Northern Dispatches

I've left the balminess of Toronto and am in Iqaluit, Nunavut.

I spent Christmas at my sister's house which was very nice except for opening presents which drove me absolutely crazy.

On Christmas morning, we started opening presents at 10:00. There were 7 of us including my 16 month-old niece. There were quite a few gifts, but nothing extravagant. My family is very different from my brother-in-law's family when it comes to Christmas traditions.

Santa had filled our stockings and so we began by opening them. Mostly toiletries and chocolates.

A Christmas present should be torn open. I don't like it when people are careful to peel the tape off in order to prevent the paper from peeling, and they unwrap the present in an effort to save the paper. It's hard enough saving the unused tubes of paper for twelve months; I don't understand how people expect to reuse the paper that they've salvaged from gifts. Christmas is incredibly wasteful, and, environmentally, it probably is the right thing to do, but come on.

For each present, paper, bows, and ribbons were saved and piled neatly. Each present came with a store-bought card that was read aloud. Honestly, all those corny cards sound the same: May the light of the season touch your heart and bring you peace for the upcoming year. Blah, bla, blah, blah. The personal notes are much better. Cards would invariably include photos that would also be read and passed around to everyone, and we were all supposed to ooh and aah and bask in the joy of both giving and receiving. Presents were opened and examined closely. Instruction manuals were even partially read aloud. Thank you declarations flowed. Fine. Great, even! This was nice for the first trip around the room, but it continued like this for 4 hours!

My family always opened our presents rather quickly, but never simultaneously. We would wait while other people opened their gifts, but we didn't lounge around and drag the gift exchange on until 2:00 in the afternoon! We would always take our time, but my job was always to make sure that everyone had a present in hand and a present on-deck. When one person was finished opening a gift and we had all seen their face light up, we were on to the next present. The wrapping paper would be torn and the we'd be cookin'.

Eventually, I just gave up trying to speed things along. I was so profoundly bored that I tried to think about how I could feasibly get out of this torture. I could never have imagined opening presents being boring, but this was. Don't get me wrong, I loved all the presents I received and I loved seeing the joy in the faces of those to whom I gave presents, but dragging the opening on and on sucked most of the joy from the experience. It probably didn't help that I made numerous hints about being thirsty that were completely ignored. Apparently, I had to sit for 4 hours reading cards and saving wrapping paper for next year without booze.

Christmas dinner was very nice, and turkey is an amazing food. Butterball pales in comparison to the fresh, unfrozen turkey that I have grown accustomed to throughout the years at my father's house. Certainly the Butterball stuffing is a disgusting sodium concoction that probably, technically, shouldn't be called food. Nevertheless, the meal was fine, and was a nice change from my usual dinners of veggie dogs wrapped in a tortilla, or chocolate chip pancakes.

On Boxing Day my father and I drove to his farm. We didn't arrive until about 5:00 and I immediately started cleaning the garage. My Dad wanted me to move my car into the garage, but it required a lot of cleaning in order to free up adequate space. I found places for and moved all the junk, and discovered that my car's battery was dead. I hooked up the charger and waited. Eventually, I managed to get the car started and my Dad and I managed to squeeze the car into the garage.

My father has a large garage that is able to fit two cars lengthwise. It's a tight fit, but it can be done, and when it comes to storage, it's very convenient. With 10 centimetres between the front of my father's car and the garage wall and 10 centimetres between the rear bumper of my father's car and the front bumper of my car, I closed the garage door. It creaked down slowly as I watched in panic as it approached my back bumper. The door just slipped past my bumper. I let out a breath of relief but quickly gasped as a metal hinge protuberance neared my bumper. It hit the top of my back bumper about half a centimetre in and proceeded to scrape down the outside of the bumper for another 20 centimetres or so. I could hear the plastic being gouged out. With at least 20 centimetres of wasted space that would have made all the difference, I cursed the fact that now I would need to repair my back bumper or live with it being scratched.

I left Ottawa for Iqaluit on the morning of the 27th. There was a visibility warning and there was some concern about whether or not we would be able to land in Iqaluit. If we had been unable to land, we would have continued on to Rankin Inlet where we would have to wait for another flight to reattempt an Iqaluit landing and, if unsuccessful, we would head back to Ottawa. The promise of spending 12 hours travelling only to return to my departure point made me quite anxious. It's not like I had anything better to do, but no one likes wasting a whole day. I had also been looking forward to arriving for such a long time that I would have been devastated if I had to wait another day.

The captain came on the PA system at 12:15 and said that the storm had passed and that we would be landing. It was -30C when we touched down, but the wind made it feel like -56C. My 153 pounds of luggage arrived quickly and in great shape and I was ready to go.

Did you catch that? Yes, 153 pounds of luggage. Groceries are extremely expensive in Iqaluit and because I was allowed to bring two pieces of checked luggage, I figured that I might as well use my full allowance. Just to give you a point of comparison, milk costs $4.00 a litre, toilet paper is $3.00 a roll, and toothpaste is $6.00 a tube. Why would I come with just 20 pounds of clothes?

This morning the sun rose at 9:30. It isn't really that bright outside, but Iqaluit always has some sun unlike places further north. As I write this at 1:20, the sun is setting and it will be pitch black by 2:00.

I am here for three or four weeks (maybe more, maybe less). There isn't a lot to do as we don't have television right now, so there is a good chance that there will be more posts. A belated happy holidays to everyone!