I love you. And guess what? Other people do too, people far and wide, who’ve visited and who’ve only dreamed of visiting. I moved here two years ago (technically February 25 is my anniversary date), and I started this blog as a way to show my family and friends back home what Yellowknife was all about.

One of my first posts, and the one that’s single-handedly garnered me the most views, was one about webcams in Yellowknife. There was a live feed set up in Old Town, I think by a citizen, which looked out onto Great Slave Lake and the downtown area. I thought it was perfect, so I linked to it, and other people did too: to date, 8,867 people have viewed that post alone.

Then in January I received a comment that the webcam wasn’t working anymore. Sure enough, unbeknownst to me, the webcam had been taken down. Disappointed, I looked around for other webcams to replace it, since many people came to my blog for this reason. There wasn’t a single other webcam to link to, so I edited my post to let people know, and I gave up.

That is, until I got this comment.

My emotional reaction was something along the lines of “screw you, Yellowknife isn’t backwater!” Initially, I was mad. How dare “Don” make negative judgments on my beautiful town? What nerve! And then, I realized he was right.

I’ve been dwelling on this for a couple days and I’ve come to the conclusion that the city needs to fire up some live-feed webcams for the world to see. So many of us would love to set one up ourselves, but with caps on internet usage, it’s completely out of the question. Our hands are tied, and yet we yearn for our families back home to see what beautiful weather we’re having, or how cold it looks, or how much snow we have in October. We want to show off this unique city to the world, but we can’t!

With NWT Tourism’s Spectacular NWT, the popular reality TV shows Ice Road Truckers and Ice Pilots NWT, CBC’s Arctic Air, and the viral YouTube video Evaporating Water in -30°C (which, by the way, currently has 8.7 million views), it’s clear that people want to see the north. No matter where they live, they want to be able to experience Yellowknife.

Today I tweeted the mayor of Yellowknife Mark Heyck, asking if there were any city-run webcams that I wasn’t aware of. I had a response in minutes, which was essentially “not that I’m aware of”, followed by “what did you have in mind?” His response was promising and basically prompted me to start ruffling feathers to get this done.

SO!

I’m calling on the City of Yellowknife to step up to the plate and start up a few live-feed webcams! If you live here and you want to show Yellowknife to your friends and family back home, or if you don’t live here but you want to be able to see Yellowknife for yourself, please share this post! Comment and let me know what it would mean for you to have webcams in Yellowknife! We have such a unique environment and culture here, and it’s fine time we start showing it off. Who’s with me?

We tried all kinds of other material to try and make a new gasket.  I even cut a gasket out of my leather dingo boots but that didn’t work either.  We sat there in the cold for about half an hour before it started getting really cold inside the van.  I didn’t know what to do.  I was shacked up with Bubbles at the time and she loan me her gym bag to pack some extra clothes in.  I was digging around for another pair of socks when I felt a round large object.  I pulled it out and it was a big rubber dildo.  I pulled it out and said, “Hey, this might work.”  One of the elderly ladies took offence to the sight of it and started hitting it with her cane and swearing at me in her language. 

After we all had a good laugh, we decided it would be perfect material for a gasket.  The girth was just the right size to fit over the new thermostat.  But we didn’t have a knife to cut a new gasket out.  The only thing I had was an axe.  And a dull one at that.  I tried once to cut it in half but the axe just bounced back.  All the guys were holding their privates and wincing in pain.  One of the elders pulled out her sewing bag and handed me an ulu, a traditional women’s knife.  And sharp as a razor.  The women all huddled together to watch.  But when I readied the ulu, they all shrieked in unison and I couldn’t concentrate.  All the guys were looking like I was going to perform the operation on them and the look on their face of pure dread.  I finally found the courage to make the cut. 

If you’ve ever tried an ulu, it’s not as easy as it seems.  Especially on rubber.  I was making a mess of it and finally the elder took it away from me, and sliced off a perfect size piece.  It looked like she was cutting a piece of quock, frozen fish, the way the ulu sliced graciously through the rubber.  It’s all in the wrist.  The gasket fit perfect and we made it to our destination an hour later and I dropped everyone off at their respective houses.  The last one off was the elder who gave me the ulu to use.  Her grand-daughter was with her and she spoke to her grand-daughter in her language.   The grand-daughter told me, “She wants to know if you need that rubber thing.”  It was just a rubber shaft by then so I told her “Not really, why?”  “She wants to make a plug for the sink,” she said.  I didn’t think Bubbles would want it back in its current condition so I said sure.  But I knew damn well she would make me go out and buy her a new one.  So I told her daughter, “Twenty bucks.”  Her grandmother didn’t have twenty bucks so she game me about seven dollars in change plus half a pack of cigarettes.

When I got back home I sat Bubbles down and told her the story.  Instead of laughing, she starting throwing things at me, telling me I’d never measure up to what that thing had done for her and demanded I get it back.  I eventually ordered her a new one.  I see that elder once in a while and I dread it.  Because she always asks me in her language, “How’s your ooshook? (penis)” and laugh like hell with all her women buddies.  And always in Effie’s Cafe, when it’s packed. 

Another time I was standing at the bar with my buddy in Grande Prairie.  This woman was leaning against the bar at the other end.  She was puffing out her “mah” (Gwich’in word for breasts) and grinning at me like she had something to offer.  She wobbled over and stopped about an inch and a half from my face.  “I want to have your baby” she said.  “Can you” I asked, backing away from her stale beer breath.  She closed one eye and focused real hard before she cackled to herself and covered her mouth.  “I thought you were Tom Jackson” she said, more to herself than to me. 

The best was when I was driving south one time.  I only had enough money for gas so I’d stop along the way and play my guitar and sing for change.  I was playing in front of the Northern Store in Fort Nelson one morning when this truck pulled up with about six Indians in the front seat.  They all spilled out and this old Indian couple looked at me with great interest.  They said something to their daughter in their language.  She told me they wanted my autograph.  I didn’t know what the hell they wanted my autograph for so I said sure.  I scribbled my named on a cigarette pack and gave it back to them.  “Is that a D” she asked.  I took it back and looked at it.  Then it hit me, they think I’m Tom Jackson.  “No, that’s a T, sorry.”  They were looking at me with the big question across their foreheads “What are you doing playing for change?”  “I’m ah, I’m…I’m just making money for poor people.  I’m going to give this to Salvation Armey.”  Boy a big smile just came over their faces and they said something to their two grandchildren who went and dug under the tarp for something. 

They gave me a big bag of drymeat and one whole bannock, plus a ziplock of bone grease.  Man I never ate so good.  I sat right on the sidewalk and ate half that bag.  They were just killing themselves laughing.  They’d say something and their daughter would translate.  “Is North of 60 a real place?”  “Oh yeah, it’s in Saskatchewan.”  “I thought it was NWT?”  “Oh yeah, sorry, I mean NWT?”  I sang them part of the Huron Carole was but was screwing it up so bad I just said I have to go now.  I asked them for a couple of smokes for the road and they looked at me really quizzical.  “Never mind” I said, not wanting to push my luck.  I thanked them for the grub and peeled out before they saw my NWT plates.

The Deh Cho Bridge near Fort Providence, which officially opened to traffic on November 30, 2012, is the first bridge to cross Canada’s longest river, the Mackenzie, and the largest bridge project ever undertaken in the Northwest Territories. Before the kilometre-long 2-lane bridge opened, communities of the North Slave region, including Yellowknife, often endured days- or even weeks-long disruptions during winter freeze-up and spring break-up when crossing the river was hazardous or impossible and any supplies would have to be flown in.

Early estimated capital construction costs had been $55 million. In 2007, when the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation (DCBC) contracted with the Government of the Northwest Territories to design, construct, finance, and operate the bridge, cost estimates had risen to $167 million. Final costs came in at $202 million, in large part because of technical and financial difficulties, says Earl Blacklock, manager of public affairs and communications for the Government of Northwest Territories Department of Transportation.

Major construction began in the spring of 2008 with installation of the four southern piers. By April 2009, the four northern piers were completed. DCBC had scheduled a 2010 completion, but in early 2009 the original general contractor, New Brunswick-based Atcon Construction, was relieved of its management and on-site work coordination, and later filed for bankruptcy. DCBC’s design did not meet Canadian bridge code standards, and its engineer left the project.

“That was the moment that we came on board,” says Dr. Matthias Schueller of Infinity Engineering Group Ltd., which conducted a value engineering assessment for the Deh Cho Bridge, and then took over the design of the superstructure, pylons, cables, and abutments. “When you keep the design as it is for aesthetic reasons and other reasons—for example, you don’t want to take out the piers and build a new structure,” Schueller observes, “you have to deal with what you have.” When Infinity got involved the eight piers in the river were mainly completed.

In spring 2010 the territorial government took over the project from DCBC, hiring Ruskin Construction, the sub-contractor principally responsible for construction during the first two seasons, to finish the job. 

Founded on concrete spread footings cast into the Mackenzie River bed using cofferdams, each pier consists of a lower solid concrete cone reinforced with an outer steel shell protecting it against ice forces, and an upper steel head, which has a base and two inclined legs connected by a tie-beam. The lower concrete cone and the steel head are connected at the pier’s bottle-neck, with post-tensioned high-strength bars to ensure that the critical connection stays tight and sealed for service loads.

Infinity’s redesign was completed in six months. Using light-weight design principles, it designed an innovative composite extradosed truss bridge compatible with the already-constructed piers. The main span is cable-assisted, and at its highest point reaches 27.2 metres above the Mackenzie River. Two A-pylons each support two cable planes, each of which comprise six cables connected to the main truss through an outrigger system.

The piers had been identified as very stiff and with a brittle failure mode. Only one pier could be equipped with longitudinally fixed bearings, but “you cannot hang the entire superstructure on only one pier because no pier alone could handle the significant wind load,” says Schueller. However, engaging more than one pier would result in expansion and contraction between those two piers. Infinity used an innovative technique called the Failure-Mechanism-Concept (FMC) to verify that the bridge’s 1045-metre-long superstructure could be built as a single continuous unit with expansion joints only at the abutments, eliminating the two complex and costly expansion joints originally proposed for the 190-metre-long main span. To allow forces such as dynamic wind or earthquake forces to be shared with other piers, the designers decided to employ “lock-up devices,” also called “shock transmission units,” which act like shock absorbers on a car. “This way we allow the superstructure to expand or contract due to temperature changes, but when the dynamic loads like gusting winds come, we have a system where several piers are engaged.” Such lock-up devices have been used for years in seismic regions or in very long structures like suspension bridges, but not typically in bridges like the Deh Cho Bridge.

Applying FMC took the bridge’s design beyond the traditional ultimate limit state design approach adopted by modern codes. Infinity recognized that the weakest pier section, the “pier bottleneck,” could be designed to act like a fuse in order to allow a controlled failure mechanism. “We redesigned the critical section so it can rotate; the joint simply opens up when you have a certain force and this way you can engage other piers,” says Schueller. “When the bridge goes to its limits, you want it to ‘announce’ the problem by showing unusual deformations and strains or members that fail but don’t automatically trigger a sudden collapse.”

Infinity determined that designing the superstructure for a high degree of repetition, effective assembly-line fabrication processes and rigorous shop trial assembly including quality control and quality assurance would lead to faster and cheaper onsite construction and minimal repair in the field. Its designers focused on fast-track methods, designing a Lego-like standardized system for the assembly-line fabrication and trial assembly of 55 truss segments. All prefabricated and partially preassembled components were designed so that they could be delivered to the site by road and rail via standard transportation means, avoiding oversized loads and special permits.

Superstructure fabrication started in early 2010. On-site temperatures as low as -40 °C meant that most construction could only take place between June and December.

Material delivery to the north shore depended on ferry or ice road service, and ice breakup in the spring required the removal of any work supported by temporary foundations in the river. Only abutments, curbs, and wearing surface were designed for conventional construction methods.

“We basically changed the superstructure in details but not in the big picture,” says Schueller. The new design saved about 25 per cent on steel and 30 per cent on deck concrete, and provided other significant cost advantages, including lower expected maintenance costs. The bridge is being financed by the savings from the elimination of the ferry and ice bridge services, $2 million annually (inflating) from the Government of the Northwest Territories and a bridge toll on commercial vehicles of between $75 and $291 based on the number of axles. Passenger vehicles are free.

 The Piling 

“So far north and with the extreme temperature and rural conditions, everything is a little more difficult,” according to Dr. Matthias Schueller, but the pile driving “was pretty straightforward—nothing special: piles were driven into the fill of the approaches, which were built up to the base of the foundation for the abutment, far below the final profile grade line. Some were simple vertical piles and some were inclined, to have more resistance for horizontal loads. The profiles were rolled sections, typically used as beams. A small hammer drove them down to the anticipated elevation, and when they had enough resistance according to geotechnical specifications they stopped. The piles were then integrated into the foundation slab of the abutment.”

Residents and organizations are encouraged to review the Discussion Paper and email feedback and suggestions to mineraldevelopmentstrategy@gov.nt.ca.

For more information, please contact

Alayna Ward
Manager, Public Affairs and Communications
Industry, Tourism and Investment
Government of the Northwest Territories
867-920-8696

Here’s a few of our collection. Click on any image to take you to the Etsy listing

Here’s a pair of 1970′s Levi’s 684 wide flare bellbottom jeans. They are low rise, Hip Huggers. Size 28X32

Here’s a pair of Deadstock 1960′s Lee Leens wide flare bellbottom jeans. They have side hip pockets and “Fatigue” print on soft brushed Cotton. Size 30X36

Here’s a pair of Deadstock 1960′s Lee Riders white denim, peg leg jeans. Size 33X29

Here’s a pair of 1960′s Deadstock LEVI’s Sta- Prest plaid peg leg jeans. Size 30X28

Here’s a pair of striped Levi’s Sta-Prest slacks from the early 1970′s. Size 30X31

Here’s a pair of 1980′s Deadstock Levi’s 519 black corduroys. Size 29X34

-In the New Year I introduced my class to novel study for the first time which means that it’s the first time that these students have been expected to read a book from beginning to end mostly independently. I’m proud to report that they have embraced the challenge and we’re reading our second novel already with much enthusiasm!

-Seeing grade 7-9 students embrace the wonders of Power Point presentations and practice their presentation skills was pure fun. They worked hard and engaged with their learning – something that’s relatively rare for that group.

-Working with a struggling, reluctant reader in grade 3 to the point that s/he asks to read and is happy to try makes me happy every time. It doesn’t get old!

-My students’ curiosity and willingness to take risks in their thinking has made for a successful start this term in Science. I love to hear their hypotheses about the world and I’m so pleased that they’re not afraid to share them.

-Building on that last point, I’ve noticed that my students have been willing to take more risks and have been getting used to the idea that sometimes they make mistakes and sometimes their thinking needs adjusting. This is after months of concerted efforts to get them comfortable with making mistakes – it’s all part of learning! (At the beginning of the year, most of them would cry if they made even the tiniest mistake.)

-Overall there is a stronger bond between the students and all of us “new” teachers. The school feels like a tighter community now. There’s even more laughter and sharing going on. There are still challenges, but for the most part they are confined to a couple of students. Overall, we’ve got a pretty good groove going. May it continue and grow till June!

The second week was still good, but more realistic. The students were a little  less excited about what we had to say and we were all a little less rested – and the memory of Christmas was well behind us. This brings us to week 3. I won’t even try to summarize it. Instead, here are a few notes:
Monday
A grade 7-9 class cannot make the connection between prejudice and issues raised by the Idle No More movement. Really…? Really. I had to spell out the connections for them starting with First Contact.

Tuesday
A grade 3 child cries and refuses to go home because s/he didn’t earn enough stamps for free computer time.

Wednesday
A grade 4 child cries, screams and forcefully throws his shoes off his feet into the middle of the classroom, because an assignment that requires 2-4 sentences of writing plus a picture is “too hard” and s/he “doesn’t know what to do” despite half a day of explaining, other children working away happily, and an example plastered at the front of the class. Oh yeah, and countless offers of one on one help.

Thursday
A grade 3 child eats a cookie I brought in as a treat. Then s/he promptly eats a tissue I gave out to wipe their hands with, announcing “It tastes so good!” No amount of explaining that tissues aren’t edible worked. The student was very content about eating the tissue. I almost took a photo.

Later that day, a grade 5 child cries because s/he doesn’t like the brownie I brought in for the class. When I asked if s/he wants to give it away since s/he doesn’t like it, the child refused, continued to cry and ate it anyway.

Friday
A grade 4 child screams at a grade 3 child when tagged during a game at recess. When asked to go back to class due to this screaming and rude language toward the grade 3 child, the grade 4 student storms out, picks up a chair and throws it in the hallway on the way. S/he then promptly hides from the principal. Now that’s drama.

Another grade 4 student left the school to go home (without permission) because s/he decided that s/he doesn’t want to do anything at school right from the very first brain warm up activity. The first thing s/he said in the morning was: “Oh… I don’t want to do this!” in a groaning, whining voice. All the other children were clicking away happily writing a funny fill-in-the-blank story online. At least the message we’re sending is clear: school is for learning, not for doing nothing… S/he preemptively suspended him/herself.

Sigh.

Its a meet you want to be ready for. Lucky for me, I was. And I came away with my first ever Canadian Championship. Heres how it unfolded.

Friday was the 1500m. Despite a (as normal) nervous lead-up to the weekend, I had found a really good feeling in the last couple days of practice. During warmup on Friday, I could feel that I was physically on a good day. Knowing this, I stayed out of trouble in most of my races, made smart moves when I needed to and managed to win the 1500m. Good way to start!

Just after the finish of the 1500m final. A little bit of intensity… Photo by Patrice Lapointe, Fotosports.ca

1500m podium. Guillaume Bastille, myself, Vincent Cournoyer. Photo by Patrice Lapointe, Fotosports.ca

Saturday, we raced the 500m. In the past, I have had some trouble with this distance. Too often, I have finished well down the results and failed to score big points. Since the teams for World Cups and World Champs are selected from a cumulative ranking of points amassed over two sets of trials races, it is important to count as many points as possible on any given day. This season, I have invested heavily in fine tuning a new start position in order to improve my start, which is crucial in a 500m sprint. It seems to be paying off. While I’m not always first off the line, I am in the mix a lot more often, and almost never find myself with a gap to close if I get off the line in last. Instead of focusing on closing the gap, I can focus on passing and winning the race. By the end of Saturday, I had made my way to the A final, a first for me at a Canadian Champs, and finished with a slightly disappointing (at the time) 4th place. Still, my best result in a 500m to date.

Sunday is the longest, and hardest day, of trials. Why? Well first of all we already have two days of racing in our legs, and second we have to race the 1000m four times, as well as finish an intense weekend with a grueling 3000m. In the 1000m, I again made my way into the final and like the 500m finished 4th. In all honesty, I was a bit disappointed with this result. I never really managed to make a move in the race and felt like a bit of a passenger. I have to give kudos to the distance winner Charles Hamelin though, because his skating was a big part of that feeling. He was simply extremely strong on that day and I think all of us in the race felt a bit like passengers on the “Locomotive de Ste-Julie” as world famous announcer Dany Lemay likes to call him.

Next up was the 3000m. What can I say. The 3k is always a slog. A stressful weekend of racing takes a lot out of you and grinding out 27 laps is going to hurt. I managed to win the bonus points sprint after nine laps with a cheeky little acceleration. After that, for whatever reason, I decided that I should go ahead and pull about 15 of the remaining 18 laps. That kind of effort catches up with you and unfortunately for me, it caught up with me in sight of the finish line. I was passed 3 times in the final lap to finish 4th again. I’ll save you the details, but I was definitely cursing myself. In a weird twist of fate though, Charles, with who I was battling for the overall, fell of his own accord and thanks to my taking the bonus sprint, I managed to have just enough points to take my first Canadian Championship by a razor thin 16 points (very slim margin, as each distance is worth 1000 to the winner)

All in all, a good weekend for me. With that result, I’m qualified for the last two World Cups of the season and I will also be competing individually at the World Championships. I’m excited for the rest of the season! Thanks to all of my supporters, especially the Government of the Northwest Territories, currently my only personal ‘sponsor’.

Lastly, below is a picture of my new World Record Ring. My teammates  Charles Hamelin, Olivier Jean, Francois Hamelin and each received one of these last week for our record breaking relay at the World Cup in Calgary this past October. The Olympic Oval has the fastest ice in the world and anybody who breaks a world record there become a member of the brothers of the wind and receives a ring as recognition. I am happy to be part of the club!

This was back in the fall. Since then, the SPCA hasn’t had any kittens at all – until now. I should explain that while we would absolutely love to get an adult cat, a kitten would just have an easier transition and fit in better with our two adult boys who are already happy and settled in their home. Adult adoptable cats don’t get as much attention as kittens do, and the kittens have guaranteed forever homes once they’re ready, because no one can resist a kitten. But the adult cats are where it’s at! I myself have adopted two adult cats from the SPCA over the years, and they were both beauties with stories to tell and lots of love to share. So if you’re considering adopting a pet, choose an adult; they need you more, and in your home, with comfort, love and safety, they’ll be happier than you could believe.

In Yellowknife, the NWTSPCA has been raising money for years to build their new shelter, and finally last year it was finished and opened. One day while perusing Facebook I happened upon this photo, posted by the NWTSPCA:

The very next day Chris and I went in to meet them. There were 11 kittens from three mothers in total, all adoptable, even the mothers. Our friend fell in love with the idea of a kitten and decided to adopt one, too – and take her mother as well! So we spent time with the kittens, learning which ones were which, and we settled on Kitten #4 (The grey and white one):

He was one of only two boys, which worked out well for us because boys are generally easier than girls, in my experience, and our two adult cats are boys. We decided to name him Ace, after the Blue Jays mascot (World Series 2013 baby!!), and because it seemed to suit him.

So, world, meet Ace. He’ll be home with us in a matter of hours.

Pick up your new Squawk, relaxing all around town at restaurants, Ring’s drugstore, the arena, library, rooster and various waiting rooms!

Happy New Year!

Download the recent article  Northern telecommunications under scrutiny from the Northern Journal that provides background and discusses the process. You can also read the December 11th Northern Journal editorial on the same subject.

Check the lower right hand corner of your card for your exiry date. When you need to renew, the renewal form can be downloaded here, from www.hss.gov.nt.ca, by calling 1-800-661- 0830, or you can pick up a form from a Health Centre or hospital.

Renewal can be done up to  four months in advance of the expiry date.

…Obviously they had never flown with Buffalo Airways!

In a region where roads are rarer than rocking horse shit, bush pilots have achieved something of a legendary status in the wilds of northern Canada. In Yellowknife, the ‘Ice Pilots’ of Buffalo Airways continue a pioneering tradition that can trace its roots back to the years following the end of the First World War. Started by the legendary Joe McBryan (‘Buffalo Joe’) in 1970, the distinctive livery of Buffalo Airways has been blazing a trail across the skies of the Canadian Arctic for over four decades, delivering supplies and equipment to remote Arctic communities, in conditions that many of us wouldn’t even take a dog out in. What makes their performance even more remarkable is the fact that they ply much of their trade aboard aircraft that saw their heyday above the beaches of Normandy in 1944.

Phil and I had gone to Buffalo Airways with no real expectations of anything but a cursory look around the place and maybe a couple of shots of the planes. Phil really wanted to get a shot of Joe himself, but we had already resigned ourselves to that being a non-starter. However, we had failed to take into account the YK-factor…where all things are possible! Not only did we get our shots of the planes…and of Joe, but we got the full tour and a flight down to Hay River on a 70 year old Dakota DC3 into the bargain. I reckon if we had hung around any longer we could have found ourselves on the payroll!

We got the full tour from Scott Blue; not only the coolest named pilot in Canada, but also the tallest! Scott flies the C-46 ‘Commando’ transport planes and the CL-215s…mainly because he can’t fit into the DC3s! Seriously, the man is too tall to fit in the cockpit. Scott would need to be sat somewhere in economy to stand any chance of getting a DC3 off the ground. He did prove a great tour guide though and took us through the hangar, the workshop and practically every plane in the fleet. In fact, the only place we weren’t allowed was the runway! They say that the only difference between men and boys is the size of their toys. Believe me, toys don’t come much better than a fully working Douglas Dakota or a CL-215 water bomber!…I think it took me and Phil about 15 seconds to decide to fly down to Hay River!

The 45 minute flight takes you across the vast expanse of the Great Slave Lake, the deepest lake in North America and the ninth largest in the world. I very rarely get excited about flying these days, but somehow, the thought of making the journey in a plane whose historical antecedents included every major airborne operation of World War II had me fidgeting in anticipation. This was proper flying. The plane was so old that even mobile phones couldn’t interfere with its navigational instrumentation. Hell, I’m not even sure it had navigational instrumentation! I felt that I should be wearing a fedora, or at the very least a parachute. I loved it, especially when about 20 minutes into the flight ‘Buffalo Joe’ himself wandered out of the cockpit and asked if we wanted to go up front.

…I beat Phil through the door and was sat in the pilot’s seat before he had even picked up his camera!

We spent the night at Hay River, staying with Peter Magill and his lovely wife, Dian. We had never even met Peter until two days previously, when we wandered blindly into his office at Buffalo Airways looking for help and inspiration. But, in the true spirit of the north, he and Dian had invited us to stay with them. How little they knew. They were probably both still regretting it the next morning when we all awoke at 5.30am, suffering from the effects of too much wine and an excess of monosodium glutamate! Peter takes the flight between Yellowknife and Hay River to work every day, winter and summer. I suppose it does help that your office is next to the runway, but even so, his commute is shorter than many who have to endure the daily grind of rush-hour.

…And, personally speaking, give me a septuagenarian aircraft over the London Underground any day.

With thanks to: Scott Blue, Peter & Dian Magill, Mikey McBryan and, of course, the inimitable, ‘Buffalo Joe’ himself.

Ernie was my boss at YFK… the Yellowknife International Airport. Not a true likeness, of course, but it feels right.

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