatures to allow teachers to drive.

In the North, the principal told me to fit two girls in the front seat and have four boys in the back seat. The two girls were sitting on each other, while one of the boys was sprawled out over the other three boys. Different attitude up North.



Two girls taking a break during the hike to the net.

Like we have said before, the trees up here are not thick, and under great weight bend.

The 2 km hike on the lake to the net. The hike was good, but pretty exhausting as we hiked through 1 foot of snow the entire time.

Sunshine found the spine of a fish, that had been picked apart from wolves/birds/other scavengers.

One of the openings to the net.

Pulling the net out.

Some of the fish we caught. Some jackfish, suckerfish and whitefish.

When 250+ is Cheaper than 15

We have started our first full week of school. Getting back into the swing of things. Amazing how routines pick up as if there was no time off. Days are going by quickly, as workloads are getting bigger. Some interesting news this week.

Last Thursday we went to the store with a local teacher and her grown daughter. On the way back, at around 6:00 pm, Claire noticed some lights in the sky. Claire asked if they were the Northern lights and the two passengers said yes. Claire and I were ecstatic, having seen nothing like them before. The two people in the back were surprised that we had never seen them before and told us to wait until they get better later this month or in February. Needless to say, Claire and I are in for a treat some time later this winter.

Another tidbit of information came yesterday morning. All the students go home or lunch as no one, which includes all staff, stays at school. Claire, Amanda, and I are the only ones left, save a couple others who decide to stay that day. Before lunch the principal came on the intercom and told us that there is a Wolf Alert for Deer Lake as a big black wolf was seen about 100m from school and looked hungry. Our students have told us, since we returned that they have seen wolves running through town. Interesting side note, Amanda told one student who typically walks that they needed to take the bus and he replied by pulling out a pocket knife saying, "Don't worry, I always come prepared." Must have been a boy scout in a previous life. His older brother in grade nine told Claire, "It wouldn't be the first wolf I've killed."

Other bit of news involves the satellite. We finally installed it over the weekend and have enjoyed its many channels. Good timing as the cable added 5 new channels (Discovery, Animal, Bravo and two others) but is raising their bills by $10. Meaning, our satellite bill will be $9 cheaper than cable. Weird to think that over 250 channels is almost $10 cheaper than just 15 channels. After the satellite was installed, I had to phone Shaw Direct and activate the receivers. A man, by the name of Stephen (french spelling/sounding) answered and walked me through the order and what not. Reading down my order he stopped at the movie package and noted that I had ordered the Women's Movie Package. He paused and asked if I had made a mistake and if I was aware of what type of movies the channel played.

A picture indicating the depth of the snow. I am installing a thermometer my parents got me for Christmas.

Snow is quite deep and yes they are indeed shorts. Since this picture, we have received another 4 inches or so of snow.

The back door of each of our places is covered with snow and icicles. Doesn't mean much for Claire and I, but Amanda takes Dexter outside everyday. Some of those icicles could kill.

Installing the satellite. The school let us borrow their drill and gave an extra battery. We started Saturday afternoon at 3:30 and by 3:37, the batteries had already run out.

Claire in proper winter attire standing behind our house.

Hard to tell here, but all we see outside is white. All the branches are covered with layers of snow. It looks really dark out too. Must be a bad camera.

My fine handy work. Thanks for the thermometer, works great!

More than teacher

If you (readers) would allow, I would like to post about something different from what our typical blogs have been about. Claire and I focus our writing about experiences we have living in Deer Lake and interactions we have with students or staff. Today I would like to write about something quite different, and definitely more important, Claire's successes.

As you readers have learned through our blogs and talking to either of us during our Christmas break, we have experienced many things. What some or many of you don't know is that Claire has emerged as a great teacher, friend, mentor and missionary. I laugh as I write this because I noticed on Thursday, that Claire has developed a teacher walk. Sounds strange, but it's true. She walks the halls of the school and aisles of the classroom with the confidence of a teacher, saying a friendly 'hello' to any who pass her way (even the students in grade six). The walk is quick, but not fast.

I want to say a little about each success (teacher, friend, mentor and missionary) and I'll start with teacher. Claire is prepared for each lesson, after having spent countless hours at school and home with resources and her laptop. She finds time to utilize all resources and cover a host of topics. She crafts her lessons to make them entertaining for the students. One key area is her bravery in the classroom. She has not been afraid to try new things and challenge the students. She single handily preps, instructs, and cleans up the grade 9 classroom from a variety of art projects. Another area in which she has emerged as a successful teacher has been her work with the students. Students are not afraid to approach Claire with questions/concerns, or offer opinions during class.

The second area of success has been as a friend. For anyone reading this, it will be of no surprise for me to say that Claire cares, and that is really and understatement. My family likes to bug Claire that she asks a lot of questions, but it is only because she cares. When Claire asks how your day was, she isn't being polite, rather she is sincere. She really cares about other people. This sincerity is on display everyday at school. At the beginning of the year, Claire would say to one particular girl, "Good Morning." The girl never replied. Before Christmas break the girl started opening up and now replies with a opening salutation. Another example that comes to mind (and there are plenty) involves her growing relationship with one of the grade 8 girls. With Claire as a teacher, this girl has matured and grown. Obviously the work isn't done, but Claire has already changed this girl's life. Amazing!

The third area is as a mentor. The secret in becoming a great teacher is in your ability to steal. Sounds wrong, but let me explain. Great teachers are able to pull and extract plans/ideas/resources from others teachers or any other source possible. While Claire does this, she has come up with great ideas for me and I am sure Amanda as well. The three of us often discuss ideas or bounce opinions off the other two.

The last area has been as a missionary. Many of our students come from broken or mixed homes. In grade nine, our of 17 students, roughly 5 come from a traditional home. Women commonly aren't not viewed as an equal. Claire is a strong Christian woman, and this has been evident. We accepted our positions in Deer Lake knowing this is where God wanted us. We believe that the people who have entered our lives, have been placed and prepared by God. With the female staff at work, Claire has quickly become friends with a handful. Claire has ministered to them through the way she carries herself and her daily interactions.

Claire asked me how she has helped me and I couldn't put my thumbs on any, not because there aren't any rather trying to pick the right ones. I have given it some thought any picked two key areas. One has been in Claire's courage to socialize or approach others. On Thursday, we went to the Northern and were waiting in line when Claire saw a group of grade nine boys, with one or two new faces. Claire, fearing nothing, went up to them and started a conversation. No matter the place, no matter the situation, Claire, thanks to her ability to care, will talk to anyone, and I mean anyone. A second area is her ability to play with the students. She is not afraid to make herself the butt of any joke, if it results in connecting with the students. Last night, Claire and I were sitting with roughly six grade 8 and 9s at bingo. She told them that we had seen the Northern lights and that they were amazing. The students were clearly surprised but it made no difference to Claire.

Thank you for your time. We are enjoying ourselves in Deer Lake and, as the above notes, are succeeding. Claire, due to her sincerity and love of others, has become more than just the grade 8/9 teacher.

First Day

So, our first day back was pretty uneventful. Every student came back to school, which may sound weird but we were warned that a handful might drop out over the break. Routines were quickly picked up as if we had just returned from a weekend.

Nothing much has changed since we left in mid-December. There is probably another foot of snow (3-4 feet in all) and the temperature is a cozy -25. Snowmobiles have replaced vehicles as the mode of transportation. We did find out that someone's dog froze because the owners locked him in the shed, because he had fleas.

Good news! The number of T.V. stations we have has increased by one. We now have Peachtree which is a nice addition. Oh and Global Toronto has also decided to rejoin us.

Interesting side note from today. In grade 8 geography the students are learning about quality of life and standard of living. I asked the question, "Who thinks they have a high quality of life?" No one raised their hand. Then I asked, "Who thinks they have a low quality of life?" Roughly half the students raised their hands. We then learned that Canada's life expectancy is hovering around 80. The students could not grasp the concept as people do not often live past 65 in Deer Lake.

Claire also had an interesting story from today. She was teaching about nouns and looking closer at compound nouns (goldfish). In the work book she was using the students were assigned to take the compound nouns and put them into sentences. One of the compound nouns was Bare Naked Ladies. The students had no clue who they were, Claire explained, but some students were still unsure. Tonight when she was marking she read me some interesting sentences they made up. Here are a few examples: " If I saw Bare Naked Ladies I would run the other way", " Bare Naked Ladies walk across the street". We had a good chuckle out of it. The students take everything so literally, to the point that if I tell a student to go sit in their desk, they will reply "I won't fit".

We will post some pictures soon of the snow and scenery.

We're Back

Well we made it back to Deer Lake safe and sound. We had a great Christmas and enjoyed visiting with many friends and family. While we were home we were so busy visiting and getting some shopping done that we did not have much down time. I wasn't quite ready to come back, and I definitely could have used another week, but I am thankful for the time we had.

Yesterday was our big travel day and we made it back, but to say it was an uneventful trip would not be true. We left home at 8:10 am and made it to the airport by 9:15 am, traffic was amazing. We caught up with Amanda no problem, got our luggage checked in and off we went.

Our flight was delayed a bit. We were supposed to be at gate 112 and about 15 minutes before we were allowed to board they told us we had changed gates to 142 (which is on the other side of the terminal) so we walked quickly to get there. Once we were there waiting, mine and Greg's name was called over the PA system asking us to report to the desk at the gate. So we went, we thought that maybe they couldn't fit us on that flight so they were going to delay it. Turns out they just had to give us our seat number (they didn't do that when we checked in for some reason). Just before we were supposed to load an announcement came over the PA saying our plane is delayed (the plane was late getting to the airport). When we finally did load the plane Greg, Amanda and I were scattered all over the plane. I sat in the front, Amanda in the middle and Greg was bringing up the rear. When everyone had boarded there was announcement saying we were going to be delayed even further due to something not right in the cargo area, I am not sure what it was but some maintenance guys came and fixed it. Our flight finally left at 12:30 (we were supposed to leave at 11:30).

We finally reached Thunder Bay at 2:10. Our flight from Thunder Bay to Red Lake was scheduled to leave at 4:00. Amanda and I needed to go grocery shopping and Greg being the organized person he is had scheduled us a taxi for 1:30. Needless to say it was gone. Once we got off our plane we realized there was 8 taxi's lined up outside waiting to take people places. So Amanda and I booted it to a taxi while Greg waited with Dexter and they collected our bags.

Grocery shopping was fine. I was running around the store like crazy and was all over the place. I am a slow grocery shopper and like to take my time so I was really out of my element rushing around. We got all the groceries we needed and called the taxi for a pick up. They were at the store really quick. We were back to the airport by 3:20pm. We made great timing.

When we went to get Greg to come help us pack the groceries into the Rubbermaids we discovered that the Rubbermaids never made it to Thunder Bay from Toronto. Unfortunately, one of Amanda's boxes never made it either and hers had a lot of stuff she need it in. Our missing baggageereas just 3 empty Rubbermaids. Hopefully Amanda's box will be here in Deer by the end of the week, we are told that our stuff is in Thunder Bay now.

Due to Air Canada not bringing our Rubbermaids they gave us 3 cardboard boxes. Thankfully we brought tape (thanks Grandma and Grandpa) with us to help keep them together, but I still was not happy with the boxes they just seemed way to flimsy. All our food fit in the boxes and we taped them up and got checked into our next flight. Our flight was scheduled to leave at 4:00 and 3:50 an announcement came on saying that our flight was delayed until 4:15. At 4:10, another announcement was made saying it was delayed until 5:00. At this point we went upstairs in the airport and got something to eat. At 4:55, we watched our stuff being loaded on to the plane. They were just throwing our boxes of food around, I was a little worried about the glass bottles and things that could break. We finally began boarding our plane at 5:15.

We had to fly to Sioux Lookout and then catch a connecting flight in Red Lake. Our connecting flight was scheduled to leave at 5:45, we thought we were going to miss our fight and have to spend the night in Red Lake. We made it to Red Lake at 5:55 and found that our plane was still there. They waited for us because there was so many people on our flight connecting to the other flight. We got all our luggage and checked in again to our other flight and got loaded on for our last leg of the journey.

The last 20 minutes of our flight to Deer Lake had a lot of turbulence, but it was alright. We finally made to Deer by 7:45pm.

Everything was fine when we got back. We were able to catch the last period of the Canada vs. USA World Junior game and watch Canada beat the USA, which made Greg very happy. After the hockey game ended we unpacked our stuff and began to relax a little bit. It was definitely a long and tiring day.

This is a picture of the state of our boxes by the time they reached Deer Lake. These things were definitely abused along the way.

I am surprised at how well everything travelled, even after they were thrown around, nothing was broken.

Deer Lake Musings

So we don't have any new pictures to post, more on that later, but decided to write about our experiences over the past weekend. We woke up Satruday morning and pretty soon were left without power as the entire community's power went out. It lasted for 2 and a half hours. Since it was morning, we didn't need to find candles, but not having water and heat was hard to get over. At night, we made our way over to the school to setup for the School Christmas party. In the middle of setting up with Tracy (Gr. 8 TA, and a new found friend) the power went out again at 4:30. People started to come to the school because the dinner was supposed to start at 7:00. Some brought food that they were still able to make (potato and macaroni salad). Eventually the principal and director decided to eat whatever food was brought at 9:00 and call it a night. Ironically the power came back on at 8:52.



The power outage did provide a new experience as we learned how resourceful you need to be to survive up here. Within hours of the power being out, the school was already cold (Claire had to get her winter coat) and our teacherage was 15. That night, when playing a game involving presents, many people had purchased comforters or throw blankets. They were the hot ticket items. We learned that day why.



Brings us to a new topic as our thinking about certain life needs and life itself has changed in the last several months. As mentioned, everything up here is in terms of survival. Everything you do is to survive. Not to worry parents, as we have plenty of food and water and will not waste away, but small things like gathering enough containers to hold water, both for drinking and plumbing for when the power goes out. I have taken this last one a little excessive as I am reusing any container deemed large enough (general rule is anything 1L or bigger). Last week I was laughed at because I washed a large ketchup container and filled it with water. When asked why, I reasoned that it would be at least two flushes. After Saturday, people weren't laughing anymore.



Another area of different thinking is in common sayings. We have mentioned this to some people but the term north has a new meaning. Back at home, north generally refers to anything higher than Toronto. Our definition of north now refers to Santa's workshop. As well, the term, "there is nothing to do." You do not understand this until you have experienced a Friday night in Deer Lake or an afternoon without power here. Stuck in the dark with no light/heat/running water creates a boring evening. But even when the power is working there are times when watching paint dry would be a hit. The one store closes at around 6, so there is literally no where to go after that. And with the weather approaching -40, we have stopped our late night walks, or any optional outside time.



A final way in which our attitude has changed is our resourcefulness. With things being so expensive or non-existent we have had to make due for several things. One example involves a rolling pin. We now have one thanks to our Thunder Bay outing, but we didn't at first. Claire was making butter tarts and started kneading the dough. After realizing we didn't have a rolling pin, we looked high and low for anything that would work. I, being a good Dutchman at heart, remembered we had been keeping some recycling and retrieved the inner cardboard roll from the aluminum foil. Worked like a charm. You would be amazed at how many items can be used more than once or could serve two purposes (candy tubs as tupperware and cheese bags as sandwich bags).

Back to the staff dinner, it was quite something. We didn't end up eating until 9:45 at the earliest. The one turkey that arrived cooked (there were four that were supposed to come) had been sitting out for over three hours. The food wasn't anything to write home about (can I still say that, after I had just written about it). What was good to see was the resilience the people have. People kept coming with the food they had been assigned to cook late into the night. A cooked turkey arrived at midnight. Down south many, if not all, people would have not come after the power came back on. After eating everyone played a couple christmas games. We didn't get back home until 2:00 am.

Christmas Festivities in Deer Lake

On Friday, December 9 the community had a Christmas Parade. It was quite different, but something Claire and I are thankful to experience and will never forget. There was no school that day for students. The teachers split into two teams, boys and girls, and dressed up two busses. The girls, being more astute planners, had several meetings weeks before to plan and prepare. On the other hand, the men, being more confident in their ability, decided to wait until the night before to get started. The girls, who ended up as the winners, disguised their bus as a gingerbread house. It was quite good and reflected their hardwork. We, the men, used the school's ATV and trailer to build a sleigh pulled by reindeer. Quite ingenius I know, but apparently the girls were quite upset with us bending the rules (we were ONLY supposed to use the bus).

After the busses were decorated the entire staff went to the Band Office and lined-up with the rest of the floats. In all there were 9 floats. The Band Office built one, health services and several other groups had others. The school had the advantage of having big busses, while the other 7 floats were trucks with Christmas lights or something like that. The parade was supposed to start at 2:00, but of course with this being Native Country it didn't actually start until 3:00. So we sat on the bus, in -30 weather waiting.

Next, the NAPS (local policeman) drove the truck and led us through the community. Everyone, and I mean everyone was lined up outside their houses with grocery bags waiting for us to throw out bags of candy. This event wasn't just for children, as adults, and even the elders were outside in wheelchairs watching and collecting the goodies. It was really something to see the entire community, both young and old, get into the festivities.

The winning girl's float. Now there was no actual prize, rather bragging rights, so the competiveness seemed out of place.

This is the girl's mascot, Crystal. She is the Grade 7 TA and one who we have really connected with.

The men's sleigh is made up of the bus and the ATV/trailer. The bus was the sleigh, with the ATV being th reindeer.

In discussions with students and staff we have learned of some neat Christmas traditions in Deer Lake. Some sound really neat and we are disappointed that we won't be here. The one everyone talks about involves Christmas Eve and is called Mukshey. On Christmas Eve, people go door to door to everyone's house and visit/eat food. It starts at dinner time and goes till the wee hours of the morning. No times or booking, simply walking door to door and spending five-10 minutes visiting with everyone. What makes this even better is the attitude and significance it has to the people.

When we ask the students what they are looking forward to most about Christmas, almost 100% of the time, their answers are the same, Mukshey of course. Their excitement does not lie under the tree but around eating and visiting with elders/cousins/family. Not quite the same attitude as the kids have down south.